CONTESTING MALAY BOURGEOISIE/CHINESE CAPITAL

In Fuads The red shirts and poor Malays, he debunks the notion: Rural Malays
discontented with their economic conditions are the main backbone of the red-shirt rally.
To him, it is the insecurity of Malay bourgeoisie faced with the onslaught of Chinese
capital who are the main instigators behind the red-shirt rally.
This is problematic on many fronts.
Overstating Malay Bourgeoisie
Despite pointing out the few exceptions present at the rally who represent the Malay
bourgeoisie, Fuad has not touched upon the obvious--the overwhelming homogeneity of
rally-goers who hail from small towns and villages outside the urban conurbation of the
Klang Valley area.
Implicit in Fuads critical analysis is that these rural poor are easily manipulated by the
Malay bourgeoisie. This explains the huge mobilization of the rural masses into the city.
To him, the downtrodden Malay from out-of-town are mere functionaries in the rallying
calls of the Malay bourgeoisie for more economic domination over the country.
Completely devoid of the will to contest the Malay bourgeoisies claim, rural folks
become pawns who receive passively the directives from their more prosperous elites to
stage a protest.
While there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the claim that the class of Malay
bourgeoisie is prominent amongst the rally-goers, it is more helpful to see the likes of
Ahmad Maslan, Annuar Musa, Ali Rustam and Reezal Merican--all examples of Fuads
Malay Bourgeoisie--through their political standing rather than their economic status.
They are not the bourgeoisie in the conventional sense, middle-class folks who dictate
politics through their sheer wealth, whose economic status make them the power
brokers in our democratic capitalist system. For the likes of these UMNO politicians, their
political standing takes precedence over their economic ones. They are individuals who
graduated into the middle-class through their political appointments.
Contesting the dominant narrative that Malaysian politics is neatly segmented according
to geographical and racial boundaries is fine. It should be welcomed in light of the
hegemonic state narrative of racialism. However, it should not be done in a way that is
dismissive and supplants the very real economic discontentment faced by rural Malays,
as Fuad has wrongly committed.
By overstating Malay Bourgeoisies presence at the rally, overstating their power to
mobilize rural peasants (presented here as instruments at the bourgeoisie's disposal), as
well as overhyping the economic concerns of the Malay bourgeoisie, Fuad also construct
a wrong perception that the Malay Bourgeoisie and not the Malay rural folks, are the
main instigators of the rally.

Is Chinese Capital independent of the State?

Another contention with Fuads is his uncritical discourse on Chinese capital. In his oped piece, the Malay bourgeoisie feels increasingly threatened by Chinese capital. This
forms the primary motivation behind the staging of the rally. This simplistic binary of
Malay Capital on the one hand, and Chinese capital on the other, obscures the porous
boundary that separates the two. There is simply no more distinctively Malay or Chinese
capital.
The popularization of the Ali-Baba private sector cooperation has led to the
proliferation of a hybridity of Malay and Chinese capital, which purportedly benefits from
both Chinese management expertise, and state patronage granted due to Bumiputras.
This is the predominant model in todays private sector.
Even if one were to raise the prominence of Chinese inherited wealth that still circulates
within the exclusive domain of Chinese families, it is also important to point out that the
longevity of these Chinese dynastic businesses has benefited tremendously from state
patronage. Genting, Berjaya, Tan Chong Motors would not remain viable without state
cultivation. To paint Chinese capital as autonomous from a State--dominated by Malay
bourgeoisie--is wrong. The dichotomy between Chinese-Malay immediately crumbles in
light of this.
If one is still not convinced that Fauds argument that the Malay bourgeoisie is insecure
of Chinese capital is a wrong one, we only have to look at the statistics of Malay and
Chinese capital over the years. In 1969, just before the implementation of the
tendentious NEP, Malay capital ownership stood at 1.5% of the overall capital circulating
in the economy, while Chinese capital was at 22.8%. Fast forward to 2006, Malay capital
has grown leaps and bounds to 19.4%. What is even more spectacular is that Chinese
capital has made an even stronger comeback at 42.4% of overall capital.
In lieu of this, we should re-consider Fuads hypothesis that Malay capital can only grow
at the expense of Chinese capital, and vice versa. Crucially overlooked is the fact that
both types of capital has historically grown at the expense of foreign ownership,
suggestion a collusion of sorts between the two. The simplistic either/or analysis that
Fuad applies to the growth of Chinese and Malay capital simply does not hold.