on the real issue behind native-born singaporeans vs foreigners - in a nutshell

The following was posted as a comment following 'Blowin' in the Wind's' interesting article, "How many Indians, Chinese, Malays and people of other races in Singapore's total population?"


The issue should be why there is a 'native born' chinese majority in singapore;

why the government favours maintaining a racial balance in favour of the chinese;

why the 'native born' chinese never had a problem with this racist policy;

how they, albeit unwittingly, thrived on it;

how this served to maintain the hegemony and longevity of the government;

how other cultures were thus diluted through this and related policies designed to elevate one at the expense of all others;

how difference of non-chinese origin was ignored and marginalised;

how the tyranny of the majority can now be equated with the tyranny of 'native-born' chinese;

how the call for integrating 'foreigners' is synonymous with assimilating them to the state-imposed perspectives and deficiencies of 'native born' chinese as assimilated non-chinese;

...and why, when all of the above is put together, the issue of 'foreigner vs native-born' becomes little more than an attempt to maintain the advantage of 'native-born' chinese over all others be they of recent foreign origin or local.

From an understanding of this, we can begin to understand the underlying spirit of much that is going on locally and in the face of new foreigners. We can begin to understand the intellectual ineptitude of the people, the opportunism and apathy that is prevalent, why gambling, shopping and eating are 'national pastimes', etc, etc, etc.

However, with regards to the article, given the stance of the government on race, one could logically suppose that to lump foreign Indians with local Indians gives people the false sense that disparities in racial numbers aren't as significant'. But given that more foreign Chinese might be inclined to stay in singapore as compared to foreign Indians who understandably view singapore as a 'chinese country' - just as the 'native born' Chinese do in practice - the government policy to maintain a racial balance in favour of the chinese can be pursued without public concern.

ed