opinion It has been reported recently that Housing and Local Government Minister Ong Ka Ting would propose to KL City Hall to revamp the areas surrounding Jalan Petaling, better known as 'Chinatown' to the English-speaking tourists from around the world.

According to Ong, his department would do everything within its power to ensure that Jalan Petaling reflects all the characteristics that befit a 'Chinatown', in the hope that it would draw more foreign tourists to KL.

An act of goodwill by the MCA vice-president to address the concerns of the Chinese community in Malaysia? To me, alas, such a proposal is nothing but yet another political gimmick to woo Chinese Malaysians, whose support could be all the more crucial for the Barisan Nasional to secure a two-third majority in Parliament come the next general election, now that the Malay vote can no longer be taken for granted.

Perhaps the MCA leadership has stood so aloof from the crowd for so long that all it can think of these days is to entertain the Chinese Malaysians with a ludicrous idea as such, thinking they are pathetically nave enough to believe that its 'benevolence' would be met with some benign response from the community it claims to represent since Merdeka.

Such trick might have worked during the civil standoff between the Chinese and the Malays in the mid-1980s. But there appears to be a moral imperative for the Chinese Malaysians to remind the MCA of the changed socio-political climate in Malaysia today.

Unlike the Chinese communities in the US, the UK and Australia, whose members flocked to these countries in search of a new life as immigrants and played no role whatsoever in the initial stages of nation-building, Chinese in Malaysia were indeed one of the crucial parties in the Merdeka campaign in Malaya in the 1950s.

The Chinese were again no less an integral party when the Federation was expanded to include Sabah and Sarawak to form the modern-day Malaysia in 1963. Together with the Malays, the Indians and other indigenous groups, Chinese Malaysians have been contributing to the well-being and the progress of the nation since the first call of Merdeka was shouted across the sky by the late Tunku Abdul Rahman.

Established roots

It is true that the Chinese, alongside the Indians and the Ceylonese, were brought to British Malaya as labourers to serve under the colonial rulers towards the end of the 19th century. By the time the nation achieved independence, the sons and daughters of the immigrants had firmly established their roots in this tropical land. Their enthusiasm and active participation in the Merdeka campaign has surely qualified them to be counted among the founders of the Federation of Malaysia.

While the Chinese are predominantly, if not exclusively, visible in the urban centres of the US, the UK and Australia, one finds Chinese almost in every corner of Malaysia. My maternal grandparents, for instance, had lived in Bukit Sengeh, a small Malay village in the state of Malacca, for decades, along with a handful of Chinese families. In other major cities such as Johor Baru, George Town and Ipoh, shops run and owned by Chinese stand side by side a Malay kedai (shop) or an Indian barber's. In view of this, there really isn't a need for a 'ghettoised' quarter in the capital city of Malaysia called 'Chinatown'.

The Mat Salleh may find the presence of a segregated Chinatown in New York, London or Melbourne exotic, the last thing the Chinese Malaysians desire is to turn themselves into some kind of a purpose-made 'showcase' to satisfy the curiosity of Western tourists. Interesting enough, Chinese Malaysians take the word 'Chinatown', or Tang Ren Jie/Zhong Guo Cheng in Mandarin, to mean the Chinese enclaves found in many Western metropolises, but Jalan Petaling, or fondly known as Chee Cheung Kai in Cantonese, is not among them.

Yes, Jalan Petaling is predominantly a Chinese area, but it is as normal as the Chow Kit district, which is bustled with Malay/Indonesian crowds. However, the free flow of information and the rapid economic growth over the last decade has facilitated greater interaction among the different races of Malaysia.

Today, it is as easy to find a Malay or an Indian or even an Indonesian in the areas surrounding Jalan Petaling, as it is to see a Chinese shopping around Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman. In short, KL's life is pretty much a living epitome of Malaysia.

Integration not delineation

Although deeper understanding is yet to be encouraged and cultivated among Malaysians of various ethnic origins, a clear-cut delineation of the different communities is no longer possible, and certainly uncalled-for. All we need now is greater interaction and integration, not something that smacks of racial segregation or artificial differentiation.

Like him or loathe him, one must give credit to Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad for his brave attempt at Bangsa Malaysia, expressed through his grandiose Vision 2020. (Arguably, he has seemed to betray the very vision of his own when he put Malay unity above national solidarity and later declared Malaysia to be an Islamic state.)

This bold experiment, boosted by the booming economy in the first half of the 1990s, has undoubtedly reduced racial tension to its lowest level since the nation's inception. That Malaysia has survived the financial crisis in 1997 and the political turmoil after the sacking and jailing of the former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim in 1998 without incurring racial clashes goes to show the greater-than-expected communal harmony and tacit understanding among the various ethnic groups.

Race relations in Malaysia are certainly not as strong as, say, those in Thailand. They are nevertheless no longer as weak as in the mid-1980s, when they were susceptible to parlous manipulation by the two major race-based parties, Umno and MCA.

Owing to the raison d'etre of the MCA, the Chinese party cannot help but seek to prove its relevance through identifying and addressing the concerns of Chinese Malaysians. Unfortunately, political realities such as the dominant position of Umno, the state ideology that provides legitimacy to Malay supremacy, as well as the failed leadership exemplified by Ling Liong Sik, the party's president, have time and again compelled the MCA politicians to put the cart before the horse.

For one, the party is now anxiously expecting to receive from the Chinese community the credit for its effort to establish the proposed Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, while conveniently overlooking the fact that many Chinese primary schools across the country are facing serious overcrowding, with no signs of approval by the Education Ministry for expansion or increases.

Fighting hard

While Chinese Malaysians have been fighting hard against the Malay-dominant state (but not the Malays per se) in order to be recognised as the legitimate participants in the Merdeka movement and as the rightful citizens of Malaysia, the supposedly 'leader' of the community, none other than Ling Liong Sik himself, cared to remind the Chinese that, being a minority in the country, "we should behave accordingly".

To win back the trust of the Chinese, the MCA needs to do an awful lot more than political window-dressing. The older generation of Chinese Malaysians, many of whom are unable to communicate with other races in either Bahasa Malaysia or English, may feel elated at the Jalan Petaling episode, but the young Chinese Malaysians nowadays tend to have broader horizons.

Being one of them, I would like the MCA to also look into the plight of the Indian rubber-tappers in this country, to push for the publication of the findings of the investigation into the Kampung Medan racial backlash in March last year, and to stop attacking PAS for promulgating political Islam, while playing diehard apologist to the prime minister when the latter single-handedly and arbitrarily turned Malaysia into an Islamic country not so long ago.

Perhaps MCA has made too many blunders over the last few years that it can only resort to cheapjack ideas such as revamping Jalan Petaling as a handy fig-leaf to cover its nakedness in ideology. If such is the true state of mind of Ong Ka Ting and Ling Liong Sik, it is simply too bad for an organisation that claims itself to be the third largest Chinese political party in the world, and certainly worse for multi-ethnic Malaysia.

JOSH HONG is a freelance writer.