Actually Chinese and other races has equal stakes in both Malaysia and Singapore and Malaysia and it cut across most sports. The tide turned first in Singapore as future did not seem bright when sports involved paid full time professionals. As there is no critical mass , the salaries were too low and parents did the right thing. The shelf life is also short.
UK is suffering from similar effect. The odds of doing well in football when you have to compete with the entire EU for place in a English league team is a slim. So why bother. So you end up with people who come from poor background.
I know of youngsters with great potential in primary school who gave up sports for studies.
Golf and Tennis is for rich kids and that has been there for decades. Never seen a rich kid ever playing football even in thosedays.
I think it's tradition. Even Malaysia team, very few Chinese players, sometimes even zero.