Some Chinese may have migrated abroad due to unhappiness with the situation in Malaysia, but former MCA president Tan Koon Swan thinks the community still has a bright future in the country.

He said while some Chinese believe they are mistreated by the government, or that there is no future for them in Malaysia, the reality is the opposite.

In an interview with the Sin Chew Daily, the politician turned entrepreneur said although a number of large companies appeared to be controlled by other races, deeper analysis reveals that the Chinese still contribute 70 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP).

Therefore, said Tan, who was MCA president from 1985 to 1986, the Chinese still play a major role in the country's economy.

He cited Felda as an example, which together with Sime Darby's oil palm plantations and other bumiputera entrepreneurs, control about 25 percent of the estate lands.

Several Chinese large entrepreneurs control 20 percent of the estate lands and the rest of the 55 percent belong to small estate owners, "you know who they are", said Tan.

He told the Chinese daily that although some Malays enjoy power, high salaries and good benefits in the government-linked companies (GLCs), most in the Malay community still live hard lives of suffering, if compared with the Chinese.

No absolute fairness, but...

He added while there is no absolute fairness to the Chinese in Malaysia, they nevertheless still have relatively fair opportunities to start their businesses.

In conclusion, Tan said with the development of China's 'One Belt, One Road' economic policy that includes Malaysia and Asean's new economic region, Malaysia will have a huge market to explore and great potential for development.

Meanwhile, DAP political education director Liew Chin Tong (photo) criticised Tan's opinion, pointing out that his ideas in the past had caused hardship to the Chinese community.

"Tan’s ideas of Chinese self-empowerment through pooling money in MCA-led stocks, as well as deposit-taking cooperatives to 'fight' 'Malay-led' (essentially state-led) investment giants, were prevalent in the first half of the 1980s - until the economy crashed in 1985.

"Millions of ethnic Chinese placed their faith in Tan and his associates. Many ended up losing their life savings when the deposit-taking cooperatives collapsed when the economy entered a recession and the market crashed.

"We are now in the 21st century. With the failure of these racial ideas in 1980s, we should now be able to see that corporate ownerships by rich individuals of all ethnic groups have nothing to do with the lives of ordinary Malays, ordinary Chinese or ordinary Indians," Liew said in a statement today.

He said the country today needed to articulate an economic model that looks into the well-being of ordinary Malaysians and not equate the wealth of certain individuals as the wealth of a race.

"But such is the challenge that faces Malaysia: old racial ideas being recycled, as if they are the gospel truth, without the historical context of the past," Liew said.