4/17/2013

Singapore’s changing demography



The population of Singapore used to be 75% Chinese, 12% Malay, 8% Indian and 5% Others or thereabout, plus or minus here and there. What is the racial distribution today? Assuming that this racial mix remains fairly unchanged, the distribution will be 37.5% Chinese, 6% Malay, 4% Indian and 2.5 Others. How so? Coz the other 50% has gone to foreigners, either PRs or transient workers. And what is the racial mix of the 50% foreigners? My guess, 50% from India, 30% from China, 10% from Philippines and 10% for the rest of the world. I don’t have the official data and this is just a guesstimate. Add this to the whole population mix and we will have (37.5 + 15) 52.5% Chinese, (4+25) 29% Indians, (3+5) 8% Malay if the Pinoys are categorized as Malays, and 5% for the rest of the world. I think this mix can be seen in the trains or buses and can be confirmed by a random check on the commuters inside a train cabin or inside a bus. I stress again, the numbers are educated guesses.

What does the new mix imply or how would it affect the social and cultural pattern of the population? Let me just look at one specific area, language or lingua franca. Singapore has been selling itself as a destination for education with English as a predominant language. English is our lingua franca and foreign students can come here to be immersed in an English speaking world. This is particularly attractive to the PRC and Korean students and also students from Asean who wanted to become more proficient in English. The students could get not only a quality education but also learn a useful English language by interacting with the locals.

This advantage has changed. When the foreigners are a minority, they could turn everywhere, every corner to find a Singaporean to talk to, in English. Now this is becoming a rarity. For every Singaporean they met, they will meet another foreigner. Even in the schools and universities, the number of foreigners is increasing. It will mean that foreign students will have lesser opportunities to learn the English language, in particular the PRC students, many will end up speaking Mandarin and not English. This could also apply to students from other countries when they too find it difficult to associate or communicate with Singaporeans in English.

When Singaporeans are a minority or near minority, the Singapore culture, way of life and even the English language will have lesser room to express itself. The only people that could benefit from this demographic shift are actually the Singaporeans. Singaporeans will now be more international, having been exposed to more foreigners, integrated with more foreigners, and could even learn some Tagalog, Hindi and perfect their Mandarin. It would be reversed integration in a way as the dominant Singaporean way, culture and language will no longer be dominant anymore. Singaporeans are no longer the dominant or outright majority people in the island.

As they said, or joke about, Singaporeans need not have to leave the island to see the world. Hop into a train and he will be in a sea of international citizens. If they want a little more of India, go to Little India. And there is China Town and Geylang, and Beach Road to be in Bangkok or Orchard Road to be in Makati, or Botanic Garden to feel more like in the Philippines. Singaporeans can save a lot of money from travelling when the world is at their doorstep.

The demographic change has a lot of tangible benefits for the Singaporeans sure. Singapore is truly an international city and Singaporeans are international citizens.

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe the government wants to rediscover "Singapore", and it was not Raffles but the PAP who discover "Singapore."

Anonymous said...

Your forecast of Singapore Population Mix could have included another 2 scenerios :
1. When native Singaporeans becomes the Minority Race;
2. When native Singaporeans becomes "Extinct".
By such time, assume PAP would not have to be accountable as it would also have "vanished" from the Singapore political scene.

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

The 'native' or born and bred Singaporeans are already a minority. With 50% foreigners in the island and the other 50% supposedly Singaporeans plus PRs. then within the Singaporeans maybe 10% or 20% are new citizens.

Born and bred Singaporeans already an absolute minority now. At the rate it is going, yes, soon an endangered specie.

Anonymous said...

RB, pap never consider that they may be voted out and replaced by new citizen so they may extinct too

Anonymous said...

It's just a matter of time before PAP ministers get voted out by the Pinoys and we get a Filipino Prime Minister.

And then PAP will cow peh cow bu come begging to Singaporeans to do national service by voting PAP again.
Just a useless bunch of entitlement minded blood suckers.
It will be good to replace the entire bunch of them in GE 2016.

Anonymous said...

The change is demography is very serious and will have grave consequences in the future and well being of the country.

The Govt is changing a successful formula to a questionable formula.

Anonymous said...

By 2050, native Singaporean will become extinct, and the impact on you and me is beyond what we could imagine and recognize. However, those able lots can choose relocate elsewhere.

Uniquely Singapore!

Ⓜatilah $ingapura⚠️ said...

Relax, unscientific, emotion-driven, delusional fools. There is only one race: The Human Race.

It doesn't matter which ethnic group makes up the aggregate.

>> What does the new mix imply or how would it affect the social and cultural pattern of the population?

It doesn't imply anything. -- but people will make up shit to start trouble. Guaranteed.

Some people will fuss and fight because they simply don't like others who "look different" to them, or have petty beefs with some "foreign" cultural aspects.

But in fact, we are all the same species, and new culture will simply be an aggregate or an integration of various cultural ideas, and some new ideas which simply "arise" from a spontaneous order.

So I say again -- relax unscientific fuckers, we are all the same mammalian hominid primate species, with large brains and made up of lots of bacteria. i.e. you and I are mostly GERMS! Bacteria outnumber our "human" cells by as much as 10 to 1.

If you are still really hung up about race, then accept the scientific fact that We Are All Africans

Anonymous said...

We are all primates, that's scientifically for sure for Matilah. And there is only one Matilah in 7.5 primates, this one we all can be sure too. But, is he African, Asian, Angmo or mixture? Does not matter, mixture or not, he is still primate. Knn.

Ⓜatilah $ingapura⚠️ said...

Dude, we are ALL African. Even you. So consider yourself a monkey who is good at knn ;-)

Anonymous said...

I no see any African that looks like a Chinese or angmoh. MS, do you look like an African?

Anonymous said...

Does it matters ?

Like African or Gorilla oso primate what !

Anonymous said...

By 2030 the Chinese population may shrink to 40% and Indian also 40%, Malay 10% and others 10%. By 2050, maybe Chinese 30%, Indian 50%, Malay 10, Others 10.

Anonymous said...

Scientists say all humans including Singaporeans are all descended from Africans.

But PAPies are descended from LKY.
And LKY is descended from Heaven.
LKY is the Son of Heaven.

oldhorse42 said...

The racial mix is classified into four categories. In cat 1 is the Chinese, cat 2 is the indian, cat3 is the malays/muslim and cat 4 is the unclassified or others.
The PAP will never allow cat 1 to go below 70% since PAP is still perceived as a Chinese party and rely on support of chinese voters to stay in power.A large % of chinese actually come from malaysia.We can't really tell them apart from those born in singapore.
The cat3 is the worrying lot as this group traditionally will vote against PAP and it is not in PAP's interet to have this group to become dominant in any HDB block and estate.There is even talk that the pinoys are classified as cat 3 to give the appearance that this category is not diminished by the huge increase in new citizens in cat1 and cat2.

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

My guesstimate is that the Chinese is way below 70% now and if you include the whole population, including non residents, it is fairly near the 50% mark.

To the Chinese and PAP, this is no problem. They both believe in meritocracy. So as long as the migrants are more meritocratic, race is not an issue. The Chinese in Malaysia are proof that they don't mind being a minority in the country.

theonion said...

RB

Where did you get the "heimskur" opinion that Chinese in Malaysia prefer minority, it was not a matter of choice, further, all arms are under control of whoever is in power at the time.
If you have relatives in Malaysia, you would know this upfront

They may be wiling to compromise and live with the circumstances but for all others, that is why always in the family, one portion is always a diaspora overseas





Anonymous said...

onion cannot smell RB's sarcasm. Why you so naive?

denk said...

chinese get a raw deal wherever they'r minority.
there had been pogroms n genocides against chinese in various countries

here's the more scary part,
we've seen an evil force at work
fukus loathe 唐人 as much as nature abhors vaccum !
an international conspiracy has been going on for decades
its mission , *ethnic cleansing: chinese out, fukus in*

1965
MOTHER OF ALL *CHINESE OUT, FUKUS IN* op
*************************************************************

*Soon these army and civilian cadres were together plotting disruptive activities, such as the Bandung anti-Chinese riots of May 1963, which embarrassed not just the PKI, but Sukarno himself. Chomsky and Herman report that "Army-inspired
anti-Chinese programs that took place in West Java in 1959 were financed by U.S. contributions to the local army commander
"; apparently CIA funds were used by the commander (Colonel Kosasih) to pay local thugs in what Mozingo calls "the army's (and probably the Americans') campaign to rupture relations with china."
http://www.namebase.org/scott.html


THE TEMPLATE FOR *CHINESE OUT, FUKUS IN* OPS

*The Indonesian covert action of 1965, reported by Ralph McGehee, who was in that area division, and had documents on his desk, in his custody about that operation. He said that one of the documents concluded that this was a model
operation that should be copied elsewhere in the world. Not only did it eliminate the effective communist party (Indonesian communist party), it also eliminated the entire segment of the population that tended to support the communist party - the ethnic Chinese, Indonesian Chinese
. And the cIA's report put the number of dead at 800,000 killed. And that was one covert action. We're talking about 1 to 3 million people killed in these things. [1987 Lecture] THE SECRET WARS OF THE CIA: by John Stockwell*

http://www.whale.to/b/indonesian_genocide.html

that was just the beginning !
*operation chinese cleansing* has been going on ever since in
asia
africa
middle east
....the world !

operation ethnic cleansing
exhibit 1001,
skip pass the religious craps, scroll down n take a look at the *sars map*
*When I saw this map, reality reached up and smacked me in the face! The distribution of SARS cases certainly seemed to indicate that it was a genetic disease targeting only Asians. [Map provided by FT.com, "North Korea closes its borders to Sars" by John Burton in Seoul, May 11, 2003]
http://www.cuttingedge.org/news/n1812.cfm

all the later varieties of bird flu, swine flu, the h1n1, h5n1 etc plus the current h7n9 ravaging china, tw, hk , seem to exhibit the same *affinity* to east asians, particularly chinese
are these the *advanced bioweapon targeting specific geno type * cited in the fukus neoconned *things to do tonight* manual ?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1221.htm

denk said...

fact or fiction ?
http://mysingaporenews.blogspot.sg/2013/03/occupy-singapore-operations-plan.html

rb

often reality is weirder than fiction.

what sg is doing is kinda like someone doing a complete blood transfusion.

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

That's exactly what I had in mind.