O

The Old Established Forces was a category in political demonology invented by President Sukarno. He made clearest reference to this pejorative term in a speech on 17 August 1963, when Indonesia had launched its campaign of Confrontation in opposition to the formation of the Federation of Malaysia. The term Overseas Chinese applies to a Diaspora of well over 20 million people of migrant origin who are dispersed disparately within the states of South-East Asia. They comprise a majority of the population only in Singapore. Chinese migration to South-East Asia was driven by a mixture of push and pulls factors and took place in the main from the southern provinces of China precipitated by adverse economic circumstances and political upheaval during the nineteenth century. Racial tension has been very high at times in Malaysia, where a violent communal confrontation in 1969 was a historical turning-point in shaping the political system in the interest of the indigenous Malays.