Many practical lessons in history for Singapore

Scott Anthony For The Straits Times

12 February 2019

History matters for its own sake. But it is also important because it enables you to think dynamically and relationally in a world where the deterministic language of machines is often used as shorthand to describe changes that are far more complex. Indeed, it is vital to civic competence.

From forecasting to avoiding errors in geopolitical calculation, a proper study of history can be a good guide to the future

One of the things I like about living in Singapore is the optimism - the honest confidence that tomorrow will be better than today. There's a belief that everything can and will be remade, and remade better.

The contrast with present-day Europe could not be more stark. It's invigorating.

But one issue with constantly looking to the future is that it can lead you to underestimate the utility of the past. Singaporeans are proud of their past but, at the moment, it seems history is mainly used to bolster or contest a sense of identity. The debate over 1819 and how much significance can or should be read into Stamford Raffles' landing is a good example.

Although questions of identity are clearly very important, if overemphasised, they can turn history into a morass of bad-tempered and unwinnable cultural arguments. Meanwhile, the prejudice that history "is the reciting of facts" remains quite deeply embedded.

The problem with both these dominant points of view is that they miss many of the ways in which history can make a practical contribution to the future. Over the past few years, Singapore has made considerable investment in history and the humanities, yet the opportunities that this investment opens up are not widely understood. There is still little sense that history has anything practically useful to contribute to the task of shaping tomorrow. But it does.

PREDICTING THE FUTURE

At the most basic level, historical research can improve the models which we use to predict the future. To give a dramatic example, climate scientists have turned to the ship logbooks of the English East India Company because by making use of the observations recorded by 17th-century sailors, they can build a long-term understanding of climate change.

Meteorology is a young science, its maturing interrelated with the rise of aviation. Until this climate data began to be recovered by historians, phrases often heard in the media, such as "the hottest (or coldest) since records began", did not extend very far back in time; now, the available instrumental records span more than 200 years. With this data, it is possible to better model rainfall, and predict harvests and the impact of floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

Even more importantly, historical research helps us to question the models that we use to predict the future. "Why did no one see this coming?" - as Queen Elizabeth II famously asked economists at the London School of Economics after the Great Financial Crisis of 2007. One persuasive explanation was that the mathematical models used by modern economists had become decoupled from the historical contexts that had informed their creation.

The global downgrading of economic history as a discipline meant that not enough attention was being paid to what was being put into, and left out of, the models used to understand the global economy. The handful of economists around the world who did not accept economic orthodoxies about debt and money predicted the crisis, but because they did not accept those orthodoxies, they were professionally marginalised. The political, cultural and economic aftershocks of this oversight are still playing out today.

Preliminary research by Project Hindsight, a strategic historical research consultancy based in London, has gone a step further. Its research has examined a series of international private and governmental long-term predictions made since 1963 in order to evaluate how reliable the forecasting of the future has been. The answer is, not very.

In fact, it's becoming evident that our understanding of technological change and its impact is almost always entirely wrong (and only marginally better with economic predictions). This insight is worth keeping in mind because we live in an age when almost all of the information about new technologies, even very promising ones such as artificial intelligence, is primarily produced by those very same industries - industries that often demand tax breaks and regulatory exceptions as a down payment for future riches which may or may not arrive.

In contrast, what this historical research into forecasting suggests is that social data produces reliable long-term results. If you want to glimpse the future reality of Singapore, ask a demographer.

NEW MEDICAL DISCOVERIES

Of course, there are also more straightforward contributions that historians can make to national life.

At the Nanyang Technological University, digital techniques are being developed to study how ancient and mediaeval medicinal products were used across different Eurasian drug cultures. The hope was that by bringing together (for example) mediaeval historians, microbiologists, medicinal chemists and data scientists, new drugs could be created. In the context of the rise of antibiotic-resistant microbes, it's an urgent undertaking.

The way in which Chinese Nobel Prize winner Tu Youyou referred to traditional Chinese medicine to develop treatments for malaria is a model here.

Despite living in an era defined by an abundance of information, we need historians to make sure we don't forget what we already know.

AVOIDING GEOPOLITICAL MISTAKES OF THE PAST

There is also more to do in the one public role for historians that people instinctively do support. The idea that people who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it is a ubiquitous one (if almost certainly not true). While using historical perspectives on contemporary geopolitics seems uncontroversial because historians are liable to say things that leaders do not want to hear, it has also proven difficult to realise.

The Chinese government has come down hard on so-called "New Qing History" because its insistence on a more autonomous Manchu identity complicates present-day territorial claims.

Meanwhile, recent work on contemporary Russia by researchers like Mr Tony Wood and Dr Mark Smith has shown Russian President Vladimir Putin to be in a compromised position, constantly struggling to appease and strike bargains between rival opposing domestic power centres.

Yet, this analysis is mostly ignored in the West. Instead, a media narrative of super-villainy is promoted for reasons that have plenty to do with gaining tactical advantage on the battlefield that is contemporary US politics. This course of action risks a new Cold War and raises the chances that the next Russian president will be more aggressively nationalist.

To help counter such scenarios, an Applied History Project was recently set up at Harvard University to provide policymakers with historical perspectives, and to model interventions and their consequences. Given the right environment, it would be easy to imagine a similar venture flourishing here.

VITAL WORK IN A MULTIPOLAR WORLD

What I am trying to suggest is that there is a plethora of uses that history can and should be put to, but many of these uses are not fully exploited yet in Singapore.

When I ran the Public and Popular History programme at the University of Cambridge, many of our students were recruited by management consultancies, financial institutions and large legal firms. The rationale of recruiters like Boston Consulting was that if you're going into a large organisation to offer advice, you need to be able to quickly come to understand how and why it came to be structured in the way it is. Historians are trained for this.

Similarly, large financial and legal organisations that are hungry for acquisitions need to understand the liabilities they are taking on. Even more so because we live in an age where the electronic office has wrecked institutional memory, sometimes with disastrous consequences.

History matters for its own sake. But it is also important because it enables you to think dynamically and relationally in a world where the deterministic language of machines is often used as shorthand to describe changes that are far more complex. Indeed, it is vital to civic competence.

Far beyond debates about the contemporary significance of 1819, the multi-disciplinary analysis produced by Singapore's historians has so much more to contribute to the nation. The future needs historians.

•Scott Anthony is assistant professor of public history at Nanyang Technological University. He was previously a strategic communications officer at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in the United Kingdom.

•There will be a talk on the use of history in policymaking by Dr Andrew Blick from King's College London, titled Learning From The Past Or Repeating Mistakes. It will be held next Tuesday at 6.30pm at the National Library. For free tickets, go to learningfromthepastlecture.peatix.com/

How the Singapore Government is spending its dollars in 2015

Here is the link to a site that shows you the breakdown on how the Singapore Government is allocating its finances in 2015. For FY2015, the Overall Budget Balance is projected to be a deficit of $6.7 billion or 1.7 per cent of GDP. However, this deficit will be covered by past surpluses with no draw on past reserves.

http://www.straitstimes.com/STI/STIMEDIA/Interactives/2015/02/budget_singapore_2015/index.html

PRESERVING SINGAPORE'S HERITAGE

Digging up our history

By Derek Heng And Kwa Chong Guan For The Straits Times  Feb 21, 2015

THE archaeological excavation at Empress Place, which Minister Lawrence Wong visited last week, is the latest in a series of excavations started 30 years ago.  Other places recently excavated include the back of the Victoria Theatre before its renovation, and the space between the old Supreme Court and City Hall before it was built over to connect the two buildings for a National Art Gallery.

The driving force behind these excavations, 30 years ago and today, remains the same. It is to search for and recover any historical artefacts before redevelopment takes place. The limited, albeit detailed, Chinese and South-east Asian historical records suggest that a settlement existed at the mouth of the Singapore River since the end of the 13th century, which grew during the 14th century into a kingdom and port-city called Singapura, lasting for a century. Apart from Sir Stamford Raffles and John Crawfurd, the second governor of Singapore, who gave early 19th century eyewitness accounts of the remnants of this settlement, there has been no further confirming evidence.

It was only in 1984 that such evidence was recovered when the old National Museum invited Dr John N. Miksic, an archaeologist then teaching in Indonesia, to conduct a trial excavation on Fort Canning, a site which had been extensively developed and landscaped. Against the odds, an undisturbed layer of soil and earth datable to the 14th century was found around the old Keramat Iskandar Shah. Further excavations over the years have confirmed the conclusions drawn by historians from historical texts on Singapore's 700-year legacy.

From glass fragments and pottery shards to bronze coinage and Buddhist figurines, the current excavation at Empress Place is continuing to provide further testimony to Singapore's deep roots as a regional port.

For too long we have dismissed the stories in the Malay Annals of a wandering prince landing on Singapore, seeing what he was told to be a lion, and deciding to establish a kingdom which grew into a "great city" under his successors. The huge amount of artefacts recovered is testimony to the Annals' claims that Singapura was "...a great city to which foreigners resorted in great numbers so that the fame of the city and its greatness spread throughout the world".

Both archaeological data and textual records have now enabled the National Museum to frame Singapore's history as a nation-state as one epoch of a much longer experience as a settlement, port-city and state that has lasted for much of the last millennium.

The archaeological evidence also corroborates textual information, from the Malay Annals and Portuguese accounts, that this port was eclipsed in the early 15th century, when Singapura was attacked by rival Javanese forces and its last ruler fled to establish another emporium named Malacca.

A large corpus of 16th and 17th century Portuguese and Dutch documents, including maps currently exhibited at the National Library, records a thriving port just west of Tanjong Rhu. Under the administration of a port-master appointed by the Johor sultans up the Johor River, it was linked to the capitals of the Johor sultanate at Kota Tinggi and further downstream to Johor Lama.

Additionally, the Flemish gem trader Jacques de Coutre had provided us a vivid record of the trading world of South-east Asia between 1593 and 1603. His autobiography, found only in the 1960s and recently translated by Associate Professor Peter Borschberg (National University of Singapore), records that Singapore was a port which was "...one of the best that serves the (East) Indies". He advised the Portuguese king to take over the island and build forts on it to control the sea lanes to China. This linkage is confirmed by the very scant but similar body of Chinese porcelain shards recovered from a series of Johor River sites and the Kallang River estuary.

Unfortunately, we missed the opportunity to recover a larger body of archaeological evidence in the 1970s, when the Kallang estuary was being dredged. The dredging work brought up a lot of Chinese porcelain shards, which would have confirmed the existence of a thriving port.

However, the National Museum at that time was not equipped to appreciate the importance of the finds, and they have since been lost to the country.

Since 1984, the 30-year history of archaeological excavations here has been one of scrambling to salvage what can be saved before a site is redeveloped. Singapore is not alone in this. Other cities, from London to Xian, have had to confront the dilemma of redevelopment or preservation of historic sites.

The issue is not only of archaeologically significant sites, but also other historic sites and buildings. How do we decide what to do with the rest of the Bukit Brown cemetery after the expressway is driven through it? How do we plan what to do with Pulau Ubin?

Should a government agency, with the mandate and funding, decide the fate of a potentially historically significant site or building for redevelopment - leaving the growing number of civil societies and non-government organisations (NGOs) passionate about these sites as locations of our social memories defining Singapore, having then to react and challenge the development plans?

There must be a more efficient way of engaging each other to debate such issues other than as in a school debate, with only one side winning.

A number of countries and territories, including Hong Kong, have been grappling with these issues and have been working on various planning frameworks which bring together the diverse stakeholders and interested parties - government agencies, landowners and developers, and NGOs and civil society groups - to discuss and debate how to conduct a heritage impact assessment of a potential historic or memory site.

Perhaps we should move towards some form of a more open and transparent heritage impact assessment to engage and debate these issues of the imperative for urban redevelopment and preservation of historic sites. After all, such sites are the locus of our social memories, anchoring us to this island and defining us as Singaporeans.

stopinion@sph.com.sg

Derek Heng is associate professor of humanities at Yale-NUS College, and Kwa Chong Guan is senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University.

A roller coaster decade

Mr Lee Hsien Loong became prime minister 10 years ago today. How has his time in office shaped the lives of Singaporeans?

 By Chua Mui Hoong Opinion Editor

10 YEARS AT THE HELM: LEE HSIEN LOONG

MR LEE Hsien Loong's first decade as prime minister can be summed up in one word: Challenging.

It has been a roller coaster of a ride for Mr Lee, who became independent Singapore's third prime minister on Aug 12, 2004.

For one thing, there has been greater political contestation. Singapore saw two general elections in 2006 and 2011, and two by-elections, in Hougang (May 2012) and Punggol East (January last year).

The presidential election of 2005 saw incumbent S R Nathan, the sole candidate, returned unopposed.

But in 2011, a four- cornered fight between candidates surnamed Tan saw Dr Tony Tan Keng Yam triumph with just 7,382 more votes, or 0.3 per cent, over closest rival Tan Cheng Bock.

It was a decade of peaks and troughs. Just out of the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome crisis, the economy went on to record robust growth of over 7.5 per cent a year until 2007, only to face the sharpest recession since independence during the global financial crisis. Growth plunged sharply to 1.8 per cent in 2008 and shrank 0.6 per cent in 2009. The Government responded with a whopping $20.5 billion Resilience Package for Budget 2009 to guarantee bank deposits, and to fund the Jobs Credit wage subsidy. It did the unprecedented, getting then President Nathan's assent to dip into the reserves to fund the package. Crisis was averted. A year later, the economy rebounded, growing 15.2 per cent.  

Leading Singapore relatively unscathed through the global financial crisis was cited by several observers as among Mr Lee's top achievements in the decade.  Annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaged 6.3 per cent from 2004 to last year, according to economist Tan Kong Yam in an essay in The Straits Times Opinion pages today. On a per person basis, GDP went up from $46,320 to $69,050 from 2004 to last year.

Vibrant, but mind the gap

BEFORE he became prime minister, Mr Lee gave The Straits Times an interview where he spoke about making Singapore a "dynamic economy" and building a vibrant, cohesive society. Is Singapore today a dynamic economy? Former Nominated MP Zulkifli Baharudin thinks so. "PM Lee has made Singapore one of the most compelling global cities in the world. Like his father (former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew), he has permanently changed the course of Singapore. This is an extraordinary achievement especially for a country that was never meant to be."

Singapore has opened two integrated resorts, played host to the Formula One race and Youth Olympic Games, and created the dazzling Gardens by the Bay. An Economist Intelligence Unit survey in 2012 put Singapore sixth best globally in its "Where to be Born" index, and top in Asia.

But that global buzz also comes at a price - cohesiveness.  

Mr Lee presided over a Singapore of rising income inequality. The Gini coefficient was 0.460 in 2004 and went up to a high of 0.482 in 2007. The Gini index is a number tracking income inequality from 0 to 1, with 0 representing perfect equality.

One of the signal achievements of Mr Lee's Government is the move to bridge inequality by raising the tranche of subsidies for the lower- and middle-income group in all areas: from an income supplement for low-wage workers to grants for housing to subsidies in health care and childcare.

Whereas subsidies were mainly targeted at the low-income before 2004, subsidies these days are aplenty for households with median incomes and higher. Long- term care subsidies are given to those with per capita household income of $3,100 a month - or up to the 70th percentile.

There is also more risk-pooling in health care. In 2004, the old MediShield health insurance scheme did not cover babies with birth defects. And once you reached 80 years of age, or hit claim limits of $30,000 a year and $120,000 for life, you were on your own.  This year, the new MediShield Life promises universal coverage for life with no claim limits. In one stroke, high hospitalisation costs are done away with as a major source of angst for Singaporeans. 

Mr Lee has also done much for the older generation, notably in the $8 billion Pioneer Generation Package of health-care subsidies.

By last year, the Gini coefficient was back down, to 0.463. After government transfers and assistance, it was 0.412.

Taken together, the social policies rolled out under Mr Lee, ably assisted by Deputy PM Tharman Shanmugaratnam, are reshaping the social climate in which Singaporeans live. The momentum of change increased after the 2011 General Election. But the shift towards higher social spending started way before that. Workfare, for example, began in 2005 and was institutionalised in 2007.

There is a major reordering of the social compact. The Government is not just taking care of the economy and leaving families to fend for themselves in the marketplace. It will help families and individuals fend off the excesses of the marketplace. Trouble is, many Singaporeans do not see it that way, as they grapple with rising housing costs and feel the heat of competition for jobs.

Angst over crowding

INSTEAD, anxieties on overcrowding abound. Over the past decade, the population went up too fast, before transport and housing infrastructure could cope.  The population in 2004 was 4,166,700. Last year, it was 5,399,200. That is a growth of 29.58 per cent over 10 years, or more than 1.2 million people - almost all foreigners, given Singapore's declining birth rate.

Housing supply failed to keep pace with population growth. Instead, traumatised by the huge surplus of 17,500 unsold new HDB flats in 2002, the Government slowed its building programme mid-decade. From an average of about 30,000 units a year, it built just 2,733, 5,063 and 3,154 units from 2006 to 2008, respectively.

Some observers consider this the greatest policy failure of the last decade. How did a government that prides itself on keeping close tabs on numbers allow an influx of foreigners beyond the housing and transport infrastructure's capacity to cope?

Individual ministers might have been more focused on meeting the aims of their own ministries, but the Government as a whole would be expected to oversee this collective effort. Mr Lee himself did not shirk this responsibility. In the heat of GE 2011, he surprised many when he apologised to the people of Singapore for the mistakes made, in an election rally at Boat Quay.

That public mea culpa and events after GE 2011 raised widespread expectations of political change. Days after the elections, former PMs Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong, along with other ministers, retired from the Cabinet, to give PM Lee a clean slate to govern. A review later slashed ministerial salaries.

Change, but slowly

ON THE political front, Mr Lee has made a series of nips and tucks that appear minor, but which add up to something larger.

Take one example: Speakers' Corner, set up in 2000 as a free speech venue, was liberalised on his watch. He opened it up in 2004 to exhibitions and performances, not just speeches. In 2008, public protests were allowed. These are small changes. But Singaporeans took full advantage of the relaxed rules. Today, attending a protest at Hong Lim Park - against the White Paper on Population, for example - has become pretty commonplace.

But it is in what he stopped doing that Mr Lee has made the greatest political impact. He sought to be seen to be fair when he called for polls, reducing the surprise element in timing them. Nor were there wholesale changes to electoral boundaries. He stopped using estate upgrading as electoral carrots.

In GE 2011, opposition candidates' views, not their personal character, were attacked. In choosing fair election campaigns, and in refraining from browbeating opposition candidates, Mr Lee made it less risky for people to enter the opposition fray.

And they did. In 2006, 47 seats were contested. Two opposition MPs won. In 2011, 82 out of 87 seats were contested. The opposition won six.

But Mr Lee stopped short of fundamental reforms to the electoral system that some sought, ignoring calls for an independent election commission, for example.

His world view of politics for Singapore remains embedded in that of his predecessors: that of a Singapore governed by a dominant People's Action Party as stewards of the country's long- term interests. But it is not one that all Singaporeans share. Some hoping to see more fundamental political change under Mr Lee are disappointed.

Former Nominated MP Siew Kum Hong, for one, had expected Mr Lee to usher in an era of political change after GE 2011. "But three years later, it's become clear, from incidents like the Population White Paper and the new (Media Development Authority) licensing regime, that the top- down/command-and-control approach remains very much alive in the PAP," he says.

Some say one of Mr Lee's strengths is his ability to listen to different views. But that has led to a view that he has tried to accommodate competing views to the point of the Government seeming populist at times.

He has a friendly and approachable image online and off, and is arguably the PAP's biggest political asset. At public events, he is often mobbed by those wanting to meet him, and take pictures or, these days, selfies with him.

But personal popularity has not translated into a long coat-tails effect for his party: The PAP's vote share fell from 66.6 per cent in 2006 to 60.1 per cent in 2011.

What is one to make overall of Mr Lee's roller-coaster decade?

One can take the optimistic view and say Singapore has weathered crises remarkably well and remained intact as a society, despite the train breakdowns, the Little India riot of last December, a bus drivers' strike, and the sex and corruption scandals. Critics might say there are signs of a ship that is cruising, or even adrift, tossed about by the global winds of change.

I would say that the truth as usual lies in between.

Singapore has done well on the economic front. There is a palpable buzz about the country.

On the social front, the incremental approach, where every small change adds up, has ushered in a Big Bang shift in social policy.

But whether the feel-the- way-forward approach is enough at a time when Singapore is undergoing rapid change remains to be seen. There is every risk that just as the last decade saw a gap widen in income equality, the next decade will see a rift widen in expectations in the political arena.

________________________________________

2004-2014: MILESTONES

2004

•             Aug 12: Mr Lee Hsien Loong, at age 52 and after 20 years of service in politics, is sworn in as Singapore's third prime minister, succeeding Mr Goh Chok Tong.

2005

•             Jan: The ComCare Fund is set up to provide financial assistance to needy families.

•             April 18: After a year-long debate, the Government decides Singapore will have casinos.

2006

•             Feb: Workfare Bonus is introduced to top up the pay of lower-wage workers, recognising that growth no longer delivers the same opportunities to all. It becomes permanent in 2007.

•             May 6: At PM Lee's first general election at the helm, the PAP is returned to power with 66.6 per cent of valid votes.

2007

•             Aug: Reforms to the Central Provident Fund scheme are announced, including mandatory annuities to cover old age, a later drawdown age of the Minimum Sum, and higher interest rates.

2008

•             Feb 27: Terror suspect Mas Selamat Kastari escapes, sparking a review of the Internal Security Department's operations.

2009

•             Jan: The Government dips into reserves to help finance a $20.5 billion stimulus package for Singapore to ride out the global financial crisis.

•             May 27: PM Lee raises the minimum number of opposition MPs from three to nine through the Non-Constituency MP scheme, trims the sizes of Group Representation Constituencies.

2010

•             Feb: The productivity push starts, with $2.5 billion set aside for continuing education and training and $2 billion for the National Productivity Fund.

•             April: Property cooling measures are introduced as property prices hit new heights.

•             May 24: PM Lee and his Malaysian counterpart Najib Razak agree to move the Malayan Railway station in Tanjong Pagar to Woodlands, breaking a 20-year impasse on the issue.

2011

•             May 7: The watershed general election is held. PAP wins with 60.1 per cent of the vote share, but it sees the loss of Aljunied GRC to the Workers' Party (WP).

2012

•             Sept: The first phase of the Government's $1.1 billion plan to boost bus services is rolled out.

•             Nov: Parliament passes legislative changes to remove the mandatory death penalty for certain instances of murder and drug trafficking.

•             Nov 26: Singapore's 26-year strike-free record is broken as 171 SMRT bus drivers from China go on strike to protest against poor pay and living conditions.

•             Dec: Speaker of Parliament Michael Palmer resigns over an extramarital affair. It triggers a by-election in Punggol East in January, which WP candidate Lee Li Lian wins with 54.5 per cent of valid votes. This follows the WP's win in the Hougang by-election in May 2012.

2013

•             Jan: A White Paper on Population sets out plans to accommodate up to 6.9 million people here by 2030, drawing backlash.

•             June: Websites that regularly report Singapore news and have significant reach are asked to put up a performance bond of $50,000 and be licensed under new licensing rules.

•             Aug: PM Lee announces plans for universal health insurance MediShield Life.

•             Dec 8: A riot breaks out in Little India.

2014

•             Feb: An $8 billion Pioneer Generation Package is launched to provide health-care subsidies 

The Idea Of Singapore

 By Lee Soo Ann

IN WRITING Singapore: From Place To Nation for students, I came to the paradoxical conclusion that Singapore is no more than a place where foreigners sustain foreigners. More accurately, it is a case of one kind of foreigner sustaining another kind.

Singapore may be returning from being a nation to being a place again. What had sustained Singapore, then, in its history?

During the British trading settlement in 1819, Singapore was established by the East India Company out of maritime rivalry between the British and the Dutch at that time. Located in Malacca, the Dutch had a chokehold on shipping going to China unless the British could establish a station south of Malacca. Stamford Raffles had heard of Temasek from the Malay Annals, which he could read from his knowledge of Malay acquired when he was governor of Java. Consequently he sailed to the mouth of the Singapore River and, as the saying goes, the rest is history.

The location of Singapore at the tip of the Malay peninsula gave sailing ships an advantage when resting between the two monsoons, unlike resting in Penang, which was already British, as it was too far north. Chinese junks used to sail from China to South-east Asia from Zheng He's time. Its location on the Strait of Malacca route to Australia and New Zealand gave Singapore a further advantage when the telegraph and telephone linked Britain to these colonies. With the shift to steam from sailing ships, Singapore became a coaling depot, for ships sailing to Japan and China as well. Singapore's proximity to oilfields in Sarawak made it into an oil distribution centre.

One may conclude that the prime maritime location of Singapore is responsible for its success in its first hundred years as a British territory. However, the location of Singapore has never changed in its entire history.

What did change was the capacity of foreigners to meet foreigners in Singapore in safety and to make a living for themselves. The Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1824 ensured that Dutch rivalry did not menace the economic growth of Singapore. The Dutch had all of the 15,000 islands of what is now Indonesia to grapple with. Foreigners meeting foreigners is not a new concept but British rule made this concept real in Singapore. When foreigners brought with them different currencies as the medium of exchange, the British instituted the Straits dollar. This dollar gave birth to local banks which complemented the previous dominance by British exchange banks. The British left each ethnic community to largely police itself and the growth of free trade was accompanied by the free inflow and outflow of people. Only during the 1930s Depression was there a limit on the number of males allowed in. Women however were not subject to quotas, and considerable numbers came during the 1930s, which contributed to equalising the sex ratio, the consequential formation of families, and the baby boom of the 1940s and 1950s.

The limited self-government in 1955 followed by full internal self-government in 1959 saw a different group of foreigners entering Singapore to play an active role, and these were from the Federation of Malaya formed in 1948. As Singapore was a British colony until 1963, Britain allowed those "up country" to enter Singapore. Many Malaysians entered Singapore after it was separated from being part of the Straits Settlements in 1946. The 1957 Citizenship Act created Singapore citizenship, and many foreign-born residents of Singapore (especially those born in China) took advantage of the provision that they had stayed in Singapore for several years previous to 1957 to obtain citizenship. This explains why there were many pro-communist Singaporeans who were able to enter politics.

Many Malaysians who entered Singapore became Singapore citizens. It was only after 1965, when Singapore separated from Malaysia, that Singapore citizenship was more strictly granted.

The People's Action Party (PAP) government, which came into power in 1959, had many of these foreign-born citizens. Many of the leaders of the PAP were from the Federation. In the 1959 Cabinet, only one - Mr Lee Kuan Yew - was born in Singapore.

It was a case of one kind of foreigner sustaining another kind, those born in the Federation sustaining those born in China, to put it in broad terms. Of course, there were Singaporeans born in Singapore, but they were in the minority, for the simple reason that for the several decades before 1946, the majority of those residing in Singapore were males. In 1911, the percentage of Singapore island Chinese born in British Malaya was 20 per cent. In 1947, the percentage improved but was still only 40 per cent. British Malaya meant Penang, Malacca and Singapore. If we were to remove those born in Penang and Malacca, the percentage of Singapore island Chinese born in Singapore would be much lower. Singapore citizenship before 1957, if granted according to Straits Settlements rules, was obtained by only the small minority born in Singapore.

Singapore was essentially an immigrant society, a frontier town, and it was only from the late 1940s onwards, with the onset of the baby boom, that those born in Singapore became more numerous. However these Singaporeans born in Singapore at that time were infants and children. They are now adults, of course, but then another spurt in those foreign born came from the 1980s onward.

A major reason is the fright Singapore leaders had after Separation in 1965, of the 1970 withdrawal of the British armed forces. The Government initiated anti-natal policies in 1970, which started with the legalisation of abortion. Abortions rose to one-third of pregnancies, and births fell. The level of abortions has now fallen, but is still around 10,000 a year.

Rising educational opportunities for women meant that they could join the workforce and seek further education for themselves, which limited them to the men whom they could look up to, unless the men themselves became better-educated.

Home ownership used to be of basic units, but over the course of time, there was continuous upgrading with couples choosing to live "beyond" their means, so that both husband and wife needed to work to pay off the mortgage. The extension of housing loan terms from 20 to 30 years after the 1985 recession meant that couples saddled with long-term loans were less likely to want larger families.

What this meant was that the intake of foreigners had to be liberalised, from "traditional" sources like Malaysia to "non-traditional" sources such as Thailand and Bangladesh for construction, the Philippines and Indonesia for domestic helpers, and so on.

The foreign worker levy was introduced in 1990 to ensure that the cost to the employer of employing a foreigner would be equal to that of employing a Singaporean, but as this levy was in absolute and not percentage terms, eventually the cost of employing a foreigner fell.

And so it is today that the wages required to attract a foreigner may be high for the foreigner, though low for the Singaporean, so that the wage level in Singapore tends to be set by the foreigner. The average wage level for the Singaporean has not risen much in the last 10 years.

On paper, there are 3.5 million Singaporeans and 1.5 million foreigners, but these foreigners are largely working adults. However, only two million Singaporeans are working, the others being those who are old or young or still studying.

It is true that foreigners are needed to sustain the Singapore economy but the Singapore economy also needs substantial numbers of foreigners. Foreigners are helping to sustain foreigners!

If we take into account the fact that a substantial portion of Singaporeans are actually foreign-born (either in China or India or some other place, or Malaysia), the dominance of "foreign" Singaporeans is unquestioned. Singapore is now a place where foreigners meet and help one another, much like what it was then under British rule.

Those leading Singapore now can be likened to those who governed Singapore under British rule. This was largely beneficent rule, for the British did not "exploit" Singapore like what some other European powers did in their rule. Singapore did not have commodities or crops which could be supplied to the "mother" country.

Singapore was merely a place from where Britain managed its economic interests in South-east Asia, for not only was there Peninsular Malaya, but there were also Sarawak, Sabah and Brunei.

Those who govern Singapore now need to have the ability of the British to manage different kinds of foreigners, and in large numbers too.

The writer is a Senior Fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and also the Department of Economics at the National University of Singapore.

This is an edited version of the essay that is published in Commentary Volume 22, The Idea Of Singapore, The National University of Singapore Society.

The Straits Times

Published on May 04, 2013