Chinese New Villages in Malaya: A Community Study

Date

1973

Authors

Nyce, Ray

Journal Title

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Volume Title

Publisher

Malaysian Sociological Research Institute

Abstract

‘Counter-insurgency’ A methodological rather than an ideological response to revolutionary guerilla warfare, is one of the words that most characterize our epoch. In a wholesale application of a primary method of counter-insurgency, over ONE MILLION persons in Malaya were regrouped or resettled in the early fifties to rupture the links between the Malayan Communist Party’s guerillas and the Min Yuen or supporting masses movement. Six hundred and fifty thousand persons (42% Indian, 38% Chinese and 16% Malay) were regrouped; 78.5% on estates, 12.3% in mines and 9.2% in other areas. Another 573,000 persons, 86% Chinese, were resettled in 480 New Villages. One-seventh of Malaya’s population was brought into coles settlement or resettled in the colonial government’s will to maintain itself. Families in legal or illegal occupation of the land were castigated as ‘squatters’ to justify their being ripped from their environment. Without warning, 573,000 persons were forcibly removed from their homes, loaded into trucks and resettled, which initially meant little more than assignment to a particular area of earth on which to rebuild their lives. New villages were behind barbed wire, flood-lit, guarded and under curfew from sundown. All daytime traffic, in and out, was thoroughly searched, for a spoonful of rice concealed in a girl’s bodice, multiplied by thousands, could give sustenance to those in the jungle. These previously scattered rural masses had no longer the potential of a sea in which the guerilla could swim like a fish. Kernial Singh Sandhu vividly summarizes this traumatic period in his introductory ‘Emergency Resettlement’. Ray Nyce, who worked for years in the New Villages, details the life patterns of these peoples after the first shock of resettlement. The New Villages, details the life patterns of these people after the first shock of resettlement. The New Villages of Malaya were first organized in 1950. In 1965, New Villages were again formed in Sarawak. In 1971, the fences were going up again around particular New Villages in Malaya. This is discussed by Shirle Gordon in Intisari, VI, i. New Villages, a phenomenon of our times of armed struggle, must be studies of we are to know the life implications of strategic acts. Ray Nyce took his B.A. in Sociology at Muhlenberg College and both his M.A. and Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at Hartford Seminary. He has lived and worked amongst the Chinese community in Malaya since 1957. He commands both the Hakka dialect of Chinese and Malay. Kernial Singh Sandhu is a geographer. Msri is a people’s research institute committed to the right of the people to control their environment and, as a pre-condition, to research into their own problems without reference to, or control or direction from, any external agency. Should you the reader subscribe to these views, we would welcome your active engagement in MSRI and in its struggle for the continuance of this people’s research organization.

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Citation

Nyce, R. (1973). Chinese New Villages in Malaya: A Community Study. Shirley Gordon (Ed.). Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: MSRI.