Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore, passed away early this morning, a great man in a small country. As a descendant of Chinese, Lee Kuan Yew established Singapore, which holds a pivotal position in the world. Chinese people often feel honored when they mention Singapore and Lee Kuan Yew. But is Singapore really a "Chinese society"? This is a problem.

If you look closely at Singapore, you may find it strange. Because in Singapore, the symbols that can represent the country are basically used to the best of their ability and distributed to different ethnic groups-although Chinese account for the absolute majority of the population, the stars and moons on the Singapore flag symbolize Muslims, English is the national language, but the characters are simplified in Chinese mainland, and Taiwan Province is the area that Lee Kuan Yew visits most often. All this, will it be too strange? Is it different from our general impression that Singapore is a "Chinese society"?

We need to know a little about the history of Singapore. Singapore used to be called "Temasek", which is a Malay name. In the 14th century, Wang Dayuan translated "Shima Zhilue" into "Simaxi". In 1819, T. S. Raffles, an Englishman, opened Singapore as a trading port, which opened the colonial era of Singapore. Singapore didn't have a large population at first. In the 195s, because the Chinese coolies were ruthlessly exploited, people's grievances were great. In 1877, the British colonial government set up "Chinese Protectorate", with W. Pickering as the first guard department. Thanks to protection, the number of Chinese immigrants increased greatly after the 188s.

The people who came to Singapore were mainly Chinese from the south of China, and most of them were coolies from the South Asia. Trocchi, in his book Opium and Empire: Chinese Society in Colonial Singapore, introduced the early British methods of governing Chinese in Singapore. The British divided the Chinese into different "gangs" based on dialects, and then arranged for people with the same dialect to live in different areas, where the colonial government and gang leaders ruled.

in p>19, the British Overseas Chinese Association was established, and the influence of Chinese expanded. At that time, Singapore already had the inheritance of Chinese culture, such as Lin Wenqing, who was called "the sage of Singapore", and Qiu Yiyuan, who was closely related to the royalists (he was also the first person to call Singapore "Sin Chew"). It was during this period that Kang Youwei, Sun Yat-sen and others came to Singapore successively, which is said to have caused great repercussions. There is no denying that Singapore has very close ties with China.

In the second half of the 19th century, Chinese education in Singapore gradually took shape. Yan Yongcheng, a businessman, sponsored the establishment of Anglo-Chinese Free School in 1886. At the opening ceremony, he said, "I am glad to know that students can also acquire Chinese knowledge here. For me, Chinese is an important part of Chinese children. When children grow up, they will also be proficient in Chinese English, which will be better citizens than those who only receive English education in order to live in the Taiwan Strait colony, but abandon the language that originally belonged to their country. " After the May 4th Movement in 1919, local Chinese schools in Singapore began to teach vernacular Chinese.

In the long history, Singapore has formed a unique local culture. For example, there is a kind of "Pidgin" called "Bahamalai" in Singapore, which is a mixed language of Malay, Fujian and English. The identity of Singaporeans also became a topic worth discussing at that time. For example, whether Lin Mousheng, an overseas Chinese martyr during World War II, loved China or Singaporeans at his sacrifice has become a controversial mystery.

From the above, we can know that the ethnic groups in Singapore are not single. Especially after the war, from India in South Asia to Indonesia, Malaysia and other countries in Southeast Asia, the old imperialist colonial countries in Europe were shattered and the anti-colonial movement rose. Against this background, the People's Action Party led by Lee Kuan Yew held high the banner of "multi-race" and won the 1959 Singapore general election because of anti-colonization. It can be said that Singapore's identity, to a large extent, was born from the resistance to "outsiders".

So, what's the attitude of the China government in the independence movement? In 1956, when David Marshall, who was about to take office as Singapore's chief minister, visited Beijing, Premier Zhou Enlai told him that the China government wanted to see Chinese Singaporeans acquire local citizenship and devote themselves wholeheartedly to Singapore. Any Chinese who acquired Singapore citizenship would immediately stop "having China citizenship, but of course they still retained their inherent ethnic and cultural relations". In 1963, the British merged Singapore and Malaysia on the grounds that Singapore was too small to be independent. However, the two regions quickly experienced violent contradictions in various aspects, and the Federation was declared to be broken after only two years. In 1965, Singapore was forced to become independent.

With such a small political body, in the context of the Cold War and in such a complicated Southeast Asia, Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew must choose a sideline. His choice is to "draw a line" with Chinese mainland. This decision was not made after the founding of the People's Republic of China. As early as 1949, when the University of Malaya was established in Singapore, only British graduates were admitted. If they went back to the mainland for further study, they could not return to Singapore. Lee Kuan Yew firmly allied himself with the United States, and was merciless in rooting out leftist forces at home and rectifying all Chinese schools. From 1959 to 1978, the number of Chinese students dropped from 46% to 11%. In 198, Nanyang University and the University of Singapore merged to form the National University of Singapore. In the past, Nantah became Nanyang Technological University today, and English education was absolute. In 1983, the number of primary schools in Chinese schools was only 2%.

But as a pragmatic politician, Lee Kuan Yew is a magician who plays with ten balls at the same time. He skillfully juggles with various political forces, and he will never let go of such a huge market as China. In 1976, he visited China and met with Mao Zedong. After that, Chinese was "salted fish" in Singapore, and Lee Kuan Yew himself took the lead in studying Chinese hard. At the same time, Lee Kuan Yew stressed the need to rebuild Chinese traditional culture in Singapore. Behind all this, there are very practical considerations. Showing kindness to China has brought great benefits to Singapore, such as Suzhou Industrial Park in Singapore.

By the 199s, the first generation of bilingual people had grown up, representing the rise of totally different Singaporeans. An article entitled "Identity: Crisis and Opportunity" in the Straits Times on September 21, 1996 wrote: "I sympathize with the older generation, I know them, and part of what I have today is what they left behind. But I know I must be different from them, because I don't have the psychological and historical burdens they bear. "

According to the p>199 census, Chinese accounted for 77.7% (2.1 million/2.1 million) of the total population in Singapore. In fact, as early as 1824, in the first population survey in Singapore, Chinese * * * accounted for 31% (3,317 people), which was already the majority. However, Singapore's pragmatic attitude makes it a "pluralistic society" more than a "Chinese society". The proportion of non-Chinese population in Singapore exceeds 22%, and geographically, because it is in the middle of the Malay archipelago, the continuation of Singapore's civilization does not come from China (North Korea, Japan and Vietnam are in the radiation zone of Chinese civilization). When we are talking about Singapore, we'd better not take it for granted that she is a Chinese society.