If educated at all, it was poorly and in Chinese. For the most part. they survived off the proceeds of small rubber and vegetable holdings. Very few of theic Chinese were native born, and under the proposed new citizenship laws it would be a long time before they had any political power. As the British and Malays negotiated the political future of the country.their needs and interests were largely ignored. Most urban Chinese were educated in Chinese and made a living from relatively low paid jobs as factory workers, laborers or hawkets. Their concerns about educarion, housing and working conditions would no doubt be low on the list of a Malay government with a rural Malay political base. priority of any clectod Malay government had to be t economic improvement of the Malays. Any attempt to move Malays into the modern economy would appear to have a negative impact on the working class Chinese because their manual and semiskilled jobs were the ones that would initially draw Malay competition. For over half the Chinese community, immigration to Malaya had not resulted in great fortunes but in low incomes and hard labor. China born or the children of China-born, few had citizenship or any kind of legal or political standing, and yet, they planned to stay. The leadership of the most o Chinese community was dependent on these rwo groups, the squatters and the workers, most of whom were the"new immigrants," families formed when large numbers of Chinese women came to Malaya in the 1930s. At the end of the war, there was a significant shift in the leadership of the Chinese community. Prior to the war, the dominant political group had been the nationalist KMTdue to its association with the ruling party of China and comm support from Chinese business interests backed by secret societies. But by 1945, the communists had significantly increased their stature and position among the Chinese in British Malava. It is estimated that there were 37,000 convin communists, many of whom had been part of the active resistance movement during the war. X When the MPAJA emerged from the jungle after the war, t were viewed as heroes by many in the Chinese community. They participated in activt the victory parades and were given medals and cash awards by the British for their anti-Japanese efforts. The communists were the best political group in the Chinese-organized community. In the first few years after the war, the Malayan Communist and