Chinese Integration

In response to some Malaysian anti-Chinese racism of a Malay supremacist who wants Chinese and Indian culture to fade:

Fayyadh Jaafar 🇲🇾🌹 on X

The Baba and Nyonya, despite marrying Muslims, didn’t convert to Islam.

Clearly showing that their cultural blend wasn’t about mimicking every aspect Malay customs, but rather creating something distinct, which we can't replicate today thanks to Malaysia's conversion laws.

Vynn is playing with spirits on X

People often ask why the Chinese don't assimilate into local culture more. Firstly, they do, just not in the way that some of you expect them to. Secondly, the reason the barrier exists is because of Islamic conversionary laws that prevent two-way assimilation. Consider Sabah. 

In Sabah, the Chinese can and do acquire Bumiputera status and are treated as natives legally. Often known as Sino-natives, there are many cases of Chinese intermarrying with natives and passing down their names, languages, cuisine, schooling, values, & wealth to their children.

 

Chinese identity is seamlessly wedded to native identity in Sabah. The sharp faultlines that typify Sino-Malay relations in West Malaysia are so blurred in Sabah that the racial fear mongering which has long been the mainstay of Peninsular politics backfires so flagrantly at those who stoke its flames amongst Sabahans. It is as if you have pointed the finger at one of our own. The race relations between the Malays and the Chinese of Malaya (then, inclusive of Singapore) were so arid that any frictions were liable to spark quickly into race riots. This is what happened in the 1960s when race riots in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur started spreading to other parts of the country.

 

Prior to these race riots, Malaya has had centuries of intermarriage between Malays and Chinese in the form of Chinese peranakans families, the Baba Nyonya only being one example. These race riots continue to mar the history of Malaysia to this day.

 

The flames of Malaya's race riots did not catch on Sabah's tanah air, however. When news of the riots reached Sabah's shores, there was no dry tinder for it to light. Sino-native relations have been watered by the decades of shared drinking, blood-mixing, and holy water dabbling.

 

Sabah may have suffered the Silent Riot but it has never been afflicted by a race riot between the Chinese and the natives.

 Why Sabah is different.

Local adat (custom) recognizes the native status of Sino-natives. The Native Courts are a third jurisdiction that covers matters pertaining to adat which are not covered by the Civil and Syariah courts.

The Chinese can acquire bumiputera status in these courts by proving to the judge they are married to natives and live as natives. Two cases from the 1950s come to mind: Liew Sin Yin versus District Officer, Jesselton 1959 and Ong Seng Kee versus District Officer, Inanam 1959.

Mr Liew married a Dusun woman and married according to Chinese custom and gave his children Chinese names. But since he lived in Jesselton city, a predominantly Chinese enclave in those days, he never paid poll tax as a native.

Therefore, the judge rejected his application for native status. In contrast Mr Ong from Inanam, lived in the native village with his Dusun wife and paid poll tax as a native. Similar to Mr Liew, his children have Chinese names and re even educated in Chinese schooling systems.

However, because Mr Ong behaves in accordance with local adat, the local native officials of his village testify that he is considered a local. This testimony & the obligations that bind him to community, reassured the native court of Inanam to grant him native status in 1959.

The Chinese truly get along with the natives of Sabah. This is because they are culturally compatible in many ways. One of the ways this is realized is in how they share their duties in life and in death. 

In life, they share their wealth, their lands, and their adat. In marriage, the relative equality of the wife with the husband ensures that the children inherit both sides of the family's rights and duties. In death, they pass down their inheritance and are then buried together.  

Ambilineal inheritance prevails only if religious conversion is not mandatory. The children are allowed to succeed as legitimate heirs, the rights and duties of both parents, unencumbered by Muslim-only inheritance laws.  

Furthermore, there is a great deal of religious compatibility between the Chinese and the natives. Chinese folk beliefs recognize the tutelaries of the land and requires one to pay respect to the local spirits.

If the Chinese are Christian, as in the case of the Hakka, then they find fellowship in the native Christian population.

Why are there so many Hakka in Sabah?

There were many waves of Chinese migration but the Chinese who arrived in North Borneo over a century ago came either as traders or as minorities hoping to escape persecution. The latter group are known as the Hakka. 

After the failed Taiping Rebellion (1850-64) against the Qing emperor, the Hakka became the target of persecution by the Manchu. Many Hakka Christians wanted to migrate to Sabah to avoid the persecution by the Manchu government in China which linked them to the Taiping Rebellion.

To give you a scale of the persecution the Hakkas faced, in retaliation for killing three Hunanese officers, the Xiang Army exterminated the entire Hakka population of Wukeng and Chixi during military counter-attacks on the Hakkas in the year 1888.

The army also massacred tens of thousands of other Hakkas in Guanghai. So when the Basel Christian Mission made a deal with the North Borneo government to resettle the Hakka in North Borneo as coolies, the Hakka leapt at the opportunity.  

The Hakkas that fled to and eventually settled in North Borneo under Medhurst's Free Passage immigration policy were Christians, just like their leader. According to colonials records, 3,859 Hakka entered North Borneo under the Medhurstian Free Passage scheme in the 1920s.

But from 1930–1940, a total of 31,998 Chinese entered Sabah on their own accord. The Hakka had caught wind of the prosperity of their relatives in this land and many more wanted respite from mainland persecution. 

They were given assistance in the form of land concessions and cash subsidies. These Hakka Christian farm-owners would go on to form the backbone of Sabah's economic development. Unlike non-Hakka Chinese, who were mostly labourers or businessmen, most Hakka came as settlers. 

You can see that unlike the Chinese in West Malaysia, who are primarily Hokkien and Cantonese, the Chinese in Sabah are mostly Hakka to the point that it was the lingua franca of the Chinese communities before Mandarin took over in the modern period. 

Unlike the skewed gender ratio typical of Chinese immigration into the Nanyang (Southeast Asia), the Hakka arrived as families. There was as many Hakka women as there were Hakka men. The Hakka after the Taiping Rebellion were a poor people.

But they made up for their lack in material assets with a grit like no other. When the great stupidity of Chinese footbinding became fashionable during the Qing dynasty, the Hakka women were one of the only Chinese women who did not bind their feet even when the practice was commonplace in other parts of China. Hakka women engaged in hard work like the men and so did not have time to entertain self-detrimental luxuries. During the Taiping Rebellion, the leader of the Xiang Army, Zeng Guofan, had a special contempt for Hakka women,  referring to them as "hillbilly witches" for the active role they played as generals and armed resistance during the Rebellion. Hakkas who settled in the rural highlands of Sabah also earn the moniker Cina Bukit (lit., Hill Chinese) and are known as Chinese who work the hills. 

The Hakka are adept at speaking multiple tongues since they've accustomed so well to the local colour. It is not uncommon to meet a Cina Bukit who speaks Dusun, Malay, English, Mandarin, and of course, Hakka.

The Hakka women marry with the locals and pass on their tongue and work ethic to their children. If Chinese men marry native women, they pass down Chinese names and receive Chinese schooling. 

In return, the native spouses of these mixed marriages pass on their bumiputera status as well as rights to land unto their Sino-Native children.

When the Chinese die, they are buried together with their family in the same cemeteries. 

The Chinese and the Natives live together, eat together, raise children together, worship together, and die together. Mandatory conversion laws prevent this.

Let's not forget how three of Sabah's past Chief Ministers (the head of government) have been held by Chinese. Chong Kah Kiat (2001-2003). Yong Teck Lee (1996-1998). Peter Lo Su Yin (1965-1967).