The Decline of the Chinese Language Schools
The development of China watching in Singapore bears some similarities but more differ-ences from the Western context. Though China watching in Singapore was not started as part of the Cold War as in the West, it was also heavily influenced by political considerations as it was developed under strong government auspices. On the surface, Singapore looks very Chinese, with ethnic Chinese constitutes over 70% of its population. In reality, for political reasons, Singapore did not provide a conducive intellectual climate for scholars to become interested in modern Chi-nese studies.
Before its independence, Singapore used to be a “Chinese educational bastion” for Southeast
Asia developing a comprehensive Chinese-language education system without government sup-port. Singapore also founded the first Chinese-speaking university outside of China entirely with private efforts, the Nanyang University. However, the Chinese education system had quickly de-clined after independence as the Singapore government led by Mr. Lee Kuan Yew did not develop or promote Chinese education while suppressed the Chinese newspapers (Nanyang Siang Pau and Sin Chew Jit Poh), as both were regarded as hotbeds for spreading Communism and Chinese chauvinism.6 Though the left-wing Chinese groups had originally facilitated his accession to pow-er, Lee quickly split up with them after he had recognized the Communist threat and how it could endanger the survival of Singapore in the geo-political context of the anti-Communist Southeast Asia. He also realized that Chinese chauvinism could breed communalism, which would threaten the stability of Singapore as a multi-racial society. Thus, the government cracked down on the Chinese newspapers and introduced measures to integrate all schools by starting bilingual educa-tion at the primary level, with English as the major medium of instruceduca-tion leaving Chinese, Malay and Tamil to be taught as mother tongues.
As a result, the Chinese language ability (both reading and writing) of the young generation of Singaporean Chinese had been severely weakened. As more and younger Singaporean Chinese started to speak English at home and to each other outside, their Chinese language standard fur-ther went down. Since books and newspapers from China were banned in Singapore and visits to China prohibited, young Singaporean Chinese had grown up with very little background knowl-edge about the history and geography of China. All this had contributed, intentionally and unin-tentionally, to what may be called the “de-Sinification” of the younger generation of Singaporean Chinese. Subsequently, the government did encourage them to study more Chinese and to speak more Mandarin by starting the annual “Speak Mandarin Campaign”; but it had not effectively re-versed this process. This also explains why later on Singapore had to import China experts from PRC (People’s Republic of China) to carry out its “China watching”!
Not surprisingly, Singapore’s road to China watching had gone through a rather tortuous process comprising three phases: (1) It started off from the government’s sponsorship of classical studies to promote Confucian values by setting up the Institute of East Asian Philosophies (IEAP) in 1983. (2) IEAP was then reorganized in1992 to become the Institute of East Asian Political Economy (IEAPE), which was an independent think tank specifically for China watching; and (3) IEAPE was dissolved in 1997 and renamed the East Asian Institute (EAI) to become an au-tonomous research organization within the National University of Singapore. The main mission of EAI, as a member of the wider university community, has gone from the early days of “China watching” to now both watching China and studying China.
The key person behind the whole process was the late Dr. Goh Keng Swee, who was Singa-pore’s first Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Lee Kuan Yew’s “right-hand man” from the start), having held portfolios in finance, defence and education.7 Goh was behind Singapore’s Confucianism campaign when he was Minister of Education, and he was also the Chairman of IEAP, which pro-vided the intellectual support to this campaign.
After retiring from politics in 1984, Goh became an Economic Advisor to China’s State
6 For further information, please see Lim, Mun Fah, “Chinese education in Singapore: As you sow, so will you reap,”
Sin Chew Daily (November 26, 2009); and Thum Pingtjin, “Chinese Language Political Mobilization in Singapore, 1953-63,” (PhD thesis for Oxford University, 2011).
7 For Goh’s contribution to Singapore’s development, including China watching, see Emrys CHEW and Chong Guan KWA (eds.), Goh Keng Swee: A Legacy of Public Service (Singapore: World Scientific, 2012).
Council’s ‘Office of Special Economic Zones’ under Vice-Premier Gu Mu. Goh’s China assign-ment had opened up his interests in China’s economic reform and developassign-ment, which in turn made him see the need to start China watching in Singapore.8
In 1990, John Wong was appointed by Goh as Director of IEAP and later IEAPE. With constant guidance and advice from Goh, Wong IEAPE started the business of China watching in Singapore. In 1997, IEAPE was renamed EAI, with Wang Gungwu as its Director and Wong, Re-search Director. Currently, the PRC-born Zheng Yongnian, who joined IEAPE in 1996, has suc-ceeded Wang as Director of EAI.
Watching China to Understand China at IEAPE
Wong’s immediate mission at IEAP was to change its research focus from classical studies to the study of contemporary China with special emphasis on China’s economic reform and politi-cal changes, or “China watching” in short. The initial batch of China scholars at IEAP comprised a motley group of former officials associated with the deposed Zhao Ziyang regime. They were all happy to be out of China after the Tiananmen crackdown. Except for a few, they were not dis-sidents in the sense that they were banned from returning to China. Academically speaking, they were not really scholars with training to do research. They were more like interpreters or deci-phers of what was going on in China. In any case, we found them very useful because they had lived and worked in China, thereby capable of providing insider knowledge and first-hand experi-ence on understanding developments in China.
For the first two years, “China watching” was carried out virtually under the cloak of Con-fucian studies, for good political reasons. China watching was actually all about researching on
‘Communist’ China, which was still a politically sensitive subject in Singapore, and more so in the region around Singapore because of its anti-Communist legacies. Singapore established formal diplomatic relations with China only in October 1990, shortly after Indonesia had done so. Back in the early 1980s when Deng Xiaoping had already started economic reform, publications and newspapers from China were still banned in Singapore. Indonesia did not even allow the importa-tion of all Chinese books and newspapers regardless of their origins—anything bearing Chinese characters, even from Taiwan. In Singapore, even by 1990, news about China seldom appeared on the front page of the local Chinese newspaper Lianhe Zaobao while the English Straits Times used the term “red” for things associated with PRC.
Because of these Cold War legacies, we thought it would be better for IEAP to carry on its sensitive research under the cover of classical studies for a start, especially since most of our re-searchers at that time were from China, with some having complicated political backgrounds. It was only in late 1992, when China had opened up much more after Deng’s Nanxun, IEAP pro-ceeded to change into ‘IEAPE’ or the Institute of East Asian Political Economy.
Recruitment of suitable researchers had posed even greater challenges. Back in the early 1990s, it was extremely difficult to recruit suitably qualified PRC scholars with training in modern social sciences. Wong made several trips to the USA, UK and Australia for recruitment purposes, without much success. China in the 1980s had sent quite a number of students abroad for further studies, but only a small proportion of them were in the social sciences, with even fewer seeking
8 See ZHNG Yongnian and John Wong, Goh Keng Swee on China: Selected Essays (Singapore: World Scientific, 2013).
to pursue a PhD. In 1991, one could virtually count with his own fingers the number of PRC stu-dents who had obtained a PhD from a good university in Economics, Politics or Sociology. Those who did so would prefer to stay in America, even for a teaching job in a small college. And then not all of them were suitable for our kind of empirical research at the Institute: a PhD in Econom-ics, for instance, was likely to be too narrow or too ‘mathematical’ for policy-related studies. In fact, IEAPE had continued to be dogged by this serious recruitment problem throughout.
In the spring of 1992, Deng Xiaoping in his celebrated Nanxun speech singled out Singapore as a country that had achieved both rapid economic growth and good social order—something the Chinese called ‘spiritual civilization’. He urged China to ‘learn from Singapore’ and later ‘do better than Singapore’. Shortly afterwards, the Chinese Communist Party dispatched a high-level delegation to Singapore, led by Vice-minister Xu Weicheng from its Propaganda Department, for a study trip.9 Following Xu’s visit, about 400 delegations from various PRC localities and orga-nizations visited Singapore, and many of them came to IEAPE to hold discussions and exchange views.
Over the years, IEAPE had participated in many activities connected with high-level of-ficial visits from China and Taiwan, including Zhu Rongji’s trip to promote the Pudong project and the ‘Wang-Ku’ meeting to discuss the Cross-(Taiwan)-Strait issue. In fact, several members of China’s Politburo came to the Institute to hold discussions with Goh. Many of China’s top technocrats today have also been to the Institute for various activities, including Zhou Xiaochuan, Governor of the People’s Bank of China; Ma Kai, Minister at the State Council; and Guo Shuqing, Chairman of China Securities Regulatory Commission.
China Watching in Action
As IEAP and later IEAPE were charged with the primary mission of conducting policy re-search, all new scholars with university background had to adapt themselves from publication-based academic research to practical policy-oriented research. In reality, both require sound scholarship as foundation plus familiarity with basic methodology and modern social science tools. The major difference lies more in the approach as well as the attitude of the researcher. Un-like academic papers, a good piece of policy-related research usually needs to be well focused and factual, not meant to test any hypothesis or reach any preconceived conclusion. It also needs to be concise, informative and readable.
We took the view that for useful policy-oriented China watching, we should carefully moni-tor domestic developments in China in order to understand what is actually happening there. Goh wanted us to give low priority to international relations studies, a subjective considered to be full of personal perceptions and opinions. In discussing US-China relations, for example, a China scholar in Beijing would take an entirely different view from an American scholar in Washington, and indeed different American scholars from the left or right would further hold different views.
It would also be hard for our scholars to come up with a very good paper on this subject to be able to ‘impress Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew”, as indeed many Western scholars and commentators
9 The delegation returned to China and quickly put out a book, Xing-jia-bo jing-shen wen-ming or ‘Singapore’s Spiritual Civilization’ (Beijing: Red Flag Publishers, 1992). The book highlights Singapore’s social and cultural development in a very positive manner. It was made available to all Party branches in China, creating a good image of Singapore among the Party grass-roots members throughout China.
themselves have constantly come to Singapore to consult Lee on such issues.
Thus, the main research agenda for IEAP/IEAPE was to focus primarily on the domestic political, economic and social development of China, and issues that were directly related to eco-nomic reform and development. Such a research agenda still by and large constitutes the bulk of EAI’s research activities today. For many decades, modern Chinese studies in the West, especially in USA, had have come under heavy influence of the Cold War, focusing largely on problems and negative aspects of developments in China. Accordingly, many Western commentaries on China have tended to be highly opinionated and heavily biased.
IEAP/IEAPE had made strong efforts to consciously follow a more ‘objective’ approach to China research, which was as far as possible trying to be non-Western and non-PRC in perspec-tive. Looking back, such an objective and neutral approach has served us very well, rendering our research reports more relevant and more useful to the Singapore government. In fact, this has still constituted the basic tenet of China watching for scholars at EAI today.
Knowing that Taiwan had the best ‘China watching’ facilities in Asia, we assigned a scholar to go through Taiwan’s major research publications on China, including those put out by its mili-tary intelligence units (such as Fei-qing yan-jiu 匪情研究 or ‘bandit studies’) through the decades.
The conclusion was startling: no evidence to show that those major events like the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution had been predicted or anticipated beforehand in all the publications. This reminded us of the limits of China watching. Henceforth, we have come to adopt this as the car-dinal principle for our China watching: “No foreign China expert knows what is happening inside
Zhongnanhai (中南海, the residence of China’s top leaders).”
The primary mission of IEAP/IEAPE was to update the Singapore government by informing it what was going on in China. For this purpose, short, readable research reports were circulated to cabinet ministers, ministers of state and permanent secretaries of various ministries. Wong wrote the first report as IEAP China News Analysis No.1, which went out on 3 January 1991. This was soon followed by other papers issued under different titles: IEAP Background Brief, IEAP
Commentaries, IEAP Discussion Paper and IEAP Internal Study Paper. In the first two years,
most of these papers were written by Eu Chooi Yip (formerly Secretary of the outlawed Malayan Communist Party’s Southern Branch and just returned to Singapore from his exile in China) and Wong while Eu also translated into English many papers originally written in Chinese by PRC scholars. In short, IEAP/IEAPE practically functioned as a closed-door government think tank on China, with its research findings kept away from the public domain.Studying China to Understand China at EAI
In March 1997, IEAPE was closed down and renamed East Asian Institute (EAI) to become an autonomous university-level research organization within the National University of Singapore.
EAI’s mission would be to conduct both academic as well as policy-related research on China (in-cluding Taiwan and Hong Kong) and China’s changing relations with its neighbours in East Asia.
In a sense, this contemporary China studies organization had undergone a double reincarnation, first from IEAP to IEAPE and then from IEAPE to EAI.
To fulfill its academic mission, EAI started to organize weekly seminars and regular public lectures. Over the past 15 years, EAI has organized many international conferences and work-shops on developments in China while EAI scholars have also produced numerous books related to China and other East Asian countries (mainly English but also some Chinese), working papers
(both English and Chinese), and journal articles. Besides, EAI has published two academic jour-nals, China: An International Journal, an internationally referred journal with citation indexes of Thomson Reuters, and East Asian Policy.
Meanwhile, its policy-related research has been expanded to meet its public service obliga-tions by regularly circulating (now every week) to the Singapore government informative and pol-icy-related reports as EAI Background Briefs, on developments in China and the rest of East Asia.
By the end of 2012, EAI has sent out 781 issues. Some react to an event like the unrest in Tibet or riots in Xinjiang while many deal with developments of topical interest concerning the 18th Party Congress, the National People’s Congress, and leadership changes at both central and local lev-els. Still many deal with topics like social protests, housing and healthcare reform, pollution and the environment, China’s growing relations with the region and with the US. These Background Briefs are usually based on in-depth research and specialization of the individual scholars. To-wards the end of every year, the Institute issues Background Briefs dealing with China’s domestic political and social development throughout the year, its economic growth, and major changes in its foreign relations. Among the regular readers of the Background Briefs in the Cabinet is Mr.
Lee Kuan Yew.
Besides, EAI often conducts briefings to ministers and senior officials in the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and the Ministry of National Development (MND) on developments in China and Japan. From time to time, it was often asked by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to brief visiting foreign dignitaries. Over the years, EAI was also commissioned to undertake consultancy reports for various ministries, including a detailed evaluation of the China-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP) for MTI.
EAI has developed into a foremost Research Institute on East Asian development, particu-larly on modern China, in the whole of Southeast Asia. Within Singapore, it is perhaps the only research institute among many others that has successfully maintained a good balance between academic and policy-related research. Recently, an organization at the University of Pennsylvania has ranked EAI as one of the top five “thank tanks” in Asia.