Study On The Chinese’s Function On Malaysia’s Political Modernization

Political modernization is a common problem that developing countries confront. It means that traditional political system converts into modern political system. Political modernization is an effective theoretical framework to interpret the political development of a developing country. Malaysia is a multi-religious, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural country. The Malays, Chinese, Indians constitute the three ethnic groups in Malaysia. In 1957, Malaysia became independent from Britain and started the process of political modernization. Malaysia has been adopting the form of British constitutional monarchy. However, the traditional system of dynasty has remained the fundamental of this system. The political party has formed the characteristics of the coordination of the ethnic politics and the coalition of the parties. In this multi-ethnic country, the inequality between ethnic groups exists. The government grants political,economic, and educational privileges to the aborigines. It has formed the principle of "Malay dominance." The Malays claimed a special position and special rights owing to their long domicile, causing the gap between Chinese and Malays. Chinese have become keen on political issues by the start of political participation. This action to some extent affects the process of Malaysia’s political modernization.This paper comprehensively applies political science, history, economics and other methods and focuses on the topic of Chinese’s function on Malaysia’s political modernization. The political awakening of Malaysian Chinese, Chinese party and Chinese organization are crucial to Malaysia’s political modernization. The first part of this paper mainly discusses the connotation and realization of political modernization. Based on that, the historical process and the challenges of Malaysia’s political modernization are also studied. The second part of the paper mainly discusses the process of Malaysian Chinese’s transformation from political apathy to political participation. The third part and the fourth part mainly analyze the Chinese party and the Chinese organization’s contribution to Malaysia’s political modernization.According to our discussion as above, it can be concluded that the Malaysian Chinese have made a significant contribution to Malaysia’s political modernization.The contribution not only came from the Malaysian Chinese’s fighting for their rights and interests but also their active promotion of the social development.