Apply that frame of Malay chauvinism to a Chinese and it doesn’t make sense in any nationalist way. On the contrary, the Chinese chauvinist is considered to be the embodiment of disloyalty.
Shu Zheng
Anglo Chauvinist or Chinese?
Both politicians and the media have painted the above picture as something of the Great Merger, the coming together of a Malay and a Chinese political heavyweight. Bullshit. The only plausibility that they stand together is because both are Anglophiles, sharing an identical, imported western culture with a common worldview.
Their coming together was a political strategy to pull back Malay fears (first instilled by Mahathir Mohamad) of Chinese chauvinism in the DAP and then to re-bridge the popular Malay perception that Pakatan is Chinese driven, a perception that has tainted and worked against the political fortunes of PKR and Amanah, and so to reverse that. Amanah, PKR and Bersatu especially need Zaid to be in DAP more than the DAP needs Zaid. In the DAP, Zaid is superflous — redundant. Now, Pakatan Malays and Bersatu don’t have to explain why they are with Chinese chauvinists who have been considered for ages as anti-Malay and anti-Islam, thanks to Mahathir who started it.
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The Chinese Chauvinist
Still saddled with Umno’s bigotry, still haven’t shaken off Mahathirism from his heart, Syed Akbar Ali has this to say on the significance of Zaid Ibrahim in the DAP:
It is an opportunity to show that ‘No we are not Chinese chauvinists‘.
From the annals of Umno bigotry, Chinese chauvinism was made into a bad thing, the ultimate badge of the unpatriotic and the disloyal. In racist Mahathirism, it means the Chinese are unwilling to ‘integrate’ (whatever that is) or, worse, assimilate. Either of which Malays like Kadir Jasin and, of course, Mahathir Mohamad mean to ‘masuk Melayu‘. Before Najib Razak, these Malaiyoos would have preferred Ridhuan Tee to, say, Lim Kit Siang.
What then is Chinese chauvinism? Or, what defines a Chinese chauvinist?
Looking under the sheets for an answer, the term chauvinist isn’t reliable. Framed within the western lexicon-thought, there is no Chinese equivalent because there isn’t an identical concept. Without a word for it, chauvinism had to be made up: 沙文主义 shāwén zhǔyì which reads ridiculous in literal terms, sand/culture/master/righteousness.
The western idea says chauvinism is ‘exaggerated patriotism or nationalism’, that is, the belligerent belief in a national superiority and glory. You could fit a Malaiyoo, say, Kadir into that category and so called him a Malay chauvinist — although strangely nobody, the media especially, do it. Why? Because chauvinism is derogatory. The Chinese is fair game though.
Kadir is Malay chauvinist because that’s what he himself has professed: only Malays are the rightful heirs of Malaysia, others are pendatangs, and that the Malays are in possession of a great (but fictitious) culture and civilization (imported from Arabia).
Apply that frame of Malay chauvinism to a Chinese and it doesn’t make sense in any nationalist way. On the contrary, the Chinese chauvinist is considered to be the embodiment of disloyalty. Hence, the term becomes a convenient Umno and Malay tool to beat up on the Chinese, so justifying half a century of discrimination in Malaysia.
In the justification, the NEP is considered, falsely, ‘reverse affirmation action‘ (a term every motherfucking English language reporter uses) when, in point of fact, it was and remains an apartheid policy today set in stone. (In the US, affirmative action arose as a result of a long history of minority discrimination — education, jobs, even getting a bus seat — without making the majority worse off. In Malaysia, the opposite, bizarre thing happens where Mahathir’s NEP discriminates against the minority as punishment and as if the Chinese were collectively responsible for Malay poverty.)
In China where one would expect to find numerous Chinese chauvinists, the term is a contradiction in terms since everyone in every ethnic group is by state policy Chinese, policy as opposed to the legal definition (in Malaysia). One would be hardpressed to find a chauvinist out of 1.3 billion. Here’s Mao Zedong in 1956:
“…on the relationship between the Han nationality and the minority nationalities…. we put the emphasis on opposing Han chauvinism.”
In that Mao line ethnocentrism is the closest rendering to any semblance of western chauvinism. Han chauvinism is rendered in pinyin as da hanzu zhuyi 大汉族主义.Mao ordered any expression of that zhuyi 主义 eradicated on the grounds that China is a civilizational state not a legal contraption (like is America or France or Malaysia) where laws were made up, sometimes implicitly, often explicitly (the Malaysian Constitution), to give legal existence to multiple ethnicities. The civilization that defines China has long been well established, indeed since the Han dynasty 2000 years ago wherein there was then just one emperor and all are equally his subjects. The People’s Republic follows that tradition, a single unitary state from which is created in whose name all its nationalities (actually ethnicities, 56 in total).
If Chinese chauvinism cannot be framed in (western) political terms what then is its intrinsic meaning? Asked in this way then there seem to be no other point of reference in Malaysia other than this: A Chinese chauvinist is someone who is steeped in Chinese culture, learning and in its traditions.
Who would be the perfect example of such a Chinese chauvinist? Helen ‘Aku Cina‘ Ang? How about Lim Kit Siang? (Care to nominate anyone of them, you are a stupid clown.)
Not even among the contributors at shuzheng could you properly fit that label because such a chauvinist would have to, by its internal logic, embody all that’s intrinsic in Chinese-ness. These characteristic qualities of Chinese-ness wouldn’t be something you can fake, as a Malaiyoo can be faked — the Malay has no determined roots nor any fixed indigenous past. Nor fake to be a Muslim or Christian wherein all one needs to do is to open your mouth and wag your tongue’s allegiance to some God. Ridhuan Tee would claim he is Malay and who is to say he can’t?
The Chinese does not exist by a declaration.
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