Yong Peng
| Yong Peng | |||
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| Township | |||
Yong Peng town in 2010.
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 Yong Peng
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| Coordinates: 2°01′00″N 103°04′0″E / 2.01667°N 103.06667°ECoordinates: 2°01′00″N 103°04′0″E / 2.01667°N 103.06667°E | |||
| Country | Malaysia | ||
| State | Johor | ||
| District | Batu Pahat | ||
| Government | |||
| • Local Authority | Majlis Daerah Yong Peng | ||
| • Chairman | Haji Kamalludin Bin Haji Jamal | ||
| Time zone | MST (UTC+8) | ||
| Postcode | 83700 | ||
| Dialling code | +607 | ||
| Police | Yong Peng | ||
| Fire | Yong Peng | ||
Yong Peng (Chinese: 永平) is a town in Batu Pahat District, Johor, Malaysia. It has an area of 1911.6 hectares with an estimated population of 29,046. Yong Peng has two main interchanges on North-South Expressway including north to Kuala Lumpur and south to Johor Bahru.
Slightly more than half of the local residents are of Chinese origin; whose forefathers migrated from southern China in the 1880s. The rest are Malays and Indians who mainly reside in the surrounding Yong Peng areas. Other than Malay, the other main language used is Mandarin with an accent strongly influenced by the Fuzhou and Hokkien Dialects.
Due to perceived lack of economy opportunity, most of the younger generation choose to leave Yong Peng after completing secondary education and migrate to bigger cities (e.g. Batu Pahat, Johor Bahru, Kuala Lumpur, Klang etc.). Some even travel further and settle in foreign countries for work. Those who remain mostly work in the plantation sector (especially rubber, palm oil and cocoa), light industry (especially garments) or the supporting services (banking, education, retails etc.)
Chinese make up the majority of the population at 60% followed by the Malays at 32%, Indians at 7%.
During the reign of Sultan Abu Bakar of Johor and under the influence of the British rule in the 1870s, a policy was initiated to modernise Johor and increase tax revenue by opening up more of the forest and swamp area for plantation purposes (initially for spices such as pepper and gambier; then followed by rubber). But to do so, they need massive number of workers. Coincidentally the political and social chaos in Southern China during that period (ref: History of China) made the Chinese migrants an obvious choice. Some of these early Chinese pioneers travelled from the river mouth starting from Batu Pahat and along the Bekok River (Sungai Bekok) and settled upon a fertile land not far from where Sungai Bekok and Sungai Sedi meets.
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Wikipedia