Why Do Ng
p. 61 · Read in the full issue
Chinese
Not Learn English?
Letter to the Editor AN article in your May issue, “How Came the Chinese in New Guinea,” suggests that a wise Ad ministration “might make use of the New Guinea Chinese.” As usual, there is no mention that the Chinese, or any other of our brethren here, might make themselves useful.
Mr, Mackenzie expressly mentions “traders, planters, artisans and pro fessional men.” Considering the difficulties in acquiring sufficient land to settle our returned soldiers, it is questionable whether we want any more planters; whilst a trip round Chinatown, where every hovel is also a trade store, raises the question of indiscriminate ladling out of licenses.
Pre-war, the Chinese artisan was respected as a useful member of the community. But these ranks have thinned, and there is no proper apprenticeship system for to-day’s youth. The Chinese may not be wholly to blame for this.
But who and where are the Chinese professionals, past, present and of the future, beyond a handful of teachers?
No amount of propaganda seems to
have so far awakened in the Chinese a desire to have their own doctors, lawyers, nurses or teachers. The teachers mentioned above have had to be brought in; the student-teachers have not the academic foundation to reach professional status.
Again, Mr. Mackenzie states: ‘They could help in the task of settling and governing the country.”
Mr, Gabriel Achun, chairman of the New Guinea Chinese Union, when farewelling Colonel Murray on be half of the Chinese people, thanked him for a “fair deal,” but added: “Although there are aspirations that we Chinese still hope to attain.”
Listeners interpreted that sentence to mean representation on the Legisla tive Council; but (Australians might very well ask) why should a people be represented in the government of a country whose official language they will not trouble to learn. Are Legis lative Councillors to be subjected to harangues in Chinese as well as Pid gin?
I suggest that the onus is on the Chinese to make of themselves re spected and useful citizens. Every thing possible is being done to help them to this end: they have their secondary schools, they work side by side with Europeans, and play in competition with Europeans. In all these spheres the language causes a
barrier which only the Chinese them selves can hope to remove. 1 am, etc..
Rabaul B4
Mr. A. J. Elphick, Government Printer, who has been in Fiji since 1946, reached Sydney in July on long vacation leave.