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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