Filipinos did react to Duterte’s comment, passed on as a joke, about the advantages of becoming a province of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).  But it was not a Filipino who made this statement; the quote did not come from a Filipino. The statement was from Bilahari Kausikan, a career Singaporean ambassador who had retired as Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  

Singapore is more Chinese than the Philippines.  Ethnic Chinese make up about 75% of its population.  Mandarin is one of four official languages.  Although Malay is the national language, the government has been promoting proficiency in Mandarin for decades now.  All prime ministers of Singapore have been Chinese.  Kausikan himself is of Indian descent.

In his long career, Kausikan apparently acquired some notoriety among his peers as an “undiplomatic diplomat,” nevertheless earning respect as an effective professional in the diplomatic service.  Retirement has permitted him to indulge with less constraints a caustic style that is ruthless in exposing what he considers foolish arguments.  I can imagine his regional colleagues bristling at his statements suggesting that Singapore’s role in ASEAN consisted in helping the organization avoid senseless and self-destructive policies.  

For good or ill, he does not seem to know or care very much about the Philippines, noting that it suffers from as many political as natural calamities as to make the distinction unnecessary.  That smug sense of superiority that an increasing number of Singaporeans take towards the region’s other nationalities does leak out in his essays.  Sadly, I cannot disagree with many of the points he makes.  Who can argue with logic and with success?  In fairness, he is as unforgiving of the folly demonstrated by Great Powers.  He warns that even the foolishness of Great Powers must be taken seriously, because they can cause greater harm.  

Kausikan also published in 2019 a collection of essays in a book entitled Singapore Is Not an Island.  Why the seemingly perverse insistence on claims that appear to defy indisputable facts?  Singapore is an island and Singapore is Chinese. But his subject is neither geography nor demography.  On the map, Singapore is a little drop of red spilling out of the Malaysian Peninsula.  While geographic factors are enduring, they do not determine destiny.  

Singapore is insular, but also global, in the role it plays as a hub for trade, industry, and finance, which increasingly does not require extensive territory or even physical infrastructure.  Neither does his narrative obsess on Chinese demographic dominance in the multiracial society, to which his own Indian ethnicity might have tempted him.  His concern focuses on national identity and international relations, and how, despite ethnic diversity, the two must reinforce Singapore sovereignty.  

British decolonization in Southeast Asia initially united Singapore, Sarawak, Brunei, and North Borneo (Sabah) in the Federation of Malaysia in 1963.  Indonesia, under Sukarno, branded the Federation as a neo-colonial creation and supported the 1962 insurgency launched in Brunei against it and conducted a three-year Konfrontasi (1963-66) to prevent its establishment.  The inclusion of Sabah in the Federation also ensured opposition by forces within the Philippines.  The Federation lasted less than two years, not because of external resistance but by the discord on how to integrate a small, predominantly Chinese Singapore into a largely Malay community under one national identity.  

Singapore wanted a Malaysian Malaysia that, despite population disparities, would not discriminate among the country’s main ethnic communities: Malay, Chinese, and Indian.  Malaysia wanted to ensure Malay political primacy for the majority ethnic group.  The policy conflict erupted into racial violence in Singapore in July and September 1964.  In a more benign form of cosmetic, ethnic cleansing, Lee Kuan Yew and Tunku Abdul Rahman agreed in 1965 on the withdrawal of Singapore from the Federation to become a separate, independent state.

Surrounded by Malay nation-states, Singaporean leaders had to accept the reality that critics among its neighbors would perceive and project it as a Chinese country.  This was an inconvenient truth.  The Chinese had been active as traders and artisans in the region for hundreds of years, but always as a minority group often subjected to discriminatory treatment by colonial governments and the independent states that succeeded them.  

Rejecting the Chinese country branding was important for Singapore for two reasons; first, lest their neighbors assume that Singapore would tolerate the kind of abusive, humiliating treatment they have sometimes inflicted on their minority Chinese communities.  Second, Singapore also had to demonstrate that its majority Chinese population did not discriminate against its minority populations, lest this provoke an appeal for aid and protection from their kin across the border.

After 50 years as an independent state,  concern over these two issues has largely dissipated.  Malay Singaporeans have shared in the country’s economic success that its neighbors cannot dispute.  On the average, they are enjoying levels of prosperity that Malay-majority countries have not yet attained.  Kausikan concedies that its ideal of multiracial meritocracy has not been perfectly achieved — because perfection is not possible this side of heaven.  But he believes that the burden of proof has shifted to those who would question Singapore’s treatment of its minority communities?  Doubts will perhaps remain until the public sees the ultimate proof of ethnic/cultural color-blindness that will come when Singapore elects a non-Chinese prime minister.  Tharman as president won’t cut it.

Ironically, the bigger problem now is persuading the PRC that, notwithstanding its Mandarin competence and superb Chinese cuisine, Singapore is not a Chinese country. – Rappler.com

Edilberto de Jesus is a senior research fellow at the Ateneo School of Government.