Appendix 2 List of Dongzong's Members

INTRODUCTION

This study has identified two institutions, namely, structural and relational institutions, that have been crucial to the mobilization capacity and persistency of the Chinese education movement in Malaysia. As democratic institutions within non-liberal democracies are often constrained and easily manipulated by the ruling regime, social movements in these states rely instead on relational institutions to channel their needs and demands for change. The flexibility of relational institutions based on informal interpersonal networks compliment the rigidity of their structured counterparts, thus enabling social movements in non-liberal democracies to persist in pushing its agenda despite facing ongoing constraints imposed by the state.

Dynamic state-movement interactions result in movement mobilization mechanisms and repertoires that are adapted to the local political environment, indigenous norms and cultural influences. Although these mechanisms and repertoires may differ from those practised in liberal democratic societies, they have proven to be enduring in sustaining movements in suppressive states. Using the Chinese education movement in Malaysia as a case study, this study has demonstrated that despite rapid industralization and urbanization, primordial-based social movements — of which the Chinese education movement is a type — remain a significant social force in Malaysia.

This concluding chapter is divided into three sections. It first summarizes each of the previous chapters and details their significance to the main argument of the study. The second section explores three significant trends on social mobilization identified from studying the Chinese education movement: (1) the strategies and sustainence of resource mobilization efforts of the Chinese education movement activists; (2) the role of brokers and interpersonal networks in sustaining movement-regime interactions within a non-liberal democratic setting; and (3) the challenges faced by the movement in sustaining unification.

In the final section, the role of institutions, in particular the non-formal relational institutions, is evaluated in terms of the institutions’ impact on the endurance of social mobilization within a suppressive regime. This section emphasizes the importance of adapting movement repertoires and mobilization mechanisms, especially those that have evolved through interactions with the regime over the years, as the key drivers of the movement. As one of the oldest nationwide social movements in Asia, the Chinese education movement is an instructive example from which important lessons may be drawn and shared with activists of similar movements within non-liberal democratic settings.

Appendix 3 List of Independent Chinese Secondary Schools in Malaysia

Appendix 1 List of Jiaozong's Members

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 2 detailed the formation of the Chinese education movement, its trajectories and the external challenges faced during the early stages of the movement during Malaya's transition from a colony to an independent state. The chapter demonstrated the significant role that Chinese elites’ personal social capital played in determining the social movement's trajectories. The movement gained momentum in the 1950s through the collaboration amongst MCA, Dongzong, and Jiaozong under the framework of the Grand Three Associations of Chinese Education. The collaboration proved its value in defending the interests of Chinese schoolteachers and Chinese school committee communities when Chinese schools were incorporated into the national education system under the 1957 Education Ordinance. Unfortunately, the collaboration fell apart when MCA's leadership was reshuffled, placing the survival of Chinese schools under threat as the state's assimilative policies of the 1960s and 1970s took hold.

Due to the difficulty of penetrating the movement's stronghold at the central level, the state began to impose a series of limitations and soft coercive approaches by manipulating state agencies, such as Ministry of Education, to weaken the movement at the local level. This divide-andattack strategy significantly limited the capacities of the movement agencies, hitting the movement's local-central associational linkages particularly hard. This chapter argues that the state, through manipulating state institutional mechanisms such as education policies and distribution of financial resources, managed to weaken the movement without using force. This strategy enabled the state to suppress the movement, and at the same time, secure the political interests of the non-liberal democratic government to stay in power. Such an environment forced the social movement to learn, adapt, and withstand challenges, which became the key factor to its survival.

In order to examine each of these challenges in detail, this chapter is divided into four sections. The first section presents the challenges faced by Chinese school committees when their traditional role as caretakers of Chinese schools were severely threatened and weakened by state-imposed structural constraints through educational policies and distribution of state resources. These constraints altered the character, structure, and capabilities of these local agencies, resulting in changes to their involvement in the Chinese education movement.

The second section describes a critical turning point for Chinese schools in the 1970s when English-medium primary schools were phased out by the state.

Appendix 4 Distribution of Dongzong Executive Branch Staff by Academic Qualification, Age, and Years of Service (1995–2011)