The Malaysian Social Contract : between Affluent Malays and the Chinese

IT'S TODAY. Ok, doing community service by raising awareness of government proceedings - not interested? Please unfollow or keep scrolling. Here's a #showerthought I had yesterday, from a sociological standpoint.

One of Malaysia's cutest achievements is the tacit social contract between the rich Malays and the ... the Chinese! (Contextually ... who's left out of this arrangement - the poor Malays, the Indians, and the indigenous non-Malays. I suppose they are watching the main drama. What is that? Well ... )

The main drama : 

1. most Malaysian citizens : are economically immobile Malays

2. most Malaysian politicians : are economically mobile Malays

Why don't the non-(2.)s resent the (2.)s? Furthermore amidst widespread and intense suffering across all races, why haven't the (2.)s been challenged by revolt? The answer as we all know is in the social contract. But the most important device in this social contract isn't often talked about. It just comes up ... every once in a while. We must now introduce :

3. the largest Malaysian minority ethnicity : the Chinese

Implicitly, as it has turned out, Malaysia's social contract involves (3.) agreeing to be piñatas for (2.). How so? Basically (3.)s are decoys. Given any negative economic event, (2.) will point its finger at (3.), thereby directing the wrath of (1.) at (3.) instead of (2.).

This works brilliantly - (2.)s are able to withhold health, wealth, and almost every other non- religious semblance of respectability from (1.)s, while getting away with it scot-free. (2.)s meanwhile are complicit in this arrangement because they'd rather be the medium-sized-fish in a small pond, than small-fish back in China. What keeps the pond (Malaysia) small? (2.)s of course, they maintain (1.)s in a perpetual state of economic duress, so that they can't compete with the (3.)s.

Oh my fucking  █████  god. If this was the first time you read about it, you'd be like "what the BBQ flying fish happened here?" But I don't know, most Malaysians grew up in a world already defined like this. We were born in it, moulded by it. We didn't see the light until we were already studying sociology at the dinner table, by then it was nothing to us but boring ...