OLD PROBLEM, NEW URGENCY

The spotlight has fallen on the persistent problem of forced labour in Malaysia lately, due to both infringements and policy responses. Forced labour encompasses harsh exploitation and abuse, but also less overt forms of coercion such as retention of passports, squalid living quarters and debt bondage, some of which have seemingly become endemic to the country. The intertwined phenomena of labour outsourcing and undocumented status have exacerbated worker vulnerability to forced labour conditions. Recent high-profile cases, especially involving import bans on rubber glove manufacturers and palm oil producers, and the country’s downgrade in the US Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report from three years in a row on Tier 2 Watch List to Tier 3 in 2021 and 2022 (US Department of 2021a; US Department of State 2022).

The past year also witnessed formal institutional landmarks in the fight against forced labour and the concurrent problem of human trafficking. In June 2021, Malaysia renewed its national action plan on trafficking in persons for a third five-year term (NAPTIP 3.0). On 26 November 2021, the National Action Plan on Forced Labour (NAPFL) was launched, which set the ultimate goal of eradicating the problem within a decade. This objective, oriented around justice and basic rights, fits within Malaysia’s professed adherence to decent work standards and its broader ambition of reducing reliance on labour-intensive, low-wage production, and fostering quality high-wage jobs.

Why does forced labour persist, and can Malaysia put an end to it by the target date of 2030? This article proceeds by surveying migrant flows and key features, followed by a brief overview of relevant laws and policies. We consider major structural and operational problems that have perpetuated forced labour, and Malaysia’s efforts to combat forced labour that were initiated prior to the pandemic. We then examine salient cases since 2020 that have dented Malaysia’s reputation and underscored the importance of a robust and credible response. The NAPFL’s scope and ambition may concur with the magnitude and complexity of the problem, but Malaysia must apply a more systemic approach and focus on effective and transparent implementation to deliver on the promise of eradicating forced labour.

INTRODUCTION

According to international frameworks, climate solutions need to be scaled up in critical international trade issues to fulfil the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals’ (UNSDG) goal 13, the 2015 Paris Agreement, and the decisions taken in the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 26) and the subsequent conference in 2022 (COP 27).

The European Union (EU) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are the two most successful regional blocs, and trade relations between the two are currently on an upswing trajectory. However, the EU’s current plan to impose a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) as part of the EU Green Deal will likely cause disputes with global partners, including ASEAN.

This paper analyses the EU CBAM and its technical implementation and, most importantly, the possible implications of the EU CBAM on ASEAN-EU strategic relations. Through literature reviews and interviews with expert partners, this paper attempts to capture the regional perceptions and possible calibrated scenarios of implementing the EU CBAM in the ASEAN region.

Section 1 explains the rationale behind EU CBAM, and its technical aspects, providing the nuanced perspectives of those who support and those who disapprove of its implementation, so as to give readers a balanced view of the issue. Section 2 looks closely at the strategic implications of the EU CBAM to ASEAN-EU relations and discusses ASEAN’s receptiveness to such a policy. Section 3 concludes with possible future scenarios to be explored by the EU and ASEAN for adaptation to the EU CBAM.

SECTION 1: ABOUT THE EU CBAM

As part of its flagship Green Deal policy launched in 2021, the European Union introduced a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). If it fully takes off, the EU CBAM will impose a carbon price on certain imports, such as electricity, aluminium, cement, iron and steel, and fertilizer, into the EU region.

The CBAM aims to strengthen global climate change actions, and is much aligned with the EU’s current unwavering commitment to the UN Paris Agreement on climate change. Under the Paris Pledge, countries worldwide are fully committed to limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius and preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

• • Forced labour, encompassing various types of coercive practices and rights violations, is an entrenched problem in Malaysia. Recent years have seen more decisive and concerted efforts to resolve the problem and repair Malaysia’s damaged reputation, but the country’s forced labour woes escalated amid COVID-19, with exposés and trade embargoes in 2020–21.

• • Most consequentially, the US has imposed withhold release orders (WROs) on major rubber glove manufacturers and palm oil producers. For two consecutive years, 2021–22, Malaysia has occupied the lowest Tier 3 in the US Trafficking in Persons report. In November 2021, the country’s National Action Plan on Forced Labour (NAPFL), formulated through tripartite engagements with the participation of the International Labour Organization, was launched, with the third National Action Plan on Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP 3.0) operating in tandem.

• • The NAPFL outlines strategies and integrated measures for eventually eliminating forced labour by 2030, which requires systemic solutions commensurate with the magnitude of underlying problems. Forced labour has persisted despite the official termination of labour outsourcing and increased intergovernmental bilateral initiatives to better manage foreign worker flows.

• • Continual challenges in the labour supply industry and the administrative system, including the problematic overlapping powers of the Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Human Resources, complicate the creation and implementation of a more just, effective and accountable migrant worker system.

• • Government-to-government (G2) agreements, through Memorandum of Understanding, have become the established platform, but are marred by inconsistency and lack of transparency.

• • The new government of Malaysia will need to address deep-seated issues and confront vested interests, domestically and in the labour source countries, to realize the aspiration of eliminating forced labour by 2030.

The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policymakers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

Editors’ Note

The search for the “Real Malay” long engaged European visitors and officials in the Peninsula and wider region. Among the Society’s members, these discussions gave particular focus to anthropological concerns around the culture and mindset of the Malays, which centred on a series of deficiencies related to factors of environment, culture and genetics perceived by European thought to be found in the community. One such study is found in the account of latah, a nervous disorder, presented to the Society by D.J. Galloway in 1897 and responded to by H.N. Ridley. Galloway was a doctor and founder of the Straits Medical Association. In his 1897 paper he was concerned not only with latah as a medical condition, but also with latah’s connection to the prevailing ideas of race and the culture of the Malays. Galloway argued that the Malays possessed attributes that were “chiefly mental” which isolated them from the other races of the Peninsula. The Malay, he noted, whilst hiding under a “mask of impassivity, of stoical deference”, possessed a “sentient personality” and a “high degree of responsiveness to impulses outside him”. Latah was thus seen to result from an increased susceptibility to external stimuli and from a lack of ability to repress instincts. The cause of this condition, he suggested, was the lack of education, which prevented subjects “from arranging and inhibiting [their] ideas”. Ridley, in his criticism, noted that the spread of education and “contact with a higher civilization” was making latah difficult to find in the towns. This suggested to him that with modernization under British rule, latah would gradually die out. At the same time he conceded: “[A]t present our knowledge of psychics is really small, and of its relationship to the structure of the nervous system we know almost nothing”.

Editors’ Note

More direct philosophical reflection was evident in Ridley’s 1908 paper on Utilitarianism, which reflects earlier concerns expressed in the Society about liberal reform and theories of equality. Utilitarianism had been central to earlier liberal theories of empire and whilst it had long fallen out of fashion, it was through a discussion of its main tenets that Ridley sought to criticize contemporary liberalism.

In the paper Ridley rejects the idea that the doctrine of the greatest good for the greatest number necessitated the rule of the majority or the rule of the mob. He depicted the mob not as a font of wisdom but as one easily swayed by “catch-cries of loud-voiced orators”. Nor was happiness so easy to measure as, according to him, the Malay peasantry of his day was contented in the same way that the English peasantry had been generations before. Moral good, he argued, could then coincide with hierarchy, tradition and order—all of these issues echoed Brooke’s earlier essay on education. It was the “Suffragettes, Socialists, Home-rulers, and other such mono-maniacs” that sought to induce unhappiness in the masses who were the chief problem for Ridley. Whilst the increase in the general happiness of mankind remained important, he argued for gradual reform and improvement rather than radical political upheaval. Venning Thomas, in his response, sought to defend Utilitarianism from some of Ridley’s attacks, but he too expressed a similar opinion by attacking “government by public opinion” and socialist politics which, according to him, required a dose of paternalism. “Our action in taking away the ‘Keris’ of the Malay was not a mere matter of expediency, but one thoroughly in accord with the principle of utility; how much more necessary is it to remove the vote, that weapon of proved danger with which we have armed the mob!”

In dealing with a concrete subject like that of Utilitarianism, it is advisable (as indeed has been the usual custom lately in papers read before this Society) to commence by laying down a definition of the word; and this is the more necessary in the present case, as the subject of the creed or theory is not clearly indicated by the name.

Editors’ Note

Henry N. Ridley’s 1907 Presidential Address to the Society focused on a common topic of discussion in colonial circles: the differences between East and West. The paper is notable for its reflections of Ridley’s biological concerns around race. Beginning with the different histories of the races and civilizations of East and West his piece would then turn to the problem that W.R. Collyer’s paper had earlier discussed—the possibility of Western culture influencing the East. Although Collyer’s paper saw some future possibility of European societies reforming Eastern ones, Ridley’s paper suggests the division between East and West to be far more static and emphasized the permanent plurality of races. Using biological metaphors he suggested that whilst cultivation could improve “thorns and thistles”, you could not “gather grapes off thorns or figs off thistles… The inherent qualities of the species remain the same to the end of time”. And whilst he would see in the early twentieth century the growing adoption of Western science and culture, this adoption would remain superficial for him. The East could adopt Western culture, dress and technology, but this did not entail convergence between East and West as they would continue to remain racially distinct.

It is usual in a Presidential Address to select a subject for consideration which is of a general nature, and it is not, I have found, an easy matter to select one which is suitable for this occasion. I have considered, however, that some reflections on the relations and differences in the life-philosophy of the nations of East and West may prove of some interest, and this the more in that we have had of late in our discussions comparatively few of the studies of Eastern nations which we formerly so frequently listened to. Perhaps this is due to our having, as it might appear, rather exhausted the studies of the nations surrounding us; and thus I have selected the present subject, as suggestive of lines of research and thought on the life and thought of the Orientals.

Editors’ Note

W.R. Collyer was a prominent lawyer and jurist who had earlier served in Sierra Leone, Gold Coast and Cyprus before arriving in the Straits Settlements in 1892. In 1903 he was serving as the Attorney General when he provided the introductory address as the President of the Society. His address took up a question central to the history and development of the colony—the application of law to Europeans. In the early days, according to Collyer, it could be said that Europeans in the colony were “amenable to no authority in the place”. This produced a contradiction between the equality before the law proclaimed by Raffles and the double-standards between Europeans and Asians which emerged in practice. The transfer of the colony to the Crown meant for Collyer that the present contradiction was no longer between Europeans and Asians, but was now between the interests of business and that of legal order. Giving the example of the then recent curtailment of the jury system in the interests of traders he argued that this policy was creating an opposition between civic duty and the pursuit of business. It also raised the question of whether the colony was simply a place to make money or a place in which the legal order had intrinsic value. In his opinion this in turn expressed the nature of colonial society in the Straits Settlements.

For my subject tonight I am indebted to Mr. Buckley’s Anecdotal History of Singapore. Of course you have all seen the book, and I suppose many of you must have read it. It is a very wonderful storehouse of facts, and tells the history of Singapore in an original manner. It is kaleidoscopic in its variety, the events jostling one another as they do in an unselected and unedited diary. It depends on no attraction of style, and no artificial allurements of typography or “get-up”, but simply on the enthusiasm and loving research which the author has bestowed on his work.

Editors’ Note

Henry N. Ridley was a prominent botanist who played a central role in the cultivation of rubber in colonial Malaya. He was also a prolific scholar with a wide range of interests. According to Edward Salisbury, Ridley’s botanical publications numbered more than 350, apart from his books and numerous notes on medicine, zoology, ethnography, mineralogy and geology. As Sandra Khor Manickam has highlighted, Ridley was also important to colonial thinking about race in Malaya at the turn of the twentieth century. This is particularly evident in Ridley’s numerous contributions to the Society, many of which were concerned with questions of race and ideas of social Darwinism. In line with his scientific training, Ridley’s contributions are also notable for their particularly biological perspectives. In his 1900 paper he emphasized the role of the survival of the fittest in developing higher civilizations. He gave particular emphasis to the role of climate and environment in producing the conditions for civilization in Europe, and a corresponding lack of civilization in tropical regions. Yet, if Ridley saw race in particularly biological and environmental terms, he was also aware that societies could intervene to limit the process of the survival of the fittest through, for example, modern sanitation and medicine. Such developments according to Ridley resulted in a racial “weakness” which pitted the rights of the individual against the health of the race. As with many other of the Society’s papers, Ridley’s contributions were a critique of liberal individualism, and an argument for race-based thinking to become central to political life and colonial policy. “To improve the position of both at the same time”, he would argue, “is the future task of our legislators.”

Although the phrase “survival of the fittest” is now familiar to most persons, its meaning appears to have been often much misunderstood, and it is advisable to give some explanation of it before discussing it. The difficulty has lain in the word “fittest”, which does not signify the best of all possible forms of the organism, but merely the most suitable or best adapted for the conditions of existence in which the organism finds itself.

Editors’ Note

Discussions of religion in the Society were driven by the missionaries and religious ministers who held membership. One such figure was G.M. Reith, a Presbyterian minister, who left Singapore in 1896. Reith—a representative of a more liberal tendency in the church—would reflect in his 1895 essay on two contemporary discussions in missionary circles in the 1890s. The first was the relationship between Christianity and Islam, and the second was the role of proselytization in the colony. Reith’s liberalism was evident in the way in which his understanding of religion was couched in Darwinian terminology and defined by man’s struggle against his environment. His identification of religious belief with the category of race allowed him to trace the monotheisms of the Middle East to a shared racial heritage, differentiated only by the “aber-glaube” (extra-beliefs) which had developed at a later stage. This argument allowed for Reith to disassociate himself from the hostility towards Islam amongst members of the missionary community. By moving beyond the “aber-glaube” he proposed that a dialogue could take place between Christianity and Islam that did not have as its end the ideas of religious supremacy or salvation, but a shared liberal idea of progress.

A similar liberal tendency also informed Reith’s views on proselytization of the Muslims of the colony. Opposing the missionary focus upon conversion, Reith argued that the focus of missionaries should be on building up a critical intellectual spirit amongst the Malays. This could mirror the critical re-adjustment which had occurred in Christianity. Increasing the spirit of inquiry could help Muslims uncover the “vital principle of faith which is common to the three great religions of the world”. Reith’s piece nevertheless generated heated debate in the pages of The Free Press, with supporters in The Free Press defending his position. Dissatisfaction from his congregation and missionaries eventually saw Reith being dismissed from his post.

Let me first define the scope and limits of this essay, the title of which suggests a subject of apparently unlimited extent.

INTRODUCTION

The global energy landscape is undergoing a period of profound change. The first two decades of the twenty-first century may be remembered as the time in history when the world awoke to the fact that the costs—political, economic and environmental—of its 150-year addiction to coal and hydrocarbons might be unsustainable. A large-scale switch to a readily available supply of alternatives, including renewable energy, is perceived as the only viable solution moving forward, as well as changes into daily consumption and way of life. If this moderate pace is not followed by all countries, wars and neo-colonial campaigns to increase and better control the supply of strategic resources could be considered as an alternative by some big players.

Thanks to its hydrocarbons, Brunei, the smallest of all ASEAN countries in population and gross domestic product (GDP), has known its “thermo-industrial revolution”, a moment in mankind which decisively intertwines the relationship between modern energy and economic development (Fouquet 2008; Hamilton and Grinevald 2015; Mottet and Jammes 2020). Given the likely depletion of their reserves by 2040, Brunei’s authorities have officially made diversifying production and, broadly speaking what they qualify as “energy transition”, a so-called strategic objective since the mid-2000s (Energy Department 2014, pp. 12, 23, 27–28). Conversely, in 2019, the hydrocarbon sector generated 56.6 per cent of Brunei’s GDP (current prices); oil and gas government revenue plus taxes (most of which induced directly or indirectly by the hydrocarbon sector) represented 21.7 per cent of GDP (Brunei Darussalam Statistical Yearbook 2019, tables 3.1 and 8.2). As such, Brunei’s real “dependency rate” over hydrocarbons is presently around 80 per cent of GDP.

What does “energy transition” mean—if any—to Brunei, notwithstanding that the notion of “energy transition” is controversial and not unanimous (Jammes et al. 2020)? In the United States, energy transition is widely interpreted as the reduction in dependence on hydrocarbons from the Middle East (de Perthuis and Jouvet 2015), to the benefit of shale oil and gas of which extraction is highly polluting and costly. In Europe, energy transition is discussed more over the long term and is primarily related to climate change issues (Stern and Kander 2012).

INTRODUCTION

Innovation is now the buzzword in the world of business, and entrepreneurship is an area critical for global economic development particularly in developing countries. Innovation and entrepreneurship are not confined to start-ups and new ventures, but rather, they allude to dynamic and holistic processes in all aspects of social and economic development. Thornton, Ribeiro-Soriano and Urbano (2011) highlighted that entrepreneurship is on the rise due to a number of cultural and economic factors. For most entrepreneurs, innovation is not just about creating new ideas but making those ideas happen. While invention is an important source of technology (Weber, Dixon and Llorente 1993), Schumpeter (1934) asserted that innovation is more than invention, and technological innovation can help to create opportunities and give entrepreneurs access to a wider swath of the population.

The complementary relationship between entrepreneurship and innovation can be explained via two perspectives. Schumpeter’s (1934) notion of business in innovation described how entrepreneurs’ new ideas can lead to the overhaul of a market and link them to economic growth and development (“creative destruction”). On the other hand, Kirzner (1973) looked at how entrepreneurs find gaps, recognize opportunities and make the most of the opportunity by trial and error and market feedback. No doubt that the world today is dominated by innovative ideas and technology, but innovation alone cannot facilitate entrepreneurship success because success does not take place in a vacuum. Entrepreneurs require a healthy entrepreneurial ecosystem comprising the mix of attitudes, resources and infrastructure to grow and sustain. It has been years since the Global Entrepreneurship Index ranked the United States of America top in the list because of its attractive ecosystem, showing that the success of entrepreneurship hinges on the context in which it operates.

In the context of oil and gas high income developing economies, entrepreneurship and innovation have continuously been an important agenda in their national economic development plans. Even more today, the role of entrepreneurship and innovation intensifies as the reduction in oil prices and their volatility pose strong challenges to these economies. While it may be a blessing to have an abundant supply of natural resources, in the long run, diversified economies perform better than mono-sector economies (Cherif, Hasanov and Zhu 2016).

Editors’ Note

Debates over the application of English law which took place throughout the British Empire often centred on the relationship between English law and existing customary practices. As Napier’s piece highlights British practice was to apply English law, except in cases of personal law where they regularly deferred to Hindu and Islamic legal practices. Yet in spaces like the Straits Settlements which were declared to be unoccupied land, no such recognition of customary law was afforded. The history of this problem was addressed by W.J. Napier in his Introduction to the Study of the Law Administered in the Colony of the Straits Settlements. In his 1899 paper to the Society he addressed this problem in reference to the Chinese population. This population, which had grown significantly from the 1870s, brought issues of marriage and inheritance amongst the Chinese in front of English-law courts. Yet the colonial administrators, many of whom had arrived in the Straits via India, had little or no familiarity with Chinese law, language and customs. This was the source of constant dissatisfaction amongst the Chinese community when they turned to British courts for justice. Whilst the British sought to better communicate English legal decisions in Chinese, a figure such as Governor Blundell feared that any attempt to translate English law into Chinese was “utterly hopeless” on account of the nature of the language.

The colony’s Arab community, on behalf of the Muslim community, had been able to lobby for the introduction of the Mohammedan Marriage Ordinance in 1880. But it was only until the 1890s in the Malay States that Chinese law began to attain greater recognition and a draft code on Chinese customary law was developed. This legacy of the division between the colonial administration and the Chinese population was one of the factors that laid the groundwork for the Chinese to adopt a system of self-government for the resolution of disputes and the regulation of social life through their clan networks.

This being a legal subject, it is impossible to divest it of its legal aspect, but I shall attempt to deal with it in as general a manner as I can.

This book is an attempt to understand socio-economic development in contemporary Brunei Darussalam, which highlights the country’s journey in diversification from the dominant oil and gas sectors. The book makes an important contribution to the handful of publications on Brunei and fills in the absence of a comprehensive analysis on socio-economic issues in Brunei.

The publication of this book comes at an important era of the twenty-first century, as Brunei is on its halfway mark towards its Vision 2035. The goal of economic diversification remains vital to Brunei’s long-term economic growth but, at the same time, is dramatically shifting toward a more varied structure of production and trade with a view to creating jobs, increasing productivity, and improving the resource efficiency of infrastructure and quality of life.

This is a reference book for students, academics, entrepreneurs, policymakers within and outside Brunei, as well as for general readers who are interested to know about the socio-economic conditions in contemporary Brunei.

The book is a product of the Centre for Advanced Research (CARe), under the leadership of former Director Dr Chang-Yau Hoon; in collaboration with the Institute of Policy Studies, under the leadership of Director Dr Mahani Hamdan; and with the support of colleagues from various faculties at Universiti Brunei Darussalam. As a premier empirical research centre at UBD, CARe has three missions: first is to develop research and data resources that address social issues in Brunei. Second is to be a platform for local and international interdisciplinary research collaboration. And third is to provide professional training to graduate students, university staff and researchers from various sectors. This book is a collective effort to address these missions at CARe.

This book would have never been possible without the strong dedication of the authors and conducive research environment provided by Universiti Brunei Darussalam. We are indebted to the unflagging support of the Vice Chancellor of UBD, Dr Hazri bin Haji Kifle; and the current Director of CARe, Dr Siti Mazidah binti Haji Mohamad. We would like to express our appreciation to the editorial team at ISEAS Publishing for providing us with constructive comments on the draft of the book and their willingness to co-publish it with UBD.

Editors’ Note

Alongside Lim Boon Keng, Tan Teck Soon was the other prominent, and longest serving, Straits Chinese voice in the Society. In their contributions, both challenged the less than liberal and often stereotyped views of the Chinese held amongst some prominent members of the Society (see Section 2). Although Tan’s main intellectual interests were focused on cultural and educational concerns related to Chinese and Western societies, this atypical presentation sought to share with his European audience insights into the Chinese conduct of enterprise and business—both the positive and negative aspects. The essay is noteworthy in outlining the case made by the acculturated English-speaking Straits Chinese elite which not only saw themselves a match in educational and social achievement with the British but also felt it necessary to emphasize the economic contribution the Chinese had made to Malaya. The Chinese, Tan argued, had developed the land of the Malay States at a time when the British had avoided intervention and had worked to facilitate trade into the interior, often in precarious circumstances and without government protection. Coinciding with the growth of Chinese nationalism amongst the overseas Chinese in Malaya, Tan, who had been educated in China and whose writings reflected upon the rise of a modern China, highlighted the importance of the China trade to the Peninsula and the difficulties faced by the trading community. Responding to the paper, J.M. Allison, a member of the Legislative Council and a manager of Barlow & Co, prominently involved in the rubber trade, had little sympathy for what he saw as Tan’s “exaggerated account” of the plight of Chinese traders. Disputing various points in the presentation relating to the contribution of Chinese traders and the Chinese population as a whole in Singapore, his main counter argument was to emphasize that Tan overlooked the benefits of trade under the British flag which provided the basis of prosperity for the trader and the colony.

In endeavouring to write an essay dealing with Chinese local trade for discussion at a meeting of this Society, I must first apologize for introducing into our syllabus a subject to which some objection could justly be made as hardly coming within the scope of the Society’s aims and objects as evidenced by its rules.

Editors’ Note

Whilst in his earlier essay on the Chinese revolutionary movement in Malaya, Lim Boon Keng suggested that he did not have the space to discuss the rise of socialism in China, his subsequent presentation to the Society a few months later in 1913 dealt with this topic. Initially tracing the Confucian origins of what he identified as socialist thought in China, he sought to distinguish this socialism from the modern socialism of Europe. Whilst Sun Yat-sen’s socialism mirrored, for Lim, the socialism of Marx and Engels, Sun remained for him also a Confucianist. Lim also sought to contrast Chinese socialism with the “Jacobins’’ of the European nationalist movement and the Westernized radical ideas of socialism being produced in China by “rabid communists, syndicalists, and socialists, and few even graduating as nihilists and anarchists”. This had culminated in the bomb-throwing in Peking in 1905, and attempts to uproot traditional Confucian culture. For Lim, Confucianists who “have striven to resuscitate the old Socialism based on ethics and the natural humanistic order” offered an alternative and more ethical model of modernity than the European socialism practised in Europe.

In any study of Socialism among the Chinese, the vast importance of the past economic history of the nation could not be overlooked. For thousands of years the Government of China has relied upon the economic principles of Confucianism and Chinese society has retained up to this day the peculiarities which patriarchic communism had imparted to it in the prehistoric era. The immense gulf separating the social conditions of the East and of the West explains the wide divergence of the methods of Socialism. The prevalence of serfs and slaves in Europe down to the modern ages, and the oppressed state of the labourers, who had in most Western States, become detached from the soil, explain why in the West the Socialistic movement has been carried on from the lower social orders. In China some form of Socialism has, until our own day, been always attempted by the Government, while the free people of China has been contented with their domestic and village liberties and immunities.

Editors’ Note

W.R. Collyer was a prominent lawyer in the colony who had earlier served in Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast before arriving in Singapore in 1892. His 1898 Presidential Address is notable for expressing a growing scepticism about the liberal aims of empire and its potential for civilizing and reforming colonized societies. In particular, Collyer highlighted a lack of faith in the “universal mission of our race” and the “missionary force and its power of assimilating other races”. For Collyer this was rooted in the reality of racial difference. Racial characteristics determined for him the “natural receptivity” of races to different cultures, and whilst the British had been able to spread European ideas to non-European societies, this spread remained limited. Drawing on the British experience in India where the Bramo-Samaj had emerged as a comparable culture to the English, Collyer noted that this had not passed down to the masses and therefore highlighted the unsuitability of Indians for self-government. Yet if liberal reform had failed, he did not believe that this should entail a wholesale abandonment of the civilizing mission. For him, emphasis should move from impressing the “natives with trumpets and drums and gunpowder” or hastening “to get rich with fraudulent goods and short measures” to a gradual process of persuasion and honest and considerate dealings with colonial peoples. This he saw as the more important mission for empire builders.

The subject I have chosen for my address tonight is “The Influence of Europeans Abroad upon Native Races”. It is a subject which must frequently suggest itself to all thinking Europeans in a place like this, and may, I think, be considered to a certain extent appropriate in a meeting of Western philosophers in an Eastern city, where, if anywhere, that influence should be exemplified in all its present features, and its strength and weakness, its success and failures, should be manifest to the ordinary observer. The ordinary observer, however, is apt to be very much taken in.