April 20th every year is the United Nations Chinese Language Day in recognition of the fact that it is the world's second most spoken language with over 1.1 billion speakers (English has some 1.12 billion). In Malaysia, the existence of vernacular schools that use Mandarin as a medium of instruction has been a topic of debate - does it help unite a multi-ethnic society or is it necessary to bring in much needed FDIs - or do these have to be mutually exclusive. Eddin Khoo, an author and senior fellow at ISIS as well as Wong Chin Huat, a political scientist and professor at Sunway University break down the issues.

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