I thank Dato’ Seri Chan Kong Yew and Sdr Tony Pua for Impian Malaysia Gallery.

I am retired from DAP politics but I agree with a PKR Member of Parliament that the Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has three years left from suffering the same fate as former UK Premier Rishi Sunak.

Anwar has survived longer than the two previous backdoor Prime Minsters – Muhyiddin Yassin who was Prime Minster for l7 months and Ismail Sabri who was Prime Minster for 13 months.

I can understand the concerns of the Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim, in his first 20 months in office to secure Malay political support as there is nothing to show if he proves to be a Prime Minister with a shorter span in office than his two predecessors.

But at the end of his five-year mandate, he must stand on his record of institutional reforms and changes which he had promised as leader of Pakatan Harapan in the 15th General Election if he is not to end up as another Rishi Sunak.

I had hoped that the Sungai Bakap by-election will be like the Indian general elections where the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s victory was a defeat for his Hindutva supremacist and autocratic polices winning 240 MPs instead of the expected 400 MPs.

But it was not to be.

But there is still hope as could be seen by the election of a moderate President of Iran, Masoud Pezeskian against a slate of extremists early this month.

We must learn from the Sungai Bakap by-election. The next three years will be decisive not only determining the outcome of the first Anwar Ibrahim premiership but in determining whether Malaysia can rise to be a great world-class nation or be a failed state.

For Malaysia to be a great world-class nation, it is essential that we achieve the Malaysian Dream vision – where Malaysians, whether Malays, Chinese, Indians, Kadazans, Dayaks or Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Sikhists, Taoists must be united and produce world-class talents and have global mindsets to influence civilisational dialogues to prevent war between the great powers and to build international peace and development.

We must also return to the moderate compact all communities, religions and states reached in the Malaysian Constitution pledging Malaysia will be a moderate country and while Islam is the official religion, all Malaysians can practice in peace and harmony their religious beliefs.

This is one of the things which I would like to promote – civilisational dialogues and understanding instead of a clash of civilisations.

Last month, I was in Dunhuang with its spectacular Mogao Caves in the Gobi Desert, with their murals, sculptures, and treasury of manuscripts — a World Heritage Site as it was meeting point of Buddhist and Central Asian art and culture with Chinese civilisation — and Jiayuguan Pass at the end of Great Wall on the old Silk Road from Lanzhou to Urumqi.

What made my trip to China particularly memorable was the China proposal in the United Nations General Assembly on June 7 to make June 10 the International Day for Civilisational Dialogue.

I celebrated the first International Day for Civilisational Dialogue at the steppes in Xinjiang with its rolling plains.

The Chinese resolution in the UN General Assembly, which was adopted unanimously, was most appropriate.

Thirty years ago, our Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim was the foremost exponent of civilisational dialogue, countering the American political scientist, Samuel Huntington’s thesis of “The Clash of Civilisations”, even before the UN General Assembly adopted the resolution proposed by the then Iran President, Seyed Mohammad Khatami on 4th November 1998 to designate the year 2001 as the United Nations Year of the dialogue among Civilisations.

Since then, the idea of dialogue among Civilisations had been made the object of a plethora of conferences and international meetings. But Anwar was responsible for an earlier Islam-Confucianism Civilisational Dialogue before he was sacked as Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister.

This is the global century century and all earthlings need global mindsets and thinking beyond individuals, nations or even blocs of nations.

The world must make China’s proposal to designate June 10 every year as the International Day for Civilisational Dialogue more successful than Iran’s proposal to the year 2001 the United Nations Year of the dialogue among the Civilisations.

Malaysia as the meeting point of various civilisations, in particular Islamic, Chinese, Indian, and Western, should have a special role to play this civilisational dialogue and understanding.

Another thing I am interested in is to form a gathering of 100 years old. This morning during my walk, I was asked how I survived cancer. It is important not only to have global mindsets, we must have a positive attitude to life.

We must dismiss the negative attitude that we are to die any moment, replaced by the attitude that we want to live to 100 years old. We may not live to 100 years old but we must have a positive attitude.

Recently, DAP MP for Bukit Bendera, Syerleena Abdul Rashid, wrote an opinion piece over the misleading and inaccurate oversimplification for the complex issue by a PAS MP Salamiah Mohd Noor with regard to the decision of couples to remain child-free, attributing the trend to liberal influences, when the decision were due to “deeply complex and multi-faceted reasons” due to career aspirations, environmental concerns and the desire to maintain a certain quality of life.

What will the population of China expected to be in the year 2,100?

Let me read from a recent article which appeared three months ago

”China’s population of 1.4 billion people is the largest in the world, right? Not anymore. In 2023 India surpassed China as the most populous country. China’s population began shrinking in 2022, and the latest United Nations report indicates that it could slip to 1.3 billion in 2050 and then plummet to only 770 million in 2100.

“As this news spreads, warnings of a looming crisis are growing louder. Perhaps most concerning of these is that China will not have enough young people to grow the economy or support older adults. But China’s declining populace could be a cause for opportunity rather than a crisis. China could arrive at a stable and sustainable population of around one billion in 2100. At this level, it is possible for the country to remain a global superpower and for its citizens to become even more prosperous, with its older adults well cared for. And China’s experience in making this transition could provide valuable lessons for many other countries that will have a declining population in the coming decades.

“The Chinese Communist Party has flipped its population policy twice since assuming power in 1949. Initially the policy was very pronatalist—it promoted reproduction and a high national birth rate. Then in 1979 a strict one-child policy was adopted alongside the economic reforms launched by former leader Deng Xiaoping that fueled China’s extraordinary economic rise. In 2015, prompted by a sharply falling birth rate, a pronatalist policy was reintroduced that allowed two-child families, and a policy that allowed three-child families was introduced in 2021.

“The most recent policy statement came from Chinese president Xi Jinping in his address to the 13th National Women’s Congress in October 2023: “We should actively foster a new type of marriage and childbearing culture.” Other addresses at the Congress reflected a shift away from gender equality, even to the point of suggesting that women leave the labor force to have children. Such pronatalist policies run against the sentiment among a large segment of China’s youth, however. And many people do not want to have one or more children.

“China’s population decline raises fundamental issues about childbearing, dependency ratios and “optimum” population size.”

In February, Newsweek reported that Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS) said that China’s population of over 1.4 billion could drop by a precipitous 60 per cent by the end of the century, i.e. some 525 million.

Are these forecasts the result of the Chinese Communist Party being influenced by men marrying men, women marrying women, the liberals, the LGBT?

I leave these as food for thought, for those who are interested in civilisations and living to 100 years old, they can get in touch with me, and we can see where we go from here.

(Speech by DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang at the launching of Impian Malaysia Gallery in Petaling Jaya on Wednesday, 17th July 2024)