MGG Pillai Commentary View

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Why tourism from China has dropped 65 per cent

THE CHINESE TOURISTS ARE not coming to Malaysia. It has dropped to 49 per cent less, if you compare the statistics with the traffic in the first six months of 2004 and 2005, and to 65 per cent less, if you compare the figures of the first nine months of last year and this. As the tourism minister and his officials plan to go to China and find out why, the result for the decline is in the Malaysian newspapers. The police stripped four Chinese national women, three of them married to Malaysian citizens, after they were arrested for not having papers on them, the mainstream newspapers said. The tourism minister and his team need not go to China now. The people who matter know why. Pak Lah says nice things of China at the APEC summit in Busan, South Korea. But Chinese government will not encourage its citizens to visit Malaysia to be harassed. It is as simple as that. The herd mentality is at work, the Malaysians say, but the effect is 65 per cent tourist traffic in nine months. The Chinese have voted with their feet. The Malaysian government is feeling the pinch. The government officials say that the visitors engage in illegal activities, but they cannot prove the Chinese do. In any case, all tourists should not be targetted for the few guilty ones. But the Chinese can show their citizens are badly treated by government officials. The Malaysian newspapers carried stories of the police stripping women Chinese citizens, three of them married to Malaysians. What is worse is that the chief of police has promised an investigation, and then the policemen punished. But the prime minister has not acted swiftly as he must. In normal circumstances. he should already have removed the OCPD for the district, and the police men put on trial if there is any truth in the claim. He must find out why Chinese tourists do not come here, and take steps to defuse the already explosive situation. He has done nothing so far.

Whatever the government might say, people will still not travel if they are going to be harassed in a foreign country. The foreigner, unless he is not Caucasion, is on notice that the police is on their trail if they are allowed in at the airport. The Indians were once targetted. The managing director of an IT company and others were made to squat in their under pants in the hot sun in the Brickfields police station, when police rather crudely barged into the Palm Court Condominium last year. No amount of entreaties by the Indian High Commission helped. Neither did a visit by the then foreign minister, Mr Natwar Singh, help. The police had raided the condominium with brute force. But the issue has died down. The Indians were not prepared to retaliate. A suggestion that the Indian Immigration should take retaliatory action of Malaysians, particularly the wives of senior government officials, who go to India on holidays was ignored. Both sides wanted the furore to pass, and so it was. But this evening (20 November 2005) a police car came to Palm Court condominium for a routine check, and I saw several Indians disappear as if they are trying to hide away from the law. The Indians are inerested only in government-to-government relations in Malaysia, and carry less if the Indian citizen here is in trouble for no reason of his own.

The Malaysians were keen to buy an Indian company. The owner's jet was allowed into Malaysia but the owner was not. The immigration thought him an illegal Indian, although he had valid papers and had come to way one of his companies to a Malaysian firm. He and his jet went to Singapore instead, where the signing took place. The only reaction to this was that most Indian business went to Singapore. The Indians are still harassed, although an Indian got the Nobel Prize for Literature, for Physics in 1930, and for Economics in 2003. Malaysia hopes to gain a Nobel Prize in 2020. It has refused entry to Indians although they have the expensive re-entry, or once in, the police make their life difficult. It is true of the Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Nepali, Burmese, Thai, Indonesian tourist. Most of them are law abiding, but a few do come in with what they think is a valid entry visit but they are being fleeced by the Malaysian and the agent in their country. It is not said too loudly that local political figures are allowed to bring in foreign workers for fee. But many Malaysians issue false entry certificates. Even the Chinese from China working here is caught in this racket. And this allows the policeman to take money from, and harass, these fellows. They are correct in assuming that most governments will not take any action. This includes China, which will not interfere if the Chinese come here without a legal entry pass but would if their citizens are harassed although their papers are in order.

I know several chaps here who have come here on legal work permits, but are afraid to explore Kuala Lumpur alone, because they will be harassed by the police. One I know was arrested and made to strip to his underpants and sit in the hot sun until his employer brought the work permit. He was arrested in Palm Court, the police refused to take his photostat copy of his work permit, which he has on his person at all times. He hides even now whenever he see a policeman. He, like many of his Indian countrymen, have legal permits to work here, but worries if he will be harassed as an iillegal immigrant every day of his life. But without legal and illegal workers, Malaysia will not have the growth rates it had had the past decade. Malaysia just do not have enough local workers to achieve that. But there was no long term effects of its policies until the Chinese. And they hit back where it hurt most: the Malaysian government revenues and its standing in the world. It is now going round in circles trying to resolve the problem. But the damage is done.

Pak Lah's government is becoming unstuck again. Ministers make contradictory statements on government policy. It was like this in Tun Hussein's time as prime minister. Both Tun Hussein and Pak Lah run governments over which they seem to have no control. In both cases, a hidden hand is or was responsible. Tun Hussein was in control of his government, but was slow in making his mind, but once he had made up his mind, nothing could shake him. But the time he took was over long, and into this vacuum came the hidden hand. The challenge to his UMNO presidency in 1978 by Dato' Sri Anwar Ibrahim's maternal uncle and an old UMNO hand, Dato' Sulaiman Palestine, put paid to him as prime minister and was only three more years at the job. Similarly, a hidden hand is orchestrating events now so that Pak Lah will turn belly up. He lives in his own world, he depends heavily on his son-in-law and daughter, and the civil service is generally against him. When he should have entered in the fray and took action, he keeps quiet or is overseas, and peole in their thirties. The ministers state government policy at cross purposes. The government services work against government policy. Chinese tourists would not come here even if Mr Hu Jintao is friendly to Pak Lah in Busan. The Chinese leader knows what he and his government should do when fellow Chinese are harassed in foreign countries. The Chinese government has taken a leaf out of its past. It had told the Malaysian government in 1974, when Tun Razak visited China, that it relations with the government of Malaysia will be at one level, and that of the Communist Party and the people of Malaysia is at another level. And this policy is now bleeding Malaysia, whether it likes or not.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@streamyx.com