Editors’ Note

“The Chinese in British Malaya” is one of Lim Boon Keng’s clearest and most detailed writings on the history and position of the Chinese in British Malaya. The first half is devoted to documenting the migration of the Chinese to Malaya and describing the different dialect groups and their economic activity in the colony. Yet, more than a straightforward historical essay, the presentation sought to analyse and reflect upon the effects of life in Malaya upon the Chinese in a way which highlights Lim’s concerns around race, social Darwinism and nationalism. One significant factor that he identified was the effect of mixing Malay with Chinese blood; and his belief that life in the tropics was tending towards the degeneration of the resident Chinese race and was producing inferior offspring who “despise labour”. This, Lim argued, was mitigated by “Chinese blood from China” which continued to arrive in Malaya to check “the degenerative process”. The education of girls was also seen to delay “degeneration”, yet “unless young people are removed from the tropics, there seems very little hope of maintaining the stamina and the virile qualities of the race—attributes due principally to the Chinese environment”.

For Lim what was partly to blame was the system of education in the Straits which, unlike the system employed by the Dutch, he saw as deleterious to the handing down of trading instincts and other aspects of Chinese culture. He also rejected the idea of “Europeanization” which he argued was “unattainable and undesirable”. To halt this degenerative process, he advocated a return to the teaching of Chinese morality and an education system mixing manual labour with an academic curriculum. Such an approach in his view could lead to a positive re-sinicization emerging out of the climatic and social conditions of the Malay Peninsula.

At the same time, Lim’s concerns around race and social Darwinism led him to also address the position of the Malays in the colony in a manner which reflected the European thought of the Society’s members.

INTRODUCTION

Being situated in the northwest coast of the island of Borneo with flat coastal plains and having an equatorial climate, Brunei is vulnerable to extreme weather events and rising sea levels. Since the 1970s, Brunei’s annual mean temperature has been observed to increase by 0.25°C per decade; annual rainfall intensity has increased by 100 mm per decade, and; around 40 per cent of wildlife biodiversity were lost due to forest degradation (BCCS 2020). Coral bleaching was also observed in some shoals near Brunei-Muara district, and climate changes were expected to lengthen the transmission seasons of vector-borne diseases such as dengue, malaria and Zika (BCCS 2020).

In response to climate change threats, Brunei commits to international treaties and cooperation arrangements that address global climate change issues. The country acceded to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2007 and to the Kyoto Protocol in 2009. The country ratified the Doha Amendment to the Kyoto Protocol in 2014 and the Paris Agreement in 2016.

Brunei’s climate change policy, launched in July 2020, would be the basis for developing a response framework for the requirement imposed on Parties of the Paris Agreement. This international agreement aims to strengthen global response to climate change threat and limit the global temperature rise to below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Signatories to the Paris Agreement are required to submit a “nationally determined contribution” which specifies each country’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to impacts of climate change (UNFCCC 2015). A global stocktake will be undertaken every five years to monitor the progress in achieving the collective target.

Addressing climate change in Brunei requires a prudent approach to balance the interaction between key economic and environmental parameters. The country faces various economic and technical challenges in achieving a balanced mix of measures that satisfies various developmental concerns. While the new climate change policy appears to be skilfully designed to address the above concerns, its implementation, however, faces various challenges. In addition, the policy document states that the government pursues a whole-of-nation approach to policy governance, but the document does not present how the whole-of-nation approach was carried out to achieve these policy outcomes.

Editors’ Note

One important element of the social reform movement amongst the Straits Chinese was the anti-opium movement which called for the prohibition on the opium trade in the colony and treatment for opium smokers. As early as 1894, Straits Chinese members took the lead in representing the anti-opium cause at public meetings in Singapore. In doing so they challenged the view common in European circles, and expressed in the papers to the Society, that the Chinese community was averse to the banning of opium, Lim would continue to write on the issue in the Straits Chinese Magazine, seeing the issue as an opportunity to mobilize the Chinese community in Singapore. As highlighted in his paper to the Society, Lim was foremost in the use of medical arguments which highlighted the deleterious effects of opium, as well as in rebutting the belief that without opium, worse abuses would follow. Although he perceived that alcohol was no less an evil, Lim suggested that this abuse was less common amongst the Chinese, easier to detect, and more easily treated. Together with his brother-in-law, Yin Suat Chuan, he founded in 1906 the Singapore Anti-Opium Society, and ran an experimental rehabilitation centre funded by Baba merchants. This influenced Wu Lien-teh to establish a similar clinic in Penang, where an anti-opium movement also emerged. The movement was also supported by prominent missionaries active in the Straits Philosophical Society: W. Murray and William Shellabear, whilst D.J. Galloway would sit on the Opium Commission in 1908. The Commission studied the opium problem and put forward recommendations to restrict, but not to prohibit, opium, thereby protecting the colony’s revenues.

Lim’s essay and J.G. Campbell’s response highlight that, beyond moral reform and economic concerns, ideas of race and racial susceptibility to substances such as opium and alcohol were important to debates on social policy and reform.

Gentlemen, in my humble opinion, there is not much to choose between opium and alcohol, at least from the ethical and scientific point of view. It seems a great pity, indeed, that public discussion of the evil of the opium habit has led to the studious elaboration of facts and fancies into a very taking kind of hypothesis that as compared with alcohol-drinking the opium habit is, after all, a very desirable kind of virtue.

WHY DIVERSIFICATION IS NEEDED FOR OIL-DEPENDENT ECONOMIES?

The existence of oil and gas is often seen as a blessing for a country (Fasano 2002; Wright and Czelusta 2004). The revenue from oil and gas can be used to build human capital, including the promotion of entrepreneurship spirit and broadening of the economic base to create sustainable development. However, in most developing countries with abundant natural resources, the paradox of the plenty and resource curse (“Theory of Dutch Disease”) from huge reliance on revenue from oil and gas reserves may also distort the resource allocation of a country (including creation of dominance of public sector employment). It therefore jeopardizes future economic growth and stability of the country (Beblawi 1987; Mahdavy 1970). Based on a study on Saudi Arabia, Aljarallah (2021) concluded that the abundance of oil and gas will produce sustainable economic growth only when the country can utilize the current gain from oil and gas to enhance human capital, which eventually replaces oil and gas as the capital of economic growth.

Furthermore, the price volatility of oil and gas and its recent decline in the past decade, as well as the prospect of depletion of hydrocarbon reserves, and the global trend toward climate-neutral economies may endanger the energy future and sustainability of oil and gas exporting economies. Therefore, oil-dependent economies urgently need to diversify, while efficiently developing themselves using the remaining revenue from oil and gas (Alsharif et al. 2017; Callen et al. 2014; Filimonova et al. 2020; Hussein 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic, which caused a decline in global demand for oil and gas, may have resulted in dual shock (i.e., economic and health crises) in oil-dependent countries. This situation further escalates the need for diversification from oil and gas sectors (Azomahou et al. 2021).

Brunei Darussalam (hereafter, Brunei), the least populous and the second richest country in Southeast Asia, is one of the examples of an oil and gas dependent economy (Asiyah az-Zahra 2017; Hamdan and Hoon 2019). Since independence in 1984, this country’s national income has heavily relied on hydrocarbon resources, although plans for diversification and investment in renewables have been underway for decades.

INTRODUCTION

Parallel to demographic transition, Omran (1971) showed an epidemiologic transition, describing an expected change in mortality and the cause of deaths. It starts with the “age of pestilence” when the mortality rate is very high and fluctuates. Death mainly occurs because of infectious/communicable diseases. The second stage is the “age of receding pandemics”, when countries have well-managed the pandemics, and then mortality starts to decline. The third and last stage is when the primary cause of death shifts to degenerative/non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Olshanky and Oult (1986) added the fourth stage, the so-called “age of delayed degenerative diseases”, when people live much longer, and the degenerative diseases are compressed in shorter periods of the remaining years of life.

However, people in developing countries may not be able to successfully manage communicable diseases. At the same time, they experience the emergence of degenerative diseases as the cause of death, thus facing a “double burden of disease” (Tyagi 2014). The prevalence of degenerative diseases has aggravated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, often known as the co-existence of co-morbidities (Collins et al. 2020).

This epidemiological trend often goes together with the transition in nutrition. Popkin (1993) argued that there are five stages of nutrition transition. The first is the “food gathering” stage. Individuals consume high carbohydrate foods in this stage, followed by the second stage, known as the “famine” stage. People are hungry and then die. The third is “receding famine” when people have sufficient amount of food. They start consuming fruits, vegetables and animals. The fourth is the “degenerative disease” stage, sometimes called the “western” diet, in which individuals consume high meat diet accompanied by a sedentary life. The fifth is the stage of behavioural changes toward healthy lifestyles, including consuming healthy food.

Therefore, with this framework as the background, this chapter examines trends of population health outcomes and the determinants in Brunei, a high-income country with the second-highest per capita income in Southeast Asia, and its related health policies. It focuses on the landscape, challenges and opportunities related to population health in Brunei. It discusses mortality rates, non-communicable diseases, communicable diseases (especially the COVID-19), people with disabilities, and the ageing population.

Editors’ Note

Similarly to Ridley’s contribution of 1900, Gilbert E. Brooke’s paper of 1904 gave emphasis to social Darwinism and the problem of race in Europe and the colonies. Brooke, a doctor and medical officer, referenced the ideas of Herbert Spencer to reject the argument that the lower classes, including the native lower classes in Malaya, should have access to an education which would be beyond their needs. The paper is notable for appearing at a time when discussions on educational reform in the colony were developing, particularly in the Malay States where education had been made compulsory in 1895. And whilst these discussions largely favoured the extension of education to all groups, important debates had emerged around the kind of education that should be provided to rural Malays. Brooke’s paper is notable for its advocacy of social hierarchy and order, as against educational reform, as well as for its comparative discussion of the European and Malayan cases. For Brooke the education of people beyond their station would induce migration to overcrowded cities, lead the lower classes into crime and women into “bad habits”, and produce “neurotic degeneration” in society. So too would it raise people not suited into the station of the middle-class. What was needed then was to move beyond the anarchy of liberal theories of free trade towards an ordered society which he saw as endorsed by “modern social and political economy”.

Tan Teck Soon’s criticism is notable for its support of education as a societal good and his support for the Chinese system of education in the colony. For Tan this was not an abstract debate, but an important matter of social reform. From 1890 to 1894, Tan was the editor and proprietor of the newspaper, Daily Advertiser which kept the Chinese community in Singapore informed of developments in mainland China. He also ran the Singapore Chinese Educational Institute, a night school for working Chinese adults.

Editors’ Note

A more critical tone towards colonial government was also evident in James Aitken’s essay of 1907. Aitken, a Queen’s Scholar from Singapore and a lawyer who practised alongside Song Ong Siang, came to criticize in the Society what he saw as the failings of British policy in Malaya. The central issue of the ensuing debate with Arthur Knight was the standards to which British colonial policy was to be held. For Knight, British achievements had to be understood in relation to the condition in which they had found the Malay Peninsula and the improvement of this condition. Aitken, on the other hand, was concerned with the British failure to attain for the colony a fuller level of economic and social development and for the unevenness of their achievements. This debate came to focus particularly on the position of the Malays, and British responsibility to include them within the development of the colonial economy and colonial society. On his part Aitken would argue in a manner that was a precursor of later debates around affirmative action that whilst the Malays were “not likely for a long time to reach the standard of the European, Chinaman, or Tamil, he should be encouraged by Government, and the other races should even be slightly handicapped in order to advance him”. Arthur Knight’s critical response similarly emphasized objections to affirmative action which anticipate arguments raised in future debates. For him the current status of the Malays was an outcome of their nature. He argued that they had the formal right to study medicine and join the legislative council but lacked the inclination. He was of the opinion that their improvement could not therefore be forced. Moral reform and improvement for Knight appeared to be confronted with the reality of racial difference.

For the purposes of this paper British Malaya may be taken to be the Straits Settlements and the Federated Malay States, leaving out of account Labuan, British North Borneo, and Sarawak.

Editors’ Note

C.W.S. Kynnersley joined the Straits Settlements Civil Service in 1872, before becoming Superintendent of Prisons in Penang in 1877 and later served as a Magistrate in Penang. According to Ridley in Noctes Orientales his paper of 1893 was one of the few contributions to the Society to affect a policy change in the colony. As with earlier essays on sex work and opium, Kynnersley’s contribution placed emphasis on the Chinese population of the colony, who formed the bulk of the prison population, and who he saw as vital to study in order to understand the roots of crime in the colony. For Kynnersley, the realities of migration and the lack of traditional authority were central themes. In China the Chinese were “under restraint, like a child reverencing his elders and betters”, in Singapore they had no respect for European officials. In such a racialized context Kynnersley would reject liberal opinion in England which saw education as preventative of crime. Instead, he argued that what Singapore required was a better policing and penal system. At the same time he noted that the system’s focus on hard labour tended to produce only hardened prisoners and ignored the potential for their reform and improvement through work.

Tan Teck Soon’s contribution provided a counterpoint. Drawing on the discourse of moral reform in the colony he argued that a proper channel of communication between the Chinese and the authorities would make possible the use of education as a means to teach people the benefits and advantages of upholding the law. This was more than just a question of moral reform for Tan. For him, the Chinese were no longer just temporary migrants but had increasingly made Malaya their home, and the colonial government had an obligation to develop a civic basis for order in the colony. As one of the two Chinese members in the Society, it has been noted that Tan’s notable contribution, as an intellect and writer, was in reconceptualizing Chinese civilization as progressive and open to change, which challenged the prevailing Western idea that Chinese civilization was antiquated and unprogressive.

Editors’ Note

Rev. W.M. Runciman’s essay of 1915 highlights the continued importance of social Darwinist and environmental determinism in the Society’s papers. Runciman was a Presbyterian minister and associated with other ministers like W. Murray, who was also a member of the Society. Runciman’s essay took up the theme of environmental influence on character and race which had been the focus of Ridley’s earlier contributions. Whereas Ridley saw racial difference in far starker terms, and government attempts to intervene in processes of natural selection as harmful, Runciman would differ. Runciman saw climate as playing a determining role in racial characteristics, preventing permanent European settlement of the tropics and modifying settled races elsewhere. Yet this was not to assume that racial differences were solely subjected to the environment. He surmised that the development of human society, science and religion “of the right type”, could counteract the negative effects of climate on societies, thus making their reform and “improvement” possible.

To those who live among or have travelled among peoples differing widely from their own nation, there must always be a great interest attached to the study of the differences and the reasons for them. There are perhaps few places in the world so favourably placed as Singapore as a meeting place for various types of humanity, representing several races. Under our tropic sun we have men from the Land of the Midnight Sun, as well as those whose home is anywhere on that imaginary line that from time immemorial has been running round the earth. From many spots between the Arctic Circle and the Equator men have congregated in this land of sunshine and shower.

It is surely a useful question to ask if the change of climate has an influence, beneficial or disadvantageous, upon those who immigrate here, for short or long periods. It has been asserted that to man belongs the exclusive privilege of being a denizen of every region of the earth. While plants and animals have their particular habitats, man can make his abode anywhere, from the Torrid to the Arctic zone, from sea-level to mountain-top, from the depths of the sea to the heights of the atmosphere.

Editors’ Note

In contrast to Reith’s sentiments, his fellow member Arthur Knight, a prominent civil servant and Freemason, represented the voice of moral reform in the colony. He argued for a duty of moral improvement on behalf of the British Empire and challenged the inevitability of the trade. He also highlighted both the opposition amongst the Chinese to opium use, as well as the evident British interest in the continuation of the trade. At the time of this discussion the British trade in opium was considerable and lucrative so a defence of the continuation of the trade was not unexpected. It has been estimated that opium revenue comprised 43 per cent of the total revenue of the Straits Settlements in 1895. It was not until 1907 when China signed a ten years’ agreement with India—whereby China agreed to forbid native cultivation and consumption of opium on the understanding that the export of Indian opium would decline in proportion and cease completely in ten years—that the trade began to be suppressed. In the Straits Settlements though, the opium trade continued to be a major contributor to government revenue right until the Second World War.

As I said at our last meeting, there is an important distinction between the Indian opium revenue and the opium revenue of this colony. The Government of India is the great grower and manufacturer of opium for sale. In this colony the revenue raised is very much in the nature of an excise, and differs little in principle from the excise on liquor which contributes so largely to the revenue of the mother-country.

I understand that I am expected to furnish some facts bearing on the question as it affects this colony.

First as to the revenue from this source. I shall give in most cases the actual figures, but as the opium and spirit farms are sometimes combined, I have had then to estimate the proportion attributable to the opium. However, my figures will be sufficiently exact for practical purposes.

The transfer of these Settlements from the Indian to the Colonial Government took place on the 1st of April 1867.

This book has had an unusually long gestation period. It all started in 1976 when Lim Teck Ghee, at that time teaching at the University of Penang as it was then known, was working in the Penang Library in 1976 and stumbled across a box of old papers that the library staff intended to dispose of. The papers included what were the original copies of some of the proceedings of the Straits Philosophical Society, a society founded in 1893 by colonial officials with the objective of engaging in critical discussion on matters related to philosophy, history, literature, science and the arts.

The value of the papers was recognized and communicated to the Library management to ensure that they would be properly handled and preserved for posterity.

Further examination of the papers—there were 17 sets—revealed that some of them had never been published and that it would be worthwhile to reproduce them because they provided insights into the thinking of some of the most influential people in the Peninsula on a variety of subjects and issues of importance during that period. The fact that their subject matter was still being debated, and in some instances arousing controversy in academia and the public sphere, attested to the need to make them available to a larger audience.

Since then, the publication of the papers has been a challenge. The first choice of publisher—the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society—was not successful as it was then felt that too much emphasis was being given to the publishing of colonial sources. At the same time, a number of early collaborators in the publication dropped out in part because of the common inability to commit time to the research. More time was lost with Lim Teck Ghee’s departure from the academia world and Malaysia in 1996.

A chance meeting between Lim Teck Ghee who returned to Malaysia in 2005 and Timo Kortteinen, Professor with the Department of Sociology, University of Helsinki when the latter was undertaking field research in Malaysia in 2007 revived the prospect of a publication on the papers.

Editors’ Note

“On the Contagious Diseases Acts” was one of the earliest contributions to the Society. The paper was written by David J. Galloway, a doctor and founder in 1890 of the Straits Medical Association. The paper would be responded to by G.D. Haviland, who, between 1891 and 1893, had served as a medical officer in Sarawak and a Curator of the Sarawak Museum in Kuching before arriving in Singapore as the Raffles Library and Museum Curator.

The background to the discussion was the Contagious Diseases Ordinance (CDO), a public health ordinance which regulated the sex trade in the Straits Settlements through a system of registration and inspection. This gave the police powers to detain sex workers in “lock hospitals” and subjected them to compulsory medical examination. The passage of the CDO had precipitated objections, both in Britain and in the colony from a number of social groups including moral reformers, missionaries, feminists and civil libertarians, who successfully lobbied the Liberal government of Britain to repeal the Ordinances in 1886.

In Singapore the CDO was introduced to protect British sailors and soldiers, not the population of the colony. Through the influence of the Chinese Protector Pickering, the CDO was expanded from its initial focus on “all nationality” women (Europeans, Indians and Japanese sex workers) to also focus on Chinese sex workers, who were to be examined on a monthly basis. Soon after, the CDO was placed under the Chinese Protectorate and contagious disease was conceptualized as a “Chinese problem”, defined by the significant demographic disparity between Chinese men and women in the colony. The repeal of the Ordinances in Britain placed the question of repeal on the legislative table in Singapore and led to debates within the colony between moral reformers and the colonial government. The former argued that, due to the prevalence of sexual diseases in Singapore, and the colony’s demographic disparity, an exception should be made and the CDO should be retained. Rejecting this, the Colonial Office ordered its repeal in 1887.

By the time that Galloway was addressing the matter to the Society, the Act had already been repealed for six years.

Editors’ Note

The engagement of the Society with missionary thinking on the native population can be found in two contributions by W.G. Shellabear in the 1910s: “Moslem Influence on the Malay Race” and “Mohammedanism, As Revealed in Its Literature”. As Robert Hunt has argued, Shellabear was central to the re-evaluation of the role of Islam in Malay society, challenging assumptions of Islam as a mere veneer over Malay society, and arguing for the need for missionaries to understand the true nature of Malay society, and to contribute towards the modernization and development of the Malays as part of the colony.

Yet whilst his assessment of the role of Islam differed from the majority missionary opinion of the time, the fundamental thrust still assumed a strong opposition between the values of Islam and those of European thought. Although Shellabear provided a more prominent role for Islam in the development of Malay society, at the same time he saw its civilizing role as limited compared for example to earlier Hindu influence. In doing so, Shellabear would take up an Orientalist focus upon language and texts to better understand the Malays, which would also be prominent in his subsequent essay “Mohammedanism, As Revealed in Its Literature”. This approach was one which Tan Teck Soon would criticize for its focus on textualism as opposed to living culture.

Shellabear argued that comparing the list of Malay words derived from Arabic and those derived from Sanskrit, it was obvious that Hinduism was “by far the more effective civilising agency”. Later in the same essay he would argue that the influence of Islam on the Malays was largely restricted to the sphere of religion, and to terminology for books and writing, but not for the language of government and commerce where the adoption of words from European and Chinese languages suggested that “the Chinese and European peoples have done infinitely more than the Arabs to give the Malays the fruits of civilization”.