$Unique_ID{COW03167}
$Pretitle{384}
$Title{Singapore
Chapter 4A.   Social Organization and Values}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Nena Vreeland}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{chinese
social
government
ethnic
groups
singapore
economic
community
malay
national}
$Date{1976}
$Log{}
Country:     Singapore
Book:        Singapore, A Country Study
Author:      Nena Vreeland
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1976

Chapter 4A.   Social Organization and Values

     When Singapore was separated from Malaysia in 1965 and became an
independent nation, its leaders were faced not only with the economic problems
of maintaining a metropolis without its hinterland but also with the problem
of creating a nation-state out of a population having seemingly insurmountable
differences of language, custom, values, and goals between and within three
major ethnic groups. According to Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and other
leaders of the ruling People's action Party (PAP), the survival of Singapore
depended on the decisive solution of these problems. To aid in the economic
transformation of Singapore into a modern industrial state, Lee called on the
population for tough self-discipline and social responsibility-what he called
a "rugged society." To carry out the nation-building process Lee called on the
people to create a "multiracial" society in which the languages and cultures
of the three major ethnic groups-Chinese, Malay, and Indian-were all respected
and in which all important social institutions-schools, military service,
housing, and the like-would be fully integrated. One government official has
characterized the ideal educated Singaporean as "vocationally adaptable,
mentally alert, morally disciplined, proficient at least in the use of one
language and able to communicate orally in two."

     The society that evolved during the first decade of independence was very
different from the one Singaporeans had lived in before. The economic
transformation of the country created a situation of rapid social change and
occupational mobility supporting the emergence of a comparatively large and
growing middle sector. The wealth of Singapore is more evenly distributed
among the population than it has been in the past. In the mid-1970s one-half
of the population lived in integrated public housing, which was as great a
psychological change from the former pattern of crowded ethnic enclaves and
slums as it was a physical change. The school system, with integrated
facilities offering alternative languages of instruction, seemed to be
yielding to the dominance of English as the language of government, business,
the professions, and perhaps of higher education. Virtually all secondary
school graduates had come to expect middle-class, white-collar jobs, and by
the mid-1970s it was apparent that the demand for such jobs exceeded the
supply. Singapore had taken on many of the characteristics and the problems of
a modern, industrial, urban society and appeared to have reached a greater
level of national integration than its leaders had expected.

SOCIAL DIVISIONS

     The makeup of Singapore's social organization is made considerably more
complex by the variety and depth of cleavages based on ethnic groups and by
cleavages within ethnic groups based on regional differences in their
ancestral homelands. Singaporeans of Chinese ancestry compose about 76 percent
of the population, those of Malay origin roughly 15 percent, and those
descending from inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka about 7
percent. These proportions had already reached a relatively stable
relationship by the mid-1970s and seemed unlikely to change drastically in the
foreseeable future (see ch. 2). The members of the three ethnic groups were
immigrants or the offspring of immigrants and, although by the end of World
War II a majority of the population had been born and raised in Singapore,
differences of language, religion, custom, and values pose a considerable
obstacle to the easy achievement of national cohesion and a feeling of common
identity and purpose.

     Moreover each major ethnic group is divided into smaller groups, some of
which until relatively recent times knew no common language. Most Chinese
immigrants came from southern China and belonged to several groups speaking
mutually unintelligible dialects; the largest groups were, in descending order
of size, Hokkien, Teochew (Teochiu), Cantonese, Hainan, Hakka (Khek), and
Foochow. The first three are by far the largest groups; each of the three is
larger than either all Malays or all Indians.

     The earliest Chinese immigrants married Malay women, adopted their own
patois, and took on some Malay customs but continued to identify themselves as
Chinese. Initially known as Baba Chinese, they tended toward English education
and Western life-styles earlier than most other immigrants; from the late
nineteenth century they were joined by other Chinese immigrants whose wealth
and inclinations led them to choose English education and anglicized ways.
Collectively they became known as the Straits Chinese and formed the backbone
of an anglicized elite that wielded great influence with the British colonial
authorities. They played an important role in the political leadership of
postcolonial Singapore. Prime Minister Lee is descended from an established
Straits Chinese family and, like most Straits Chinese, speaks English as his
first language.

     Historically relations among the various Chinese dialect groups have not
always been amicable-group chauvinism leading Cantonese to regard Hokkienese
as country bumpkins, most groups looking down on Hakkas, and so on. Initially
different groups tended to divide economic specialties among themselves; that
is, most artisans were Cantonese, most shopkeepers Hokkienese, and the like.
These differences have largely been obviated by the changing structure of the
economy and by a sense of community as Chinese, which later expanded to a
sense of Singaporean identity.

     Similar divisions exist among Malays and Indians. A large number of
Singaporean Malays have their origins in Sumatra, the Celebes, and elsewhere
in Indonesia as well as the Malay Peninsula. However, differences in dialect
are not as pronounced among Malays as among Chinese, and a common adherence to
Islam and proximity to two Malay nations-Malaysia and Indonesia-had already
given this group more coherence. A process of ethnic awakening also took place
among them as it did among Chinese. Indians are mostly Tamil speakers from
Southern India and Sri Lanka but are joined by Punjabis, Gujaratis, and
Bengalis as well.

     In addition to economic, ethnic, and subethnic cleavages in the society,
there is a major division between those who have received their education in
English and those who have not. Although English, Chinese (Mandarin), Malay,
and Tamil are all official languages, in practical terms English is the
language of business, government, administration, and the professions. Even
though government policy provides parents with the option of sending their
children to schools in which any one of the official languages is the medium
of instruction and despite some efforts to promote the use of all the official
languages in public life, an English-language education retains an obvious
economic advantage. Consequently since the mid-1960s most Chinese parents and
almost all Indian parents have increasingly chosen to send their children to
English-language schools, and by 1970 almost one-fourth of the adult
population were conversant with English. As a result the division between the
English-educated and those educated in other languages does not correspond to
ethnic or even class differences, although it has in the past been associated
with political orientation, as when the Chinese-language schools were used as
focal points for action and recruitment by Communists and other leftists.

     Given these cleavages within the society, the problems of achieving true
nationhood after independence were greatly multiplied. It is a goal that had
been given top priority by Singapore's leadership. In 1965 the ruling PAP
found itself in charge of a city-state with a majority population of Chinese
in a region where indigenous Malays profoundly resented the Chinese presence
and economic dominance and in which interethnic hostilities had recently
become overt. The PAP leadership felt very strongly that its two most
important tasks were to achieve the interrelated goals of economic viability
through industrialization and to achieve civil order and harmony through the
creation of a multiracial society in which all cultures are respected and
subsumed in a larger national identity.

NATIONAL INTEGRATION AND NATION BUILDING

     Most observers in the mid-1970s agreed that the leaders had exceeded
their own expectations in achieving both a strong economic foundation and a
national identity. The accomplishment of these goals in barely more than a
decade has had profound effects on the social organization, the values, and
the way of life of every member of the society. These changes have come in
part as the inevitable result of economic modernization and urbanization to
some extent resemble changes in other countries that have modernized in the
postcolonial era. But other aspects of the social change that has taken place
since 1965 result from deliberate social engineering on the part of the PAP
government and have produced conditions unique to Singapore. Although social
change has taken place most rapidly since 1965, the specific conditions with
which PAP leaders had to deal and the manner in which they undertook to
accomplish their goals were determined by a process well under way a century
ago.

     Singapore's population grew dramatically in the late nineteenth century
and the first three decades of the twentieth century through a great increase
in immigration. By far the greatest number of immigrants came from southern
China, fleeing the economic and civil chaos that attended the collapse of the
Manchu dynasty. Most were men who came to the burgeoning trade center of
Singapore to seek their fortunes with the ultimate goal of returning to their
families or brides in China after having acquired a small surplus. Indians and
Malays came for similar reasons. Many immigrants chose to stay and were later
joined by female immigrants whom they married and with whom they began
families.

     The move to Singapore in itself disrupted the traditional Chinese way of
life, which had for millennia surrounded the individual with a complex of such
supporting institutions as the extended family, the clan, and village, county,
and provincial institutions of government and social welfare. Stripped of
these customary supports, the Chinese in early Singapore were, in the words of
Peter A. Busch, "less a society than a collection of entrepreneurs restlessly
searching for wealth." This social vacuum was quickly filled with a variety of
voluntary associations. These associations, for the most part left undisturbed
by colonial authorities, provided the mutual aid, social welfare, religious,
and employment needs of most Chinese immigrants. They served as a basis for
communal social cohesion, albeit a cohesion that was for the most part
restricted to separate dialect groups.

     Until 1890 these needs were served by semiclandestine secret societies
(similar to the tongs in the Chinese community of San Francisco at the same
time). The secret societies, most of which had mystical or religious
overtones, helped new immigrants find homes and jobs through employers who
were society members and provided social welfare and funeral benefits. The
societies maintained a virtual stranglehold on the community and essentially
constituted a government independent of colonial authority. At first they were
tolerated and used by the British as intermediaries but, as many societies
degenerated into criminal gangs, they were perceived as a threat to civil
order and authority and were stringently suppressed after 1890. They were
never completely eradicated, however, and survive in the present day in the
purely criminal contexts of prostitution, drugs, and other nefarious
activities. After 1890 other voluntary associations of the kind traditional
among Chinese-such as dialect associations, clan associations, occupational
guilds, funeral societies, religious institutions, and mutual aid societies
composed of members coming from the same province, country, or village in
China-took over the role of fulfilling the social needs of the Chinese
community. These groups provided financial aid in times of need, mediation in
disputes, and other requirements of a self-reliant community. Nonetheless
differences in dialect-fully equivalent to differences in language-separated
the groups, and there were no institutions capable of bringing all Chinese
into a single cohesive community. Many of these associations have survived in
the 1970s, although much of their membership has been dispersed by urban
renewal and many of their functions have been taken over by the state.

     The Chinese of Singapore began to cohere as a single community only as
they became caught up in the Chinese nationalist and anti-Japanese movements
between the events leading up to the Nationalist Revolution of 1911 and the
end of World War II (see ch. 3). Mandarin Chinese, adopted by the nationalist
government in China as the national language (Kuo Yu), became the lingua
franca of the Singaporean Chinese community, even though it was the native
dialect of only a small minority. Chinese primary and secondary schools, using
Mandarin as the medium of instruction, were founded and supported by wealthy
members of the community, as were reading societies, newspapers, and other
pan-Chinese organizations. Trade unions also found fertile ground for
recruitment, especially during the economic depression of the 1930s. Most
unions, some schools, and many other organizations were affiliated with
Singaporean chapters of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party, or KMT) and the
Malayan Communist Party, largely reflecting the dynamics of Chinese domestic
politics current at the time. The MCP made some efforts to enlist Malays and
Indians into its ranks; most of these organizations, however, were parochial
in membership and influence, remaining primarily institutions of, by, and for
Singaporean Chinese. Moreover until the end of World War II, when an end to
colonial rule became more likely, the social and political institutions among
the Chinese in Singapore were oriented to the dynamics and politics of change
in China, not Singapore.

     A similar process of communal cohesion was taking place within the Malay
community. Lacking the traditional integrative force of a shared loyalty to a
local sultan, the Malay community was almost as fragmented as the Chinese
community. At roughly the same time that the Chinese were discovering a new
ethnic solidarity, however, a nationalistic Islamic reform movement that was
sweeping the entire Muslim world reached Southeast Asia. Singapore became a
major point of embarkation for Malays en route to Mecca and centers of Islamic
learning in the Middle East. Thus exposed to the movement in its most intense
form, many Singaporean Malays began to feel a new solidarity in their shared
faith. The colonial authorities assisted awakening Malay nationalism by
proclaiming a feeling of responsibility for protecting and encouraging the
culture and institutions of the Malays, entitling them to a "special position"
as the indigenous people of the colonial domain in the Malay Peninsula. Just
as Chinese communal solidarity was oriented to China, Malay communal
solidarity was oriented toward the Malay nationalist movement on the
peninsula rather than to Singapore.

     Thus by the 1950s each community had developed a fairly high degree of
social and political cohesion that excluded the other and that was directed
outside Singapore. Chinese were concerned with events in China and their own
economic affairs, whereas Malays were organizing largely on the premises that
they were the indigenous people and that they were being denied their
birthright by the economically dominant Chinese. Singapore achieved internal
autonomy in 1959 but regarded this as, in the words of Lee, "but a step
towards Merdeka [freedom] and merger" with Malaya. The merger, which took
place in 1963, lasted less than two years, and Lee and the PAP were faced with
an immediate need to bring together these potentially hostile communities.

     The PAP leadership had to contend not only with the ethnic cleavages of
the society but also with interest groups and elites that represented
conflicting social and cultural interests. Under colonial rule in the prewar
period the Straits Chinese had exercised the greatest influence; yet they
could hardly be said to represent the inclinations of a Chinese community
awakening to a nationalist consciousness. So anglicized were the Straits
Chinese that, during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, a number of them had
petitioned the colonial government to be allowed to send a contingent to fight
the Chinese nationalists on the side of the Western powers. They were able to
play an important role together with anglicized Malays and Indians in seeking
independence, but the growing cohesion of the Chinese community had also begun
to produce an elite of Chinese who had been educated in the Chinese-language
schools that had been established before World War II. Chinese-speaking
students and workers, often reflecting a more radical left-wing position,
formed the most powerful pressure groups in the mid-1950s. This division
between the English-educated and the majority of other Singaporeans,
corresponding roughly in political terms to the division between moderate and
procommunist leaders, was one of several factors influencing political events
during the 1950s leading up to the split between the PAP and more leftist
elements that formed the Barisan Sosialis (Socialist Front) in 1961 (see ch.
3; ch. 6). A major task undertaken by the PAP during the 1960s was to bridge
the sociopolitical gap between itself and the majority of Chinese-speaking
Singaporeans.

     Adopting the "politics of survival," the PAP took a twofold policy stance
that was made clear to everyone through both constant exhortation by the
leadership and consistent execution of programs based on those policies. In
the economic sphere Lee and the PAP called for the creation of a so-called
rugged society in which social discipline and self-sacrifice must be
pervasive. The kind of economic free-for-all that had characterized a city of
struggling, competitive immigrants was incompatible with an independent
country fighting for economic survival. Each member of society and each of the
ethnic groups would have to subordinate its interests to the national interest
if the whole country were to survive.

     In the sphere of social relations it was made clear that Singapore's
continued survival was dependent on creating a multiracial society rather than
a pluralistic one. All of the island's cultures and languages would be
respected; the national belonged to all of its citizens, who in turn must
reserve their deepest loyalties for Singapore. As with the need for social
discipline and ruggedness in economic life, the essential justification for
racial tolerance and cooperation was couched in terms of national survival
rather than in terms of its inherent moral rectitude. It was made clear to
Chinese Singaporeans-and to Singapore's neighbors as well-that Chinese
dominance on the island could have disastrous effects on the country's
relations with its closest and much larger Malay neighbors. Malays were told
that their cultural integrity would be respected and that the key to their
economic advancement lay in their willingness to cooperate with all
Singaporeans. Ethnic integration was made an explicit goal in public housing,
military service, and the educational system.

     The work of creating the rugged society has been most visible in numerous
mass mobilization campaigns. The island nation is small and compact enough for
the rapid and comprehensive dissemination of government exhortations, often
made in person by high government officials before school assemblies, trade
union meetings, and similar gatherings. The kind of orderly and
self-disciplined values that the government has tried to instill in the
population have been expressed in campaigns to keep city streets free of
litter, to plant trees, and to discourage long hair on young men-and, it is
supposed, the undisciplined values associated with long hair. The PAP's notion
of the rugged society also includes very low tolerance for dissent or the
economic disruptions of a strike. The campaigns and the values they represent
are not mere propaganda but are backed with very real sanctions should an
individual or group choose to flout them. Antilitter laws are strictly
enforced and carry heavy fines; unsolicited haircuts have been administered
free of charge, and men with long hair are by policy attended to last at any
government office; and strikes have been dealt with vigorously. An indication
of the responsiveness of the population to mass campaigns is found in the
overwhelming success of the family planning programs (see ch. 2).

     Government efforts to create a national identity have generally taken two
forms: multiracial policies aimed at racial integration in public housing,
schools, the armed forces, and public life; and the replacement of traditional
social welfare institutions serving specific ethnic and subethnic
constituencies with government-operated institutions serving all citizens
impartially. Both these processes have been aided by the disruption of
traditional institutions and values that generally accompanies
industrialization in a highly urban setting. Viewed from another perspective,
it could be said that the PAP has taken advantage of changing family and
community institutions by filling the breach with institutions that to some
extent express values of national integration.

     It has been hoped that integration in public housing will have enormous
benefits in the acculturation of all ethnic groups to a new Singaporean
identity. The proportion of the population living in public housing high-rise
apartments built and maintained by the Housing and Development Board (HDB) is
expected to reach 70 to 80 percent by the end of the 1970s. Integration in HDB
housing estates has meant a complete reversal of previous residential patterns
that, as a result of colonial policy, had tended almost entirely toward
homogenous ethnic enclaves. It has also been hoped that the public housing
program would accomplish the integration of different socioeconomic groups by
bringing together a broad spectrum of occupations and incomes.

     The first tentative evaluations of the success in achieving ethnic and
subethnic integration in public housing indicate that, although Chinese
dialect groups tend to concentrate in the same housing estates and although
Malays are underrepresented, the net effect has been to bring together in the
same neighborhood persons of different race who formerly had very little to do
with each other. A survey taken in the mid-1970s supports the view that this
has resulted in greater mutual tolerance, but whether this tolerance is or
will be equatable with a common social identity remains to be seen (see ch.
2). Similarly it is felt that, although the range of occupations and incomes
present in a given HDB estate may be skewed toward the lower end by income
eligibility requirements, it is probably wider than the range found in many of
the old neighborhoods from which the tenants came.

     Among the many pluralistic societies that have achieved independence in
the postcolonial era, the greatest conflict has often come about over the
issue of language, particularly as it pertains to the language of instruction
in the educational system. "Like most new states," says Busch, "Singapore
relies heavily on education as a means of instilling national loyalty as well
as a source of economic skills," and the educational policy is a clear
reflection of the PAP's multiracial ideology-its potentials and its
limitations.

     When Singapore first achieved internal self-government in 1959, the
system of education was anything but systematic; Chinese schools operated by
the Chinese community tended to represent the most leftist political
sentiments in that community; Malay religious schools were highly
conservative, and the lack of Malay-language secondary and postsecondary
schools was galling to Malay leaders; and there was some Tamil education. By
creating four streams of education-English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil-the PAP
made it clear that there would be no imposition of language or culture by one
group on another. The English stream, of course, draws on students from all
three ethnic groups. In order to promote ethnic integration in the non-English
streams the PAP has pursued a policy of housing different streams in the same
school buildings and bringing students together for meals, sports, assemblies,
and extracurricular activities.

     At the same time that government policy has supported ethnic diversity in
education and has promoted bilingualism by requiring all students to learn a
second language, it has had to recognize the inability of graduates of the
non-English stream to complete effectively for the most desirable jobs.
Efforts have been made to provide government jobs for Chinese-stream
graduates, and the teaching of English as a second language has been upgraded.
Moreover the government civil service requires all English-stream applicants
to be proficient in Malay, and in a gesture to Chinese-stream students the
government has required all English-stream Chinese to learn Mandarin.
Bilingualism is relatively high among Singaporeans, although a survey
conducted in 1972 indicated that aside from the English-speaking Indians very
few families spoke any language other than their native dialect at home during
mealtimes. Nevertheless the initial popularity of the non-English streams
quickly wore off, and all of them began losing students to the English stream.
In 1959 slightly more than one-half of school enrollees were receiving their
instruction in English; by 1975 the proportion had risen to almost 70 percent.
Only about one-third of Chinese students were enrolled in the Chinese stream,
and the Malay and Tamil streams were providing what essentially amounted to a
symbolic presence.

     The schools are also an important means of building national identity
through indoctrination in civics classes. Similarly the armed services and
police are ethnically integrated, and the national service, for which every
young man must register, is also looked on as a means of increasing national
integration and loyalty (see ch. 9). Although urban renewal was not intended
for this purpose, it has clearly aided the formation of new loyalties to the
state by effectively altering or destroying older, group-centered social
institutions that might otherwise have competed with the state for popular
loyalty. Some organizations, such as clan or village association, have lost
their effectiveness through the dispersal of their members out of the old
ethnic and sub-ethnic enclaves. Such other organizations as mutual aid
associations and school associations have been co-opted or supplanted by the
government. The government has assumed primary responsibility for housing,
education, and health and retirement benefits. In doing so it has given the
people a vested interest in the national government, to which they are likely
to look for support in the future. Similarly the government has taken over
existing important social service institutions. Community centers-which had
provided cultural and recreational activities, adult education, and similar
services-had been operated by radical elements in the PAP. When those elements
split off in 1961, the PAP quickly turned the community centers over to
government employees and managed the system for the state. Other social
service organizations, such as family planning facilities, have been similarly
reorganized.

     The success of these policies in creating a genuine Singaporean identity
throughout the population is difficult to gauge, but sociologist John A.
MacDougall, in publishing the results of a survey on national identification
taken in the early 1970s, concluded that "the hope of the PAP leadership that
[national] identification would be learned has been sustained. In developing
citizen discernment that he or she is, after all is said and done, a
Singaporean...there has been remarkable success, not excluding the minority
Malay and Indian communities." Other observers were less sanguine, however,
one of them citing the generally lower economic status of Malays as "one of
the significant facts of life preventing the development of a common identity
between the Malays and the other groups."