This was the report card on Singapore's socio-economic development issued by the founding Prime Minister (PM) of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew twentyeight years after his People's Action Party (PAP) first won the right to govern Singapore in 1959, when it was still a British colony. Its transformation from post-Second World War squalor where most of the populace continued to struggle with basic survival, to one where the vast majority had homes of their own, where many were armed with better educational qualifications than the generation before them, and a significant proportion of workers in well-paying white-collar administrative and professional jobs, was remarkable.

In the speech above, PM Lee argued that having benefited from a governance system that upheld the rule of law, integrity and active industrial policy that brought such progress, Singaporeans should have no interest in reversing course to embrace an alternative social order—communism— something that had traction on the ground before Independence. Instead, Singapore's full engagement with the global capitalist system after it had lost the Malayan hinterland with the end of merger with Malaysia and the PAP's social and political policies had proven the worth of the PAP's governance system in tangible terms.

According to the Pew Research Centre, Singapore is the most religiously diverse country in the world on grounds that its population claims to be followers of at least eight religions including Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Sikhism, and several Chinese “folk religions”. In 2012, Forbes ranked Singapore the third richest country in the world. In 2015, ValuePenguin, a prominent New York consultancy firm, ranked Singapore the second safest country in the world. Taken together, these figures suggest that in an age where religious tension and conflict is said to be on the rise, Singapore has managed to maintain multiethnic and multireligious harmony whilst achieving a level of development which has been the envy of many a developing country. This record is all the more remarkable when one considers the trying circumstances of Singapore's independence in 1965, or the number of intrastate conflicts that had afflicted so-called Third World countries during the Cold War, many of which were triggered by issues related to the assertion of differences between communal identities. In fact, many countries continue to be bedevilled by communal and sectarian conflicts today.

The peace and stability that Singapore has enjoyed however, has not been the result of chance, serendipity, or circumstance. To the contrary, it has for a large part been the consequence of carefully calibrated policies on the part of the state, with the endorsement of the leadership of respective religious and ethnic communities in the multicultural nation-state. That the state has had to proactively intervene in order to head off the risks of tension, discord, and conflict between religious and ethnic groups has been explained by Home Minister K. Shanmugam in the following manner:

The government's stance as articulated by the minister corresponds with a general view amongst the population that accords to the state a major role in building and managing peaceful coexistence of different faiths.

INTRODUCTION

In 2011, the late Minister Mentor Mr Lee Kuan Yew shared some critical reflections on the condition of the Malay-Muslim community in Singapore. In his book Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going, Mr Lee opined, “I think we were progressing very nicely until the surge of Islam came and if you asked me for my observation, the other communities have easier integration—friends, intermarriages and so on, Indians with Chinese, Chinese with Indians—than Muslims. That's the result of the surge from the Arab states.” Mr Lee's assessment of the Muslim community's difficulty in integrating might have been shaped by demands from segments of the community over the years from the 1980s. The group is influenced by the Islamic resurgence movement, calling Muslims to be more committed to what they consider to be “Islamic”, though in real terms, it actually refers to the conservative, ritualistic and puritan interpretations of religion. Such requests include urging the People's Action Party (PAP) government to safeguard the madrasahs (full-time Islamic schools) surrounding the proposal by the government to implement Compulsory Education (CE) for all students up to primary six (for the Primary School Leaving Examinations, or PSLE) in the late 1990s and early 2000s. While the government had never intended to close down the madrasahs, and the CE proposal applies to all students notwithstanding to whether they are in the national schools or the madrasahs, a segment within the community felt the move was threatening the Islamic religious schools. In another example, Muslim resurgent groups also adopted the theological position that the donning of headscarves (tudung) for Muslim women is compulsory, including all female students in national schools. In 2002, four female students were turned away from school for putting on headscarves, because they did not comply with the Ministry of Education's no-headscarf rule for public schools. The tudung issue re-emerged in 2014 when some netizens openly raised it again online. Online campaigns have been the resurgent's modus operandi lately, as active participants on Facebook groups such as Suara Melayu Singapura (Voice of Singaporean Malays); Singapore Muslims for Independent MUIS and Singapore Muslims Against Liberal Islam. These groups have attracted a large following within the Malay-Muslim community.

INTRODUCTION

In September 2015 the China Cultural Centre (CCC) was established in Singapore by the Chinese Ministry of Culture in China, representing one of at least fifty such global centres envisioned by 2020. According to a news report in Singapore, such centres are meant to “promote [China’s] culture and further bolster its soft power abroad”. Separately, the planned opening of the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre (SCC) was also underway. Helmed by the Singapore Federation of Chinese Clan Associations, the SCC would showcase “Singaporean-Chinese” culture. When asked about the potential overlap between the CCC and SCC, the chief executive of SCC replied, “There is no duplication because we will be promoting our uniquely Singapore Chinese culture while theirs will be all about those from the mainland.”

When the SCC was opened in May 2017, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong noted that the “Chineseness” in Singapore is distinct from those of the Chinese populations in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia and Taiwan. He highlighted three traits distinguishing Singapore's variant of Chineseness: “the inculcation of positive traditional values, the embrace of multiculturalism, and bilingualism”. While it is arguable whether those traits are distinctly Singaporean, what emerges from the above exchange are the contested ways in which Chinese identity is represented and experienced in Singapore among co-ethnics from different nationality backgrounds.

Since the 1990s, the Singaporean state has used managed migration to meet skills shortages and boost declining fertility rates. China serves as a key source country of new immigration to Singapore. New cohorts of Mainland Chinese immigrants (henceforth PRC immigrants) have converged in Singapore in response to demands for investor, skilled and unskilled migrants. China's rise as a global power presents new business opportunities for Singapore, but also renewed anxieties towards immigrant integration. The targets of Singapore's integration project today are the new Chinese migrants who left China after 1979 (i.e., 新移民 xinyimin). Since they share the same ethnicity as the majority Chinese population in Singapore, policymakers had thought such co-ethnics would integrate easily. However, the Singaporean-Chinese invoke a “localized” Singaporean identity, using their regional affiliations in the ancestral land—predominantly the coastal provinces of China—to differentiate themselves from the more recent PRC immigrants who come from a wider range of Chinese provinces.

WEALTH AND WELFARE SINCE BRITISH RULE

Wealth generation is steeped in Singapore's history. When Stamford Raffles established a trading post in Singapore in 1819, this entrepôt trading outpost of the East India Company attracted not just British colonials, but migrants from China and India for its promise of wealth. Welfare, in terms of personal well-being, improved because of their economic gains from being part of the commerce that took place in this thriving port. Welfare is thus strongly tied to personal wealth generation. On the other hand, institutional welfare in terms of government policy was minimal because the bulk of infrastructural support was devoted to encouraging commerce and the building of the Empire. Hence any improvement in personal well-being was not the outcome of any policy from the colonial authorities but that of personal savings and sacrifices within these immigrant communities.

Interestingly, the conditions and philosophies surrounding notions of wealth and welfare in Singapore some 200 years ago continue to prevail in the Singapore of 2019. With regard to wealth, Singapore is said to have one of the highest concentration of wealthy individuals in the world. With regard to welfare, in a speech in 2006, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong asserted that in Singapore, we treat welfare as a dirty word. By this, he meant that the Singapore government rejected the policy of welfare handouts to improve personal economic well-being. Repeatedly, Singaporeans are called on to be self-reliant, to work hard and turn to the government for assistance only as a last resort. Often accompanying this call is the belief that any erosion of work ethic and self-reliance would lead to the demise of Singapore, a small vulnerable island economy dependent on its human resource and deep port as the only natural resources. In addition, it is often asserted that the establishment of a welfare state, taken here to mean a form of government that sees itself as the main promoter and protector of its citizens’ economic well-being, would result in high taxes. If this happens, “talent and businesses will leave, no investments will come”.

INTRODUCTION

In January 2001, artists and activists gathered at a forum organized by local theatre company, The Necessary Stage, to discuss cultural activism in Singapore. The artists and activists, fresh from their collaborative engagement to build an experimental civil society network called The Working Committee, discussed “Protest, Provocation, Process”, as the title of the forum indicated. Alvin Tan, the founder and artistic director of The Necessary Stage, was a key organizer of The Working Committee. The discussion revolved around the state's approach to dissent and protest, from crackdowns in the early decades to censorious proscriptions in more recent years. Tan was no stranger to the latter, having been accused in 1994 by the local media of dabbling in “Marxist” forum theatre. One of the three speakers, the esteemed pioneer of bilingual plays in Singapore, the late Kuo Pao Kun, spoke from his personal experience of draconian extrajudicial detention in the 1970s.

The forum was a rare event. After a decade of social liberalization under then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, public forms of protest were still seen as anti-government provocations that were unacceptable in Singapore. Holding a forum on protest could itself be construed by the authorities as a provocation. Yet, there was little critical sting in the discussion. Instead, there was a sense of discomfort among the activists about the changing relationship between the illiberal state and protesters. At the forum, Kuo said,

Seventeen years later, in March 2018, a family-like dispute about protest was aired in Parliament. Kok Heng Leun, Artistic Director of the Drama Box and who represented the arts sector as nominated member of parliament (NMP), raised objections to the last of the four examples used to illustrate a “serious incident” that would come under increased police powers in the new Public Order and Safety (Special Powers) Act. The hypothetical example used was a peaceful, sit-down protest in the Central Business District, which grew over a week to impede traffic flow and affect business.

Integration in Singapore is becoming increasingly important. While this may sound like a truism today, it certainly was not the case when Singapore was thrust into modernity under the auspices of the East India Company in 1819. Established as a trading port, and later as part of the Straits Settlements Crown Colony in 1867, the island began to see a steady stream of immigrants from South China and South India arrive onto its shores. As indentured labourers, small traders, and farmers escaping droughts, these Chinese and Indian immigrants added another socio-economic layer to the existing network of activities of the Orang Laut, Javanese, and Bugis that had long connected the island to the rest of the Malay World prior to Stamford Raffles’ arrival. Integration was not a priority for the colonial administration. Preferring clear and distinct communal divisions, these ethnic communities were, over time, allotted different living quarters near the mouth of the river. Intermediaries from these ethnic communities were appointed to represent collective interests and concerns to the colonial government. Key institutions such as clan associations, guild houses, kongsis and temples for the Chinese community, and Hindu associations, merchant groups, and temples for the Indian community served as constellations for their respective cultural universes (Trocki 1990; Rai 2014) from which these communities formed their collective identities. Naturally there was everyday intermingling between the ethnic communities in shared public spaces while economic and business relationships were forged across ethnic divides in the marketplace. However, because there was no overarching common identity and because of the desire for many of these Chinese sojourners to return to their homeland, the idea of social integration in which different social groups incorporate themselves into the existing social structure to function cohesively so as to achieve the collectively desired outcomes was just not in the air.

Integration ceased to be an abstract concept upon separation from Malaysia in 1965. The island's multicultural character made it necessary for Singapore's first-generation leaders to find an equilibrium between two ideological positions. On one hand is the belief that the “nation” is only meaningful because it is made up of local communities.

INTRODUCTION

In April 2016, a news blog post titled, “Singaporeans take back Mandarin Gardens from Indian expats”, was met with much more interest than is usually garnered by happenings in the community. Describing how migrant Indians asserted dominance over the management committee of a condominium in the eastern part of Singapore, the post claimed that as a result, they started using management funds for activities that unfairly represented the interests of expatriate Indians. The changes that they had attempted to make included instituting a cricket pitch for the children on condominium grounds, replacing a Thai restaurant with an Indian one, and using communal funds for Deepavali celebrations. The post continued that Singaporeans clawed back control by showing up in force at the next Annual General Meeting of the condominium, which had even been dubbed “Mumbai Gardens” as a result of the overrepresentation of expatriate Indians in the estate.

Regardless of the veracity of the claims made, the above anecdote brings very starkly into relief the frictions and contestations between migrant and newly immigrant communities on the one hand, and Singaporeans on the other. By migrants, here I refer to temporary migrants on work or dependant visas, whose stay in Singapore is linked to their employment or family. This group is typically considered highly transient with little attachment to the country, and who will eventually leave. New immigrant communities here refer to migrants who have obtained either citizenship or permanent residency status in the last ten years, but who are still differentiated from locally born Singaporeans, and often not seen as “authentically” or culturally Singaporean. What is more interesting here is that the immigrant community that has come under scrutiny is not an ethnic outsider. In fact, under the multiracial “CMIO” (Chinese, Malay, Indian, Others) framework, Indians occupy an important constitutive position in the Singaporean state.

Herein lies the puzzle. The fissures within the Indian community then are not indicative of deep-rooted racism against a differently racialized Other who cannot be incorporated within the nation. The Singaporean state, in its multiracial definition, already has a space for the inclusion of immigrant ethnic Indians.

INTRODUCTION

As political society in Singapore matures, it has also become more diverse, presenting a significant challenge to the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) government's ongoing post-colonial nation-building project. The fact that Singapore is both a nation-state and a global city, a fundamental contradiction that has become more profound since the neoliberal developments of the 1990s, makes it imperative to go beyond the more conservative goal of national integration when it comes to ensuring Singapore's continued survival. What the PAP government should aim for, far beyond straightforward integration, is national resilience.

I will argue here that, as its context changes, the PAP itself needs to become more resilient as a party that, for about sixty years, has been at the centre of Singapore's political, governmental, and even—some might argue—social and cultural life. This will, among other things, mean that the PAP should embrace diversity more profoundly and become a “big tent” party, not only to better represent and be relevant and responsive to the evolving needs and interests of a more diverse society, but also to draw from a wider, deeper, and richer pool of talent and ideas in its endeavour to maintain high standards of governance and effective policymaking. Otherwise, the PAP runs the risk of becoming shackled to formulas that have delivered success in the past but could lead to failure in the future, if they do not adapt to changing circumstances.

This is not to say that a transformed and more resilient PAP in government will need to jettison a fundamental goal of keeping Singaporeans safe so that all who have a stake in the country can contribute to its material prosperity and be equally capable of enjoying the fruit of their labour. However, a resilient PAP government will need seriously to consider shedding its paternalist legacy of making life in Singapore so “safe” that it stifles creativity and variety, cultivates conformity and risk-aversion, encourages intolerance of change and difference, and entrenches an inactive culture of complaint. These qualities, when embedded in the system, can lead to its downfall. This is partly because such qualities work against resilience and partly because they do not adequately reflect the changing profile of a more diverse and cosmopolitan society.

INTRODUCTION

Imagine the following scenario. Due to the need to stay economically competitive, Singapore keeps building more and more nursing homes. In this way, the adults in the family can concentrate on work and the children can go to school punctually. When the children return home, the foreign domestic worker takes charge of the meals, household chores, and ensures the safety of the children. When the working adults return home in the late evening, the children are ready for bed and the meal is prepared. The children say a quick good night to the tired parents and retire to bed, while the television awaits the latter after they finish their dinner. The day is over. What is missing from this scenario?

Singapore is an ageing society, and it is a reality that cannot be ignored. The main reasons for this demographic phenomenon are the low fertility rate (below replacement level for almost a decade1), the longevity of the population, and the availability of highly advanced medical facilities. We can state that the demographic shift is a testimony of the success of our nation. But the important question is, how does this demographic shift from a youthful to an ageing population affect Singaporeans at large?

We may identify and reflect on the socio-emotional aspects that are not mentioned from the scenario described above. On the surface, practically everything described seems normal and under control. However, humans are also social and emotional beings. Family relationships have to have meaning. So what is missing in the vignette? For one, the presence of grandparents. And if our elders are housed in nursing homes, then the bond between grandparents and grandchildren will never develop, thus depriving young families of the experience, wisdom and support that are unique to multigenerational families. In addition, the value of filial piety is lacking because the opportunity for young parents to demonstrate respect to their own parents and in-laws in order to transmit such values to their children would not present itself. The grandchildren would be deprived of watching their parents as role models of care for the elders in the family and thereby be deprived of learning these subtle values.

INTRODUCTION

Social diversity has been a hallmark of Singapore's cultural identity since the founding of the island by the British East India Company. For decades since independence in 1965, Singapore's most discernible national trait has been its multiethnic and multireligious contour with the population comprising a Chinese majority (approximately 74 per cent), followed by ethnic Malays (14 per cent), ethnic Indians (10 per cent), and other races (2–3 per cent). This ethnic proportion has remained relatively stable for over fifty years. Racial and religious identities in Singapore overlap substantively. The ethnic Malays are predominantly Muslim, the Chinese practise mainly Taoism, Buddhism, and Christianity or Catholicism, and ethnic Indians embrace Hinduism, and Christianity or Catholicism. Suffice to say, this demographic terrain shapes the daily lives of people and their interactions with those from other backgrounds. It also has a profound influence on the city-state's political landscape and is closely tied to the geopolitical dynamics in the region. Beyond ethnicity and religion, there are other forms of tribalism that distinguish one group from another and, in some cases, there are material, psychological, and existential consequences.

This chapter begins with a brief history of the evolving sociodemographic scene in Singapore, followed by an introduction to the principles that govern diversity discourse in the city-state. It will highlight signs of a new socio-economic divide along geographical boundaries, tagged with ethnic overtones. The implications of this emerging spatial class segregation on urban planning will be discussed.

Broadly speaking, the British colonial government practised a Furnivall model of pluralism, where the ethnic communities each specialized in a different economic field and interact only for a functional purpose but are not emotionally invested. They maintain a separate culture, identity, language, and religion, with little or no overlap. This social environment played an influential role in shaping relations between ethnic groups via a “divide and conquer” strategy, stratifying the immigrant population via an imperialist capitalist system that emphasized ethnicity and associated it with divisions of labour. The ethnic Chinese were largely treated preferentially by the British due to their pre-eminence in trade, business enterprises, and population size, while the ethnic Malays were found mostly in the agricultural sector, resulting in essentialized identities.

One year before these self-congratulatory lines were written, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) listed the archaeological and monumental complex of Angkor in Cambodia as a World Heritage Site. The listing process had closely paralleled the negotiations that led to the Paris Agreements in 1991 and thus to the unprecedented post-conflict mission in the country led by the United Nations. The United Nation's Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) sought to restore the political integrity of the country following decades of war and isolation. In this context, UNESCO's recognition of Angkor and its significance symbolized the return of Cambodia to the international stage, while the plan for the management of the site was part of the process of political and economic reconstruction of the country. A number of institutional “stakeholders” were involved in the listing. They were for the most part members of the “international community”, which in the UN diplomatico-bureaucratic jargon signifies primarily representatives of member states. Also, and in UNESCO's language, the listing of Angkor corresponded to the recognition that the site was of “outstanding” and “universal” value (UNESCO 1992, pp. 5–6).

Following the recognition of Angkor as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, an international “campaign” to conserve it was launched at a conference held in Tokyo in 1993. Twenty-nine countries and eight organizations attended this event. Some of them committed to the conservation of a number of temples endangered by material degradation. At this conference, moreover, the participants agreed to establish an International Coordination Committee for the Safeguarding and Development of the Historic Site of Angkor (ICC-Angkor), whose mission was threefold. It would guarantee the “consistency of the projects” implemented in Angkor, define the “technical and financial standards” with which projects must comply, and “call the attention of interested parties” to specific aspects of the site's management (UNESCO 1993, pp. 7–8).