It is predictable of the MCA to create its Tan Cheng Lock memorial website only in Chinese and English, sidelining bahasa Melayu.
Wee Ka Siong and his party apparatchiks conducted their Feb 27 launch event in Mandarin as well. The website honouring MCA founder Tan was unveiled in conjuction with the party’s 72nd anniversary.
After seven decades in Malaysia, Cina MCA still neglect bahasa kebangsaan.
But at least these MCA activities in Mandarin have a weak excuse that the party is for Chinese members only.
What excuse does the DAP have for its activities to be largely in Mandarin when the multiracial party so loudly proclaims itself Malaysian First?
Malays rejected the Malayan Union
‘Unity in Diversity’ — flogging a dead horse
The outlook of Chinese in Malaysia today remains no different from their outlook held three-quarters of a century ago.
At a mass protest meeting on 5 Feb 1947 in the Malacca Club padang, the following individuals – see box – addressed a crowd of about four thousand. They were speaking on contentious constitutional matters in a time of transition from Malayan Union 1946 to Persekutuan Tanah Melayu 1948.
At the meeting, Tan Cheng Lock gave his speech in English. Goh Chee Yan spoke in Hokkien, Low Mien Sien spoke in Mandarin, Lim Kee Jin spoke in Cantonese, Arunasalam Chettiar spoke in Tamil and one person (name not provided in the report excerpted below) spoke in Malay.
In the nascent British Malaya, this kind of language Babel was the Chinese’s idea of ‘unity in diversity’. Fast forward to 2021 and the situation is not much changed.
Earlier in the 1930s, there was strong backlash from the Chinese when the British embarked on a ‘Malayanization’ policy that tried to elevate the Malay position.
The colonial administrator who introduced this pro-Malay policy was Cecil Clementi — Governor of the Straits Settlements and High Commissioner of the Federated Malay States from 1930 to 1934.
He said on 25 Oct 1933:
“The primary educational aim of Government must be to teach boys and girls whose parents are domiciled here, whether Malays or non-Malays, to live together in amity and to develop such affection for the land in which they live … if such a purpose is to be attained, a common language is essential; and this in Malaya can only be the Malay language.”
— Quoted from proceedings of the Legislative Council of the Straits Settlements, col. B161 (via source paper here)
Clementi, who had encouraged and expanded sekolah Melayu government schooling, believed that Chinese kids should be taught in BM so that through this common language, they can learn to live alongside the Malays and develop a love for the land.
But the Chinese were having none of it.
Some of the Straits Chinese who were British subjects supported English education while the rest of the Chinese would have liked their existing Sekolah Cina – which they established and paid for themselves – to be given some form of government subsidy.
For those Chinese living in the 1930s, enrolling their son in Sekolah Melayu to study literary Malay was a “sheer and cruel waste of precious time” and would be of no practical use to the boy in later life.
Their descendants after almost a century still think the same.
On 12 Feb 1934, Tan Cheng Lock responded to the Clementi initiative by saying that the Chinese cannot be made to adopt the Malay language as their own — see box below for excerpt of his speech.
And till today, the party which he founded – the MCA – has never wavered from Tan’s adamant stance. Neither has the DAP.
History has proven Tan Cheng Lock correct when he predicted – see box above – that any attempt to make the Chinese adopt Malayanization, i.e. “a homogenous amalgamation of the component races in whom the Malay characteristics will predominate” was a project that would surely fail.
Tan’s words when debating the topic of education policy at the Malacca legislative council meeting (in February 1934, as per speech above) were most prescient.
He said attempting to make the Chinese
“assimilate the so-called Malay civilization and culture” … “would be most energetically resisted by the non-Malays as something most obnoxious and baneful to their well-being and would be foredoomed to failure”.
True.
Tan proceeded to say that by making English education free or provided at a nominal cost, the British government may “induce the China-born parents to send their children to the English instead of the Chinese schools” (see box below).
He further gave the confident guarantee:
“I can assure the Government that no Chinese, whether locally born or otherwise, will ever consent to send his children to the Malay vernacular school for their education, even if it can be obtained gratis under any circumstances.”
Again, quite quite true. In other words, ‘Give free osso dowan!’
The Chinese ethos has been consistent the last 100 years here in Malaysia. That is unless elections have consequences.
GE15 is the game changer.
Helen Ang 
In 1972, Lee Kuan Yew abolished the Singapore’s Vernacular Education System together with the Nanyang University. That was that. Decision was final. Years later in the 1980s, he expressed his regrets for doing it at a time when China’s power was rising and reaching out to the World. Our beloved Malaysia may take a leaf out of this history book !. History is the finest arbiter of the Truth. My father founded the first Chinese Secondary School, Confucian in Kuala Lumpur in 1908. At a time when Communism was not even founded. From the 1930s, immigrant Chinese school teachers with left-wing ideas were flowing into the Malay States. The British began to take steps to control the spread of leftist ideas amongst the Chinese population, first ,through Governor Clementi’s clamping down. on Chinese immigrants and second, the establishment of the Protector of the Chinese ( an euphemism ) offices in Singapore, Penang and Kuala Lumpur in the Chinatowns to keep a baleful eye on the politically restive Chinese concerning their turbulent homeland in the 1930’s – the epic struggles between the KMT of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek and the Communist Party of Mao Tse-Tung.. At this time, young British police cadets were sent to Swatow, Amoy and Canton to learn about these clans on the spot for 6 months which IGP Tan Sri Claude Fenner told me. In 1931, the Singapore police had arrested the first Comintern agent, a Frenchman. in Singapore. With the fast approaching World War 2 which overwhelmed all, the late 1940s emerged in our beloved Malaya with the vernacular schools status unresolved which was soon politicised by the Communist Insurgency beginning 1948-1992 and followed by Merdeka in 1957 ! With the politicisation of the Chinese Vernacular Schools, it is difficult to resolve them until the matter is a non-issue without POLITICISATION ! And with it, Mandarin which is just another language, suffers unnecessarily. Actually, there are only 2 main issues at play overlorded by Chinese customs and manners or heritage. First, the schools and second, the Mandarin language which both are bolstered by Chinese parental will, the interests of the teachers, media and others at large ! This is the proverbial Gordian Knot which has to be untied or cut ! Good luck !
My father an illiterate but tons of common sense, sent all his children to the Methodist schools for commercial reasons !
As I said before, on the Mandarin language, there are two issues. First, as a language like any other. Second, a political issue, a tool or football. Until, these two issues are separated from each other, the proponents of this Gordian knot will run round and round in circles. Also, a student from a Secondary School only commands 1,200 Chinese characters out of 10,000 characters, enough to read the Sin Chew. A Chinese University graduate would at his command 3,000-4,000 characters. Mandarin is only a language which we must not forget. But it is the key to the study and understanding Chinese history, culture and heritage.