Following the 15th general election (GE15), Chinese Malaysians have been left in a state of uncertainty, a new book observes — grappling between what they would be giving up if they left the country, and what truly awaits them elsewhere.
In “Notes to Myself and You”, former Straits Times senior editor Yap Koon Hong writes that for the community’s English-educated members especially, various “push” and “pull” factors are at play.
“On balance, for this current generation at least, Malaysia remains the beautifully relaxed and engaging ‘rainbow nation’ of multi-everything that’s peaceful and tolerant,” he writes, borrowing a term coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in the 1990s to describe South Africa’s diverse and multicultural society.
“The tug of…