Myth of Chinese Domination of the Economy

Another widely held racist view is that the Chinese dominate the Malaysian economy. Closely related to this view are other views like; that most Chinese are businessmen, that the Chinese as a racial group exploit the Malays, resulting in the poverty and backwardness of the Malays. But such racial comparison is highly misleading because there is such a wide gap between rich and poor Chinese, and so much overlap in Malay and Chinese income distribution. Thus despite the existence of relatively larger middle and upper classes among the Chinese (and Indian), the great majority of the Chinese (71.2%) are poor like the great majority of Malays (92.4%).