AHC: Chinese majority in Malaysia

samcster94

Banned
With a POD of 1500, Han Chinese people have to be the majority in Malaysia. The majority can be a razor thin majority, but it has to be a majority in 2018. What can be done to get to that point??
 

TruthfulPanda

Gone Fishin'
Wouldn't the answer be "more of the same"?
AFAIK in 1960 the Chinese were 37% - and that is without Singapore. Plus 10% Indians. With Singapore the Malays were barely past the 50% mark.
So, simply do not bring in Indians and bring in a little more Chinese and you have a Chinese majority.
 
Wouldn't the answer be "more of the same"?
AFAIK in 1960 the Chinese were 37% - and that is without Singapore. Plus 10% Indians. With Singapore the Malays were barely past the 50% mark.
So, simply do not bring in Indians and bring in a little more Chinese and you have a Chinese majority.

You could also try having the British force-fit the Malayan Union scheme, which would allow more Chinese to gain citizenship compared to the more restrictive Malayan Federation deal, which was designed to restrict non-Malays from gaining citizenship, and thus, prevent the Malays from losing their political powers due to numerical inferiority. Just loosening the restrictions would allow more Chinese in, though that would still raise fears in UMNO of Malays turning into second-class citizens in their own lands.
 

Teejay

Gone Fishin'
With a POD of 1500, Han Chinese people have to be the majority in Malaysia. The majority can be a razor thin majority, but it has to be a majority in 2018. What can be done to get to that point??

Significantly more Chinese immigration to Malaysia in the 19th century would be a good POD to make Malaysia majority Chinese.
 
Wouldn't the answer be "more of the same"?
AFAIK in 1960 the Chinese were 37% - and that is without Singapore. Plus 10% Indians. With Singapore the Malays were barely past the 50% mark.
So, simply do not bring in Indians and bring in a little more Chinese and you have a Chinese majority.

Didn't the Malays have a higher birthrate than the Chinese meaning that any Chinese majority would be short-lived?
 
More Chinese immigration would be a good way to get this, but how would you get this? What were the factors that drove Chinese immigration to Malaya, particularly, in the first place? Why were Chinese so numerous there in ways that they generally were not elsewhere in Southeast Asia, or were these Chinese-plurality regions elsewhere that simply were not sovereign states?
 
More Chinese immigration would be a good way to get this, but how would you get this? What were the factors that drove Chinese immigration to Malaya, particularly, in the first place? Why were Chinese so numerous there in ways that they generally were not elsewhere in Southeast Asia, or were these Chinese-plurality regions elsewhere that simply were not sovereign states?

A pressing need by the British for hard labour, and harsh conditions in the Qing dynasty. I suspect racial attitudes by the British also come into play, such as stereotypes of 'lazy Malays' vs 'hardworking Chinese'. Not to mention, Malaya is far from an exception when it came to having a Chinese plurarity.

There are actually more Chinese in Thailand as compared to Malaysia or Singapore. Southeast Asia as a whole has a thriving Chinese diaspora thanks to centuries of maritime trade as well as migration from the failing Qing Dynasty. However, attitudes vary tremendously when it came to how the natives view them, and how integrated the diaspora is to the native society. For example, Indonesian society has had a pretty tumultuous relationship with the Chinese diaspora, who, in the 20th Century, were viewed with disdain over their suspected Communist ties and economic domination of the country. Things... got ugly. In contrast, Thai Chinese are so integrated into Thai society they might as well be Thai (though, part of it was driven by said Communist suspicions). Even the Thai royal family is descended from a Chinese Teochew migrant, though again, they're viewed and likely view themselves as Thai.

It's honestly not that hard to get a Chinese-majority in Malaysia, so long as conditions in China remain horrific (Mao-era China was pretty bad). The main issue is whether the colonial or local authorities would allow it.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
It's honestly not that hard to get a Chinese-majority in Malaysia, so long as conditions in China remain horrific (Mao-era China was pretty bad). The main issue is whether the colonial or local authorities would allow it.

Any sufficiently perpetual Taiping, Maoism or second Sino-Japanese War might be enough to get you there then.
 
One major problem, if you do get a Chinese majority in Malaya, is the question of how this majority will interact with the traditional power structures of the Malays, including their monarchy. I can imagine some profound tensions right off the bat.
 
Honestly, any case of a Chinese majority-Malaysia will inevitably result in becoming a vassal state of the Ming/Qing Empire and in modern day it would be wildly different from OTL Malaysia.
 
Honestly, any case of a Chinese majority-Malay(si)a will inevitably result in becoming a vassal state of the Ming/Qing Empire and in modern day it would be wildly different from OTL Malaysia.

Maybe, maybe not. Most Chinese migrants to Malaya were laborers and poor folk whom had a largely indifferent or disinterestd view of the Qing dynasty. There's also the fact that Malaya, Borneo, and the greater Nusantara region formed the regional nucleus of China's republican base. Penang is home to one of the headquarters of Sun Yat-Sen while Sibu formed a settlement base for Fuzhou christians under republican-nationalist Wong Nai Siong. Though ephemeral, these men and their actions did introduce the concept of republicanism and Qing authoritarianism to the townsfolk.

Everyone else has said the possible options for increasing Chinese settlement, but here's one more from my research: cash crop plantation. The sultanate of Johor made itself rich in the 19th century through a socio-economic system known as the Sistem Kangchu. Chinese peasants were actively encouraged to settle in the sultanate and grow cash crops for the economy, and the Johor sultans actively participated in building up the program late into the 19th century. As you can guess, this also shifted the demographic balance to the point that Johor was majority-Chinese by 1893 (though given the figures, I reckon the line was crossed decades earlier).

Perhaps the British copy the system and introduce it to the other Malay states to bolster their revenues, though I wonder what'll happen once the rubber boom hits Southeast Asia and the planters began importing Indian labor later on.
 
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