Today, tens of millions of ethnic Chinese are scattered throughout Southeast Asia as a result of the massive influx of immigrants from China during the past several centuries. The present study analyzed the language attitude of the ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia, focusing on four countries: Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. For this purpose, a total of 177 samples of language attitude questionnaire were collated. The questionnaire was composed of 11 language attitude-related elements in affective, behavioral, and cognitive components with respect to the multiple languages used in the countries: national language, English, local Chinese dialects, Mandarin, and others. Analysis of the data reveals intriguing findings about the language attitude of the ethnic Chinese in different countries. Both the similarities and the differences of language attitude are found among the ethnic Chinese groups in the Southeast Asian countries, reflecting the political, economic, and social situations of each country. The prospect of the local Chinese dialects look dim due to exogenous factors surrounding the linguistic ecosystems in the region.

The paper aims to examine whether business cycles affect the link between financial development and bank risk, measured by Zscore and nonperforming loans to total loans in six Southeast Asian countries, namely Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. This study uses a sample of 95 listed commercial banks over a 15-year period between 2004 and 2018 in the six Southeast Asian countries. This study employs panel OLS regression and modifications to tackle issues such as endogeneity and heteroscedasticity. The results show that the impact of stock market development (the ratio of the market capitalization to GDP) on Zscore is significantly positive, whereas its effect on non-performing loans is significantly negative. The findings suggest that financial development, in terms of stock market capitalization, improves banks’ Zscores and reduces their level of non-performing loans, suggesting that financial development on average reduces bank risk. The impact of business cycle is insignificant towards bank risk, thus rejecting both counter- and pro-cyclical hypotheses, except for the case of risk indicator of loan loss provisions. Examining the joint effect of the business cycle and financial development on bank risk, we find that the phase of business cycles generally does not moderate the link between financial development and bank risk.