summarize this content in an FAQ format Katherine Chassie, Knowledge Analyst, WES; Justyna Peck, Policy Analyst, WES; Chris Mackie, Editor, WENR Although the U.S. is one of the most popular destinations for Malaysian international students, enrollment has declined steeply since the 2017/18 academic year. Malaysia is a multicultural, multilingual, multi-ethnic society. The country is composed of three major ethnic groups. Indigenous Malaysians, or Bumiputera, which literally translates as “princes of the soil,” are numerically dominant—their largest single group, Malays, makes up slightly more than half of the country’s population. Bumiputera coexist with two large minority communities: Chinese and Indian Malaysians. These communities make up around 23 percent and 7 percent of the country’s population, respectively. This ethnic diversity has played a defining role in Malaysia’s modern history. Public policy decisions have long been shaped by the often-conflicting goals of protecting the special privileges of various ethnic communities and bringing all Malaysians together as equal members of a unified nation. Over the years, attempts to balance these goals have produced a succession of uneasy compromises and differential approaches to the treatment of different ethnic groups. Ethnic considerations have also strongly shaped Education in Malaysia. At some levels of the education system, three parallel systems exist, each catering to a specific ethnic group while referring to nationwide standards and guidelines. At others, all Malaysians can gather under a single roof, although doors open more easily for some ethnic groups than others. The Colonial Legacy The seeds of this situation were planted by the policies of the British Empire. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, the British slowly expanded their control over the Malay peninsula and northern Borneo, attracted by the land’s rich reserves of tin and rubber. But exploiting those reserves required a sizable workforce. Unable to attract enough native Malays to work in the colony’s lucrative tin mines and rubber plantations, the British turned increasingly to immigrant labor. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the British actively aided immigration from India and Sri Lanka to work on rubber plantations and in public works. They also encouraged immigration from South China to work in tin mines, which even prior to the arrival of the British had often been owned and operated by immigrants from China.1 Although the British worked to coopt the Malay aristocracy, towards the majority of the Malay population, who largely lived as subsistence farmers and fishermen, the British adopted a policy they termed “minimum interference.” While this policy allowed most Malays to continue cultivating the soil and fishing, at least in the short term, it also sharply separated them from the economic centers of the country and its growing money economy.2 As a result, at independence in 1957, huge disparities in wealth separated Bumiputera and non-Bumiputera, while occupation and geographic location closely followed ethnic divisions. Non-Bumiputera, and Chinese Malaysians in particular, tended to live in cities along peninsular Malaysia’s western coast, where they dominated the nation’s trade and commerce, while most Malays and other Bumiputera remained scattered in rural communities working the soil. While Chinese Malaysians tended to dominate the economy, Bumiputera, and Malays in particular, dominated politics.3 The constitution ratified in 1957 made Bahasa Melayu, the language spoken by most Bumiputera, the new nation’s only official language. More controversially, the constitution also asserted the privileged status of Malays and other Bumiputera. Article 153 of the constitution made it the responsibility of the head of state to “safeguard the special position of the Malays and natives of any of the States of Sabah and Sarawak.” Malaysia’s Varied Geographic and Cultural Landscape Malaysia is divided by the South China Sea into two regions, separated by hundreds of miles: Peninsular, or West, Malaysia, and East Malaysia. Peninsular Malaysia, the location of Kuala Lumpur, the country’s capital and largest city, borders Thailand to the north and, across the Straits of Johor, Singapore to the south. East Malaysia, located on the north shore of the Island of Borneo, shares land borders with both Indonesia and Brunei, and sea borders with the Philippines and Vietnam. Indigenous Malaysians, or Bumiputera, make up around 70 percent of the Malaysian population. The largest of these groups is the Malays, who alone made up slightly more than half of the total population in 2015. While Malays are concentrated in Peninsular Malaysia, their numbers in East Malaysia are more limited. There, other Bumiputera communities are in the majority. The Ibans of Sarawak and the Kadazandusuns of Sabah are East Malaysia’s largest ethnic communities. In both East and West Malaysia, Bumiputera tend to dominate rural communities, where their ancestors long tilled the soil or fished the seas. Bumiputera coexist with large minority communities, notably those of Chinese (22.8 percent) and Indian (6.6 percent) descent. Chinese and Indian Malaysians are found in greatest proportion on the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia, although a large Chinese community also exists in Sarawak in East Malaysia. Unlike Bumiputera, Chinese and Indian Malaysians are often concentrated in cities, while their numbers are noticeably lower in rural areas of the country. Religion largely follows these ethnic lines. The country’s Muslims, most of whom are Malays, make up around 63.6 percent of the country’s total population.4 Buddhists, the majority of whom are ethnic Chinese, make up 18.8 percent of the country’s population; Christians, the majority of whom are non-Malay Bumiputera, make up 9 percent of the population; and Hindus, most of whom are ethnic Indians, make up 6.2 percent of the population. These communities speak more than 100 languages. Most Malaysians, both Bumiputera and non-Bumiputera, speak Bahasa Melayu, or Standard Malay, the standardized form of the language native to the country’s Malay population and the country’s only official language. Other Bumiputera communities speak dozens of other Indigenous languages. Chinese Malaysian communities speak various dialects of Chinese, the most common of which is Mandarin Chinese. However, the languages spoken in South China—such as Hokkien, Hakka, and Cantonese—where many Chinese Malaysians trace their heritage, are also widespread. Most Indian Malaysians are ethnic Tamils and speak the Tamil language, although some other South Asian languages, such as Malayalam and Telugu, are also spoken. Ethnic Unrest and the New Economic Policy (NEP) The tensions inherited from the colonial era exploded in 1969. In that year’s elections, ruling coalition parties lost ground to the opposition, and, notably, to two ethnic Chinese parties. In the capital, the outcome sparked riots, and fighting soon broke out between ethnic Malays and Chinese and Indian Malaysians, killing hundreds. The riots had a profound impact on Malaysia, revealing the fragility of the country’s ethnic balance. They prompted attempts to foster national unity, including the declaration of the Rukun Negara, which espoused a national philosophy of unity and harmony among all of Malaysia’s ethnicities. But the riots also propelled leaders to power who believed that historical wrongs had disadvantaged Malaysia’s Bumiputera communities, and that easing ethnic tensions would require preferential treatment of Malays and other Bumiputera. In 1970, despite making up more than half the population, Bumiputera held just 2.4 percent of all shares in the stock market, while Chinese Malaysians, who then made up a little more than one-third of the population, held 27 percent. In 1971, these leaders introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP), which they hoped would promote national unity through the elimination of poverty among all Malaysians and the restructuring of “society so that the identification of race with economic function and geographical location is … eliminated.” The NEP gave Malays and other Bumiputera preferential treatment in all spheres of public life. It reserved senior positions in the civil service for Bumiputera, favored Bumiputera-owned businesses in government contracting, entitled Bumiputera to significant discounts for new housing, and set minimum levels of Bumiputera ownership for all public companies. It also spurred similar changes to the education system. In the years that followed, the government established special schools, scholarships, and universities exclusively for Malays and other Bumiputera students. The politicization of education along ethnic lines also solidified the parallel school system first developed by British colonial authorities. Under this arrangement, three separate elementary school systems existed side-by-side: national schools, which were fully funded by the government and taught in Bahasa Melayu, and Chinese and Tamil vernacular schools, which were only partially funded by the government. Despite attempts to roll back some of the policies unleashed by the NEP, ethnicity continues to loom large in Malaysia today. But its prominence has often obscured other significant divisions in the country. For example, while Malaysia’s swift economic rise has, since the end of the twentieth century, improved living standards for many, it has left some behind. While Kuala Lumpur and other cities in Peninsular Malaysia are booming, many rural communities, especially those in East Malaysia, remain mired in poverty. As Malaysia transitions to a high-income country over the next decade, it will need to ensure that Malaysians of all ethnicities, whether they live in cities or rural areas, in East Malaysia or West Malaysia, can access the economic and educational opportunities that prosperity can offer. Inbound Student Mobility Malaysia welcomes…
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