TNAG-2501-FCO40-3639-Relations-between-Hong-Kong-and-Commonwealth-countries-1992 — Page 20

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already undergone changes for various reasons. On the political front, Singapore has been among the firmest of

firmest of the ASEAN countries in opposing, together with China, the Soviet-backed Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia. Meanwhile, China's economic modernisation programme has attracted lively interest in Singapore. The Singapore Government has attempted to stimulate the expansion of economic links with the PRC, which has shown interest in drawing on Singapore's managerial and technical expertise. In addition to the wish to increase sales to China to offset the trade imbalance in China's favour, the recent economic downturn in Singapore has led the Lee Kuan Yew government to show increased interest in cooperation with China as

an outlet for Singapore's economic (Trade relations are covered in more detail in the

expertise. Annex.)

Cultural Aspects

13. Singapore's Chinese are not an entity. They are in part the former Straits Chinese. This was the name given to the large numbers of Chinese resident in the former Straits Settlements of Penang, Province Wellesley, Malacca and Singapore, the only territories in the Malayan peninsula where, before the Second World War, the British had direct jurisdiction. Those born in the Straits Settlements were automatically British subjects. Many of these Chinese had been settled in Malaya for up to three centuries, had been educated through the medium

medium of English and spoke English as their first language and sometimes no Chinese at all. The President of Singapore, Dr Wee Kim Wee, is a Straits Chinese. Mr Lee Kuan Yew, who is a Hakka, himself learned Chinese as an adult.

14.

To this group of Chinese were added later immigrants with Chinese as their mother tongue. The sense of being Chinese was deliberately stimulated by China's Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) in the 1930s and later, and was further enhanced by the outbreak of Sino-Japanese hostilities.

The establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, and Mao's assertion that China had stood up, strengthened China's attraction as a source of pride. In the 1950s and 1960s, doubtless encouraged by anti-colonialist feeling, there was a wave of interest within Singapore in the Chinese language and cultural heritage, as well as support for the Communist cause, both movements being particularly strong in the Chinese schools and Nanyang Chinese University. With independence, this surge of enthusiasm has waned.

In Chinese-medium schools the proportion of new pupils enrolled dropped from 21 per cent in 1975 to 0.7 per cent in 1984, while there was a corresponding rise in the figures of English-medium schools over the same period. Faced with this trend, the government decided in 1984 to phase out the remain- ing Chinese-medium schools and go over completely to a school system in which English is the first

the first language and language of instruction. Nanyang had already ceased to be a Chinese-medium university on its merger with

with the University of Singapore (subsequently renamed

renamed the National University of Singapore) in 1980. More and more of the better educated younger Chinese speak their parents' dialects

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