MALAYA: Token Citizenship

So long as the peaceful Chinese in Malaya sympathize with the Communist guerrillas in the jungle, and even actually help them, peace is something that the sword alone cannot win.

On the Malay Peninsula, which is about the size of Florida, Malays and Chinese are now about equal in numbers (2,500,000 each). But only in Singapore, which is a British Crown Colony, do native-born Chinese have full British citizenship. In the peninsula’s eleven other political units (nine of them still ruled by local nabobs under British “protection”), Chinese citizenship is strictly limited. Hoping to lessen this discrimination, the British in 1946 set out to organize the country into a Malayan Union. But the old Malay hierarchies, fearing that the Chinese might outvote them, threatened to revolt. The British compromised on a Federation of Autonomous States in which the Chinese still did not have a franchise.

The situation was readymade for the Communists, whose leaders and guerrillas are almost all Chinese. Today they get direct support from 300,000 immigrant Chinese squatters, and have the tacit sympathy of many Chinese merchants.

Last week the Federal Legislative Council approved a bill offering federal citizenship to 200,000 Chinese residents. This is less than one-tenth of the Chinese population, but it is the first hopeful step towards a wider participation by the Chinese in democratic government in Malaya.