At the beginning of the year I spent in Singapore (2006-2007), I often heard Singaporeans remark on how “the damn foreigners are taking over our country, especially those from China.” I found that funny since a white person once muttered the same thing about me and my Singaporean friends (“damn Chinese taking over”) on our way to New York from Toronto. Don’t hate too much on foreigners, I thought every time I heard a Singaporean complain. After all, if you go overseas, you’ll be a damn foreigner too.
I loved Singapore because it was so diverse in its Chineseness. The Chinese Singaporeans, the Chinese Malaysians like myself, and ethnic Chinese born in nearby Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam; we were all there. There were also handfuls of ABCs and CBCs and BBCs and European Chinese and South American Chinese and my friend the Tahitian Chinese. Singapore was a unique place created by the Chinese diaspora, and continued to draw the Chinese diaspora to its shores — it was Chinese diaspora central! I also felt at home there because it was the one country in the world where I felt truly comfortable as an English and Manglish/Singlish-speaking overseas Chinese. Finally, I was in a place where the majority population looked like me and spoke like me too.
But as time passed, I started feeling a disparity — it certainly seemed like there were more mainland Chinese than other Chinese foreigners in Singapore. I also started consuming Singaporean media which was full of negative stories of “PRC Chinese” shenanigans. Although I was surrounded by many mainland Chinese friends — after all, four of my nine housemates were from China – I started getting irritated at this large group of faceless people in the news, the “other PRCs” who threatened to undermine my paradise, those who weren’t appreciating Singapore, those who were seemingly just up to no good. I would get irritated whenever someone who “sounded PRC” bumped into me on the subway, cut in front of me in a queue, trotted around with an old Singaporean uncle. Forget about being bound by our common ancestry – anyone too different from me, from us, from our values, was frowned upon. Today, I know full well that positive encounters I had with mainland Chinese greatly outnumbered any negative ones, but at the time, my prejudice grew.
And then my time in Singapore was up. Little did I know that two years later, I would be living in China.
I’ve been here two years, the typical overseas Chinese girl who has gone back to her ancestral land. I am in a place where the majority population look like me, but speak none of my tongues in a familiar way. The Christine in Singapore who frowned on the “PRCs” could never have imagined this experience. I am amongst people who at times live up to the worst mainland Chinese stereotypes out there, but then shatter those stereotypes with their kindness and humanity, their sense of humor and compassion. I am here now, and Singapore and those former prejudices feel very far away.
At least, until this afternoon, when I saw this:
From insing.com:
Netizens are in an uproar after a netizen received a letter stating that there are now nearly 1 million Chinese nationals in Singapore.
This comes as a shock to many netizens, who until now, were not aware of the actual numbers of Chinese nationals in Singapore.
The netizen had received a letter for his application to UnionPay, a Nets Value-added service.
In the letter, UnionPay terms itself as “the preferred mode of payment for the nearly 1 million Chinese nationals living and working/studying in Singapore”.
Many believe the stated numbers are accurate as UnionPay is a reputable multi-national company.
According to a population census dated September 2010, Singapore’s population currently stands at about 5.07 million. That makes nearly one in five here a Chinese national.
Netizens largely react with shock and dismay to this news, calling it a “staggeringly huge number”, others worry that the number of Chinese national immigrants will continue to increase, leading to further overcrowding in public transport.
Many also remark that Chinese nationals may not be familiar with Singapore’s culture and could erode social graciousness.
If true, this news comes as a shock to me as well. Knowing that there are “many mainland Chinese” in Singapore is one thing; being given a figure like 1 million — when your country’s population is only 5 million — is something else. I can understand why Singaporeans are upset. Take away the mainland Chinese aspect and replace it with “nearly 1 million eskimos are living in Singapore” and you would still get an uproar. Tell any country a fifth of its people are all from one other place, and you’d get a strong reaction. It’s not so much hating on PRCs and more about uncertainty over your own identity, isn’t it?
The heated debate continues, much of it focused on relaxed immigration as a political move, and discussion of Singapore-China relations now that Singapore is “on its way” to becoming “Chinapore.” As an outsider who is neither Singaporean nor mainland Chinese despite the affinity I feel for both places, I only have a detached concern. My interest is primarily in how the average Singaporean’s hostility to “invaders” in large numbers is nothing new; the people in Diaspora @ chinaSMACK write about the hardships and hostilities involved in migration every day. And yet it’s fascinating how the “Other” in Singapore’s case is people from the same racial/ancestral roots as the country’s majority population. I’m trying to imagine Americans in an uproar over “too many whities” trying to come into the US. I really can’t.
The US did go through periods of anti-white-immigrant sentiment, when people were upset about large numbers of Irish, Italians, or Polish immigrants. But I doubt the percentages ever got as high as the numbers of “PRC Chinese” in Singapore.
When I visited Singapore last April and June, my friends and I were approached by women in their 40s asking for directions from time to time; in front of MRT, waiting for bus, as well as in the shopping malls. The consensus of the citizens is that they come mainly as sex workers but there’s no way that these aunties at this age would come to Singapore for prostitution, maybe massage parlors or other oddball works since SG dollars is on the rise in the past year.
I think you should be more concerned about our home country Malaysia. We have influx of foreign male workers(Bangladesh and Pakistan) in the construction and security sector as well as foreign female(from nearby ASEAN countries as well as PRC) to flourish the prostitution industry. Ha Ha.
Singaporean, Malay, Hongkong, Taiwan is all Chinese people, but with different system, why are you guys complaining on each other, that so snobbish. The rich complain at the poors.
Some facts:
There are approximately:
Chinese= 1.4 bilion (Soon to be 900 Million if one kid policy is going to be keep going)
White people: 1.376 billion ‘white’ people in the world
Indian people= 1.2 Bilion
But almost 50% of the world today everywhere is mixed down the line althouhg we just all appear the way we are in our own generation. and to add to this ,the world population is now 7 billion and counting at this very moment.
Mars here we come
The Chinese business culture is the worst in the world. A guy who didn’t get scammed in Russia and Dubai, did get scammed in China. That says alot. It’s not so much the people, but the culture they bring. In China businessman only care about money.
In china you have something called face. it is not honor. Honor is doing the right thing when people don’t watch. Face is the other way, doing the right thing only when people watch, doing the wrong things if for personal benefit when nobody watch. Knight in shining armor never exist in china.
Every country that receives immigrants faces the issue that the new residents come from a different culture.
The proper response is to have a strong program of teaching the language, culture and polite and proper behavior to the newcomers. Most countries do not do this to their own detriment and to that of the newcomer.
Recounted by a Singaporean Chinese:
Four girls – one each from the US, Japan, Singapore and China – board a small boat to cross the strait, but a squall kicks up and threatens to swamp the boat. The ferryman tells the girls to throw things overboard to lighten the load.
The American girl takes off her jewelry and throws it overboard with “We’ve got lots of gold in the US”.
The Japanese girl throws all her electronics overboard, saying “We’ve got lots of electronic stuff in Japan”.
The Singapore girl searches and says,”We don’t have much of anything in Singapore. Oh! I know…” and throws the mainland Chinese girl overboard.
Surely this is Lee Kuan Yu’s eugenics fantasy – a Singapore swamped with ethnic Chinese rather than Malaysians?
government policy in singapore to maintain a chinese majority .. a bit like israel, in that.
How would UnionPay know, considering that Statistics Singapore doesn’t release any numbers by country of origin?
According to the official stats, there are 5.1 mn inhabitants as per 12/2010, of which 3.2 mn citizens, 0.5 mn with PR status and 1.3 mn non-residents. Hard to believe that of the 1.8 mn PR + non-residents, 56 % (1 mn out of 1.8 mn) are PRC Chinese. To me, it always seems that most Chinese faces you encounter in a business environment are in fact Malaysian citizens with Singapore PR.
“To me, it always seems that most Chinese faces you encounter in a business environment are in fact Malaysian citizens with Singapore PR.”
No, Chinese from Malaysia do not flock to Singapore for PR (those I know and where I’m living stay in Malaysia as Singaporeans buy Malaysian properties), and those from mainland China are obvious, very obvious, to Singaporeans as the author of this blog states, “Singaporean media which was full of negative stories of ‘PRC Chinese’ shenanigans.” I suggest you keep up with the local media, look to one of the main issues brought up in the last local election,and rather than blind insistence actually ask Singapore-born Chinese (if you know any) what’s up with the mainland Chinese coming to Singapore. I’m sure you’ll get an earful, enough to open your eyes.
The influx of PRCs have been for a few years, not surprised to hit a 1 million. But i think it should be more than 1 million as we see many PRCs in Singapore whenever we go out. Even seen neigbhours marrying PRC women and in the hawker centres we can see many old men with young PRC women. Those are either on student pass or social visit pass. Why the government give out so many passes to the PRCs? I am sure Singaporeans dont welcome them to our country, they have been going around throwing their weight around and shouting at us Singaporeans. They are a big bully to the Singaporeans. They mocked at our Singlish, sow discord among races in Singapore, create many social problems like breaking up families, getting a PR status and divorced the husband and many more to come.
“Tell any country a fifth of its people are all from one other place, and you’d get a strong reaction.”
I recently heard 1/5th of Shanghai’s population is actually Japanese. Dammit where the hell are they hiding???
Something tells me these Singaporeans wouldn’t be in such an uproar if there were mass immigration of whites to their country.
Ah, the beauty of the colonized mind!
No, your caricature of a “colonized mind” disserves the Singaporean public’s concerns about a dense population booming from 4.30 millions in 2001 to 5.08 millions in June 2010 and growing, the government believing the island can comfortably grow to over 6 millions, and this increase comes mostly from mainland Chinese immigrants whose habits and attitudes are often antagonistic to Singaporeans’ way of living. It is not an issue of white or yellow as you imply, but the aggravation of numerous immigrants failing to respect or abide by established custom and manners. Without a doubt, failing to arrest the declining birthrate among local Chinese – even by using financial and arranged inducements – prompted the Singapore government to allow massive immigration by mainland Chinese, but most Singaporeans think that a mistake because the newcomers are not fitting in. This is no mystery, just read the local newspapers. That “something” talking when you wrote your comment was uninformed opinion.
Curry Day in Singapore, the popular consequence to complaint by a newly immigrant PRC family who complained to their Indian neighbors about the strong odor, asking them not to cook curry until and unless the Chinese family was not at home.
This riled up enough folks and public comment that not only is curry the national dish but August 21 has become Curry Day in Singapore.
That’s easy for you to say, you’re Chinese-Malay. Where do you consider your homeland? In Malaysia with the other Malays? If you were born an ethnic majority in your own native homeland you probably wouldn’t like it either if it were being overrun by outsiders.
I am Chinese Malaysian. My homeland is Malaysia, where I am an ethnic minority.
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Singapore is a very young country compared to most countries. All these years, we are so used to immigrants from all over the world. But in recent years, we saw a huge influx of PRC nationals in Singapore. Why has that been an issue to us? The main problem is they have brought their ill-mannered cultures into the country. I have personally witnessed all these in Singapore.
1) a Chinese woman ignoring a taxi queue and run to get into the next taxi that came by. Luckily the taxi driver chased her off the taxi.
2) in many occasions, chinese nationals would talk so loudly on their mobile phones. At the end of the conversation, hundreds of people would have know their life stories.
3) Spitting. I have witnessed a Chinese national attempting to spit on the nicely paved unlettered path in Singapore. At the moment when he suddenly realized that he’s in Singapore, he ‘sucked’ he saliva back, it’s so disgusting.
4) noise pollution, Why couldnt the Chinese nationals be more considerate to keep their volume to a reasonable level. Nowadays, I could hear Chinese people talking everywhere. They would screamed from one end to the other instead of taking 2 steps closer to each other.
5) I went to many bars in 5 star hotel to order cocktail and the waitresses are mostly Chinese nationals who doesn’t even understand basic English. How did they pass the interview in the first place?!?
I could list many more examples. So end of the day, it is not about the nationalities who migrated to the country. It’s about how these ‘foreigners’ should be guided to adopt the local cultures and not cause the good living standards that we currently have to drop because of their bad mannerism and culture.
Speaking as a chinese living abroad in USA, although we share the same DNA, our education and mentality are totally different. It’s rather a comparison of sheep (Chinese living abroad) and wolves (Mainland Chinese). It’s a reality that mainland Chinese are invading every pro western countries. Fact is we Chinese living abroad and our decedents enjoyed a better life style and greater freedom. If communists china was such a great place to live why these mainlanders finding ways to escape china. Fact is Communism stands for the Abolition of Private property. You may accumulate a fortune but it can disappear at any given moment, therefore all these rich Chinese mainlanders will do anything to escape with their wealth. Another thing is China is so overpopulated, competition amongst each other is so fierce it’s a life or death environment. Survival of the fittest and smartest often produce underhanded and evil people. Where else in the world do you see more occurrences of people being run over by a couple of cars and by-standers turn a blind eye, poisoning of food products:milk etc, and rewriting history: IE 40 million died of famine also the worlds greatest number count in history and it was erase from all Chinese historic records in china.
I wonder what the SG government is up to. Perhaps it sees economic growth coming from population growth rather than competitive advantages. But no one can blame PRC citizens for seeking opportunities abroad. “Last year, nearly 130,000 Chinese students studied in the US – a record number, and a 30 percent increase from the year before.” http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/1115/Record-number-of-Chinese-students-flock-to-US-colleges And the vast majority will remain abroad and will bear children with non-PRC passports, even if they do eventually return to the PRC to work.