The Southeast Asian Woman Writes Back by Grace V. S. Chin & Kathrina Mohd Daud

Author:Grace V. S. Chin & Kathrina Mohd Daud
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer Singapore, Singapore

5.3 Singapore and Economic Nationalism

Singapore seems to be the most successful example of a strong state development through economic means. In 1965, with its limited resources and unprepared professional sector, its leaders felt that a fast-track development plan was vital to its survival. What Singapore has become in its four decades of independence has been largely considered a miracle. Its per capita income is one of the highest in the world, exceeding even those of European economies. As a whole, Singapore’s economic policies have produced high growth, low inflation, a very healthy balance of payments without recourse to external borrowings as well as substantial gains in living standards. It enjoys a status that ranks it with major international economic players.

Singapore’s success can be attributed to government participation in economic development. Lim (1988 ) explains that the government promoted economic growth by creating a favourable and depoliticised labour situation, by providing skilled manpower through education , excellent infrastructure and tax incentives. Most importantly, it participated directly in the economy, establishing wholly owned and partly owned industrial and commercial ventures.

Singapore’s economic strategies have been the state’s resounding response to the uncertainties of post-independence life. State presence takes the form of aggressive economic programmes which permeate all aspects of national life. The state operates on the pragmatic premise that a sound economy must be built first, after which all citizen privileges will follow. The state is not very tolerant of dissent, since this creates fissures in the laboriously built economic wall. In the early decades of nation-building, Singapore neglected the other significant aspects of nationhood such as culture and the arts as these were seen as higher needs that could only be met after a certain level of affluence and ethnic coexistence has been reached. Denyse Tessensohn’s short story “Kumari” (1998 ) dramatises the effects of this neglect by showing that the state sometimes forgets there are citizens other than the productive ones.

As economic success and competitiveness have become a national raison d’etre and an essential ingredient of the national fibre, the government has from time to time reminded the citizens of their responsibility to maintain Singapore’s success. Economic nationalism has evolved into a binding ideology with the capacity to rally a multiracial, capitalist, and technology-oriented nation into a formidable force of nation-builders. Catherine Lim’s story, “The Paper Women” (1993) demonstrates how mothers are drawn into the utilitarian aspects of nation-building by virtue of their wombs.

No evolution preceded Singaporean statehood. Statehood was foisted on an unprepared, still dispersed nation. Singapore in 1965 did not have a national identity . The state preceded the development of nation, became the first major symbol of identity, and has since set out to create others. The state was imposed on an inchoate nation whose varied races led lives that were relatively independent of each other. Thus, it is the state that has nursed the young republic into the robust entity that it is now. What is believed to be typically “Singaporean” is state-induced, formed not so much

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