Khek - Hakka Worldwide - in Malaysia - Sabah

Sabah

In the Bornean state of Sabah, most of the ethnic Chinese are of Hakka descent. According to the 1991 census, there were 113000 Hakkas in the state. This constituted 57% of the total ethnic Chinese population in Sabah. The second largest Chinese subgroup were the Cantonese with only 28000 persons. This shows that Sabah is one of very few regions in the world where Hakkas clearly outnumber other Chinese subgroups. Most of the Hakkas in Sabah speak with the Huiyang accent (Hakka: Fuiyong, 惠陽). Hakka is the lingua franca among the Chinese in Sabah to such an extent that Chinese of other subgroups who migrate to Sabah from other states in Malaysia and elsewhere usually learn the Hakka dialect, with varying degrees of fluency.

In 1882 the North Borneo Chartered Company opted to bring in Hakka labourers from Longchuan County, Guangdong. The first batch of 96 Hakkas brought to Sabah landed in Kudat on April 4, 1883 under the leadership of Luo Tai Feng (Hakka: Lo Tai Fung). In the following decades Hakka immigrants settled throughout the state, with their main population centres in Kota Kinabalu (then known as Jesselton), Sandakan (mainly ex-Taiping revolutionists), Tawau and Kudat. The British felt the development of North Borneo was too slow and in 1920 they decided to encourage Hakka immigration into Sabah. In 1901, the total Chinese population in Sabah was 13897; by 1911, it had risen 100% to 27801. Hakka immigration began to taper off during World War 2 and declined to a negligible level in the late 1940s.