Chinese Singaporeans: Difference between revisions

[[Singaporean Mandarin|Mandarin]] is another widely spoken language among Chinese Singaporeans. As of 2010, it was estimated that 47.7% of Chinese Singaporeans speak Mandarin at home.<ref name="Singapore Census 2010"/> Evidently, Singapore government's [[Speak Mandarin Campaign]] was launched in the 1980s to make Mandarin the [[lingua franca]] among the Han Chinese in Singapore.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.iasdr2009.org/ap/Papers/Orally%20Presented%20Papers/Society%20in%20Design/Envisioning%20Chinese%20Identity%20and%20Managing%20Multiracialism%20in%20Singapore.pdf|title=Envisioning Chinese Identity and Multiracialism in Singapore|author=Leong Koon Chan|access-date=14 February 2011}}</ref> It was intended to be the language to unify Chinese Singaporeans from different topolect groups by replacing the then [[lingua franca]] [[Hokkien]]. This was also because Mandarin was deemed more economically valuable, and speaking Mandarin would help Chinese Singaporeans retain their heritage, as Mandarin supposedly contains a cultural repository of values and traditions that are identifiable to all Chinese, regardless of topolect group.<ref>Lionel Wee, (2006). The semiotics of language ideologies in Singapore.</ref> In the 1990s, this campaign began to target the English-speaking Chinese Singaporeans. As a result of this campaign, Mandarin became widespread in places such as residential areas, neighbourhood markets and even business districts, with the various mother tongues of Chinese Singaporeans falling out of favousfavour among younger Chinese Singaporeans. Mandarin is also often spoken in most "traditional Chinese-based" schools, even though English is now their medium of instruction. Colloquially, as with all other languages spoken in Singapore, the Chinese Singaporeans prefer a localised flavour of mixing words from English, [[Hokkien]], [[Malaysian language|Malay]], and some other varieties, into their Mandarin speech. Most young Chinese Singaporeans are capable of conversational Mandarin but are weaker in their ability to write Chinese, or with higher level conversations on complex, specialised topics.

While elsewhere in Southeast Asia where the Overseas Chinese constitute a market-dominant minority, Chinese Singaporeans in direct contrast represent a market-dominant majority.<ref name="World On Fire">{{Cite book|title=World On Fire|last=Chua|first=Amy|publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing|year=2003|isbn=978-0-385-72186-8|page=[https://archive.org/details/worldonfirehowex00chua_0/page/178 178]|url=https://archive.org/details/worldonfirehowex00chua_0/page/178}}</ref><ref name="auto5">{{Cite book |title=World On Fire |last=Chua |first=Amy |publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing |year=2003 |isbn=978-0385721868 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/worldonfirehowex00chua_0/page/46 46] |url=https://archive.org/details/worldonfirehowex00chua_0/page/46 }}</ref> Amounting to nearly three-quarters of the Singaporean population, Singaporeans of Chinese ancestry are estimated to control 81 percent of the Singaporean's publicly listed companies by market capitalisation, 96 percent of the nations entire economy, in addition to contributing to 80 percent of Singapore's entire [[Gross National Product|GNP]].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Choi (최) |first1=Ho-Rim (호 림) |title=동남아의 중국인과 중국문화 |url=https://www.aseankorea.org/kor/Activities/activities_view.asp?boa_num=9603 |website=정보자료 |date=17 November 2015 |publisher=ASEAN-Korea Centre |access-date=14 July 2022|pages=9}}</ref><ref name="Chua 2003, p. 47">Chua (2003), p. 47.</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=Managing Across Diverse Cultures in East Asia: Issues and Challenges in a Changing Globalized World |last= Warner |first=Malcolm |publisher= Routledge |year=2013 |isbn= 978-0415680905 |pages=241}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=The Chinese Diaspora: Space, Place, Mobility, and Identity (Why of Where) |last= Ma |first=Laurence J. C. |publisher= Rowman & Littlefield Publishers |year=2002 |isbn=978-0742517561 |pages=98}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Yeung |first1=Henry |title=Corporate Governance and the Global Reach of Chinese Family Firms in Singapore |journal=Seoul Journal of Economics |publication-date= January 6, 2000 |volume=13 |issue=3|pages=308}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=Chinese Capitalism in a Global Era: Towards Hybrid Capitalism |last=Wai-chung Yeung |first=Henry |publisher=Routledge |year=2006 |isbn= 9780415408585 |pages=13 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=East Asian Transformation: On the Political Economy of Dynamism, Governance and Crisis |last= Henderson |first= Jeffrey |year= 2011 |publisher=Routledge |page=69 |isbn= 9780415547925}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=Asian Firms: History, Institutions and Management |last= Tipton |first=Frank B. |publisher=Edward Elgar Publishing |year=2008 |isbn=978-1847205148|pages=277}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=China's Communist Revolutions: Fifty Years of The People's Republic of China |last1= Draguhn |first1=Werner |last2= Goodman |first2=Gary S.G. |publisher=Routledge |year=2002 |isbn= 978-0700716302 |publication-date=25 October 2002 |pages=271}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=Overseas Chinese Entrepreneurship and Capitalist Development in Southeast Asia |last=Gambe |first=Annabelle |year= 2000 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |pages=10 |isbn=978-0312234966}}</ref><ref name="Vatikiotis February 12th 1998">{{cite book|last=Vatikiotis|first=Michael|url=http://www.chaihah.co.th/docs/Far%20Eastern%20Economic%20Review%20260698.pdf|title=Entrepreneurs|date=12 February 1998|publisher=Far Eastern Economic Review|location=Bangkok}}</ref><ref name="faqs.org">{{cite web|title=Chinese of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines – World Directory of Minorities|url=http://www.faqs.org/minorities/South-East-Asia/Chinese-of-Indonesia-Malaysia-and-the-Philippines.html|access-date=23 April 2012|publisher=Faqs.org}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VrO3O0h6I0wC&q=ethnic+chinese+owned+percent+of+the+gnp&pg=PA41 |title=Asian Brand Strategy: How Asia Builds Strong Brands – Martin Roll – Google Books |access-date=23 April 2012|isbn=9780230513068 |date=17 October 2005 |last1=Roll |first1=M. |publisher=Springer }}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=piNfUHUmPG8C&q=overseas+chinese+control+percent+of+the+economy&pg=PA152 |title=Business Networks in Asia: Promises, Doubts, and Perspectives – Google Books |access-date=23 April 2012|isbn=9781567203028 |year=1999 |last1=Richter |first1=Frank-Jürgen |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic }}</ref> Characterized as a diminutive yet prosperous outsider nation surrounded and standing out amidst its geographically larger, politically unstable, technologically underdeveloped, and economically impoverished Southeast Asian counterparts that have remained hostile to the city-state's continued existence since its founding. Throughout the far reaches of Maritime Southeast Asia, Singapore itself is known and regarded as a "small Chinese Island in a Muslim Sea," as the Chinese Singaporeans are reputed for their enterprising disposition, entrepreneurial prowess, financial savvy, and investment acumen that has led them to being regarded as the "[[Jew]] of the Orient" as a result of the community's extensive economic influence that pervasively permeates throughout the country and the wider regional Southeast Asian economic outspread at large.<ref name="World On Fire"/><ref name=FJR152>{{Cite book |title=Business Networks in Asia: Promises, Doubts, and Perspectives |last=Richter |first=Frank-Jürgen |publisher=Praeger |year=1999 |isbn=978-1567203028 |pages=192}}</ref> Chinese-owned Singaporean businesses form a part of the larger [[bamboo network]], an umbrella network of [[Overseas Chinese]] businesses operating in the markets of Southeast Asia that share common family, ethnic, and cultural ties.<ref name="Weidenbaum">{{cite book|author=Murray L Weidenbaum|title=The Bamboo Network: How Expatriate Chinese Entrepreneurs are Creating a New Economic Superpower in Asia|url=https://archive.org/details/bamboonetworkhow00weid|url-access=registration|date=1 January 1996|publisher=Martin Kessler Books, Free Press|isbn=978-0-684-82289-1|pages=[https://archive.org/details/bamboonetworkhow00weid/page/4 4]–8}}</ref> Given contemporary China's growing [[Economy of the People's Republic of China|economic strength]], a number of Chinese Singaporean businessmen and investors have turned to their ancestral roots through [[Kongsi|clan association]]s to rekindle with their Han Chinese ancestry as well as to exhibit a sense of ethnic pride by expressing their homage, tribute, and honour to their forgone ancestors by partaking in China's economic development through the pursuit overseas business and investment opportunities offered in the country. Many have beganbegun to regain consciousness of their ancestral roots by reining in on the plethora of business and investment opportunities presented as a result of the country's spectacular economic growth over the last four decades, by reinvigorating and revitalizing the economic development of their ancestral hometowns through the pursuit of various business and investment opportunities such as real estate development and property investing.

Singapore's Chinese education began with the establishment of [[old-style private Chinese school]]s (known as "Sishu 私塾") by early Chinese immigrants during the 19th century. These schools predominantly used various southern Chinese varieties (such as [[Hokkien]]) as its medium to teach [[Chinese classics]]. In the 1920s, as influenced by China's [[New Cultural Movement]], many [[Chinese schools]] in Singapore began to change its medium of instruction to [[Mandarin Chinese|Mandarin]]. During the British colonial times, the colonial government generally allowed the Chinese community in Singapore to organise and develop its own system of Chinese education. By the 1930s and 1940s, with donations and fundingsfunding from the public, more Chinese organisations began to set up more Chinese schools. In 1953, the chairman of [[Singapore Hokkien Huay Kuan]], Mr.[[Tan Lark Sye]] organised and helped to establish the first overseas Chinese-medium university ([[Nanyang University]]) in Singapore, leading to the establishment of a well-structured Chinese-medium education system (from primary school to university) in Singapore.