Malaysia Was Gaining Experience In Research Of Ethnic Harmony

Malaysia is a multi-ethnic country with the main elements of Malay, Chinese and Indians. The policy of divide and rule in the colonial time by UK and the deliberate mischief made by Japanese laid the seeds of contradiction for the ethnic relationship of Malaysia, especially the acute contradiction between Malay and Chinese. After the foundation of Malaysia, the contradiction between Malay and Chinese aggravated, even affected the stability and economic development of the country. In order to create a harmonious and stable social environment for the modernization, government leaders actively explored the harmonious way of the ethnic relationship. Among them, Dato Onn bin Jaafar, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Najib Tun Razak and Mahathir bin Mohamad made great contribution in dealing with the ethnic relationship, especially in the time of Mahathir bin Mohamad. Although policies in handling the ethnic relationship differ in different time, the relationship of mutual understanding, communicating and harmony and co-prosperity among different ethnics is achieved, coming into being a new pattern of coordinated development and common development among different ethnics in the multi-ethnic country of Malaysia. To deal with the ethnic relations, the leaders found their way of handling ethnic relations with its own national characteristics while developing the modernization of the country.Throughout the history of the ethnic relationship after the foundation of Malaysia, there are few violent ethnic conflicts except for the May 13th Event in 1969. Internationally, Malaysia is known for the political stability and the fast economic growth, which is integrated with the ethnic unity and harmony. This article is going to make preliminary research on the relations among the characteristics of the ethnic policies in Malaysia, modernization of the country and the ethnic harmony to sum up the law from the experience of Malaysia in handling ethnic relationship, wishing to provide useful references for our country or other multi-ethnic countries in dealing with ethnic relationship.