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 A Malaysian Chinese is an overseas Chinese who is a citizen or long-term resident of Malaysia. Most are descendants of Chinese who arrived between the fifteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries. Within Malaysia, they are usually simply referred to as “Chinese” in all languages. The term Chinese Malaysian is rarely (if ever) used in Malaysia.

Early Chinese settlers (from the fifteenth century in Malacca; eighteenth century in Penang) form to a sub-group called Peranakan or Straits Chinese, who adopted many Malay customs and to varying extents (limited in Penang, almost complete in Malacca) the Malay language, but retained Chinese religious practices. In contrast, the newer arrivals (nineteenth century and later) who retained Chinese customs were known as sinkheh (?? - literally “new guests”).

The Chinese in Malaysia maintain a distinct communal identity and rarely intermarry with native Malays for religious and cultural reasons. This is because most Malays are Muslim. Under Malaysian law, such a marriage requires the non-Muslim party to convert. Most Malaysian Chinese consider their being “Chinese” at once an ethnic, cultural and political identity.

The Malaysian Chinese have traditionally dominated the Malaysian economy, but with the advent of affirmative action policies by the Malaysian government to protect the interests of ethnic Malays, their share has eroded somewhat. On most counts, however, they still make up the majority of the middle and upper income classes of Malaysia. As of 2007, they constitute about a quarter of the Malaysian population.

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 Most Chinese immigrants of Malaya came from southern China, mostly from the province of Fujian and Guangdong. In the nineteenth century, many came as indentured labourers, known as coolies (Chinese: ??). Others came freely to work, and were supported by Clan Associations. By 1911, the Chinese population in Malaya had reached 269,854, and around a million circa 1949.

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 The ethnic Chinese in Malaysia belong to several Chinese dialect groups. There are four major dialect groups: Hokkien, Hakka, Cantonese and Teochew. Other dialects include Hainanese, Hokchiu and Hinghwa. Hokkien, Hinghwa and Hokchiu are also known as Min Nan language. It is evident that people belonging to certain dialect groups are populated in different parts of communities in Malaysia.

The Hokkien is the largest group in Malaysia. It forms the largest dialect group in Penang, Malacca, Kedah, Terengganu, Kelantan, Selangor — mostly in Klang and coastal region of Selangor and western Johor. The Hokkien dialect is also commonly spoken in East Malaysia.

The Hakka form the most populous dialect group in East Malaysia (Sabah and Sarawak), parts of Johor notably Kulai, Selangor-Kuala Lumpur and Pahang. Hakkas are also found in large numbers in Johor Bahru and Perak, of which they possibly constitute the largest dialect group. It is the main dialect in Kuching, Sarawak.

Cantonese constitutes the most populous Chinese dialect group in the state of Selangor, Kuala Lumpur, Pahang, Negeri Sembilan and Perak where the Cantonese forms a large percentage of the population. The Cantonese also forms the largest dialect group in eastern Johor and Sandakan, Sabah. Sandakan used to be called “Little Hong Kong” since it was the second homeland for many settlers from Guangdong, where the sceneries resembles Hong Kong in the 1970s and the 1980s. Local Cantonese media is frequently broadcasted by Malaysian television channels, notably RTM2, TV3, NTV7, TV9 and 8TV.

The Teochews are concentrated in parts of Penang, many islands of Sabah and Southern Johor, principally Johor Bahru and Pontian.

There are, in general, three sub-linguistic groups of Malaysian Chinese with three metropolitan centers. The Penang, Klang and Malacca groups are predominantly Hokkien-speaking and the Kuala Lumpur, Seremban & Ipoh group is predominantly Cantonese and Hakka-speaking. To the south of Peninsular Malaysia, in Johor, Mandarin is predominantly spoken among the Chinese communities there, which is a result of the Mandarin media influence from Singapore, and the use of Mandarin in formal education. This has resulted in many people, especially the younger generation, to discard and neglect the usage of Chinese dialects, especially Teochew and Cantonese. Whereas in East Malaysia (Malaysian Borneo), Hakka and Mandarin is widely spoken, except in Sibu, Fuzhou and in Sandakan, Cantonese.

Modern movements to unify and organize Malaysian, Singaporean and Indonesian Chinese communities introduced Standard Mandarin as the language of diaspora ethnic nationalism.

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 The number of Chinese speakers has increased from 2,667,452 in 1957 to 5,365,846 in year 2000 [1], comprising 26% of total population in Malaysia. The Chinese community in Malaysia can be divided into the following dialect groups

Dialect Population

Hokkien speakers 2,020,868

Hakka speakers 1,092,754

Cantonese speakers 1,067,994

Teochew speakers 497,280

Hokchiu speakers 251,554

Hainanese speakers 141,045

Kwongsai speakers 51,674

Others (including Hunanese and Hinghwa speakers) 243,046

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 While public education remains free and accessible to all citizens of Malaysia, there are several types of schools available for Malaysians to choose from to be educated from primary levels up to tertiary levels. There are known to be three types of schools with their language of instructions where education is delivered: Malay, Mandarin (Chinese), and Tamil. Each of these medium of instructions signifies the three major races that exists in Malaysia and peculiar to the Western Malaysian communities. It is common for a Malaysian Chinese to be either Chinese, English or Malay educated.

The Malaysian Chinese communities, therefore, usually have a choice to send their children to either Chinese schools or Malay schools. Whichever schools they went to, the Malay language must be taught as a compulsory subject, if the language of instruction is not already in Malay.

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 A large segment of the Chinese population living in Malaysia is predominantly Chinese-speaking, they are commonly known as the “Chinese-educated”. Malaysia is also one of two countries outside mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, to have a completely Chinese-medium education system. Canada is the other country, but such schools are usually private schools. There are roughly 1,300 Chinese public primary schools (national-type schools) in Malaysia that are all partially government funded (where the wages of teachers are paid by the government while the up-keeping of school buildings is funded by local communities in forms of donations). The Chinese national-type school received less than 3% of total fundings for all primary schools. Mandarin is the language of instruction for all subjects except in Malay and English language classes. In the 1960s, all but 16 of the Chinese secondary schools had received government funding and had been converted into National Secondary Schools (Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan)[citation needed], but the term “National-type Secondary Schools” is used internally until today to show that they were once Chinese Schools. They first used English but later on used Bahasa Malaysia as the language of instruction. Today, there are 60 Chinese secondary schools that are supported financially mostly by the public. These are called Chinese Independent High Schools. Mandarin is the main language of instruction in these private schools except Bahasa Malaysia and English, but some schools use either Malay or English in selected subjects. In 2004, according to statistical data, 90% of all Malaysian Chinese attend Chinese primary schools (The figure was around 70% in 1970). Among the 600,000 Chinese primary school students, roughly 10% are of non-Chinese descent. On the other hand, 90% of Chinese primary school graduates continue their secondary studies in public secondary schools (both national and national-type), while the remaining 10% go to Chinese private secondary schools.[citation needed] There are also three privately owned post-secondary institutes in Malaysia where the language of instruction is Mandarin

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 A sizeable group of Malaysian Chinese speak English as a first language (something carried over from the British colonial days). They speak English at home, and make it a point to immerse and educate their children in the English language. Like their counterparts in Singapore, they are known as the “English-educated” although the term is something of an anachronism. Most of these “English-educated” Chinese are unable to read and write in Chinese.

Unlike in Singapore, English has not been used as a language of instruction in Malaysia (except in private institutions and urban schools) since it was phased out the 1970s and 1980s in favor of Malay. Although there are English medium schools in Malaysia that provide an education based on a British or US-based curriculum, these cater to expatriate children. However, as of 2002, the Malaysian government has reintroduced English as the language of instruction for Science and Mathematics in national secondary schools and universities.

While “proper” English is generally spoken and understood among Malaysian Chinese, a common form used is a patois called Manglish (Malaysian English). Manglish is very similar to Singlish (Singaporean English). Manglish speakers typically understand 80-90% of Singlish and vice versa. See British and Malaysian English differences. Unless specifically Manglish or Singlish terms are used in a conversation, it can be difficult even for native speakers to differentiate the two as the intonation and most terms (especially the infamous lah) are common. Singaporean television sitcoms such as Phua Chu Kang and Under One Roof that make use of Singlish are popular in Malaysia. The Singapore government has tried to reduce the use of Singlish in these serials, with visible success.

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 The new immigrants who have not learned the colonial trading language of English are often jealous of the older immigrants who have integrated into an English-speaking colonial system. As such, the majority of Chinese-speaking immigrants often attack the older immigrants in British Civil Service using derogatory cultural remarks, a typical intra-racial infighting that explained the weak national identifications and identities that gave foreign colonization under British power an upper-hand. The essentially ironical but racist term banana [4] (Pinyin: Xi?ng ji?o rén; Chinese: ???), “white on the inside, yellow on the outside” was invented. The ungrammatical construction of the term reflects its linguistic origin and basis - from various dialects. However, with development of Greater China’s economy, this intra-racial infighting is reducing because many of the English-educated families sent their children to learn Chinese language.

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 The Malaysian Chinese community was intricately linked to the Singaporean Chinese community because of a shared history and culture. Singapore was a part of the Federation of Malaysia before it became independent in 1965. Many Singaporean Chinese have relatives in Malaysia and vice-versa. There are also a significant number of Malaysian Chinese residing and working in Singapore. Some families in nearby Johor send their children (around 5,000 of them) to school in Singapore, commuting back and forth between the two countries every day.

On that same note, the Malaysian Chinese are culturally much more distant from the Indonesian Chinese, Filipino Chinese and Thai Chinese. This is attributable to the fact that these countries did not have a shared history with Malaysia like Singapore did.

The entire Southeast Asian Chinese diaspora is characterized by their considerable economic fortunes and their susceptibility to discrimination or political exploitation by politicians. This diaspora is commonly referred to as the Nanyang Chinese, ‘Nanyang’ (??) being the Mandarin term for Southeast Asia.

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 A majority of the Chinese in Malaysia claim to be Buddhist or Taoist, though the lines between them are often blurred and, typically, a syncretic Chinese religion incorporating elements of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and traditional ancestor-worship is practised, with the fact that each individual follows it in varying degrees. About 9.6% are Christian (Mainstream Protestants, Catholics and other denominations including a fast-growing number of Evangelicals and Charismatics) and a small number (0.7%) profess Islam as their faith. There is quite a significant number of Christians among the Chinese population in East Malaysia

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