Responding to Globalization: Nation, Culture and Identity in Singapore

3. Creating National Citizens for a Global City

82 RESPONDING TO GLOBALIZATION 3 CREATING NATIONAL CITIZENS FOR A GLOBAL CITY We need the resources from a sound, competitive economy to build a worldclass home, and we need a world-class home to anchor Singaporeans to create a first-world economy for Singapore. Singapore risks becoming like one of those well-run, comfortable international hotels which successful business executives check in and out. What makes a home different from a hotel is where the heart is. Most homes are less comfortable than a hotel, but they are where the people feel they belong, where they are king and where they can decorate and arrange the furniture the way they like. This, in essence, is what distinguishes a home from a hotel. (Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, Straits Times, 14 October 1999.) INTRODUCTION Former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong’s quote provides a typically colourful account of the latest set of perceived challenges facing Singapore. Continuing my exploration into the national response to globalization in Singapore, this chapter turns its attention to the government’s project of “globalizing” the nation since the early 1990s and its related efforts to create a sense of home among its citizens. I argue that going global has posed particular challenges to the government, not the least of which is a trend among Singaporeans wishing to emigrate. In this chapter I analyse one of the main governmental responses to these “unhomely” consequences of globalization: the affective citizenship-building strategies put forward in the Singapore 21 policy. In this chapter, against the trend among many theorists who have argued that the nation-state is “losing control” of its territoriality (Sassen 1996) and its ability to manage globalization (Held 1990; Ohmae 1995; Appadurai 1996), I propose to consider the Singaporean state’s embrace of globalization and the citizenship policies it has developed in response 03 Nation_Culture Ch 3 7/4/07, 12:57 PM 82 3. Creating National Citizens for a Global City 83 to it. I argue that these strategies are designed to manage the tension between the local and the global. They have the express aim of ensuring the continued viability, especially the global economic viability, of the nation-state. In Singapore’s case, rather than precipitating its demise, “going global” is designed to ensure the nation’s survival. I begin by exploring the earliest emergence of a discourse of a “global Singapore” in a ground-breaking Ministerial speech made in 1972. In his speech, the then Minister for Foreign Affairs, S. Rajaratnam, predicted that Singapore is becoming a global city, a key nodal point in a network of cities. Quite remarkably, his predictions began to unfold as Singapore entered the 1990s. I then discuss some of the challenges and anxieties the PAP perceives as emerging from this new phase of economic transformation, in particular the issue of emigration and other accompanying dilemmas. I then examine the PAP’s latest policy visions Singapore 21 (1999) and Remaking Singapore (2003) and critically analyse its efforts of “nation home-building”. I argue that the state has tried to resolve the tension between the national and the global through the formulation of a Singaporean identity and through affective nationalism which aims to “glocalize” Singaporean-ness (Robertson 1995). In other words, the government’s aim has been to develop a Singaporean populace that is global in outlook but rooted in the local. A CITY IN TRANSITION On 6 February 1972, speaking to the Singapore Press Club, the then Minister for Foreign Affairs, S. Rajaratnam put forward the bold idea of Singapore transforming itself into a new kind of city, a Global City. He made his speech to answer the many critics who predicted that independent Singapore would never survive. Rajaratnam (1972, p. 8) argued that “if we view Singapore’s future as a Global City, then the smallness of Singapore, the absence of a hinterland, or raw materials and a large domestic market are not fatal or insurmountable handicaps. It would explain why, since independence, we have been successful economically and, consequently, have ensured political and social stability”. Rajaratnam’s prescient statement amounted to an admission that Singapore’s economic viability, because of its territorial constraints, would always be dependent on the global economy. This assertion can be read in two ways: first, Singapore’s economic viability and indeed national survival has always been dictated by the global economy and second, Singapore has thrived precisely because of its global economic links. 03 Nation_Culture Ch 3 7/4/07, 12...