When I was looking for housing in Kuala Lumpur, I couldn't find anything better than the Chinese quarter. I settled on the busiest street with a market. During the day, rivers of people flow through it, and closer to midnight, some vendors literally cut their stalls in half. Silence only comes around 2-3 AM. But overall it's bearable.

In Malaysia, almost 23% of the population is Chinese. The last major wave of migration consisted of those fleeing communists after the revolution, some came here thanks to the British for mining operations, and others were brought by the Dutch for various construction work back in the 17th century. Historically, Chinese people were economically better off. This was partly why, since independence in 1957, relations with Malays were not the friendliest. In 1969 it escalated to a massacre with hundreds killed (exact numbers are unclear, with estimates ranging from a few hundred to a thousand people). Thankfully, there haven't been any major violent escalations since then.

Singapore also suffered due to ethnic tensions. In the mid-1960s it was a Malaysian state. The ethnic makeup there differed from the rest of the country in favor of the Chinese, so Lee Kuan Yew was particularly active in fighting for equal rights for all citizens. He came up with the slogan Malaysia for Malaysians (not to be confused with Malays). It all ended with the federal government seeing this as a threat to its power and expelling Singapore from the country. Perhaps one of the rare cases where a region didn't want independence at all, but was forced to have it.

Today tension still exists, but mainly stays in the political realm. For example, the Malaysia slogan is present in the charter of the party representing Chinese people, and they're regularly called upon to remove it. People get along with each other reasonably well; some Chinese even speak Malay better than Chinese. But it feels like the situation is still quite fragile. One random spark could easily cause a fire.