Birth rates among Chinese falling everywhere, not just China, Malaysian Chinese official says

“The Chinese in many parts of the world, they don’t have many kids,” Dr Wee Ka Siong told reporters after launching the Dato’ Teng Gaik Kwan Centre for Early Childhood Education in Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management of Technology on Monday.

“This is the trend that is causing the Chinese population to be declining,” he said, adding that the birth rate for ethnic Malays is also dropping. “This is a very personal [choice].”

Wee said that declining birth rates were caused by the challenges young couples face when caring for their children.

This includes ensuring they can afford to send their children for a tertiary education, he said, adding that when Chinese couples calculate the expenses, they tend not to have more children.

“You have to think twice because you have to nurture the younger generation,” Wee said.

Wee said that while his parents would have had around 10 siblings, members of his generation would only have two or three brothers or sisters on average.

While agreeing that the number of ethnic Chinese students in Chinese schools would drop, he said that such schools cannot stop other students of other ethnicities from enrolling.

Around 20 per cent of students in these schools are currently non-Chinese, Wee said.

Wee was responding to Bayan Baru MP Sim Tze Tzin, who had expressed concern in a Facebook post on February 13 over the declining birth rate among the Chinese community in Malaysia and the effect of this on school enrolment.

Sim said data from 2022 showed that only 40,000 Malaysian-Chinese were born that year.