Xenophobic Singapore
Filed Under (Daily Musing) by Seth on 13-07-2010
Under the recent immigration policy of the Singapore government, there is a torrent of Chinese nationals getting PR or citizen status in Singapore.
They are cheaper to hire and most work as hard as the average the Singaporean. Some of them also don’t mind doing the “dirty” menial tasks that the educated Singaporeans loath.
Before you know it, the less competitive Singaporeans are complaining that they are out of jobs because of these “China man” who are willing to work for less. What if the person holding the post is an “ang mo”? I wonder if the Singaporean will just admit his inferiority.
But the Singaporean argues that the ang mo got the job simply because he is an ang mo and people think ang mo are superior. They get paid more even though they are roughly of the same caliber, at least in terms of academic qualification. Interestingly, if you think about this by switching the ang mo with a typical Singapore graduate, and the complaining Singaporean with a Chinese national… does the argument still hold water?
Prior to 1819, Singapore was under the rule of a Malay-Hindu Prince and was a Hindu state. The people on the island, if any, were Malay aborigines. When Stamford Raffles inked the deal to start a trading post, he started a Malay settlement. As a free port, Singapore attracted the attention Arab and Malay traders as well as the Peranakan Chinese in its early years. Then came the explosion of Chinese immigrants, as in the ones from Mainland China, during 1827. They flocked to Singapore to escape the economic hardships in China and many worked as coolies and indentured laborers.
That’s right, the Chinese people that Chinese Singaporeans are so xenophobic about actually share the same roots. And that common root is actually not too distant in time. Less than 200 years ago, that’s just like 4 generations, a typical Chinese Singaporean’s great grandfather is probably a coolie who worked for pennies on the docks.
They will probably turn in their graves when they hear their great grand children complaining about the “Ah Tiong”.
National Service is the elephant in the room. You cannot ignore it when discussing why Singaporeans feel they are holding the short end of the stick when it comes to the loose emmigration policy.
The Chinese nationals that the people are complaining about, most of them have no intentions of staying here – as opposed to our forefathers who settled down here for good.
These Chinese nationals have families in China – and these families can be fed easily with the remitted cash due to the much lower cost of living in China. Singaporean families are …. in Singapore. Which has one of the highest cost of living in the world, while the wages of the average Singaporean have stagnated behind first world standards. (We have leaders being paid several times the wages of first world country leaders though – hurray!)
On top of the disparity of Singaporeans and their families being stuck with the high cost of living here, Singaporean males – those spending years of their lives doing NS – they have to compete with foreign nationals that are not saddled with NS liabilities.
Do you know of Singaporeans with similar qualifications losing job opportunities to similarly qualified foreigners because of the NS factor? I do! And I wonder if these Singaporeans who put in their sweat and blood to defend their nation and end up losing job opportunities – would they be entitled to feel a little bit xenophobic?
You don’t think they would turn in their graves and perhaps weep a little, learning that after all the hardship they had to endure, their own children may be having it the same too, and that all their collective effort, sweat, tears and blood have come to nought, now with their grandchildren having to do it (ie struggle) all over again?
Wasn’t it the very reason they embarked on that treacherous journey across the South China Seas, was to get away from the “Ah Tiongs” of their times, so that their children and the generations to come don’t have to? eg “worked for pennies”
And if the prolific high paying expatriates of the 70s, 80s& 90s were “Chinamen”, and those who are now willing to work for less are “Ang Mohs”. Singaporean will still complaint about these plundering “Gweilos”, won’t they ?
Previously, having “Ang Mohs” in an organisation meant having the prospect (or at least a hope) of replacing him/her to move up to a higher level, better paying job, which will enhance personal or family well-being, as these Ang Mohs of the past, will most likely leave and go home after some years.
On the other hand, where is the fun in replacing someone “who are willing to work for less” or “doing the dirty job”? even if it has nothing to do with permanent PR or new citizen ?
@AC
“The Chinese nationals that the people are complaining about, most of them have no intentions of staying here – as opposed to our forefathers who settled down here for good.
These Chinese nationals have families in China – and these families can be fed easily with the remitted cash due to the much lower cost of living in China. ”
this also applied to your forefather dude! go and read more and you will know that was the fact.
I guess I have more people viewing my blog than I imagined.
Let me think about what you guys posted for a day or two.
Dear Seth,
Please get your history right. Raffles did not start a malay colony here.
Singapura was part of the Johore sultanate. The temenggong (one of the important ministerial positions in the sultanate) was residing at the mouth of the Singapore river with a substantial malay settlement. There were also indigenous malay settlements at Kampong Glam and Seletar (the orang gelam and orang seletar people).
The resentment from the Malay and Indian perspectives about PRC immigrants is also that there is alright racism in the pro-PRC policy of the Singapore government — disguised under the label of maintaing the proportions of the populations.
If this was true, then they would have ensured that the local Tamil population would not be swamped by Indians from other states thus undermining the role of Tamils as one of the founder communities in Singapore.
The state uses arguments where it suits it, ignoring application of the principle across the board
@ Tan Ma Seck.
He basically signed an agreement with the Temenggong to have permission to start a trading post here at 1819. Most of the people in that trade post is Malay, because like you said, the indigenous people of Singapore were the Malays. Raffles didn’t start a Malay colony Singapore at 1819, he started a Malay settlement (because of the predominant presence of the Malays) in Singapore that operates as a trading post under the influence of the British.
It’s just semantics. Would it be better if I just say “Raffles started a trade post with mostly Malay population”?
The point is, when Raffles came to Singapore approximately 200 years ago, Singapore had few, if any, Chinese.
@ Tan Ma Seck
So do you have any statistics of Singapore’s chinese immigrants that are Hokkien, Teochew or Cantonese? How do you know if the state is not being “racist” [sic] with the Chinese population as well?
Which country in the world ask its first generation immigrant to serve military National Service? Isreal?
What about Singapore women? Since they do not serve NS, should they be given citizenship only when they married a Singapore man and beget a Singaporean child?
Hi Seth, do take a look at this blog post:
http://singaporedino.blogspot.com/2010/07/pap-uses-comic-to-promote-pro-foreigner.html
The immigrants of today’s times cannot be compared in any way to the sufferings of Singapore’s fathers. These people certainly never had the benefit of a fully paid scholarship (with a 6 year bond to country but not to any company). Any such comparison would only trivialise the sacrifices of the forefathers.
To complement the question “which country in the world asks its first generation immigrant to serve National Service?” one should also find out how many countries require such compulsory Military Service from its citizen.
Answer? : probably 27. (Singapore, Denmark, Israel, Greece, Bermuda, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Norway, Serbia, Finland, Cyprus, Belarus, Russia, Taiwan, Brazil., Ukraine, Egypt, Colombia, South Korea, China, Turkey, Iran, Mexico, Albania, Armenia and Malaysia.)
A side bar: besides Singapore, which of these countries our current crop of 1st generation immigrant, willing or able to emigrate to?
Incidentally, the country listing above is in order of # of migrant per 1000 population. Singapore is rank #10 at 5.82/1000 population, Denmark ranked #21 at 2.48, Israel ranked #25 at 2.37 …. Taiwan #59 at 0.03, and all countries down starting from Brazil has negative value (Malaysia is not ranked as no data is available from Wikipedia)
Anyway, if these 2 data set can be read together, it might be helpful to understand why some segment of Singaporean keep sounding like a broken record….
And certainly question like the one above will less likely be heard in those other countries; probably there isn’t many such “questioner” around to begin with …
Nice post, i feel that we do have a huge number for foreigners here in Singapore, but then again, we also do have a large number of jobs here to be filled. just try a couple of search firms like jobstreet.com or headhunt.com.sg and u will see tons.
i’m not saying that i like having a large number of foreigners here in Singapore, and in fact, i dun. but since this is already done, y dun we all just get over it and try to get the best we can, even if the best is not as good as it use to be.