Ng Kim Chew writes in A Selection of Modern Malaysian Ethnic Chinese Short Stories that Chinese living in Malaysia are an ethnic minority and have thus seen the preservation of their culture and literature as a kind of "ethnic moral imperative."
尤其「在一個以另一個種族為『土著』的國族國家中，華人文學和文化的存在，被華人社會視為是一項民族道德事件。」黃錦樹在他所編的《馬華當代小說選》中如此論述。