Editors’ Note

Although a strong supporter of the British colonial administration (he was appointed a member of the Straits Settlements Legislative Council in 1895 at the early age of twenty-six), Lim Boon Keng played a prominent role in the Chinese nationalist movement in Malaya. He had close ties with Sun Yat-sen and Kang You-wei, hosting the latter in Singapore in 1898. In 1901 he authored The Chinese Crisis from Within (edited by Society member Rev. G.M. Reith), chronicling the reform movement in China. In 1906 Lim became a founding member of the Tongmenghui, an anti-Qing dynasty movement, established by Sun Yat-sen, and served as president after it became the Singapore branch of the Kuomintang in 1912. After the Qing dynasty was overthrown in 1911 he was appointed to various medical positions in China and became the personal physician of Sun Yat-sen. Significant to Lim’s thought in this period was his belief that the Babas of Singapore, with their mixed culture, could play an important role in the reform of Chinese society.

Lim’s 1913 essay to the Society highlighted the importance of the Chinese of Malaya to the nationalist movement in China and also took stock of the nationalist movement itself. Listing down the effects of the movement including the removal of the queue, the adoption of European dress, the introduction of representative government and the emancipation and education of women, he also noted its tendency towards extremes. “Fanatics”, he argued, influenced by the “crude socialism of the workmen of Australia” sought for “equality in all things, abolition of social, legal, and family distinctions and suppression of religion”, believing that the “masses only require work”. This materialist and radically egalitarian philosophy was antithetical to the Confucianism to which Lim had long subscribed.

In his view these questions had largely been resolved in favour of Confucianism, with popular opinion in Malaya and China defending Confucian values against attempts to abolish such teachings. Echoing his belief in the progressive role that the Baba Chinese could play in China’s development, Lim perceived the support for Confucianism amongst the Straits Chinese as an expression of their openness to what was best in Western culture “while intending to maintain their old institutions that do not conflict with republican principles”.

Editors’ Note

Administrative discussions around British obligations to protect and uplift the Malays were important themes throughout the essays of the Society. This would contribute towards a discourse and, more importantly, a doctrine of protection which would become enshrined in post-colonial policies of race and immigration as well as in the formation of an independent Malaya. This discourse was evident in C.W.S. Kynnersley’s essay in 1901. Kynnersley was a British colonial administrator who joined the Straits Settlements civil service in 1872 and in 1901 was serving as the acting Colonial Secretary of the Straits Settlements. Kynnersley’s essay, like broader colonial discourses, emphasized the underdevelopment of the Malays, as well as the failure of British policy to protect and uplift them through education and development. This reinforced, for Kynnersley, his concern in a British obligation to modernize and reform the Malays. Highlighting those states where the Malays had remained in the majority, he noted their ability under British guidance to govern themselves and develop their states. For this to be achieved, he argued for British policy to create the conditions for their growth. Central to this was a need to make provision for Malays in the civil service and to limit the employment of immigrant communities. Debates over the issues he raised continued to be significant in the Straits Settlements and Malay States for a long time after Kynnersley’s essay.

Being called on this evening to deliver an Introductory Address, I must in the first place crave the indulgence of members of this Society. I am aware that in past years the Society has enjoyed the privilege of listening to addresses from those who have so worthily filled the office of President. When at our last meeting I expressed the regret which we all felt at the departure of our learned and genial President, who was deeply interested in the work of the Society, I was fully sensible of the honour you were doing to me in asking me to act in his place. It is, I think, wisely provided in our Rules that the papers to be read are not confined to subjects which can properly be called Philosophical.

UNDERSTANDING POPULATION DYNAMICS

Understanding population dynamics is very important for policymakers and business communities. They need to know the size, composition and geographical distribution of the population and how these have changed and will change over time. Population dynamics and its three main components (fertility, mortality and migration) affect various developmental sectors such as economy, politics, social and environment. Economic impacts of population dynamics operate through production, consumption and distribution. On the production side, the population provides capital and labour to the firms/institutions. In return, firms/institutions provide salaries and produce goods and services to fulfil the needs of the population. On the other hand, the population consumes goods and services and pays the producers. Therefore, the population has two functions: as producers and consumers. Information on producers and consumers is needed for the distribution system of goods and services and labour allocation, making development policies and business strategies.

Socially, population dynamics may result in behavioural and norm changes. People may behave differently in densely populated areas compared to those in sparsely populated areas; living in areas with many older persons may be different from living in areas with mostly younger persons; living in areas with many visitors from other places may be different from living in areas where the members of the population are homogenous and have few visitors.

Coupled with rising income and wealth, population growth places increasing pressures on the planet’s resources through consumption of water and air, clearing forests, and land use. This contributes to climate change and challenges environmental sustainability, with both global and local socio-economic-political implications.

There is a close relationship between population growth and economic growth. Expressed in percentage, economic growth is equal to population growth plus growth in per capita GDP (gross domestic product). However, to make effective targets of development, understanding the size of population is not sufficient—population composition matters more. Changing age composition from young to old, for instance, influences the labour market including pension and social protection systems, infrastructure, poverty, as well as demand for goods and services. This chapter describes and examines the population dynamics over time in Brunei.

PREAMBLE: HIGHER SKILLED AND MOTIVATED WORKFORCE FOR BRUNEI 2035

The acceleration of the inevitable disruptive changes to work due to rapid technological advancements will profoundly impact the employment landscape over the coming years for many countries, including Brunei. With such an evolving employment landscape, it would seem challenging to prepare workers for jobs that do not yet exist. These changes are not only non-linear and unpredictable, but are also imminent. The significant impact on jobs could range from job creation to job displacement and heightened labour productivity to widening skills gaps. One of the apparent signs of the changing employment landscape is many in-demand occupations that exist now did not exist several years ago. According to the World Economic Forum (2016), approximately 65 per cent of today’s children will find themselves working in jobs that do not exist now. This salient statement has urgent implications on future jobs which will require a new set of technical and soft skills.

Advances in digitalization could lead to revolutionary changes such as a significant disruption to the labour market, where many sectors will face chronic unemployment due to the replacement of routine human jobs involving repetitive and regimented tasks. On the other hand, these revolutionary changes could also present unprecedented business opportunities, job creation and sustainable economic growth (Chui, Manyika and Miremadi 2016; Frey and Osborne 2017; OECD 2016). These changes raise new challenges for i) the preparation of future higher skilled and motivated workforce through education and training, and ii) maintaining the employability of the existing workforce through continuing education and workplace learning, in order to upskill or reskill to remain relevant to the needs of the labour market.

The purpose of this chapter is to illuminate the contribution of Brunei’s Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in promoting vocational competence of the future and existing workforce in realizing Wawasan 2035. The initial part of the chapter will describe the concept of “vocational education and training” and its significant position within Brunei’s education system. The subsequent section provides an overview of the developments focusing on key milestones of Brunei’s TVET landscape.

The Straits Philosophical Society and Colonial Elites in Malaya: Perspectives on Race, Identity and Social Order

Founded in Singapore in 1893, the Straits Philosophical Society was, in the tradition of other learned societies throughout the British Empire, a space within the colony for the “critical discussion of questions in Philosophy, History, Theology, Literature, Science and Art”. With a membership restricted to graduates of British and European universities, fellows of British or European learned societies and those with “distinguished merit in the opinion of the Society in any branch of knowledge”, it was a meeting place for the educated elite of the colony made up of colonial civil servants, soldiers, missionaries, businessmen, as well as prominent Straits Chinese.

Colonial associations have been increasingly recognized in colonial historiography as important sites in the lifeworld of the colony. Sports clubs, church associations, charitable groups and educational institutions have been studied as spaces in which the social life of the colony, the political, social, and economic ideologies and the ordering of colonial rule, particularly along racial lines, were reproduced and reinforced. The clubhouse, in particular, has been shown by historians to be a pivotal institution—becoming a sacred ground for Europeans as a bastion of racial prestige, whilst also reinforcing the mystique of the ruling caste. The limited, but politically significant, integration of colonial subjects it permitted was similarly a vital wellspring of colonial hegemony.

More recently scholarly societies have been studied as important centres in the intellectual and ideological life of the colony. Firstly, as spaces for the dissemination of colonial knowledge and systems of thought; and secondly, as spaces in which the colonized learned and responded to the thinking of the representatives of colonial power. Su Lin Lewis, touching on the Straits Philosophical Society, the Siam Society and the Burma Research Society, has argued for the colonial learned society as a site of “sociability and intellectual exchange” producing independent intellectual cultures which would later contribute to the rise of social reform movements and early nationalist movements. These societies, she argues, “contributed to an emerging intellectual culture of libraries, public lectures, and universities” and the flow of intellectual ideas through “correspondence, travel, and exchanges of publications”.

INTRODUCTION

The Sultanate of Brunei Darussalam is a small but rich country that is most notably known for hydrocarbon resource abundance. Its economy heavily relies on oil and gas, accounting for over 91 per cent of total commodity export and 76 per cent of government revenue. It has a relatively large share of public sector that supports a population of 459,500 (2019) with a generous welfare system that subsidizes staple food, petrol, water and electricity, while providing free education, affordable healthcare services, low-cost government housing scheme and subsidized land purchase, and old-age pensions for those above 60 years old. Its accumulated wealth from oil and gas has propelled the Sultanate into a high-income country, with the 2019 real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of US$62,100 international purchasing power parity (internationally comparable purchasing power of the income per person). Life expectancy has increased from 62.6 years in 1970 to 70.2 years and 75.7 years in 1990 and 2018, respectively, while educational attainment and literacy rate of its population aged 15 years old and older has also increased over time from 85.1 per cent in 1981 to 97.2 per cent in 2018 (UNDP 2020; UIS 2021). These improvements led Brunei to rank 47 (out of 189 countries and territories) and score 0.838 on the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI) in 2019.

Despite being wealthy, Brunei economy has been growing at slower rates, with an average GDP growth of 1.7 per cent over 1975–2019 (1.2 per cent during 1986–2019, and 3.9 per cent in 2019). Its non-oil-and-gas private sectors are still relatively small (less than 30 per cent share in GDP) and are dominated by Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) that are mainly concentrated in the service sector. The manufacturing sector is dominated by downstream oil and gas production while the agriculture sector accounts for just 1 per cent of the total output. The Brunei government has been actively seeking, through its National Development Plans (NDPs), to diversify the economy towards non-resource sector with various policy initiatives and institutional reforms, as well as large investment projects and modernizing its business and economic infrastructures.

INTRODUCTION

Brunei is one of the smallest countries in the world. Yet, it boasts one of the highest percentages of forest cover in the world. The monarchy is endowed with a coastline of 161 km and 11 ecosystems that are home to around 15,000 vascular plant species, including 2,000 tree species. The major mountainous peak, Bukit Pagon on the eastern part of Brunei rises to 1,850 m (Ranjith and De Silva 1998; SCBD, n.d.). Brunei’s economy today is largely driven by oil and gas. Yet, local communities and industries have also actively been using the ecosystems and the various tangible and intangible benefits they provide (ecosystem services). In this chapter, I provide an overview of the changing dependencies on Brunei’s ecosystems and their current state. Following that, I explore the challenges faced by the government and local communities in the conservation and management of ecosystems.

CHANGING DEPENDENCIES ON THE ECOSYSTEMS

Brunei is a natural resource dependent state. However, the nature of dependence and the resources that sustained its economy has changed over time. Although oil fields were discovered in 1929, the economy transitioned into an oil and gas dependent only in the 1970s (Hussainmiya 2014; Mukoyama 2020; Schelander 1998). Prior to that, it depended on forest produces (camphor from Dryobalanops aromatica Gaertn.f., rattans, resins, pepper etc.), agriculture, minerals and coal during various points on the historical timescale (Schelander 1998). Cutch emerged as a major forest produce only towards the end of the nineteenth century. Cutch is a khaki dye obtained from mangroves for tanning of leather and treatment of fishing nets (Horton 1985). A cutch factory operated between 1901 and 1904 provided job opportunities to around 300 men from Kampong Ayer (Hussainmiya 2006, pp. xi, 22, 34). From 1906 to 1922, and in 1931, export of cutch made the largest contribution to the exchequer. As a consequence of the boom, mangroves around Brunei Town were overexploited to such an extent that by 1920, most of the mangrove bark that forms the raw material for cutch production was imported (Horton 1985).

During the early part of the twentieth century, Brunei also experimented with plantations.

INTRODUCTION

All aspects of our lives have been significantly impacted by the ongoing digital revolution and advancement of modern technology. Such advancement has inevitably led towards the process of digitalization. Digitalization came to be crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic when many countries were forced to digitize to ensure the safety and well-being of their citizens. Brunei was one such country that had to undergo forced digitalization after an exponential rise of COVID-19 cases within a span of a few weeks after reporting its first case on 9 March 2020. Hence, it is critically important that the notion of “digital society” is intended to enable and provide a sustainable framework towards achieving the efficiency and effectiveness of the country’s health system.

The Bruneian society is a high-degree digitalization adopter, as attested by the high internet and social media participation via smartphones by the people. Hence, this gives an indication that the people are ready to embark on a digital transformation. The AITI Business Report (2019) stated that 90 per cent of businesses in Brunei have access to the internet through social media utilization in tapping the digital market and engaging with their customers, and 58 per cent are aware of the advantages of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) integration into their businesses. However, businesses’ digitalization through e-commerce is still low. Only 16 per cent of businesses have online sales activity, and much of these activities are attributable to their engagement with overseas traders or partners. Brunei’s slow development in entrepreneurial activity is primarily due to its heavy dependency on the oil and gas industry which has been a long-standing problem since its first national development plan. Nevertheless, the fall of oil prices has made the country take precautionary or protective measures (Basir 2017).

In 2007, public recommendations of Brunei’s expectations were published, which henceforth allowed the Bruneian society to envision a future that can fulfil long-term hopes and expectations (GOV.BN, n.d.). That vision was called “Wawasan Brunei 2035” or the National Vision 2035 as consented by His Majesty the Sultan of Brunei.

In the aftermath of the First World War, the intellectual life of the colony began to change. Many of the European members would go off to fight in the war and would not return. At the same time, one of the Society’s most prominent members, Lim Boon Keng would leave the colony for China in 1921. He was increasingly dissatisfied with the lack of opportunities for Straits Chinese and the British inability to treat them as free men within the British Empire. As Lim would earlier argue in 1917,

This built upon Lim’s calls during the war to challenge racial discrimination within the British Empire and for the movement of colonized towards democratic self-government within a reformed Empire, as a first step towards a “federation of the world”. Yet Lim’s belief in the promise of British Liberalism, and hope that the British Empire could transcend racial discrimination, diminished. Nor did the promise of the smooth integration of Anglicized elites within the colonial establishment realize a harmonious colonial order.

By the 1920s new challenges and claims were being made against the colonial order in Malaya, and a colony that had earlier been seen as devoid of politics was increasingly becoming politicized. The earlier decades of the Society had seen a more tranquil political climate in the colony in which questions of colonial policy could be openly debated in a more non-partisan manner. In the aftermath of the war, questions of the future of Malaya became more urgent, and a new series of claims emerged which challenged the stability of the old order with stronger rhetoric.

Editors’ Note

Napier’s paper, presented in the early years of the Society, is significant for its comparison of Dutch and English colonial systems at a time when the subject of land policy was being debated in the colony. In comparing the two systems, Napier joined a tradition of contrasting the Dutch Cultivation System with Britain’s liberal colonial policy. This was prominent in the writings of Stamford Raffles and John Crawfurd in the early nineteenth century. So too was it prominent in J.W.B. Money’s journey to Java in the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny of 1857, as well as later in Alfred Russel Wallace’s support in The Malay Archipelago (1869) for the Dutch protectionist system, which he saw as superior to the exposure of native populations to free competition.

The paper compares the British and Dutch systems by focusing upon the divergent principles which underlay their approaches to land policy. British liberalism, with its aim to produce a market in land, was criticized by Napier for its tendency to lead to the displacement and indebtedness of native populations. This was contrasted with the “picture of prosperity and order” he had witnessed in the Dutch Indies, based upon their protection of customary land law. These positions reflected earlier debates between Swettenham and Maxwell in Malaya. On Napier’s part, whilst he was not uncritical of the Dutch, his experience led him to call for a more protectionist ethos and he would go on to provide justifications for Malay land reservations: “where a race is found by a conquering European power to be in possession of the land of the country, it is permissible—nay, it is the duty of that power by its legislation to prevent that race being ousted”.

Ridley, in his response, also criticized Britain’s liberal approach. He argued that the “natives” did not appreciate the “high technicalities” of English law, and suggested that in other areas the British could learn from the Dutch. They could follow the Dutch regulations on the movement of natives and their curfew system.

Editors’ Note

Unlike Kynnersley’s 1901 essay, Ridley’s essay on the future of the Malay race offered a more pessimistic outlook for the Malays. Ridley, informed by his social Darwinism, argued that the Malays lacked the racial character to prevent subsumption by immigrant races, in particular the Chinese. He foresaw the Malay race intermixing with the Chinese and disappearing as they were integrated within a more dominant Chinese race. At the same time, he argued that two trends may delay this subsumption. The first was the presence of Islam as a differentiating factor between the Malays and Chinese, and the other was the presence of the British who may for some time artificially protect the Malays from external competition. In response Hanitsch, a botanist, Curator of the Raffles Library and Museum, and a colleague of Ridley, argued, against Ridley, that the long-term protection of the Malay race might be possible, but only on the basis of the restriction of immigration and through a system of education which would build upon existing trades and protect the current state of Malay society. To justify ongoing British protection of the Malays, Hanitsch noted:

I take the title, the Future of the Malay Race, to refer to the distant future of the race—its final end, if ended it should be before the great globe and all that it inherits shall dissolve—and therefore I will attempt to study the probable end of the race. At the present time I think it is clear that the Malays are increasing in number, at least in the Peninsula, although successful reproduction of the race is not large, Malays have comparatively small families, and are losing a considerable number of children very young.

Editors’ Note

As with the sex trade, the opium trade was another contested area of British policy in the Straits and one which was the object of discussion in the Society in 1893 on an evening in which two papers on the topic were presented. At this time the colonial policy of revenue farming was coming under pressure from moral reformers and Liberal politicians in Britain and by 1893, a Commission was appointed by Gladstone to investigate whether the trade should be suppressed across the Empire. In 1893 the Secretary of the Anti-Opium Society would arrive in the Straits to study the situation in the colony, whilst there was also emerging a growing anti-opium movement led by missionaries such as Rev. W.G. Shellabear, Rev. A. Lamont, Rev. J.A.B. Cook and Straits Chinese thinkers like Lim Boon Keng and Tan Teck Soon. As with Galloway’s essay, a dominant theme in Reith’s essay was how, in the face of liberal criticisms, an exception could be made for the colony, and the opium trade justified. In doing so Reith would follow arguments not dissimilar to those made by Galloway. An exception was firstly justified because the scale of the use of opium in the colony made demand difficult to eradicate. Secondly, suppression of production in British India would only drive traders in the colony to source opium from China, sending the trade underground, increasing smuggling, and harming the tax revenue of the colony. Finally, he argued that suppression of the trade would worsen relations between the Chinese and Europeans, citing recent disturbances in Kulim as proof. In this way Reith resurrected the spectre of the violent and difficult to govern Chinese to justify the continued trade in opium.

Though the object of a Philosophical Society is to dig about the roots of things, to question fact or imagination about the causes of things, and to weave theories about the moral bearing of things, yet the Straits Philosophical Society can hardly discuss the much discussed question about the opium traffic, without having much to say about the opium problem as it presents itself to this colony.

Editors’ Note

In one of several presentations that he made to the Society on education, Tan took up the issue of the modernization of Chinese education which he saw as central to the question of social reform amongst the Chinese. His essay is also notable for the attention it gives to the educational challenges faced by other communities and his criticism of British neglect. A notable intellectual and social activist, Tan, anticipating Furnivall’s much cited work on the emergence of the plural society almost fifty years later, was critical of the development of the colonial plural society in which “except as regards the strenuous pursuit of dollars, each leads a life of his own entirely indifferent to the existence or proximity of the other”. This was particularly true of the Europeans who, he argued, lived a separate social existence in the colony, governing only with regard to their own ideals and making only “feeble and spasmodic attempts” to understand and influence non-European populations.

Tan’s essay can be seen as an early pioneering call to the British for a greater focus on modernizing and reforming Malaya’s different communities. At the same time it is not surprising to find in his discussion on the Malays important discursive overlaps between Straits Chinese and European thought. The Malays were defined by Tan as characterized by a laziness induced by the tropical climate. Thus their “want of stamina and character is inherent, and if entirely left to itself the race will in all likelihood degenerate and die away in a not very distant future”. And whilst he would argue, alongside other members of the Society, that racial mixing was slowly improving the Malays, he also reasoned that as the “child of the soil” the Malays required special protection from the British, as well as the education of Malay women and the formation of model farms to teach them agriculture. These were themes which European members of the Society were also inclined to support (see Section 3).

INTRODUCTION

Brunei is a predominantly Muslim country with a population of 459,500 in 2019 (Department of Economic Planning and Statistics 2019). As one of the oldest monarchies in the world, the sultanate of Brunei began in the fourteenth century when Awang Alak Betatar converted to Islam and married a Johore princess. He was coronated as the first Sultan of Brunei in 1368 and became Sultan Muhammad Shah. Despite political turbulences, foreign interference, economic instability and substantial territorial loss at the end of the nineteenth century, the monarchical system remains intact until the present day.

There are many factors that contributed to the continued existence of Brunei’s monarchical system. Hamzah (1989) considered the skilful tact, diplomacy and political experience of the Brunei Sultans in dealing with external pressures as the main factor that overcame the political deficiency that could jeopardize the integrity of the monarchical system. Whereas Talib (2013) emphasized “the traditional and religious sources of legitimacy” from which the Brunei monarchy draws its strength as fundamental to the country’s survival.

In the present day, Brunei’s monarchy implements a unique governance model that strikes a balance between tradition and modernity. The traditional components are solely implemented in the royal court whereas the modern elements of governance shape the present-day state administration (Asiyah az-Zahra, Siti Norkhalbi and Noor Azam 2017, pp. 4–5). As will be discussed later, this unique model shapes what Talib (2013) regarded Brunei as a neo-traditional polity that enables the country to respond well to the changing needs of the modern globalized world.

THE BRITISH RESIDENCY 1906–59)

Before the turn of the twentieth century, Brunei was in a deep political crisis, following a substantial territorial loss to the Brookes in Sarawak and the British North Borneo Chartered Company in the present-day Sabah. By the turn of the century, Brunei was truly desperate to retain and ready to fight for what was left of its sovereignty. After several pleas made by Sultan Hashim (r. 1885–1906), the British agreed to the establishment of the British Residency in Brunei. With the signing of the Supplementary Agreement between Brunei and Britain in 1905/1906, Malcolm McArthur was appointed as the first British Resident.