THE BABAS OF SINGAPORE
What makes Singapore different? The majority of Singapore's
population is ethnically Chinese, but Singapore is largely free of
corruption, has sound institutions and the rule of law dominates.
It's nothing like China. The answer lies in a historical division
in Singapore's Chinese community between the babas and the sinkeh.
The sinkeh, comprising the majority of the city-state's population,
were the recent immigrants from China, or whose parents were born
in China. They spoke Chinese, lived like Chinese and considered
themselves overseas Chinese. In Indonesia, such Chinese were called
the totok.
The babas, on the other hand, also known as Straits Chinese,
were Chinese more in name than practice. They were the descendants
of the very early Chinese immigrants (Hokkiens from the Fujian
province) to the straits settlements of Malaya (Penang, Singapore
and Malacca). They assimilated with both the local Malays and the
colonising British, whom they especially admired. The babas
developed their own culture, cuisine and language - Malay liberally
sprinkled with Hokkien.
The sinkeh were the traders, the coolies and the shophouse
owners. The babas became the lawyers, the civil servants and the
politicians; they attended the local English-language schools run
in the tradition of the UK's public schools, and Oxford and
Cambridge. If the sinkeh received an overseas education at all, it
was in Nanking or another university in China. Although the sinkeh
dominated Singapore's population, it was the babas who dominated
public decision-making. In effect, a
baba minority captured sinkeh Singapore, and that minority's
attitudes were more those of Victorian England than
China.
It was the babas who were the framers of Singapore's rules and
institutions. Many of Singapore's most prominent Chinese have had
baba backgrounds. Lee Kuan Yew, who became prime minister of
Singapore aged just 35, is the most obvious example. He claims a
Hakka heritage, although his upbringing was that of a baba: at
home, he spoke English with his parents and baba Malay to his
grandparents. "Mandarin was totally alien to me and unconnected
with my life," Lee said of his childhood.
For Lee, Chineseness was an acquired skill and later a political
necessity. He was not brought up as a Chinese with a focus on
China, but as a baba who looked to England. He followed the
conventional career path of a baba and went to London to study law.
And so Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore became Harry Lee of Fitzwilliam
College, Cambridge. His father had given him and two of his
brothers English, as well as Chinese, names. Did Lee run Singapore
as a piece of Asia mired in Chinese ways? No. He ran it in a manner
to which a British colonial administrator would have aspired.
That other great framer of Singapore's institutions, Goh Keng
Swee, who rose to become finance minister and deputy prime
minister, is the epitome of the baba elite. Goh was born in 1918 in
Malacca, the epicentre of baba culture, into a baba family. His
parents were English-oriented Chinese Methodists.
The baba influence is now more subtle, but still there.
Singapore's current prime minister Lee Hsien Loong has the
strongest baba pedigree of any of the country's leaders.
http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/news/648273/
From another paradigm, Singapore could be seen as the domination
of one group over another.
Most of the leadership has been drawn from the Baba Chinese
community, a group cultured in Malay and “Colonial British.”
Babas hold strong family values, community cohesiveness, and
tend to respect authority.
This is in contrast to the southern mainland Chinese migrants to
Singapore who fled oppression and tended to oppose authority.
Singapore has thus been run more in the manner to which a
British colonial administrator would have aspired.
Thus patriarchal leadership with neo-Victorian values is not
something the migrating Chinese accepted openly.
Singapore has seen many campaigns,
incentives, and deterrents to achieve the values of the Baba
class.
http://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/one-view-over-a-thousand-singapores-cadre-system-4852/
http://www.asiawind.com/pub/forum/fhakka/mhonarc/msg01319.html
http://www.singapore-window.org/sw06/0609FEER.HTM
http://www.scribd.com/doc/117973252/Carl-Trocki-Singapore-Wealth-Power-and-the-Cul-BookFi-org
http://www.amazon.com/Ruling-Elite-Singapore-Networks-Influence/dp/1780762348/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1405057460&sr=1-1&keywords=michael+barr+singapore
