Singapore: 'East' Meets 'West'
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Chapter 6
Singapore: ‘East’ Meets
‘West’
6.1 Introduction
In Chapter Four and Chapter Five, I documented the discursive practices which shape
international education at the ‘supply’ or producer end. I identified similarities and
differences in the ‘surfaces of emergence’ of international education in all three producer
contexts, beginning with Australia in Chapter Four and the United States and the United
Kingdom in Chapter Five. In this chapter, I describe and analyse the discursive practices at the
‘demand’ end of the international education – the consumer market that is Singapore. I show
that the discursive practices underpinning international education are shaped by interactions
between historical, economic, cultural and social contingencies which are vary over time, and
across spaces. These discursive practices are central to understanding the links between
globalisation, international education and the formation of subjectivities.
As in the previous chapter, I bring together macro-contextual and micro-level analytics to
understand firstly, the importance of the education-economy link in Singapore’s success as a
post-colonial capitalist state. My objective is to describe and analyse the largely economic and
instrumentalist model of education that has so far prevailed in Singapore. Using Foucault’s
theorisations on power, subjectivity and governance, I map the types of changes that are now
being introduced to enable Singapore to ‘leap frog’ into the knowledge-based economy,
broadly considered as the next mode of development after industrialism. The Singaporean
government has privileged the economic dimensions of globalisation, while at the same time
steering the educated Singaporean subject towards a spatially fixed identity which continues
to be premised on ethnocultural nationalism. I conclude that the types of subjectivities that are
being formed through these discourses are premised on modernist assumptions of ‘racial’ and
national identities. Similarly, the state continues to sponsor a fundamentally modernist role
for university education with its emphasis on producing knowledges which can be translated
169Chapter 6 Singapore: ‘East’ Meets ‘West’
into national wealth. However, there is one notable difference: where once the educational
focus was on the formation of elites, bureaucrats and professionals, the focus now is on
producing entrepreneurs. To support my hypothesis that Singapore’s vision for its university
sector is premised on spatio-temporal fixity, despite a surface appearance of dynamism, I
analyse the technologies, strategies and tactics used to construct Singapore as a regional
‘education hub’.
The second objective of this chapter is to describe and analyse the desire for overseas
education among Singaporeans and the meanings they attribute to ‘international education’.
I examine a range of ‘micropractices and mundane materialities’ to inquire about the extent to
which the experience of an international education is deemed transformatory and conducive
to acquiring a ‘global imagination’ (see Rizvi, 2000). I show that the desire for ‘exposure’, (the
Singaporean term used to describe the experience of international education), is partly related
to a pervasive national trait to ‘stay ahead’ of the competition. At the level of the individual,
‘exposure’ to international education works to open up new subjectivities while also
reaffirming older ones which are anchored in fixed and essentialised notions of ‘race’ and
‘nation’. As a group, Singaporean consumers of international education are not likely to
demand a ‘brand’ of international education that is transformatory unless it fits within the
instrumentalist parameters defined by the state.
6.2 Global Dreams
In this global city of the 21st century, old ways and old disjunctures jostle with New Economy
miracles and ‘high tech’ icons. Singapore. Post-colonial. ‘Where East meets West’. Home of the
famed Singapore Girl in her Pierre Balmain-designed sarong kebaya (see Heng, 1997). Tiger
Economy. A spectacular success, corruption-free, a glowing ‘free market’ node, proof that the
‘other’ has what it takes to succeed in the aggressive world of capitalism.
The aesthetic world of Orchard Road, one of the city-state’s major shopping precincts is a good
place to absorb and analyse Singapore’s contradictions. December in Orchard Road marks the
start of the Christmas season. The extravagant and ostentatious Christmas lights on Orchard
Road equal, if not surpass, the Christmas lights in London’s West End. Every one of its
air-conditioned shopping centres has a collection of Xmas trees, huge edifices which are
visible from every tier of the giant escalators. Festooned with gold and silver bows, and
sprayed with powder-fine ‘snow’, these arctic heterotopias are a defiant symbol and reminder
of the continuing importance of the Northern Hemisphere to this part of the world. What
would it be like to celebrate Christmas using a geographically suitable theme? A monsoon
Christmas perhaps? Could it match the splendour of a Christmas trading on colonial memory
and images?
Orchard Road is more than a site from which to observe boundary crossings. It also represents
the aspirational desires of Singaporeans: the “5 C’s” – Cash, Credit Cards, Condominiums,
Country-clubs and Cars (Wei, 2000)1. Shopping is a national pastime, not surprising, given
170Chapter 6 Singapore: ‘East’ Meets ‘West’
that consumerism is perhaps the main arena of freedom in Singapore. Orchard Road is a
magnet which draws everyone from the ‘average’ Singaporean to bored and overpaid ‘expats’
(expatriates) and the lower-end of imported human capital, the unskilled guest worker.
Everything that a human being could possibly want to buy is available in this street. At street
level, the symbols and signs are asymmetrically inclined in favour of first world
multinationals, largely Euro-American with the occasional Japanese name: Louis Vuitton,
Armani, Prada, Channel, Hilton, Taco Bell, McDonalds, Marks and Spencer, Starbucks, Isetan
and Takashimaya.
You cannot strive for the 5 C’s without the army of domestic helpers who make up the lower
end of the ethnoscape of guest workers: Filipinas, Indonesians, Indians, Sri Lankans,
Bangladeshis. They too claim a provisional space at Orchard Road. Sunday is the day off for a
large number of Filipinas who come to shop at Orchard Road’s Lucky Plaza, and more
importantly, to meet with each other and to speak their own language. Their energy, humour
and collegiality are palpable to any bystander. Local Singaporeans, however, keep their
distance including the shopkeepers in Lucky Plaza. The Filipinas might buy, but they are
hardly deserving of a customer service approach. We are all Asians but some of us are more
superior Asians. In Singapore, Filipinas are considered to be amongst the lower tier of Asians
and are best managed in this way.
At the Singapore Cricket Club (‘SCC’), the scene is different. A favourite haunt of Nick Leeson,
the man reputed to have single-handedly brought down Barings Bank, there is a different kind
of ‘guest worker’ here. They represent the ‘top-end’ of human capital, largely ‘western’,
predominantly male expatriates, recruited to work in an island working feverishly to
re-invent itself as a high-tech node and financial services centre. The SCC is another
heterotopia, a place where modernity’s icons of money and masculinity coalesce to re-create
a peculiarly 19th century type of social relations between men and women and between the
haves and have-nots. The Members Bar is off-limits to all women except on New Year’s Eve
when they are allowed entry, but only if they submit to the ritual of being picked up and
thrown from the Bar into the crowd of men at midnight. Not only do they represent the
city-state’s nostalgia for its colonial past, but ‘country clubs’ like the SCC, Tanglin, Seletar and
Keppel have been re-worked into the Intelligent Island’s indices of success and social
standing.
People have been coming to Singapore for all kinds of reasons for most of its history. For some
people the ‘pull’ factors have been paramount and they have been drawn by a sense of
adventure and curiosity to explore the’Far East’ and the chance to get rich. For others, ‘push’
factors like war, famine, grinding poverty and oppression in their home countries gave them
few choices. The maids who work for my family today, like the Filipinas at Lucky Plaza and
like my grandparents who came to Singapore close to 100 years ago, make up a large and
1. Cars are a very precious commodity in Singapore where the government demands a Certificate of Enti-
tlement (CoE) which sell at S$80,000 upwards.
171Chapter 6 Singapore: ‘East’ Meets ‘West’
variable ethnoscape of people looking for a better life. Lydia, 47 years old has worked for our
family for 15 years. She has raised a whole generation of children in our family, and paid for
the education of one generation of children in her family in the Philippines. She came to
Singapore because there was no work in the Philippines and she had a large family with elders
and children to support. Mariam is from Indonesia. With two children, aged three and five
years, she decided to try her hand at getting a job in Singapore after the children’s father left
her. She has been engaged to care for the newest baby in our family, my nephew, Jai. Mariam’s
children will get to see her for one week, bi-annually, if she is lucky. Then there is Shahu from
India. She cares for my intellectually disabled masi (maternal aunt), Hardial. She is a mother
of adult children. She too talks of the day when she can go home, although she is concerned
that her sons may have been a bit cavalier with the remittances she has sent home. It it these
sobering ironies, these disjunctures that continue even in this spectacularly successful
high-tech bubble. Local and global forces pull and push against each other in ways that are
strangely unpredictable and barely discernible to most of us, and particularly for five or three
year olds like Mariam’s children.
These women’s lives away from their families also represent a productive absence. As women,
their position as guest workers has enabled them to renegotiate their places in a paternalistic
family hierarchy, something made possible by their earning capacity. Then there is the bigger
picture surrounding guest workers. Remittances from guest workers are vitally important
income sources for many poorer countries. The Philippines earns US$7 billion a year from
remittances. In 1993, remittances were equivalent to 44 per cent of Bangladesh’s merchandise
exports; equalled 13 per cent of India’s export earnings and 24 per cent of Pakistan’s foreign
earnings (see Puri and Ritzema, 1999). Host countries like Singapore also benefit from taxes
such as the ‘maid levy’. In 1992, the maid levy on employers of maids returned $234 million
to the Singapore government (Heng, 1997, pp. 32).
So, in this story of disjunctures and human emotions there is also a win-win story to be read.
Still, it seems a high price to pay and for me it is a grim reminder that things may not have
changed much from my grandparents’ time. Lydia has a raft of horror stories of other maids
who endure assault, starvation and isolation. No days off, a 16 hour working day, no
telephone calls and no relationships (see also Henson, 2002). The conditions are worse for
those maids whose countries are timid in their dealings with the Singaporean government.
Mariam quietly passes food over the fence to the Indonesian maid next door who has not had
a day off for eight months.
6.3 A Modern Colony: Singapore Inc.
Singapore’s acquisition and settlement by the East India Company (EIC) is a story of
competing empires. Singapore was purchased by Stamford Raffles of the East India Company
for 1,000 Spanish pounds in 1819 after he had installed a preferred and illegal heir as ruler of
the Johor sultanate (Heidhues, 1974, pp. 18-19). Within a few years of colonial settlement,
Singapore had subverted Batavia’s (Jakarta) position as a premier trading centre and in doing
172Chapter 6 Singapore: ‘East’ Meets ‘West’
so, the British wrested the highly lucrative ‘Far East’ trade monopoly from the Dutch (see
Boulger, 1897)2. Its strategic importance to the British colonial government as a naval base and
entrepot saw Singapore separated from the two other Straits Settlement colonies, Malacca and
Penang, both of which were reunited with the newly independent Malaya in 1957. Singapore
achieved a limited autonomy from the British colonial government in 1959 and in 1963 joined
the federation of Malaysia before seceding in 1965 (Chua, 1998, pp. 28-29; Han, Fernandez and
Tan,1998, pp. 65-83).
Singapore’s status as a postcolonial nation is unique, as its history attests. As a newly
independent nation in South-East Asia, it sought to maintain close cultural and economic links
with the former colonial powers. The political leadership of the largely English-educated and
multi-ethnic People’s Action Party (PAP) that led Singapore to political independence, took a
decidedly unsentimental view of retaining the colonial legacy. Reflecting on the course taken
by the newly independent Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, its first prime minister noted,
We were not ideologues…We had no raw materials for them to exploit. All we had was
the labour. So why not if they [foreign companies] want to exploit our labour?….And
we found that whether or not they exploited us, we were learning how to do a job from
them, which we would never have learnt. We were in no position to be fussy about
high-minded principles. We had to make a living… (Lee in Han, Fernandez and Tan,
1998, p. 109).
In analysing Singapore’s post-independence development and systems of governance, what
is immediately obvious is the significance of a rubric of ‘local’ factors specific to its geography,
population, demography and internal politics. These factors interacted with a series of
macro-level forces including those arising from the superpower rivalries extant at that time.
First, Singapore’s status as a city-state with minimal natural resources immediately made
redundant any notion of constructing a sheltered socialist economy, choices which were open
to other postcolonial nations such as India (see Chua, 1998, p. 29). Out of deficit and ‘crisis’
also came opportunity. Singapore had, in the words of Lee, “the whole export oriented
freeway open to us...China was isolated, out of the world’s markets. Most developing
countries rejected the MNCs [multinational corporations]...they believed that MNCs would
exploit their labour and natural resources “(Lee, 2002).
Second, Singapore’s adoption of English as the official language was designed to build the
required pool of human resources in order to engage with international trade markets. This
important choice also enabled the English-educated Chinese political leadership to assert their
dominance over the more left-leaning, Chinese-educated community many of whom
harboured positive sentiments towards communist China (Sai and Huang, 1999, pp. 132-143;
Han, Fernandez and Tan, 1998, pp. 43-61; Rodan, 2001, pp. 143-144; Wang, 1992, pp. 208-210).
2. Boulger’s biography on Stamford Raffles offers a colonial history of Singapore’s beginnings.
173Chapter 6 Singapore: ‘East’ Meets ‘West’
Singapore’s success as an economic powerhouse has been touted as a paean to the power of
capitalism. However, a space-time analytic of its political economy points to a more complex
set of reasons for explaining the hugely successful capitalist state that Singapore is today. It
achieved political independence at specific moment in time – during an era of Cold War
politics and it used the superpower rivalries to strategically position itself. Singapore’s
geography and its chosen political alignments with the West meant that it established itself as
a willing and able ‘free market’ node. In a postcolonial South-East Asia, fiercely resistant to
the possibilities of continuing exploitation by capitalism by the region’s former colonial
masters, Singapore’s stance would place it into a position of competitive advantage.
The ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) has strategically used Singapore’s history to construct
a unique ‘reason of state’ rationality which draws heavily on a discourse of crisis and survival.
The crisis and survival discourse has been well-documented as a governmentality to ‘rally’
citizens to ‘pull together to survive’ (see Barr, 2000, pp. 226-234; Birch, 1993, pp. 72-75; Chan,
1976; Emmerson, 1995, pp. 95-96; George, 2000, pp. 52-56; Rodan, 1993, pp. 58-59). As a
discursive strategy, narratives of crisis have been immensely powerful in both shaping and
instituting acceptance of the government’s policy platform of ‘market pragmatism’ and its
concomitants, individualism and meritocracy. The catchcry, ‘we have no choice’, was and
continues to be invoked to retain popular support for the government’s policies. It is by
deploying narratives of crisis premised on Singapore’s ‘vulnerability’ as a small nation with
no natural resources, that the government has been able to strategically circumvent ethical
dilemmas such as trading with the apartheid government of South Africa, or presently, with
the military regime of Myanmar.
Much of the analysis of politics and governance in Singapore has drawn on top-down models
of power that are deployed by authoritarian governments to exercise power and to suppress
their citizens. To this end, much has been written about Singapore’s deployment of
disciplinary strategies, technologies and instruments to govern (George, 2000, pp. 39-40, 65-69;
Kwok, 1999, p. 54; Lam, 1999, pp. 11-12). Many of the instruments of state called on to
discipline its people, were residues from the biopolitical arsenal used by the British colonial
authorities to discipline the dissident local population in their colonies3. Following
independence, these instruments were put to use to crush communalism, industrial militancy
and communism. However, what is often neglected in analyses of Singapore’s government is
the use of ‘pastoral power’ or ‘governance by care’ to win popular support4.
3. Someexamples of the disciplining technologies which were used to suppress anti-colonial dissidence
included: the Internal Security Act which enabled detention without trial, a statutory requirement for
everyone above the age of 12 years to carry an IC (Identity Card) at all times, the requirement of all
aspiring university students to undergo a security clearance at the hands of the intelligence police, the
Special Branch.
4. Singapore’s
policy of subsidized public housing is one example of the exercise of pastoral power.
Access to high-status educational goods via Public Services Commission (PSC) Scholarships is
another.
174Chapter 6 Singapore: ‘East’ Meets ‘West’
Following independence, the government used an amalgam of tactics, technologies and
strategies to neutralise and disarm the potentially explosive communal and cultural politics
which were to be the nemesis of so many postcolonial states (Barr, 2000, pp. 18, 29-30, 144-145;
Chua, 1998, pp. 34-36; Purushotam, 1998, pp. 51-55). At the same time, a range of nation-state
techniques were deployed to steer Singapore’s multi-ethnic population towards an
identification with the nation, rather than with their ethnocultural communities. By
introducing constitutional protection for religious freedom and by instituting the use of
English, the politics of ‘race’, language, religion and ethnicity were effectively neutralised and
displaced5. Together with a multicultural cabinet who denoted a semiotic representation of a
cosmopolitan leadership, an image of ‘unity in diversity’ was created.
Writing about governance in the city-state, George (2000) uses the metaphor of
the'Air-Conditioned Nation' to describe and analyse the workings of the Singaporean
government. He observes the politics of'comfort and control’ to be at work in the city-state.
After years of being disciplined by ‘OB Markers’ (out-of-bounds markers), Singaporeans have
become depoliticised. Political autonomy remains elusive while the freedoms of consumption
are pervasive (pp. 39-56). Singaporeans have achieved first world living standards with a
capable and financially astute government at the helm. While this is an adequate freedom for
some of its citizens, others have been increasingly perturbed by the limited discursive space
for a civil society (see also Birch, 1993; Chua, 1999; Rodan, 1993, 1996). As I argue in this next
section, the Singaporean government has moved to address this emerging desire, as part of a
broad set of responses to manage globalisation.
6.4 East Meets West: Managing Globalisation
Singapore offers a unique site from which to understand how the contemporary nation-state
is simultaneously both an agent as well as an object of globalisation. A strongly
developmentalist state, Singapore has largely eschewed the minimalist state approach which
has informed the neoliberal state in the’west’. Its belief in ‘market pragmatism’ has so far, been
tempered by the direct involvement of government in various nation-building projects
(Rodan, 2001, pp. 143-152). It has also engaged in various projects of 'culture building' in order
to define itself in particularistic or culturally unique terms even though, more than any other
South-East Asian country, it personifies cultural pastiche and melange (see Kahn, 1998, p. 5).
The official line on globalisation is that Singapore ‘does not have the choice’ open to other
nations with natural resources, “for us globalisation is a necessity” (Goh, 1999). Many of its
education policies, for example, can be read as responses to the challenges presented by global
competition. Before discussing the use of education as a site for managing globalisation, I will
first analyse Singapore’s culture-building rationales, and their effectiveness as a strategy to
manage the ‘risks’ represented by globalisation.
5. Theseincluded constitutional recognition of cultural and religious diversity including religious free-
dom, public holidays on cultural and religious festivals, and guaranteed political representation for
the indigenous Malay population.
175Chapter 6 Singapore: ‘East’ Meets ‘West’
In the period immediately following political independence, the state accommodated cultural,
linguistic and religious diversity, as long as this diversity sat within state-prescribed
parameters of economic modernization, individualism and meritocracy. Politics was reduced
to economics and a relatively deculturalized approach to nation-building was deployed
(Chua, 1998, pp. 30-31). By the 1980s, there was a discernible shift towards a ‘culturalization’
of the political terrain. This shift was justified as necessary to counteract the ‘dangers’ of
westernisation, individualism and deculturalism. Individualism was acceptable only insofar
as it promoted economic achievement and self-sufficiency (Rodan, 2001, pp. 160-161). Its other
dimensions were less welcome. Singaporeans, according to the government, required a ‘moral
ballast’ to anchor them to their collective responsibilities to the state and the family unit.
The Confucian Values discourse which emerged as a result of this ‘cultural turn’ was part of
a broader discursive ensemble, premised on an ‘East versus West’ discourse which effectively
positioned a homogeneous, decadent and individualistic ‘West’ against a hardworking,
thrifty and community-minded East. Ironically, the Confucian ‘hypothesis’ which
discursively linked Confucian values with economic performance and modernization,
emerged from the ‘west’6. In some quarters, there were concerns that the culturalization of
Singapore politics was not only subverting its multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan beginnings, but also
discursively privileging the Chinese-Singaporean contribution to Singapore’s nation building
project (Rajaratnam in Hong, 1999, pp. 104-105). Nonetheless, it was enthusiastically
embraced by the Singaporean government before its metamorphosis into the more culturally
inclusive ‘Asian values discourse’ (see Chua, 1999; Kwok, 1999, pp. 53-66). In the same vein,
the Asian values discourse can be read as an attempt to distract the population from the
growing wealth disparities within Singapore in the same way that the ‘Asian Way’ or ‘Asian
Style’ government has been invoked by various authoritarian governments to variously
justify their oppressive tendencies (see Barr, 2000, pp. 33-3; George, 2000, pp. 49-56; Mitton,
2000; Rodan, 2001, pp. 161-164).
Culture-building presided over the resurrection of the ‘racialised identity’ where previously
the emphasis had been on neutralizing ‘race’ and culture. Several reasons have been proposed
for the ‘cultural turn’ in Singapore’s political terrain. Barr’s (1999; 2000, pp. 120-126) thesis
attributes the official state engagement with Confucianism with Lee Kuan Yew’s ‘sinicization’
which included his espousal of biological and cultural eugenics although it can be reasonably
argued that this shift towards the ‘sinicization’ of the Singaporean identity was a strategic
preparation for the Singapore’s engagement with the ‘sleeping giant’, China.
For Chua (1999) the official engagement with Confucianism was part of a raft of strategies
extending back to the 1980s and aimed at artificially grafting an elite Mandarin culture onto
an ethnically and linguistically heterogeneous Singaporean-Chinese community. In arriving
6. Perhapsthe scholar most associated with the Confucian Values discourse is Tu Wei Ming, originally
from Taiwan but who has spent the greater part of his university education and working life in Amer-
ica. He has been employed as a Professor of Chinese History and Philosophy at Harvard University
from 1981.
176Chapter 6 Singapore: ‘East’ Meets ‘West’
at this conclusion, he concurs with Kong’s (1999) findings from her study of
Singaporean-Chinese transmigrants – that claims to a homogeneous and fixed Chinese
identity are at best tenuous. By the end of the 1990s, in response to a global rise of religious
and ethnic fundamentalisms, the Singaporean government interest in policing race relations
and religious activities had increased although notably, recent events linking the local Jemaah
Islamiah group with the Al-Quaida network has revealed that the government has not been
entirely successful in eliminating the risk of resistance through insurgency.
Chua (1998) argues that the raft of policies aimed at ‘fixing’ the Singaporean identity have
been largely unsuccessful. According to his analysis, the hyphenated Singaporean, whether
‘Singaporean-Chinese, Malay, Indian or Other’ is characterised by “productive absence”. It is
this hollow quality which allows the Singaporean government to change what being
Singaporean means to fit in with the situational demands of the moment. Over the past
decade, the situational demands have stemmed from economic globalisation, resulting in the
emigration of highly qualified Singaporeans who are regarded as eminently employable in the
global economy. At the same time, there has been increased importance attached to the
recruitment of ‘foreign talent’ by the Singaporean government, as a response to staying
competitive.
Presently, Singapore’s nation-building discourse is centred around the Shared Values7 and
Singapore 21 visionary platforms (see Chua, 1998, pp. 38-40). Both work to construct a
qualitatively different ballast from the ethnocultural identity fixing of the 1980s: Singapore as
‘home’. It is a place where you can establish emotional ties while at the same time, it provides
‘economic opportunities’. Singapore 21's stated objectives are to produce a more “gentle,
caring and gracious” society, a nation with ‘a heartbeat’ where every Singaporean matters”
(Singapore 21 Committee, 2002). Where in the past, emigrants earned the ire of the
government, the official stance now is to keep the door open to encourage returnees.
To stem the permanent outflow of talented Singaporeans, the government has established the
Singapore International Foundation (SIF), a key instrumentality whose mission is to create
‘belongingness and rootedness’ for Singaporeans to counteract the change and uncertainly
wrought by globalisation. The Foundation’s mission statement offers hints as to how the
government intends to’ manage’ globalisation: “To enable Singaporeans everywhere to think
globally, feel Singaporean, be responsible world citizens and foster friendships for Singapore”
(SIF, 2002).
To achieve this end, the SIF uses a number of ‘mundane’ steering devices to remind
Singaporeans where they belong. By producing and organising magazines8, newsletters,
fellowship programmes9 and conferences10, the SIF promotes ‘Singapore Inc.’ as an
‘organisation ‘to do business with, and the ‘Lion City’ as a place to live. The SIF also
7. Singapore’sShared Values are: nation before community, society above self, family as the basic unit of
society, regard and community support for the individual, consensus instead of contention and racial
and religious harmony.
177Chapter 6 Singapore: ‘East’ Meets ‘West’
coordinates the Humanitarian Relief Programme (HRP), which organises medical missions to
countries experiencing war or natural disasters. The HRP is a response to long held complaints
by Singaporeans about the excessive emphasis on materialist aspirations.
This brief snapshot of the steering technologies employed by the government to manage
globalisation, point to the emergence of state-sponsored initiatives to broaden the
subject-positions available to Singaporeans. They are now ‘permitted’ to be more than just
economic subjects. They are travellers, humanitarians, successful professionals, in all, global
citizens. However, their roots and identity must remain anchored in Singapore. What remains
to be seen is how these alternative subjectivities can co-exist without subordination to the
economic subjectivities that have been so dominant in Singapore’s history.
To summarise, Singapore’s historical beginnings have seen the development of a unique
governmentality which is premised on a discourse of crisis and survival and ‘market
pragmatism’. The ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) has successfully ‘governed by consent’,
effectively winning every election since Independence by invoking a ‘reason of state’
rationality which is centred around economic survival of the city-state and threats to national
security from both internally generated or externally imposed forces (see Barr, 2000; Birch,
1993; George, 2000; Rodan, 1993 1996; Lam and Tan, 1999). At the same time, a ‘softer’
discourse of belonging and home seeks to construct a network of business, financial,
intellectual and interpersonal contacts between Singaporeans overseas and those at home.
6.5 Education in The Intelligent Island: Always Being Ahead
Seeking to appropriate western knowledges and practices has never been a problem for
Singapore as long as it contributes to the national project of attaining economic success as a
capitalist, ‘free market’ powerhouse (see Chua, 1998, pp. 32-34; George, 2000, pp. 171-172).
From its founding principles – striving for economic survival and the material improvement
of its citizenry – Singapore has constructed a particularly strong nation-building role for its
education system, which features strongly instrumental and symbolic dimensions. In the first
instance, it is concerned with cementing a sense of national identity amongst its multi-ethnic
citizenry and loyalty to the nation. Second, education serves to produce a pool of human
8. Atypical SIF magazine would carry a mix of stories aimed at conveying these two images of Singa-
pore. Accordingly, the magazines features ‘hard’ newsworthy items which focus on government and
private sector opportunities, ‘development stories (e.g., the opening of a new museum, hospital etc.)
and profiles of successful Singaporeans. A series of ‘soft’ stories which trade on memory and nostalgia
are positioned at the tail end of the magazine. For example, ‘Homecooking’ (which features a favour-
ite childhood recipe), and inevitably, a story of the peripathetic Singaporean who is nearly always
quoted as saying that their roots are firmly in Singapore.
9. Programmes such as Singapore Internationale, are intended to “promote the Singaporean image and
identity overseas”. Similarly, the Singapore-Australia Young Business Ambassadors Programme,
“offers young professionals from Singapore and Australia a unique opportunity to network while liv-
ing and working in each other's country as part of their career exposure and professional growth”
(SIF, 2002).
10. The2002, conference scheduled to take place in Sydney is titled, “A World in Transformation: Impact
and Implications for the Asia Pacific Region”. It is offered at a nominal cost of A$50 and is refundable
for all students attending, suggesting that this is a targeted group.
178Chapter 6 Singapore: ‘East’ Meets ‘West’
resources that will enable the economic survival and success of the nation (Ashton and Sung,
1997, pp. 209-214; Gopinathan, 1997; Spring, 1998, pp. 75-79). This speech by the Minister of
Education captures the evangelical hopes held of the education system:
How each generation turns out depends critically on education. Whether our young
have the skills, drive and entrepreneurship to make a living, whether they uphold the
principle of meritocracy, whether they love Singapore and are prepared to give their
lives in her defence are shaped by the education they receive during their formative
years (Teo, 2002).
Presently, Singapore’s educational vision is focused on maintaining a competitive edge for the
nation-state. It sees the best way forward as developing a technically competent and highly
educated labour force for the ‘next lap’ of Singapore’s development, which is to join the first
world club of knowledge economies, or in the words of officialdom, ‘to establish Singapore as
a vibrant and robust global hub of knowledge-based industries’ (Tan, 2001; Teo,1999). Where
education was once intended to produce ‘docile bodies’, the knowledge-based economy now
demands a particular type of ‘critical thinking’, preferably one that lends to
entrepreneurialism. Both schools and universities have been charged with the responsibility
of securing Singapore’s place in the knowledge-based economy. Schools are now required to
develop ‘critical thinking’ and ‘creativity’ in its subjects. The Thinking Schools Learning Nation,
the IT Masterplan and Technopreneurship 2111, are just three expressions of a broader policy
platform intended to steer the educated subject towards innovation, creativity and
self-improvement (Goh, 1997; Chang, 2000; Spring, 1998, pp. 79-83; Wee, 1998).
Schooling is also a site where strategies are put into place to develop affiliations or affective
‘connectivities’ with Singapore, the nation. National Education, a form of citizenship education
is one such attempt to anchor the Singaporean identity and to inspire loyalty to the country
(see Spring, 1998, pp. 83-88). Together with platforms like Shared Values and Singapore 21,
National Education represents an attempt to offset ‘brain drain’12. In the Singaporean context,
brain drain has two dimensions – the physical movement of talented Singaporeans to other
countries where prospects are better, and a selective westernisation of young Singaporeans’
imaginations.
As I discussed in some detail, in Chapter Four and Chapter Five, governments in several
developed countries are examining the role of universities in knowledge-based production, as
a means of delivering greater national wealth. The Singapore government is no different.
However, as I will argue shortly, it has played a much more active and direct role in
11. Technopreneurship 21 has been described as an initiative aimed at establishing the infrastructure and
culture for technological entrepreneurship in Singapore.
12. The Singapore 21 vision is based on the following ideas: Every Singapore matters, Opportunities for
all; The Singapore Heartbeat; Strong Families; Active Citizens (see Singapore 21 Committee, 2002).
National Education is a form of citizenship education aimed at developing national cohesion (Minis-
try of Education, 2002).
179Chapter 6 Singapore: ‘East’ Meets ‘West’
establishing the strategic context for its universities to innovate and produce for the
knowledge economy.
The government has decided that Singapore’s university education system which was largely
modelled on the British tradition has to be changed to meet its aspirations to be a strong and
competitive performer in the global economy. As part of its Industry 21 platform, the
Singaporean government has embarked on a plan to establish Singapore as “a world class
education hub, a centre internationally renowned for its intellectual capital and creative
energy” (Singapore Economic Development Board, (SEDB), 1998). To achieve this end, a
policy to attract a number of ‘brand-name’, primarily American, universities to establish base
in Singapore has been initiated. In announcing this plan, the powerful government
instrumentality, the Economic Development Board (SEDB), declared that the arrival of these
institutions would “raise the intellectual and education standards of Singapore” and establish
industry-university links to increase the potential for commercialisation of new technologies
and new industries (SEDB, 1998). The successes of Silicon Valley and Boston Route 128 are
frequently invoked as ‘grids of specification’ against which to chart Singapore’s vision of an
education hub (SEDB, 1998; Tan, 2002). The plan is to have ten ‘world class universities’
(WCU) establish base in Singapore. So, far only two have done so – the University of Chicago’s
Business School has established an ‘office’ and INSEAD the French Business School has
established a ‘greenfields’ campus.
Although official declarations initially referred to the Singapore Management University as ‘a
beachhead of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School’, it is not a branch
campus of Wharton, as such. Rather, the government has entered into a five year contract with
Wharton Business School to establish the SMU which is being described as Singapore’s first
business university. SMU is poised to “...take on the American mind-set for management
education” (Cohen, 1997, p. A71; see also Davie, 2002). Its mission statement reveals its strong
discursive links with the market:
to groom visionary leaders and global entrepreneurs who can contribute and value-add
to society. To do so, SMU has adapted Wharton's top-notch curriculum and pedagogy
and fine-tuned them to suit Asia's needs13
The government’s plan to re-configure Singapore from a manufacturing centre to a node
within a network of global knowledge producers has seen the continuation of its role as a
developmentalist state. This is particularly evident in its support for the university sector.
SMU, for example, has received significant support from the Singapore government in all
aspects of planning, development and financing. The Ministry of Education subsidies the
tuition fees of all SMU students including international students. In return, international
students are required to work in Singapore for three years after graduation. The university’s
target is for 20% of its international student body to be international.
13. Welcome by President of Singapore Management University (SMU, 2002).
180Chapter 6 Singapore: ‘East’ Meets ‘West’
The University of Chicago has established a ‘branch’ of its Graduate School of Business (GSB)
in Singapore, offering the Executive Masters of Business Administration (MBA) degrees. It is
primed as an attractive option for Singaporeans and others in the region who currently
undertake MBA programmes in overseas high-prestige universities. The GSB is located in a
restored 118 year old heritage building, the House of Tan Yoek Nee, on the edge of the
shopping precinct of Orchard Road. Its architecture and aesthetic features, complete with
glassed-off security and security guards, suggests a hybrid institution that is half way between
a minitiaturised imperial Chinese palace and a corporate headquarters. It bears little
resemblance to a ‘greenfields’ or even, a city-based university campus.
Branding itself as “the home to Nobel laureates, leading economists, market theorists and
business experts“, the GSB’s targeted customer base is “leading companies throughout the
Asia-Pacific region”, who are anticipated to nominate their high-potential managers as
students. The MBA is not intended just for managers; it is also “intended for” and being
promoted to “government officials, physicians, lawyers and health service administrators as
well as entrepreneurs”14. The Chicago GSB declares in its promotional brochures that its
courses “provide the tools to out-think the competition in advance”.15 The inclusion of
government officials, health service administrators and physicians, into the discursive realm
of management education suggests its arrival as a ‘master discourse’: it has relevance to every
domain including those once thought of as non-profit.
Much is made of the GSB’s fundamental branding message which aims to set its programme
apart from other ‘brands’ of management education:
[The university’s) MBA graduates are highly sought after in the job market, with
median first year total compensation totaling $125,000 for 1998 graduates (Friedman,
1999).
These statements work to reinforce the view of education as positional goods. The subjectivity
produced by this discourse is that of the hypercompetitive individual. To ensure that the MBA
course offered in Singapore is no different from the course offered in Chicago, a raft of
promotional statements reassure prospective applicants and presumably GSB alumni that
“the professors who will teach in Singapore are the same ones who teach on our main
campus” and “Students who complete our new program in Singapore will receive the same
MBA degree as students in our six other MBA programmes...” (ibid).
A number of other collaborative ventures have been initiated as part of the Industry 21
blueprint: Logistics Institute – Asia-Pacific (TLI-AP), is a collaboration between the National
University of Singapore (NUS) and Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech); also high
profile, is the alliance between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the two
14. Quotes
from a brochure of the Chicago Graduate School of Business, Strategic Thinking for the New
Economy, University of Chicago (see Chicago Graduate Business School, 2000).
15. ibid.
181Chapter 6 Singapore: ‘East’ Meets ‘West’
Singaporean universities. The Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA) established in 1998 to promote
global engineering research, is a postgraduate programme which is receiving considerable
state support and surveillance16. Using a combination of face-to-face teaching and state-of-art
technology, SMA programmes are taught jointly by academic staff who remain based at MIT
and staff at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University and the National University of
Singapore. The SMA programmes are supported by generous government scholarships which
are available to applicants from the region.
Importantly, all these programmes are credentialled by local Singapore universities and not
by their American counterparts. Although these partnerships are discursively constructed as
‘alliances’ and although the official imagination and aspiration is for Singapore to be a a node
in the network of world class universities, the American partner universities appear to have
inserted the necessary clauses to protect their brand names.
Although Australia is the favoured destination for a large number of Singaporeans, no
Australian university was invited by the Singaporean government to participate in plans to
develop its ‘world class’ education hub. An Australian survey into Singaporean impressions
of Australian universities ranked Australia at number four in terms of quality after the United
States, the United Kingdom and Singapore (Milton-Smith, 2001). The reasons for this set of
impressions are complex and are observed to include a failure to “undertake corporate
image-building”; “failure [of Australian universities] to communicate their strengths and
achievements to the wider Singaporean community; and “a failure to have invested in
developing dynamic alumni associations” (p.7). Partnerships between Australian universities
and local private higher education providers are widely considered as detrimental to the
Australian reputation as these private institutions tend to cater for students perceived to be
academically weaker (p.6). In a country where positional status is key, the ‘hard sell’ of
Australian degrees which are a daily feature in the city-state’s main newspaper, is perceived
to further dilute reputation and quality (See Figure 8).
The sole non-American brand name university present in this fledgling education hub is the
French Business School, INSEAD. It has established a campus in Singapore, sprawled over an
area of 2.86 hectares, in effect establishing itself as a ‘greenfields’ rather than an urban campus.
The first phase of INSEAD’s campus was opened in 200017. Declaring that “INSEAD’s
expansion in Asia illustrates our commitment to globalism and multiculturalism”, the
founding Dean of INSEAD Asia also revealed that the university intended to use Singapore as
16. Regarded as a ‘high status’ project, the Alliance has been at the receiving end of significant ministerial
attention in its first year of operation, with senior teaching and administrative staff providing monthly
briefings to the Minister of Education (Interview with senior administrator of SMA programme,
November 1999).
17. Phase one of INSEAD cost US$21 million.
182Chapter 6 Singapore: ‘East’ Meets ‘West’
Figure 8: The Hard Sell
a springboard to access the lucrative Chinese market of consumers for management
education:
China is a special case. It is potentially the biggest market in the world. A Gallup survey
indicates that one in ten Beijing-based companies wants MBA training for their
executives. The same survey also found that 4,000 companies in Beijing alone are
willing to spend up to US$30,000 per executive for suitable MBA programmes
(INSEAD, 2002).
Here the statements imply the subjectivity of insatiable consumer of western educational
goods for the Chinese. China is constructed as a vast market which has the potential to offer
huge profits (“4000 companies in Beijing alone...”). While INSEAD is committing itself to
providing a management education and facilitating research which it describes as
183Chapter 6 Singapore: ‘East’ Meets ‘West’
“non-national”, it also suggests a lack-lustre approach which falls short of an inspiring and
innovative vision for future management education.
Under the auspices of building a knowledge-based economy, there has also been a move to
transform Singapore’s two local universities. Here too, the Singaporean education
establishment is looking to America as a role model. The President of the Nanyang
Technological University (NTU) noted “We are conscious that a lot of our investments come
from the United States…thus the university will be modelled on the American way”
(Cohen,1997). Another key university official observed, “American style higher learning has
become an absolutely crucial part of our vision for education... The very future of our
economy is based on this realisation” (ibid). The national desire for American style education
has been translated into a number of ‘technopreneurial’ and entrepreneurial programmes
offered by the two local universities in partnership with American universities18 (see Davie,
2002). These initiatives are expected to produce “[an] entrepreneurial drive and zeal” in
students, in addition to sowing the seeds for “a technopreneurial hub in NUS” (ibid).
Thus far, I have mapped the key initiatives which are being introduced by the Singaporean
government in its bid to leap frog into the ‘value-added’ world of international education
markets. This is an apt moment to pause and ask what these discussions into the minutiae of
micropractices underpinning the ‘education hub’ reveal about the nation state’s role in a
global economy. I attempt to make a provisional summary of the meaning of these discursive
practices.
First, the broad raft of policies under the Industry 21 blue print for World Class Universities
has seen increased government support for higher education. Steering towards a
U.S.-modelled education hub reflects an open acknowledgement by the government of the
reciprocal relationships between power and knowledge. Singapore’s national desire for an
American-style higher education with its strongly instrumental and entrepreneurial focus
indicates a changing global economic order evidenced by the eclipse of Britain's position as a
colonial and economic power and the consolidation of America’s dominance. Second, the
Singapore government’s commitment to bankroll these initiatives by offering large number of
subsidies as grants or scholarships suggests a continuity with its developmentalist role. It also
exemplifies the deployment of pastoral power whereby the government seals its legitimacy to
govern by facilitating access to the provision of high-status educational goods. In a society
where education is held in reverence, the ruling PAP party is able to continue to win popular
support from the broader community. However, an important difference is discernible in the
18. As part of an ongoing commitment to ‘foster creative talent’, among the ‘best and the brightest’, the
two local universities, National University of Singapore (NUS) and the Nanyang Technological Uni-
versity (NTU) have intensified their focus on programmes on entrepreneurship and ‘technopreneur-
ship’ courses with American institutions: Stanford University will be the partner institute for NUS and
Washington University’s Centre for Entrepreneurship and Technology will be the American partner
of NTU. Both schemes are backed by generous scholarship schemes from the Singapore Economic
Development Board and endowments from the private sector. The NUS internship is the more com-
prehensive and better resourced of the two initiatives.
184Chapter 6 Singapore: ‘East’ Meets ‘West’
role of this nation-state. It is now using its powers and resources to develop a private
university system that features links with brand-name, predominantly American, producers.
At the same time, the government is renewing its commitment to the two public sector
universities, arguing that:
left to the market, there will likely to be underinvestment in basic research and in
capital-intensive scientific disciplines...the public sector must step in to correct market
deficincies in disciplines critical to our continued growth and to safeguard objectives
that would otherwise not be served (Tan, 2002).
Singapore’s economic success was attained by instilling a particular set of attitudes and values
in the citizenry, with education being one of the key sites where the state inscribed the
development of ‘appropriate’ desires and subjectivities among its citizens, desires that
effectively concurred with its national interest and goal of economic prosperity. The state
controls the curriculum to promote a human resource model of education, which along with
National Education and compulsory military service for men (National Service), aims to
promote loyalty and obedience to authority (Spring, 1998, pp. 75-81). The highly competitive
nature of the education system is also noted for cultivating and perpetuating conservative
values in students (Oehlers, 1998).
In the Singaporean context, ‘steering the soul’ towards productive ends has seen the
deployment of a range of discourses including the crisis and survival discourse and the notion
of individual merit which decrees that ‘no one owes another a living’ (Chua, 1998, p. 33). An
East versus West discourse is also deployed along with other citizen-shaping technologies to
craft the Singaporean as a ‘unique’ subject – hard working, communitarian and respectful of
authority (George, 2000, pp. 49-56; Oehlers, 1998, pp. 7-8).
In the face of the pressures never to be complacent, one subject position that has emerged is
that of the driven, hypercompetitive and individualistic Singaporean. Having been subject to
intense competition for all of life’s amenities – education, jobs, status, physical space – some
Singaporeans have reacted to the state’s ambitions to always ‘be ahead, never be complacent’
by developing a kiasu subjectivity. Kiasu is a Hokkien term which when literally translated,
means ‘fear of missing out’ or competitive anxiety (Humphreys, 2001, pp. 99-102; Oehlers,
1998, p. 7). Kiasu-ism is generally associated with hyperindividualism and hypercompetition
despite official pronouncements on the virtues of communitarianism19. It is increasingly the
object of soul searching from younger Singaporeans:
...the Singapore dream has always been about the 5 C's. You are only somebody if you
have the latest and best products...This pursuit of material wealth combined with the
constant need to be No. 1 has created the Singaporean we hear so much about – the
kiasu Singaporean. Everything that revolves around the Singaporean ego is measured in
19. The traits associated with being kiasu are myriad and are described popularly as: “Grab first talk later,
Help yourself to everything, I first, I want, I everything, Vow to be number one, Winner takes it all! all!
all!, Don't trust anyone”(Ho, 2002).
185Chapter 6 Singapore: ‘East’ Meets ‘West’
terms of costs and benefits. The "what-will-I-gain-by-doing-this" mentality is foremost
in the kiasu psyche. And because this psyche is part of the Singaporean identity, rude
traits surface (Ho, 2002).
These comments from Australian alumni confirm the extent to which kiasu-ism governs the
Singaporean soul:
Singaporeans are very kiasu, always wanting to be number one and all
that...Australians...they learn things for knowledge rather than to be number one.
(Chinese-Singaporean, female, Australian educated IT professional).
As a steering technology, kiasu-ism expresses itself at work, in schools and even manifests
when Singaporeans are studying overseas:
...Like Singaporean students, they end up like, hog the reference books...So when
everyone else was trying to get it they just keep it to themselves...
It has become so competitive over here...Even like at work. You get people who tell you,
‘I don’t have this, I don’t have that, I don’t know this, I don’t know that’. And then you
realise they are keeping everything from you...
(Arab-Singaporean, male, IT professional).
Countries like Australia indirectly benefit from this national trait as kiasu-ism propels many
Singaporeans towards upgrading their qualifications. The following comments from
Australian-educated Singaporeans are fairly typical in describing the instrumental approach
to education: “Singapore is a very paper-based society”; “Singaporeans learn things to be
number one“. Regionally, there have also been rumblings that kiasu-ism has established itself
in the mentality of the government and is evident in the Singaporean government’s domestic
and foreign policy20.
Although a kiasu subjectivity with its corresponding emphasis on hypercompetitivity is
recognised as dysfunctional to cooperation and social capital, nonetheless it also has a
productive dimension. Singapore’s spectacular economic progress, its ability to exploit the
opportunities presented by economic globalisation, its ability to re-invent itself, can be
attributed to a kiasu mentality. What is less clear is how functional this hypercompetitiveness
will be for the future. This will ultimately depend on the architects of Singapore’s future – the
ruling People’s Action Party.
What vision is being constructed for Singapore by its leadership? What deductions can we
make about the types of nation-building strategies that are at work from this example of
Singapore? What types of subject positions will be privileged in the future? In a speech, titled
20. Here, a member of Malaysia’s opposition party, Keadilan, criticises the Singapore government for an
“Only I Count (OIC”) attitude in its relations with its neighbours. He notes, “It is a vivid demonstra-
tion of the'Kiasu' mentality at work in Singapore's foreign policy... (Muzaffar, 2002). Chandra Muzza-
far is a political scientist and deputy president of Malaysia's opposition party Keadilan (National
Justice Party). http://www2.jaring.my/just/SPORE.html
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