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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023

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The Malaysian system is great for Malaysian Chinese. You own the vast majority of profitable industry (excl oil and gas) in the country, run most profitable businesses, are disproportionately extremely wealthy and are no longer hunted by the Malays. To compare to my own people, the only country in which we have ever done as well as you (relatively) was in inter-war Hungary. Otherwise, neither European nor American Jews have ever been as disproportionately overrepresented among the wealthy and powerful as Malaysian Chinese are in Malaysia. And now, unlike in the 1960s, the CCP and China’s trade relationship with Southeast Asia guarantees the rights of Chinese Malaysians to some extent.

It always surprises me when Chinese Malaysians complain because you guys get the whole country for free, and all you have to pay for it is relatively meagre affirmative action. Take it from me, market dominant minorities elsewhere would kill for that deal.

Firstly, I fail to see why an ethnic group doing well in a specific country justifies discriminating against them in law and policy, especially considering that ethnic groups are not monolithically rich or poor and economic policies based on economic status are always less questionable (there's also the question of what the erosion of meritocracy does to a country). Secondly, I'm not entirely sure what "relatively meagre affirmative action" means to you, but I don't think quotas in education (like the 90:10 racial quotas in matriculation programmes), race preferences in government contracts, discounts on property purchases, access to a reserved slice of public share offerings, among other things, count as "meagre". I mean, I suppose in return the Malaysian Chinese are granted the incredible "privilege" of not being hunted anymore.

Either way, the disillusionment of Chinese Malaysians with the current system is reflected in the phenomenon of "brain drain". Often Chinese Malaysians jump over to Singapore, where there are both better prospects and where the ruling party is better at promoting meritocracy than the Malaysian government. If they want to lose human capital, they can go ahead and keep doing what they're doing, but people are going to leave for places which don't shoot them in the knee for the horrific crime of doing well.