KUALA LUMPUR, July 15 — The proportion of the ethnic Chinese community in the local population has slid even further to 23.2 per cent for this year, the Department of Statistics Malaysia has revealed.
Malaysia’s chief statistician Mohd Uzir Mahidin also said that the Bumiputera community’s population proportion experienced an increase, noting that there were no changes for other ethnic groups.
“In 2017, Bumiputera recorded an increase of 0.2 percentage points compared to 2016, which was 68.8 per cent of total population of citizens.
“However, Chinese dropped by 0.2 percentage points to 23.2 per cent, while Indians and Others remained at 7.0 per cent and 1.0 per cent respectively as compared to 2016,” he said in a statement yesterday on Malaysia’s current population estimates for 2016-2017.
The department’s data is taken from mid-year population estimates for the 2016-2017 period based on its Population of Housing Census 2010.
The department yesterday said that Malaysia’s population is estimated to have grown by 1.3 per cent from over 31.6 million in 2016 to an estimated 32 million this year.
Out of the estimated 32 million population, 28.7 million are citizens and 3.3 million are non-citizens.
Both citizens and non-citizens experienced a lower population growth rate of 1.1 per cent and 2.9 per cent for 2017, as compared to 2016’s 1.2 per cent and 3.3 per cent.
New Era University College deputy vice-chancellor Voon Phin Keong believes Malaysia’s ethnic Chinese population will continue to drop and would fall by 20 per cent by 2040, Sin Chew Daily reported today.
Voon reportedly said that it was virtually impossible to ask the Chinese community to have higher birth rates, also noting that one of the reasons for the decline in their population proportion was the higher population growth rates of other ethnicities when compared to the Chinese.
He said immigration of other nationals into the country also contributed to the decline in the Chinese community’s population proportion, citing as example how the Chinese community in Sabah fell from 23 per cent of the state’s population there in 1963 to around 10 per cent currently due to the influx of immigrants.
