Community In Singapore Research Articles

Leadership and Power in the Chinese Community of Singapore during the 1930s

The 1930s was a unique, exciting, explosive and highly politicised decade for the Chinese in Singapore and Malaya due to the blossoming forth of Chinese nationalism aimed at China's national salvation in the wake of the Japanese invasion. This China-oriented nationalism took various forms. There was a boycott movement against Japanese goods; there were public and political rallies, cultural variety shows, and propaganda in the press and the schools, stirring up national feelings. There were campaigns for the return of skilled and professional Chinese in serving the Kuomintang (KMT) Government at Chungking, and for relief funds and funds for strengthening China's war footing. Undoubtedly, the Chinese nationalism that began in 1928 was a mass movement, and at its height in 1938 and 1939, the movement involved some 300,000 Chinese in Singapore for national salvation work, or 50 per cent of the total Chinese population on the island. It was during this politically volatile decade that various socio-enonomic forces within the Chinese community surfaced or re-surfaced in the bid for leadership. It also saw the rise, consolidation, collaboration and rivalry of various emergent elites and counter-elites in a rather restricted political arena, sensitively guarded and regulated by the British authorities. It is the concern of this paper to identify the nature and composition of various contending elites and counter-elites, to examine their roles in the national salvation movement and, finally, to analyse why a non-partisan elite headed by Tan Kah Kee ( 1874–1961) was able to capture and maintain the leadership during the period under examination.

ETHNIC GROUPS IN THE JURONG INDUSTRIAL ESTATE OF SINGAPORE

In Singapore, as is well-known, there are three main ethnic or community groups, Chinese, Malay and Indian. These groups have never had any profound communica-tion with one another. However, the recent spread of education in the common lan-guages, English and Mandarin Chinese, is expected to generate a gradual social change in the traditional isolated community within each ethnic group. In addition, the growing modern industries in Singapore can be a crucial moment to reform the situation mentio-ned above. In. this paper the author attempted to examine how the recent industrial development has influenced the attitude of these different groups. The field survey was focussed on the residents of the Jurong Industrial Estate, the largest urban industrial complex in the Republic of Singapore, and was carried out between 1969 and 1974. The establishment of Jurong Industrial Estate is the nation's first attempt to provide a large scale industrial land with a big public housing estate for industrial workers attach-ed. This government plan resulted in mingling different ethnic people in the housing area. In comparison with other big public housing estates, Jurong has higher propor-tion of Malay population. According to the author's sample survey the racial segregation is rather diluted in the Jurong Estate, particularly in rental flats. A contributing factor for the higher ratio of Malay population in. the area was available cheap rental homes for the industrial workers provided by the government. Another factor was the resettlement of Malay kampong dwellers migrated from the nearby coastal areas which were acquired for the new industrial sites. Most developing modern industries in Jurong are invested and managed by foreign entrepreneurs and they ignore the old ties within the individual ethnic groups by which traditional sectors have been maintained. The modern industries require primarily English speaking young workers, regardless of any specific community group. As a result, this new industrial town is not a place for aged or conservative people whose lan-guage competency in English is poor. Only a few enterprises from Hongkong and Taiwan prefer to employ mainly Chinese speaking people. Another factor in making a plural community in Jurong is the recent house shortage which is so urgent that new settlers have no chance to choose the same community people for their neighbors. Thus, conservative Chinese in the crowded China towns seldom moved out to the new industrial estate, preserving their old ways of living and their own dialects. Kam-pong Malays in the eastern parts of the republic and downtown Indian shopmen or hawkers are also negative for moving to Jurong to get new jobs. Most residents of the Jurong In-dustrial Estate originated from the nearby areas on which industrial impacts were being intensified. More than 80 percent of the total households under the sample survey came from the local district and its adjacent areas. They are young enough to adapt them-selves to the new circumstances through which the future social change may occur. It should not be overestimated, however, that the establishment of Jurong Industrial Estate can be a critical moment for a changing feature of racial segregation. Not all residents of the estate live and work harmoniously together, nor are they eager for having a new unsegregational community in the near future. With increase in wages quite a few residents in the public housing seem to wish moving out to better homes in the sub-urban residential quarters built by private developers. Such quarters are mostly occupied by wealthy Chinese. This trend suggests that there will be three different types of com-munity in Singapore: an old independent community of lower class, a more mixed racial community of urban-industrial complex and a re-segregational one of upper middle class.

The European Mercantile Community in Singapore, 1819–1867

In continental India the East India Company subjected European immigration to tight restrictions. Private Europeans had to obtain a licence to live in India and were forbidden to buy land. When the trade of India was thrown open to private merchants in 1813, the restriction on settlement was retained. The same licensing system applied in theory to European immigrants in the Straits Settlements, but in practice it was not enforced. In 1797 when Calcutta first enquired by what authority the European inhabitants had settled in Penang, few of them could produce licences, but no steps were taken to evict them, and in 1823 the Recorder ruled that the possession of land entitled them legally to remain in Penang.