"The Emergency" was proclaimed in Malaya in 1948, following the outbreak of an armed Communist revolt. The British government implemented the squatter resettlement scheme, so called the Briggs Plan, as a result of which 763,600 rural people were corralled into 582 new settlements, the Chinese New Villages. The argument concludes by saying that the strategy provides the settlements profitable location, modern public infrastructures and social amenities, and consequently accelerates the development of the settlements and the growth of Malaysian Chinese organizations. They have permanently altered the settlement pattern of Malaysia, as 40 percent of the local authorities today are used to be the Chinese New Villages.
