Singaporeans
Stupid - or smart?
One view from Taiwan: They're good collectively, but individually they're lost. By Seah Chiang Nee.
Apr 23, 2006

SINGAPOREANS are affluent, educated, but are they really survival smart?
In a world of harsher living, this question that never dies has again grabbed the public focus here with a general election less than two weeks away.

At the core of the debate: Without natural resources, the Singaporean increasingly has to depend on his own guile, not only a good education, to survive; has he got it?

It’s not a new debate. In the past decade, the Education Ministry has changed the education system to teach independent thinking and entrepreneurship to correct some fundamental defects in the average worker.

The average Singaporean is good at academic studies and works hard, but falls short on individual initiative and streetwise qualities, relying too much on the government for help.

Revisiting the debate is controversial Taiwan lawmaker Li Ao, who recently ranked Singaporeans rather lower in natural intelligence to the people in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

“Taiwanese are scoundrels, but lovable, Hong Kong people are craftier, (Chinese mainlanders are unfathomable) and Singaporeans are stupider,” he said, adding that it is partially due to genetics.

The original migrants who came here from China were of “poor stock”.

Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew once told Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping that the ethnic Chinese in Singapore were descendants of illiterate coolies and farmers from southern Fujian.

This had made them less able than the people of Hong Kong or Taiwan, whose ancestors were mainly businessman or technocrats.

Singaporeans could function well only as a group, not as individuals, Li told a Chinese newspaper. They would never be non-conformist or stand out above the crowd.

“If you ask me, other than Lee Kuan Yew, his son Hsien Loong, politicians aside, I can only think of a cute girl, (pop star) Stephanie Sun, there aren’t many other outstanding people. The impression that I get (of normal Singaporeans) is stupid”.

Singapore’s system, Li said, stemmed from the ancient Chinese political philosophy of legalism, which emphasised on the rule of law.

“Singaporeans do not break rules, but they also do not stand out,” he said in Mandarin.

He said Lee Kuan Yew had wanted to build a British-style democracy but because the people were not up to scratch, they only knew how to toe the line.

His report card on Singapore has shaken up the people at a time when election fever is rising, indirectly touching on a campaign issue – government control on society.

Predictably, Singaporeans have reacted angrily to the terms “stupid” and “poor genes”, dismissing them as a popularity stunt that takes no account of their successful, modern achievements.

This “genetic weakness” doesn’t aptly describe today’s diverse, more mature and worldly-wise generation.

But some critics say there is some truth in what Li said, but insist that the fault lies not in genes, but in years of political and social conditioning by a top-down government.

One writer however, said: “A better word to describe the Singaporean is naïve, which comes about because of a paternalistic and rather efficient government.

"Everything is so structured and laid-out that the people do not need to fight for a living, blunting their ability to compete. They’re lulled into thinking the outside world also behave like Singapore.”

Businessmen from Taiwan and Hong Kong are more alert to opportunities, as well as cheats, compared to even the capable Singaporeans, whose preoccupation is getting a high salary.

They know where to take the short cuts when faced with a problem; Singaporeans will just sit and wait for better days.

Under the Lee Kuan Yew leadership, the collective good comes before the individual, so the republic’s success is a “collective creation”, Li added.

The individual is often lost on his own. It has led some critics to ask whether the Singaporean has an original viewpoint of his own beyond what the government says.

“I won’t say we are stupid. We are just not daring and street-smart,” commented a Singaporean studying abroad.

In his university, other Asian students would walk up to the microphone and talk about some cause, not the Singaporeans, he said.

Li Ao is not alone in his views. Singaporean columnist Wong Lung Hsiang said it reflected what he heard in China that “Taiwanese are shameless, Hong Kongers are heartless, Singaporeans are ignorant”.

In Greater China, law-abiding Singaporeans have long been seen as gullible.

In a commentary in November last year, Wong advised Singaporeans to treasure their own system at home, “but when you are away, you should know how to adapt to others”.

What Chinese Singaporeans have inherited from their grandparents is peasant culture, explained “peasant judge” online.

“Peasants don’t care for much else except a bowl of rice on the table, a roof over their heads, and the chance to go out to the rice fields to do the daily back-breaking chores day in day out.”

Politics, too, is affected. Almost everyone goes to the polls with his rice-bowl in mind.

It occupies the citizen’s mind a lot more than his counterparts in other countries, who are more passionate about issues like justice and equality.

“Just imagine, well-informed Singaporeans advocating a one-party rule, saying it is good for the future. If this is not stupidity, what is?’ asked redbean.

This could be a recipe for future trouble should a foreign predator one day use this character weakness to take over the country.

All he needs to do to retain the people’s compliance is by keeping their stomach full and their mind empty.

(This first appeared in The Sunday Star, Apr 23, 2006).