“A different language is a different vision of life.”
Federico Fellini
Singapore is a multicultural country that has four official languages in its constitution: Malay, Mandarin, Tamil, and English. Singapore also has an unofficial English-based creole language called Singlish. It contains Asian slang vocabulary from Malay, Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, and Tamil. The 2011 census states that of the 5.4 million residents of Singapore, 74% are Chinese, 13% are Malay, 9% are Indian, and 3.3%are from other descents such as Eurasian, European, or Arab. The government has implemented language policies that shift away from less popular forms of Chinese such as Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew and that point towards Mandarin. There has been a huge increase of Malay Singaporeans who now speak English at home, from 7.5% to 17%, from 2000 to 2010. It is noticeable that among major ethnic groups in Singapore such as the Chinese, the Malays, and the Indians that over the time from 1980 to 2010 there has been a massive surge in speaking more Mandarin and English overall.
The government is trying to exterminate the indigenous languages of the Singaporean people because they pose a lot of problems. There are political and social problems with having multiple languages and even multiple peoples in a country. Former Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew said that “For political and economic reasons, English had to be our working language. This would give all races in Singapore a common language to communicate and work in”. Prime Minister Lee was also a huge supporter of the ‘Speak Mandarin Campaign’ that started in the late 1970s. Lee describes his support for this initiative by once again covering issues created by multiple languages: “Not only was using dialects an obstacle to learning Mandarin and English in school, it would displace Mandarin and strengthen the position of English”.
Singapore was originally founded in 1819 as a trading post under the control of the British Empire. They finally gained self-governance in August 1965, and it was in September 1965 that it joined the United Nations. It shortly after joined the International Monetary Fund in August 1966 and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (which is now known as the World Trade Organization) in August 1973. Singapore held one of five rotational seats on the United Nations Security Council from 2001 to 2002, with their Ambassador serving as the president of the council. Since 1989 Singapore has participated in 16 UN peacekeeping/observer missions in countries like Kuwait, Angola, Kenya, Cambodia, and Timor Leste (U.S. Department of State). The IMF says that in regards to their organization that “Singapore plays a leading role in regional cooperation. Singapore is also a leading and active participant in global and regional organizations and supports the development of economic policy capacity in the region”. Singapore has a strong role in the WTO as it hosted the very first WTO Ministerial Conference in December 1996. Singapore was also among those WTO member countries that agreed to remove restrictions on basic communication and financial services and they also had a part in the WTO’s accession to the Government Procurement Agreement or GPA.
The GINI Index (alternatively known as the GINI Coefficient) was developed by Italian statistician Corrado Gini in 1912 and it captures the amount of economic inequality in a population. It ranges from 0 to 1, with 0 meaning perfect distribution and 1 meaning completely unequal distribution. For 2018, Singapore’s GINI coefficient was 0.458 or 45.8%, which is among the lowest levels they’ve had in a decade. This rating puts it among countries like the United States at 45% and China at 46.5%.
Gross domestic product or GDP refers to the total value of goods and services produced in a year, which is what mainly judge when thinking about the economic success of a country. A way to give this number some context and significance is by looking at Purchasing Power Parity or PPP which compares the purchasing power of other world currencies to one another. When you look at Singapore’s GDP based on PPP, you can see that it is $90,091.40, or a whopping 507% of the world’s average.
Local Singaporean news source ChannelNewsAsia reports on one of the latest concerns in Singapore this week: the coronavirus. Apparently there are 7 new coronavirus cases in Singapore, coincidently those who work in the area of transportation like taxi or private-hire drivers. This issue is sweeping the world as a whole, and it has created racism towards the Chinese where the virus is supposed to have originated from. Singapore has a majority of their residents coming from China, so of course this is devastating news for the country.
Asian Globalization 