I believe it is all the different mindsets of each race. The Chinese has different aspirations, materialism being one of them. The Malays are a closely-knit society, which is true whereas Chinese tend to be less communal. For the Indians, I think they are more conservative, less contacts with the opposite sex and many of them got married through arranged marriages.
I doubt there is anything that can be done to improve the birthrate of the other races. Indians, not so much a worry as they tend to marry Indians from the continent, but for the Chinese it is the biggest worry.
Yes, I tend to agreed with jubilee on this.
I think the chinese have a different mindset from the other races on the issues of having babies. Some people deduce that Malays have more babies due to Islamic teachings . But when I look at Chinese Catholic friends, many were still chinese in mindset, either one kid or no kids at all. So religion is not a factor unless a chinese girl converts to Islam.( I had chinese girls friends who refused to give birth but after marrying Muslim men and converted, they are producing more than the 1.08 kids as per other chinese girls)
I think one most important factor is that the chinese are overly materialistic. They simply measured everything in monetary, money wised. They worried about the expenses needed to have kids or more than one kids as they want to have the best not only for their kids but they and the family as well. They want a good investment for the children in terms of education, extra classes in arts and tuition etc.This is good but overly worried might ends up nothing at all.
Another factor might be the mindset of chinese woman on marriage and childbirth. The chinese as materialitic in nature are not a communal community even though ppl talk about chinese family values etc. They are more individualistic as compared to the Malays or Indians who are more communalistic and when gotong royang allows relatives, friends to help each other in looking after the kids. The chinese are more educated and as working adults, they tend to see jobs prospects and making it successful in a working, business environment more important than just having kids and family.
Another reason might be the way the chinese tends to take care of the health of woman after childbirth. I may not be right but the chinese have several taboos in terms of food, medical care for woman after childbirth which means even employing some Yuemu to do the cooking for them. Thus it is a way to tedious for chinese girls to give birth to many kids as this means sacrificing time and money to look after themselves.
In a way, i think the materialistic nature of the chinese has create some positive as well as negative traits for their own community. The chinese treats everything in a very pragmatic way. As long as there are benefits, they will do it and vice versa if not. Its like the chinese's view of religion...and they do not really care whether this will affect their ethnic or cultural roots. Many young chinese couples even adopted pets like dogs as "kids" citing funny reasons that dogs are more obedient than actual children! You don't see these things happening in Malay married couple.
On reasons of romanticsm which the author points out, I think chinese men tends to be shy and less expressive when comes to romance and love. This may explain why other races like Angmo, Indians or even black guys are more successfu towards friending chinese girls than chinese guys themselves( it happens in US which I stay for awhile even ). A friend exclaimed that it is quite a pity that chinese guys can only friend chinese girls in KTV and bars using exorbitant rates while others non chinese guys has a easier time picking good chinese girls from work, schools etc. I'm not sure whether this is true but i have few very pretty and sucessful chinese classmates all married to angmo and indian guys and they have more than one kid.
These things are observed and may be wrong. My Malaysian chinese friends told them that their chinese community leaders had a very hard time persuading chinese girls to have more babies for the sake of their community survival in Malaysia as the chinese now are only 25 % compared to 45 % of total Malaysia population(in the 1960s). While there is some improvements, he belives the chinese would not care much about the general concern of the whole chinese community except for their own personal convenience.