Chinese communities worldwide facing declining birthrate, says Dr Wee

The Star

Chinese communities around the world are facing a decline in their birthrate, says Datuk Seri Dr Wee Ka Siong.  The MCA president was responding to Bayan Baru MP Sim Tze Tzin expressing concern over the declining birthrate among the Chinese community and its impact on SJKC enrolment.  Dr. Wee said this after launching the Datuk Teng Gaik Kwan Centre for Early Childhood Education in Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management of Technology (TAR UMT) on Monday (Feb 19).  Read more at http://tinyurl.com/293983xc  WATCH MORE: https://thestartv.com/c/news SUBSCRIBE: https://cutt.ly/TheStar LIKE: https://fb.com/TheStarOnline

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00:00 So recently the Bayan Baru MP raised concerns over the declining work rates in the Chinese community

00:05 and he said this will affect the SJKC's rate. So do you share the same concerns?

00:10 No, first of all I do not look at this issue from that angle because you must understand that in the

00:17 past SJKC was solely meant for Chinese. But now after many years we have at least more than 20%

00:29 non-Chinese who study in our SJKCs. So you cannot say that SJKC is mainly for the Chinese.

00:38 Second, yes I totally agree that the birth rate for Chinese in this country has declined

00:48 tremendously and that happened to most of the Chinese families in the world. So in Chinese

00:57 and even in many parts of the world they call it "shao zi hua" meaning that they don't have many

01:06 kids. So they try to limit to one, two. So the trend has been quite consistent in Malaysia more so.

01:17 During my five siblings, maybe my parents have more than 10 and you can see that my generation,

01:26 my children, the most we have two kids, three kids, that's all. I think this is the trend

01:35 that we fully understand. Of course the population of Chinese has been declining. That I think we

01:42 have to accept the fact. But having said that, of course the year of the dragon you can encourage

01:50 more people to increase our birth rate. That happens every 12 years but in the year of the

01:58 dragon, the Chinese couple would like to produce more babies. I mean dragon babies.

02:03 That has been our, I would say over the years, it has been like this. But

02:09 we must understand the problem faced by, the challenges faced by the young couple now,

02:19 especially the Chinese family. To give birth to a baby is not a problem. But if you have more

02:26 babies, your responsibility is to make sure that they can study up to universities. So tertiary

02:33 education is a minimum. So they'll calculate, if I want to have more babies, can I afford to do that?

02:41 So I think most of the Chinese parents, they save money, even for future education. So this is where

02:50 when you calculate all these numbers, you will not have more children. So they just limit to one or

02:58 two. Even now, one is, it seems that one and two is the most popular numbers. So I agree that of

03:06 course the number of pupils, the students will be dropping, but you cannot stop from other ways to

03:13 come into the Chinese school. So over the years, now it's more than 20% non-Chinese in SJKC.

03:22 And do you think this declining birth rate will affect...

03:25 The birth rate for Malay is also dropping. So you cannot say that because it's relatively

03:31 compared. When you see this generation, the previous generation, there's a significant

03:38 reduction in terms of birth rate, even for Malay and Chinese. But Chinese is very,

03:46 very significant. They have one or two, that's it. One, they have a boy, then they get a girl,

03:51 they're finished. That happened to most of the young couples. Hopefully, the year of dragon,

03:58 produce more babies. But you cannot wait until every 12 years, you have to have more babies.

04:03 Is there anything the government can do then to increase...

04:06 Oh, see, it is very personal. The government cannot say, "Oh, you produce more babies."

04:13 You've got to face the challenges in life. You provide the quality education to the children.

04:22 I mean, this is the thing that as a parent, you have to think twice. Even the Malay,

04:29 the Indian families and the Chinese families, they have the same consideration. Even now,

04:34 I noticed that the urban area, not only for government schools, they're thinking of sending

04:42 their children to private schools. The Singapore government, they actually

04:47 do encourage people to have more babies, they give an incentive. Do you think this is a good

04:51 policy that Malaysia we can learn from? It is very personal because in the past,

04:59 during Lee Kuan Yew's time, he restricted the number of children that you can have.

05:04 After many years, now they need more manpower. So they try to have this policy to encourage

05:12 people to give birth. But I do not think, even you give incentive, what can you offer?

05:20 Until and unless the government thinks that I give you free education until university,

05:28 then all will be borne by government. I don't think government can do that.

05:32 So you have to think twice because this is about the younger generation.

05:37 You have to nurture the younger generation.

05:40 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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