“Ten Million Strong” comes from the words of a popular song. It is a measure of Malaysia today that a patriotic jingle can reach the top of the hit parade.
The film looks at the problems of a new nation. Some are external — some from within. The Prime Minister of Singapore — Mr. Lee Kuan Yew — has said: “Malaysia is inevitable — but no one can say that the success of Malaysia as an economic and political unit is inevitable.”
By far the biggest internal problem, is the racial grouping within Malaysia. In each of the four countries — Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak and Sabah — there is a big Chinese community. Indeed the Chinese form the biggest single racial group in Malaysia. Tensions rising from this fact are discussed by Tunku Abdul Rahman, Lee Kuan Yew, an Opposition member of the Malayan Parliament (Mr. D. R. Seenivasaga), and the only Malay professor at the University of Malaya — Ungku Aziz.
In Singapore, the Chairman of the Opposition Socialist Party, Dr. Lee Siew Choh — condemns Malaysia as a British imperialist plot.
The programme shows something of the military effort needed in Sarawak to police the wild border country with Indonesia. In Sarawak also there is an examination of a stone age people groping towards the 20th century. Active and intelligent, they have a great thirst for knowledge. The film follows a young Iban (Sea Dyak) schoolteacher as he leaves a teachers’ training college in Kuching and travels across the country along the twisting turbulent rivers to a communal longhouse school in the heart of Sarawak.
Here, and in North Borneo, the problems facing the Chinese, and the tensions arising from what they consider to be discrimination against them, are examined and discussed.
Powerful personalities put forward conflicting views on the future of Malaysia.