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Singapore BETWEEN THE WORLD WARS, 1919-41
The Singapore economy experienced much the same
roller-coaster
effect that Western economies did in the period between
the world
wars. A postwar boom created by rising tin and rubber
prices gave
way to recession in late 1920 when prices for both dropped
on the
world market. By the mid-1920s, rubber and tin prices had
soared
again and fortunes were made overnight. Tan Kah Kee, who
had
migrated from Xiamen (Amoy) at age seventeen, reportedly
made S$8
million (for value of the
Singapore dollar--see Glossary)
in 1925
in rubber, rice milling, andd shipping; and Hakka
businessman Aw
Boon Haw earned the nickname "Tiger Balm King" for the
multimillion-dollar fortune he made from the production
and sale of
patent medicines. Although they never amassed the great
fortunes of
Singapore's leading Asian businessmen, the prosperous
European
community increasingly lived in the style and comfort
afforded by
modern conveniences and an abundance of servants.
The Baba Chinese leaders focused their attention on
improving
educational opportunities, which meant lobbying for free
Englishlanguage primary schools and more scholarships for
English-language
secondary schools. Although English-language schools
expanded
rapidly, most educated Straits-born Chinese studied at
Chineselanguage schools. Of the 72,000 children in Singapore
schools in
1939, 38,000 were in Chinese schools, 27,000 in English
schools,
6,000 in Malay schools, and 1,000 in Tamil schools (See
Education
,
ch. 2).
The Straits-born Chinese increased their share of
Singapore's
Chinese population from 25 percent in 1921 to 36 percent
in 1931.
Chinese immigration was drastically cut by the Immigration
Restriction Ordinance of 1930, which limited immigration
of
unskilled male laborers. Put in force to combat
unemployment
resulting from the Great Depression, the ordinance dropped
the
number of Chinese immigrants from 242,000 in 1930 to
28,000 in
1933. Immigration was further restricted by the Aliens
Ordinance of
1933, which set quotas and charged landing fees for
aliens.
Executive Council member Tan Cheng Lock and others
bitterly opposed
the policy in the Legislative Council as anti-Chinese.
The administration of the colony continued to be
carried out by
the governor and top-level officials of the Malayan Civil
Service,
posts that could be held only by "natural-born British
subjects of
pure European descent on both sides." The governor
continued to
consult with the Legislative Council, which included a
handful of
wealthy Asian business and professional leaders, who
served as
nonofficial members of the council. The mid-level and
technical
civil service positions were open to British subjects of
all races.
Very few Asians opposed the system, which gave the
official members
the majority on the legislative and executive councils. In
the
1930s, Tan agitated unsuccessfully for direct popular
representation and a nonofficial majority for the
legislative
council, but most Chinese were satisfied to devote their
attentions
to commercial and professional affairs and the growing
interest in
nationalism in China.
The sympathies of even the Straits-born Chinese lay
with their
homeland in the period between the wars. A Singapore
branch of the
Guomindang was active for a few years beginning in 1912,
and Chinaoriented businessmen led boycotts in 1915 against Japanese
goods in
response to Japan's Twenty-One Demands against China.
These demands
were a set of political and economic ultimatums, which if
acceded
to, would have made China a protectorate of Japan. Mass
support for
Chinese nationalism became more evident in 1919 when
demonstrations, which turned violent, were staged in
Singapore. In
the early 1920s, Sun Yat-sen was successful in convincing
Singapore's China-born businessmen to invest heavily in
Chinese
industry and to donate large sums of money for education
in China.
Tan Kah Kee contributed more than S$4 million for the
founding of
Amoy (Xiamen) University in 1924. The Guomindang also sent
teachers
and textbooks to Singapore and encouraged the use of
Mandarin (or
Guoyu) in Singapore's Chinese schools.
Although Mandarin was not the language of any of
Singapore's
major dialect groups, it was considered a unifying factor
by the
various Chinese leadership factions of both Singapore and
China.
Singapore's first Chinese secondary school, established by
Tan in
1919, taught in Mandarin, as did a growing number of
Chinese
primary schools. In 1927 the Guomindang increased the
number of
promising students brought to China for university
education and
began a concerted effort to extend its control over
Chinese schools
in the Nanyang by supervising their curriculum and
requiring the
use of Mandarin. In the late 1920s, the colonial
authorities had
become increasingly aware of growing left-wing politics in
the
Chinese schools and sought to discourage the use of
Mandarin as
required by the Guomindang. By 1935, however, Mandarin had
become
the medium of instruction in all of Singapore's Chinese
schools.
Following the breakup of the short-lived alliance
between the
Guomindang and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the
communists
established a Nanyang Communist Party in 1928. Outlawed
and
harassed by the Singapore police, the party was
reorganized in 1930
as the Malayan Communist Party
(
MCP--see Glossary),
centered in
Singapore. For the remainder of that year, it had some
success in
infiltrating teacher and student organizations and staging
student
strikes. In early 1931, however, the seizure by the police
of an
address book containing information on the newly organized
party
and its connections with the Far Eastern Bureau of the
Communist International
(
Comintern--see Glossary) in Shanghai, led
to arrests
and the near destruction of the CPM by the following year.
The
Guomindang also had its problems during this period. The
party's
membership in Singapore had expanded rapidly until 1929,
when the
colonial administration banned the Singapore branch of the
Guomindang and fund-raising for the party in China.
Concerned about
the increase of anticolonial propaganda, the Singapore
government
censored the vernacular press, severely restricted
immigration, and
cut off aid to Chinese and Tamil schools. During the
1930s,
attempts by the communists and the Guomindang to organize
labor and
lead strikes were also suppressed by the colonial
government.
Chinese nationalism and anti-Japanese sentiment in
Singapore
increased throughout the 1930s. The fortunes of both the
Guomindang
and the MCP rose with invasion of Manchuria by Japan in
1931 and
the start of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. The CCP and
the
Guomindang formed a united front in December 1936 to
oppose
Japanese aggression. The Guomindang called upon the
Nanyang Chinese
for volunteer and financial support for the Republic of
China,
which had promulgated a Nationality Law in 1929, by which
it
claimed all persons of Chinese descent on the paternal
side as
Chinese nationals. Tan Kah Kee headed both the Nanyang
Chinese
National Salvation Movement and the Singapore Chinese
General
Association for the Relief of Refugees, as well as the
fund-raising
efforts for the homeland among the Malayan Chinese.
Chinese
government agents used the Singapore Chinese Chamber of
Commerce
and other local organizations to organize highly effective
boycotts
against Japanese goods. Singapore's Chinese also boycotted
Malay or
Indian shops selling Japanese goods, and Chinese merchants
who
ignored the boycott were severely punished by extremist
groups.
The British authorities struggled vainly to control the
tide of
anti-Japanese feeling by forbidding anti-Japanese
demonstrations
and by banning importation of anti-Japanese textbooks from
China
and the teaching of anti-Japanese slogans and songs in
Chinese
schools. They were alarmed at the communist infiltration
of the
Nanyang Chinese National Salvation Movement and other
Chinese
patriotic groups. The banned MCP claimed a membership of
more than
50,000 by early 1940. Although nominally partners in a
united front
in opposition to the Japanese, the MCP and the Guomindang
competed
for control of such organizations as the Nanyang Chinese
Relief
General Association. Nonetheless, Singapore's Chinese
contributed
generously to the support of the Chinese government.
Data as of December 1989
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