A British expat’s life in Singapore

The depoliticised society?

Having lived and worked in Singapore for a few years now, and with the appointment (and impending re-election) of Singapore’s new Prime Minister, Lawrence Wong, an article on my experiences in Singapore is timely. I will assume the reader is already somewhat familiar with Lee Kuan Yew. For the sake of brevity, therefore, I will discuss him minimally, and I encourage anyone who isn’t familiar with him to read one of his books or biographies, particularly From Third World to First, or one of his many speeches and interviews on YouTube.

Singapore is a great place to live. Beyond the high salaries, there are two primary reasons for this, and they are related. The first reason is widely discussed: Singapore maximises freedom from, without, in my view, too much compromise of freedom to. I will not bore the reader explaining this distinction, as it should be intuitive, e.g., the freedom from the uncleanliness of others trades off against the freedom to be unclean yourself, with chewing gum banned and heavy fines for petty misdemeanours such as littering. People will debate whether some supposed ‘trade-offs’ are in fact necessary to achieve the state’s aims, or whether other trade-offs, even if they do achieve the state’s aims, are actually a worthy trade, but the general position of the Singaporean government is already well-known. The second reason, however, is less widely discussed: the systematic suppression of what I like to call ‘bottom-feeders’ and their most egregious behaviours at all levels of society. Let me explain.

Increased geographic mobility and blank slatism have left Western governments completely unable to distinguish between people ‘of good character’ and people ‘of bad character’. Although an intuitive concept, it has been marginalised in the West due to it having almost inherently inegalitarian — and usually also hereditarian — implications.

The result is that we expect to be solicited and bothered wherever we go; such is the banal reality of modern urban life in the West. As money is increasingly concentrated in major urban centres, human detritus follows, looking to make piddling profits at the bottom of the never-ending human caterpillar of exchange and trade, i.e., ‘bottom-feeders’. Such experiences range from drugs and prostitution in Hong Kong and Bangkok, to more innocuous (but still annoying) grifts in Istanbul or Rome, whether that be selling water bottles on a bridge over the Bosphorus or hawking tacky trinkets, fake designer handbags, and rip-off bracelets outside the Colosseum. The lowest of all grifts, of course, is petty crime — minor scams, pickpocketing, shoplifting, etc. — which now abounds in such former pinnacles of Western civilisation as Athens, Paris, and New York.

Such solicitation — and imposition — from detritus, whether migrants or locals, is far worse and impactful to the dignity of the average person’s life than violent crime, which mostly occurs between the dregs who are looking to maximise their position at the lowest rung of the bottom-feeding cycle by removing their competition. Although often romanticised as ‘gang violence’ in rap and popular media, Goodfellas it is not. In reality, it is far less strategic, and more random and meaningless. Such grifting, however, does not only occur at the lowest rungs of society, at the bottom socioeconomic stratum. Academia, for instance, is also rife with such grifters. One of these grifters, Professor Claudine Gay, even made it to the very top of her profession, winning appointment as President of Harvard University before she was discovered to be the academic equivalent of a rip-off trinket seller on the streets of Manila.

If I could describe the experience of living in Singapore in the simplest way possible, it would be that Singapore is the only nation on earth designed to be rid of bottom-feeders at every level of society. The result is a highly civilised way of life that could only be rivalled by pre-Great War European cities; pristinely clean streets and well-mannered people. It is an environment in which even the most obvious targets for bottom-feeders — such as the airport, the central business district, and nightclubs — feel like one’s own living room. Even the Joo Chiat/Geylang area — the traditional and current stomping grounds of Chinese triads, secret societies, and gangs — is family friendly and gentrified during the day, yet degenerate at night. Not all gang crime is made equal: even Singaporean gangs (mainly dealing in illicit cigarettes, prostitution, and drugs) do not seriously interfere with the lives of ordinary people.

Furthermore, not only is vagrancy and begging not tolerated in the way we see in even the most civilised parts of London — Mayfair, Canary Wharf, etc. — thus removing the most obvious form of bottom-feeding, white collar bottom-feeding is also quite rare. While there are smatterings of superfluous social science academics, the most lurid form of white collar puffery — which is promoted mostly by psychotic undergraduate students — is completely stamped out. The best example of this is Yale-NUS College, which, having been established in 2011 as a way to merge the ‘best of the East and the West’ (‘Brilliant!’), is being quietly shut down and re-established as ‘NUS College’ next year. In other words, Yale is being kicked out by the ever-sovereign Singaporean government. (As an aside, it’s worth noting that, despite Singapore’s uncompromising approach to sovereignty, government spending is only 15 percent of GDP; proportionally, this is a mere third of non-sovereign Britain’s 45 percent — roughly the level of government spending found in Norway and Sweden.)

The official reasoning given for Yale’s unceremonious exit was the need for financial sustainability and the desire to integrate the liberal arts more fully into the broader NUS framework. Beneath the surface, however, it’s clear to all that it is being shut down due to the insufferable shitlibbery that was being imported to Singapore by many of the American students. Singapore’s three main universities — NUS, NTU, and SMU — remain blissfully apolitical, with formal debating clubs being the only vaguely political student societies. By contrast, it is not uncommon to see matriculated or exchange students at Yale-NUS ostentatiously celebrating ‘Trans Awareness Month’, or protesting alleged ‘human rights abuses’ by the Singaporean government — the main offences in question being maintaining law and order with capital (hanging) and corporal (caning) punishment, and employing foreign workers without giving them automatic citizenship for simply existing on Singaporean soil.

To an audience of this kind, little need be said of the former, but the treatment of guest workers is worth briefly addressing. These foreign guest workers — mostly Bangladeshi and Indian construction workers and Filipino, Indonesian, and Burmese housemaids — are often on temporary visas and working for below conventional Singaporean minimum wage standards (albeit clearly not market standards — the remittances must still have some value to the workers, otherwise they wouldn’t come).

The guest worker controversy is one of the most grating criticisms of Singapore. Contrary to left-liberal claims, there is no equivalence, moral or otherwise, between (frequently abusive) ‘guest labour’ in the Gulf — where there are many reports of foreign workers being brought over on false pretences; lured in with promises of a good job, but finding themselves effectively in indentured servitude upon their arrival — and the simple, contractual, and honest guest worker policy employed by Singapore. The idea that a foreigner with no real skills, bringing nothing to Singapore but his or her muscle, should expect above-market wages — let alone welfare rights — seems ridiculous to most people here. In their view, it is a fair and transparent contract which these foreigners have signed out of their own volition; by definition, therefore, no exploitation can be taking place. This point of view — one which you would only find on the ‘far-right’ in the West — is just one of many examples in this country of what I call ‘folkish’ common sense. Foreigners don’t automatically deserve free things and above-market wages just by existing on our soil? Incredible!

The dormitories in which the guest workers live — with ample facilities provided — seem infinitely better than the conditions the workers would likely find in their home country. The average Singaporean would baulk at the idea that guest workers should not only live better than they did back home, but should also expect to live similarly to Singaporean citizens in this regard — especially when the average Singaporean citizen already lacks space themselves.

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Politics in Singapore

In his last interview as Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, son of Lee Kuan Yew, claimed — in the most polite terms possible — that his opposition, like most politicians in the West, both in and out of government, are grifters.

Most new entrants into politics as of late are more interested in ‘politicking’ than they are in policymaking, as this is more likely to appeal to the resentful lowest common denominator. As such, to make a career for themselves, they will focus more on wedge cultural issues than on the ‘bread and butter’ of governing. This isn’t just about the most trivial responsibilities, like bin collection or community centres, but also much bigger issues; issues which often shouldn’t have any moral cadence whatsoever.

Take immigration. Unlike in the West, there is zero moral cadence to this issue in Singapore. While there may be economic disagreement about the necessity for ‘foreign talent’ at the top of the job market, no one resents paying Filipino guest workers $500 a month to take care of their menial household tasks. No Singaporean Indian or Singaporean Malay lobbies to let more of their Indian Indian or Malaysian Malay co-ethnics into Singapore. Even the majority ethnic group, the Chinese (three-quarters of the population) will stress the differences between the Chinese from China — from the ‘PRC’ — and Chinese Singaporeans. Singaporean civic identity is real, and it is based on shared success and wealth.

Singapore bans any political protesting which has not received prior permission, and even with permission, many restrictions apply. As such, despite the population being around 15% Muslim, no pro-Palestine protests of any note have taken place on the streets of Singapore. After living in Singapore for long enough, it’s quite clear to see that restrictions placed on the ‘right to protest’ are not generally in place to prevent opposition per se. Plenty of people I know criticise the government liberally in a very carefree, rational manner without any repercussions. Rather, these restrictions exist to prevent political grifts and to maintain civilised life against intrusions and encumbrances.

Even the most principled critics of Israel’s dealings with Palestinians will be increasingly tired of protestors causing a ruckus and harassing people on the streets of London, Paris, or Berlin to absolutely no effect. Most sensible people do not dislike these protests because of their support for Israel; rather, they dislike them because they are composed of grotesque, ugly, and frequently deranged people who disturb your day for no good reason. After all, it’s not like wailing and screaming in the streets will realistically convert anyone to your cause; nor does it encourage people who simply don’t care to ‘educate themselves’ more on the topic: it’s blatant browbeating. These people know they are annoying, but they don't care. As such, the Singaporean government — in line with their approach to other public disturbances completely unrelated to politics — decided to take action. In my view, any explanation of the Singaporean state’s approach to political protest that hinges on the government’s supposed need to ‘suppress opposition’ has no basis in reality.

I believe one result of this policy is the continuation of normal, civic politics, most of which is quite banal to us. Even the most vehement critics of the People’s Action Party, such as the ostensibly left-wing Singapore Democratic Party leader, Chee Soon Juan, makes what are to us only the dullest — but still legitimate — criticisms of the government. On TikTok, his favourite social media platform, Juan recently recently published a video in which he extolled for six full minutes on the government’s waste of taxpayer money on faulty digital screens in metro stations, when a simple poster would suffice. Similarly, another ostensibly left-wing party, Progress Singapore Party — one of only two opposition parties represented in parliament (the other being the Workers’ Party) — criticise excessive immigration (especially from India) and high taxation on the middle class. One can imagine both of these criticisms — which are, to repeat ourselves, from an ostensibly left-wing party — being basic right-wing libertarian attacks on the centre and centre-left in Britain before we started to worry about ‘meta-issues’, such as Israel-Palestine — issues which are not fundamentally important to the British people and their true interests.

It must finally be noted that, unlike in South Korea where President Park Chung-hee sharply divides opinion, Lee Kuan Yew is, and probably always will be, nearly universally respected. Even those (mostly Tamils) who believe him to have been immoral and racist still feel they must pay lip service to him, such is the overwhelming strength of his reputation. I did encounter one elderly critic who claimed that Lee Kuan Yew was only admitted to and performed well at Cambridge because the best of Britain’s youngest generation died in the Second World War, meaning he had weaker competition. Even Lee Kuan Yew’s most vehement of critics thus made use of the concept of dysgenics in their criticism of him! This, alone, is a testament to his greatness.

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Singaporean demographics and society

The problem of Singapore’s low fertility rate is widely recognised in the country’s media. Moreover, unlike in South Korea, where fertility politics seems to tie into ‘gender wars’ (even if exaggerated by Western media), in Singapore, the discussion is — characteristically — much more pragmatic. But despite this not being a culturally fraught topic, and despite the smallness of the country and the unusually high sense of civic responsibility for such an international and multicultural place, few individuals seem to believe that they have any kind of personal responsibility to bear more offspring.

Singapore’s TFR recently dropped below 1.0, and an unusually high number of Singaporean women aged forty and above are childless. Accounting for Malays, who have almost replacement level TFR (1.85), Chinese Singaporean women have levels of childlessness above that of even other East Asian countries: over 20% of Singaporean women by the age of forty are childless, meaning likely up to 25% of Chinese Singaporean women are childless. This is a figure only rivalled by Australia and New Zealand, countries where those who do have children have far more than the average mother in Singapore.

On the face of it, it’s difficult to understand why Singapore’s TFR is so low. Despite the lack of living space, Singapore, being safe and civilised, is a good place to raise children — especially when compared to even more cramped and dirty cities like Hong Kong. A ‘baby bonus’ of £10k is not especially impressive, especially when compared to South Korea’s £30k, but this is still more than most other countries offer. Of course, the reality is that fiscal incentives have a very limited effect, as discussed in ‘Where have all the Korean babies gone?’, Volume I (October 2023).

It’s puzzling that, despite Lee Kuan Yew’s immense contribution to making Singapore a place that is friendly to meritocrats and hereditarians of all stripes, ‘Striverism’ — i.e., bastardised, rat-race, environmentalist meritocracy — is still extraordinarily prevalent. Many Singaporeans are left jaded by the rigour (in the worst possible sense) of the educational system, which presumably has suppressed fertility rates.

Due to the taboo of harming race relations in Singapore, the high fertility of Malays — nearly twice that of the national average — and the implications of this is only tacitly mentioned by Concerned Citizens who care to discuss the topic. Inevitably, this partly ties into education. The TFR of married Malay women, as of 2021, is 1.92 for below secondary-educated women, as compared to 1.63 for university-educated Malay women. This gap is likely to close over time due to the expansion of tertiary education to include people who are of average or below average intelligence, but it is unlikely to disappear entirely.

Singapore, being a foundationally multicultural country, maintains the pragmatic ‘management of race relations' approach that was taken by British governments in the ’50s and ’60s, before it was decided one day that foreigners were entirely equal to us in ability, temperament, and character. Singapore is under no such illusions, and even as Singapore’s government under Lee Kuan Yew was extolling the virtues of inclusive Singaporean civic nationalism, he was famously so hereditarian that he openly attempted to implement ‘eugenic’ policies in the ’80s to boost the fertility rate of highly educated women. He also admitted that Singapore would be economically more successful if its population were 100% Chinese.

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Law and order

In a recent interview, Lee Hsien Loong briefly discussed the progress of the Malay community, cautioning that the ‘high incarceration rate’ was still a problem that needed to be addressed by the community. No assumption was made about the ‘unfairness’ of disproportionate incarceration — i.e., ‘structural racism’ — nor was it implied that the Singaporean government or society at large could be in any way blamed for this unfortunate situation. If more Malays are going to prison, it is because they are committing more crime, ‘simple as’.

An interesting judicial belief in Singapore is the notion that criminal characteristics such as low IQ and poverty are aggravating factors, rather than mitigating ones — something that would be viewed as archaic in Britain. In Britain, it has now become accepted that judges can and will pass more lenient sentences to those who have suffered various personal misfortunes. By contrast, in Singapore it is quite common for criminals to plea for lenient sentences on the basis that they come from a ‘good family’ and achieved Top Grades — something that, while not unknown in Britain (though a stable job and/or a wife and children would be referenced rather than one’s parentage), has become increasingly outmoded.

A recent capital sentence many readers may have heard of is a good case in point. Just last year, in a highly controversial case, an ethnic Indian man from Malaysia named Datchinamurthy Kataiah was sentenced to death for drug trafficking, despite having an IQ of 69, which classifies him as intellectually disabled. Datchinamurthy was convicted of trafficking nearly 45 grams of heroin into Singapore in 2011. Psychological assessments revealed his intellectual disability, leading to calls for leniency. However, the judge decided to proceed with the death sentence because, despite his intellectual limitations, he believed that the miscreant was aware of and understood the risks and implications of trafficking drugs into Singapore. Citing previous cases, the judge also took the view that maintaining the deterrent effect of capital punishment was more important than any moral concerns related to the execution of a mentally retarded man. Legal mitigation on the basis of low intelligence is nonsensical to most Singaporeans, and especially Singaporean judges: they correctly see that intelligence is a spectrum, and that any mitigation on the basis of retardation would render, if only gradually, all deterrent laws redundant, as is occurring in Britain.

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‘Singapore is boring’

This is a common complaint about Singapore. It comes with the assumption that a place which is ‘too nice’ must therefore automatically be ‘boring’; everything, so it seems, exists as part of a complex trade-off. This, in my view, is incorrect.

In part, this is a matter of taste: one man’s ‘boring’ is another man’s ‘civilised’. The best comparison one can make with Singapore is Hong Kong, which is outwardly a very similar society. In Hong Kong, the commercial is very much mixed in with the residential. Expect to be constantly accosted by different food smells (good and bad), the soliciting of street vendors and prostitutes, and Indian or African men trying to sell you drugs outside of nightclubs. For a night out, this is great fun. If you’re a tourist, it can be exhilarating. I’m not at all arguing that ‘stuff being done to you’ as opposed to ‘doing stuff to others’ is always bad. However, when it comes to living there permanently, once the novelty wears off, it is often annoying, and frequently exhausting.

In Singapore, contrary to popular assumptions, most vices are still readily available once you know where to look. They are, however, spacially segregated in such a way as to isolate most of their negative externalities without actually prohibiting them altogether. The most obvious case of this is prostitution. Prostitution is not illegal in Singapore; however, various activities closely connected to prostitution are illegal. This includes soliciting in public, living on the earnings of prostitution, managing a brothel, and pimping. The idea behind these apparently contradictory legal approaches to the problem is that the police are given the discretionary powers to curb much of the public nuisance caused by the sex trade without banning it altogether. In practice, the sole area in the country where prostitution is tolerated is Geylang. While there is no explicit law stating that prostitution must only occur in Geylang, a combination of enforcement tactics and regulatory practices have effectively confined it there: as the police closely monitor and frequently crack down on the sex trade in all areas outside of Geylang, almost all of the business has been directed towards that district.

If, despite all I have said, you are still insistent that you actually enjoy ‘vibrant’ places, and don’t mind the sensory overload, I would recommend Little India. I never go there. If you’re interested in areas that are dominated by Malays, which are less bad, try places on the east coast of the island, like Eunos or Geylang Serai. As someone who has visited Malaysia numerous times, it’s fascinating how similar the Malay areas in Singapore are to the Malay-dominant suburbs in places like Johor and Malacca on the other side of the Malaysia-Singapore border.

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The colonial legacy and popular culture

Walk across the Singapore River between Anderson Bridge and the quaint Cavenagh Bridge, and you will see a collection of bronze statues, erected not in 1902 but in 2002, entitled ‘A Great Emporium’. These statues depict some Chinese (donning a queue, the Qing-era pigtail), some Indian coolies, a British official seemingly acting as a foreman, and a random Malay man. The Malay seems to have been added later — possibly due to complaints from the community — as the original description of the statue makes no mention of him.

‘A Great Emporium’ is presumably a reference to Sir Stamford Raffles, the colonial governor and founder of Singapore as a port city, saying: ‘Our object is not territory but trade, a great commercial emporium.’ This particular work of art struck me as being emblematic of Singapore’s generally positive perception of the colonial era and its role in the eventual development of Singapore as a city-state. Statues of Raffles are littered around the colonial town, located to the north of the Singapore River, where beautifully maintained colonial-era buildings such as the National Gallery, the Victoria Concert Hall, the Asia Civilisations Museum, the St Andrew’s Cathedral, and the Singapore Cricket Club stand as landmarks of Singapore’s colonial cultural scene. Such a lack of ressentiment and neurotic kvetching over the colonial past is a result both of Singapore’s success — you can’t blame the British for your failures if there are few to begin with — and the fact that the majority Chinese population were themselves in some sense colonisers of the land. As a result, the Singaporean Chinese simply have no interest in misrepresenting the past.

Even when armed with such logical explanations, the historical dynamics are still somewhat curious. One would expect that in most postcolonial societies, the collaborators or the imitators of the old guard will be marginalised as the society grows its own organic wealth from technological and/or logistical achievements. Think, for instance, of the violent hatred towards the so-called chinilpa (pro-Japanese collaborators) in a country as outwardly successful as South Korea.

In Singapore, however, such people still largely run the country. The new Prime Minister, Lawrence Wong, is in fact the first not to have been educated at either a British or Singaporean university (Wong was educated at the University of Wisconsin, Michigan and Harvard). In fact, there has been speculation that the United Stares lobbied Singapore to ensure that the next Prime Minister would be US-educated. This fact, although (naturally) unimportant to most Singaporeans, has not gone entirely unnoticed. (As an aside, Wong is also the first Prime Minister of non-Hokkien heritage, with his father hailing from Hainan Island in the far south of China, although this fact, despite stereotypes, seems to be of no importance whatsoever to most Singaporean Chinese.)

I do not wish to be patronising, but as the only widely known Singaporean film, certain attitudes and social mores that are given humorous expression in Crazy Rich Asians are not, in fact, too different from those I have observed while living in Singapore. Although a decidedly Trumpian film in its unabashed celebration of wealth, beauty, and glamour, it is a celebration of old money rather than new. Americanised characters, such as the start-up founder Charlie (played by an American actor) are portrayed as being not only gauche, but resentful and unworthy of high society (‘small dick energy’); by contrast, his fiancée, Astrid (played by a British actress), with her double-first from Oxford and British accent, is portrayed as the height of Singaporean class and achievement despite merely inheriting real estate rather than creating her own wealth. The message is clear: America (‘new money’) is ‘low status’; Britain (‘old money’) is ‘high status’ — and Singapore, interestingly, has plenty of both, at least by East Asian standards of ‘old’. Somehow, Britain’s soft power via an undeserved reputation for class and refinement has prevailed. Even in the clumsy (and arguably ressentiment-filled) opening scene, in which the character played by Michelle Yeoh demands a room at a fine hotel in London, is in fact an allusion to Singapore’s success at catching up with, and overtaking, their main benchmark of civilisation — i.e., Britain — and the bragging rights that come with it. Meanwhile, a joke about starving children in the Third World is made at America’s expense later on in the film. It’s also curious that many of the actors and actresses who play characters from the high-class, rich Young family are British citizens with classically English accents — Gemma Chan and Henry Golding are both British nationals, and Michelle Yeoh was educated in Britain — whereas the funny, cartoonish characters other than the main protagonist are played by American citizens — e.g., Awkwafina, Ken Jeong, and Jimmy Yang. Predictably, the only obviously gay character, Oliver, is played by a Filipino. It’s also quite funny that virtually none of the actors are Singaporean; most seem to be Malaysian Chinese.

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Summary and Conclusion

Many questions still remain about the Singaporean character, and especially the Singaporean Chinese character. In particular, why are the Singaporean Chinese so different from their mainlander counterparts, and even Hong Kongers? Singaporeans seem simultaneously more unadulterated, friendly, and innocent, yet also more open-minded and worldly than their mainlander counterparts. If we are forced to sum them up in two words, they are less jaded, which makes life here far more pleasant than it would be otherwise.

Is this difference due to acculturation, selection, or something else? To answer that question, one would have to also answer the following question: are the Singaporean Chinese more similar to other Nanyang (‘South Sea’, i.e., South-East Asian) Chinese — the Selection Bias Perspective — or to mainland Chinese from Fujian (i.e., Hokkien-speakers, their home province in large part) — the Primordial Perspective — or are they completely unique — the Acculturation Perspective?

Let me briefly play advocate for all three perspectives. One may expect the Selection Bias Perspective to be true, i.e., they are most similar to other Nanyang Chinese — despite being apart from one another for generations — due to the selection bias among Singaporeans towards openness, adventure, and mercantilism — all of which may be lacking amongst other Fujianese in China. The Primordial Perspective would suggest that Singaporeans are most similar to mainland Chinese in Fujian due to being from the same region and speaking the same dialect. Thus, one would expect a degree of genetic similarity that may manifest a unique ethnic character. Finally, the Acculturation Perspective would suggest that Singaporeans have been ‘memed’ into becoming ‘Westernised’, partly due to English education but also due to the luxury of being wealthy, which affords individuals a degree of individualism that one may not find in Mainland China or even Taiwan. This nurture-coded perspective would place Singaporean’s English education, pushed upon them by Singapore’s highly Anglophilic founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, as being essential to the development of Singapore’s distinct national character.

Having met Nanyang Chinese in places such as Manila and Bali, I favour some combination of the Selection Bias and Acculturation Perspectives, but I must admit that I have not travelled sufficiently or met enough Indonesian, Filipino, or Malaysian Chinese — nor indeed Fujianese from China — to make a truly informed judgement about their differences. I welcome feedback from readers on this question.