1958.05 新加坡

shiyi18

新加坡
1958年5月号
分享


关于今天的世界

二战结束后，当英国工党政府向印度、锡兰和缅甸的独立要求低头时，白厅寻找一个新的远东基地，以便英国在亚洲的商业利益能够与其外交、殖民和军事政策相协调。白厅将目光投向了悬挂在马来半岛顶端的新加坡岛。


由新加坡、槟城和马六甲组成的海峡定居点被拆散。槟城和马六甲归马来亚联邦首都吉隆坡管辖，而新加坡则被正式指定为王室殖民地；由于荣誉东印度公司的托马斯-斯坦福-莱佛士爵士于1819年从柔佛苏丹手中买下了新加坡224平方英里的疟疾沼泽和丛林，首付约为2万美元，外加8000美元的终身年金，其地位似乎没有理由改变。

杂志封面图片
以PDF格式查看本故事
请看这个故事在《大西洋》杂志的页面上出现。

打开
当莱佛士登陆时，新加坡的人口总数不超过50人，而且，由于这些人是流动的马来渔民和海盗，因此不存在英国将其权威强加于一个外来民族的问题。英国在新加坡利用的是机会，而不是人。新加坡的发展可以直接归功于莱佛士的远见卓识。他认为新加坡是亚洲东南角的一个浮标，印度和中国之间的所有海上交通都必须围绕这个浮标进行，他确信新加坡将作为一个自由港发展成为亚洲最大的商店。

事件证明了他的乐观态度。在定居后的六个月内，新加坡的人口增加到五千人，在其泥泞的小河周围兴起的港口可容纳三万五千吨的航运。今天，人口（其中一半在21岁以下，六分之五是中国人）已接近150万大关，而新加坡港口今年预计将处理超过800万吨的普通货物和1000万吨的散装矿物油。


走私者的天堂
对新加坡的一些邻国来说，这些数字与其说是钦佩，不如说是愤怒。例如，正在努力节约外汇和限制奢侈品进口支出的印度尼西亚，将该殖民地视为受保护的走私者的窝点和对其自身经济福利的严重威胁。

推荐阅读

工作破坏了电子邮件
IAN BOGOST

大企业真的那么坏吗？
罗伯特-D-阿特金森和迈克尔-林德
一个男人在他的办公桌前睡觉。
工作主义正在使美国人变得悲惨
德雷克-汤普森
作为世界上主要的橡胶市场，新加坡每年要处理30多万吨的印度尼西亚橡胶。其中，几乎有三分之一是通过在印度尼西亚非法的方式进入市场的，但对新加坡来说并不重要，因为新加坡不会受到伪造货单或夜间满载走私货物的tongkangs的困扰。

苏门答腊岛和西里伯斯群岛的叛军领袖自由地利用新加坡作为他们主要的易货贸易中心，这种贸易的利润是如此之大，以至于一个铜锣湾可能被认为是在三次旅行中就能收回成本。走私者来回都能赚到钱。他们把橡胶和椰干运到新加坡，然后装上消费品，从以这种方式出口到邻近的鲁瓦群岛的数量来看，这些岛屿的居民一定有足够的笔、收音机、自行车、运动衫和其他物品来装备十倍的人口。依靠这种贸易的利润，新加坡的生活水平一直以每年5%以上的速度上升；每年400美元的人均收入比大多数亚洲国家高出几倍。

去年，新加坡政府曾短暂考虑对奢侈品征收购买税。当发现几乎所有的消费品都被转口到征收购买税的国家时，该计划被匆忙放弃。例如，在三年内进口到新加坡的134,500台收音机中，只有31,000台被正式再出口或出售给当地使用；其余的，很明显，已经在挤入新加坡河的tongkangs和junks的底部离开殖民地。

人口激增
除了东京和北平之外，近年来没有一个亚洲城市比新加坡发展得更快，或改善得更快。由官方的新加坡改善信托基金实施的贫民窟清理计划导致了数十座新公寓楼的迅速建成，这些公寓楼以低廉的租金提供给迄今为止一直居住在板房里的家庭。朝鲜战争期间橡胶和锡的繁荣也激发了私人企业的行动，随着大量非熟练劳动力的出现，现代加利福尼亚风格的平房像蘑菇一样出现在郊区的住宅区。

杂志封面图片
探索1958年5月号
查看本期的更多内容，并找到你的下一个故事来阅读。

查看更多
然而，每年超过5万的人口自然增长仍然超过了殖民地的建筑和施工能力，尽管过去十年取得了进展，但贫民窟居民仍然占人口的约10%。此外，还存在着严重的收入不平等现象。一方面，有一个相当大的中国富裕阶层，另一方面，有无限大的人口在血汗工厂条件下工作谋生。

由于欧洲人总数不到20,000人，这里的剥削主要是由中国人对中国人的剥削。英国人早就意识到了这种情况，但在大多数人似乎完全没有社区意识的情况下，补救行动一直很困难。被绑架的中国百万富翁支付赎金，而不是援引警方的援助。

事实上，新加坡的生活就像摩天轮一样，印度人、巴基斯坦人、马来人、欧洲人和欧亚人等少数民族都在自己的小隔间里，在封闭的华人圈的外围无助地旋转着。经过努力，英国人为刑事调查部门争取到了三百名华人侦探，为军警部门争取到了一百五十名华人侦探，但在大约四千人的警察队伍中，只有略多于六百名弧形华人。

帮派斗争
从新加坡的早期开始，华人秘密社团就扮演着国中之国的角色，制定自己的法律，用刀和枪进行统治。据保守估计，该殖民地仍有三百个秘密社团，成员总数达一万人。他们已经把城市里阴暗的夜生活变成了一个巨大的保护费，出租车司机、小贩和酒吧老板都要支付保护费，否则就会受到社团打手的血腥惩罚。今年年初，一名协会成员在用马来人的尖刀（parang）砍杀一名小贩时，被一名警探开枪打死。第二天，60名社团成员将脸遮在扇子后面，参加了他们同志的葬礼。

二战前，国民党在新加坡蓬勃发展，尽管英国人一再请求中国人在来到马来亚时应将国内政治抛在脑后。但国民党的衰落伴随着共产党支持率的相应增加。殖民地华人社会的半自治性质为华人学校的颠覆活动提供了几乎无限的机会，这些学校在人们怀疑其危险性之前已经成为 "小马克思主义学院"。

共产党人还在工业战线上努力工作，在工厂和商店里找到大规模的支持，那里的就业条件往往是合理不满的原因。因此，英国人发现自己面临着对其新的远东总部的双重威胁：对越来越大程度的自决的不可避免的要求，加上令人不快的证据，即通过给予很大程度的自治，他们可能发现他们建议保留在新加坡的空军和海军基地建立在北平的事实上的殖民地。

有条件的自治
对把新加坡从马来亚分离出来的愚蠢行为的第二次思考，无法再把这些碎片拼凑起来。前英国驻东南亚总专员马尔科姆-麦克唐纳（Malcolm MacDonald）认为，建立一个新的英国领地，包括马来亚联邦、新加坡以及沙捞越、文莱和北婆罗洲等英属婆罗洲领土，是一个解决办法。该提案有其优点，但殖民地领土几乎看不到。


新加坡很想加入马来亚，但腾古-阿卜杜勒-拉赫曼一想到这个就不寒而栗。新加坡的中国人口，加上马来亚的人口，将消除马来人在数量上已经很稀少的多数，并加强马来亚共产党的队伍。

在正常情况下，新加坡通过一条四分之三英里长的堤道与马来亚相连，处理马来亚大部分的橡胶和锡，以及银行和保险业务，实际上是马来亚的纽约，两地分离没有什么经济意义。但是，由于马来亚不想要新加坡，婆罗洲领土也不想要对方，因此在统一方面没有什么进展。

相反，新加坡一直在稳步前进，尽管有时很激烈，走向一种自治形式，使其获得合格的自治权。英国将继续承担其国防和对外事务的责任，而一个由英国专员担任主席并由另外两名英国成员、由两名部长协助的新加坡总理和一名来自马来亚联邦的部长组成的委员会，将在有关新国家的内部安全问题上拥有压倒性的权力。

经过1956年的错误开始，1957年，由劳工阵线联盟政府首脑林耀福率领的新加坡各党派代表团在伦敦成功谈判达成了一项协议。在担任首席部长期间，曾是工会组织者的林耀福一直大力和勇敢地反共。尽管他的生命一再受到威胁，他还是开始了一场瓦解华校中的共产主义团体的运动，并解散了中国学生会，该会的一万名成员是一支骚乱的力量。


随后，林毅夫将火力转向共产党领导的新加坡工厂和商店工人工会以及人民行动党的共产党组织，利用公共安全条例赋予他的特殊权力，将这些领导人投入监狱。他的坚定态度鼓励白厅和新加坡的反共人士以乐观的态度看待未来。

然而，最近几个月的事件给新加坡的局势带来了新的阴云。在市议会选举中，反共的劳工阵线被李光耀领导的人民行动党所取代。

政治活动
在选举名单上的50万人中，只有17.6万人参加了投票。林肯正在为时间而战。他计划将原定于8月举行的立法议会选举推迟到明年4月，作为自治的序幕。他还在调查澳大利亚的强制投票制度，希望通过将政治上聪明的人送去投票，他可以淹没顺从和被灌输的极左翼的队伍。他承认，他的机会是值得怀疑的。人民行动党的左翼和右翼都有大量的群众支持，而且两者的分界线还很不清楚。


李光耀在剑桥大学学习法律，是一位天才的演说家，他代表右翼。他对新加坡和他自己的党内的共产主义追随者的程度感到震惊，但他在大发雷霆的时候却经常比他党内的共产主义派别更胜一筹。他在印度尼西亚驱逐荷兰人的事件中看到了一个先例，新加坡很可能会效仿。

他的同事，新任市长王荣光，也是人民行动党右翼的代表。他在上任之初就扔掉了作为 "殖民时代遗物 "的麦斯，拆掉了议会厅里的 "联合杰克"，并邀请党的追随者观看议会的工作。数以百计的赤脚和不穿衣服的中国青年挤进会议厅，当议员们用英语发言时，他们嘲笑和叫好，并为王和前首席部长大卫-马歇尔欢呼，他挥舞着一把巨大的锤子向追随者的掌声致敬，这是新的左翼印度工人党的象征。

当英国政府在其国防报告中宣布它计划在那里保持一支全能的海军部队时，新加坡还在沮丧地分析这些高难度的动作。在许多人看来，这似乎意味着新宪法的废除和殖民统治的回归。

麦克米伦首相在结束他的英联邦之行时经过新加坡时，迅速消除了这些谣言。"他说："我们将继续进行我们所承诺的事情。"我对各地的共产主义感到遗憾，但在新加坡处理共产主义的合适人选是新加坡人民。"


这种震惊的处理方式产生了一些意想不到的结果。所有国籍的商人都意识到，他们将不得不准备与人民行动党共存。还有人认为，王市长在提到前几届市政府的无能和腐败时，也许说的是实话。

防止极端主义的保障
人民行动党一直自信地预测它将赢得议会选举，并被英国剥夺了组建政府的机会，它对麦克米伦的声明作出了不可预测的反应。如果说希望责任的前景会孕育出责任的话，那么现在有一些迹象表明，它可能会孕育出节制。

李光耀意识到社会主义在这样一个小转口国是行不通的，他的目标是说服腾古-阿卜杜勒-拉赫曼接受新加坡作为马来亚的第十二个州，从而为他和他的政党提供一个更广泛和更肥沃的领域来开展工作。现在他的机会很渺茫；如果是不负责任的政府，他的机会将被完全摧毁。因此，这是对极端主义的一个意外保障。但是，对新加坡、对东南亚、对马来亚、对英国、对李光耀本人来说，问题是他是否有能力控制其党内的共产主义者。




Singapore
MAY 1958 ISSUE
SHARE


on the world Today

AT THE end of World War II, when the British Labor Government bowed to Indian, Ceylonese, and Burmese demands for independence, Whitehall looked for a new Far Eastern base in which Britain’s commercial interests in Asia could be coordinated with its foreign, colonial, and military policies. Its gaze rested on the island of Singapore, which hangs from the tip of the Malay Peninsula.


The Straits Settlements, consisting of Singapore, Penang, and Malacca, were broken up. Penang and Malacca came under the jurisdiction of Kuala Lumpur, the capital of the Federation of Malaya, while Singapore was officially designated a crown colony; and since Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, of the Honorable East India Company, had bought Singapore’s 224 square miles of malarial swamp and jungle from the Sultan of Johore in 1819 for a down payment of about $20,000, plus a lifetime annuity of $8000, there seemed little reason why its status should ever change.

Magazine Cover image
View This Story as a PDF
See this story as it appeared in the pages of The Atlantic magazine.

Open
The population of Singapore when Raffles landed had totaled no more than fifty, and, as these were peripatetic Malay fishermen and pirates, there was no question of Britain’s having imposed its authority on an alien people. Opportunity, not people, was what Britain had exploited in Singapore. Its growth could be attributed directly to Raffles’ foresight. He saw it as the buoy on the southeastern corner of Asia, around which all seagoing traffic between India and China would have to turn, and he was sure it would grow as a free port into Asia’s biggest shop.

Events justified his optimism. Within six months of its settlement, Singapore’s population had risen to five thousand, and the harbor that had sprung up around its muddy little river was host to thirty-five thousand tons of shipping. Today the population, half of it under the age of twenty-one and five sixths of it Chinese, is nearing the 1.5 million mark, and Singapore port this year is expected to handle more than eight million tons of general cargo and ten million tons of bulk mineral oil.


Smugglers’ paradise
To some of Singapore’s neighbors these figures are more a source of anger than of admiration. For instance, Indonesia, struggling to conserve its foreign exchange and to restrict expenditure on luxury imports, sees the colony as a protected smugglers’ cove and a serious threat to its own economic well-being.

RECOMMENDED READING

Work Ruined Email
IAN BOGOST

Is Big Business Really That Bad?
ROBERT D. ATKINSON AND MICHAEL LIND
A man sleeps at his desk.
Workism Is Making Americans Miserable
DEREK THOMPSON
As the world’s primary rubber market, Singapore handles upwards of three hundred thousand tons of Indonesian rubber each year. Of this, almost a third reaches its markets by methods that are illegal at the Indonesian end but of no concern to Singapore, which is untroubled by doctored manifests or the nighttime arrival of tongkangs loaded down with smuggled cargo.

The rebel leaders in Sumatra and the Celebes use Singapore freely as their chief barter center, and such are the profits of this trade that a tongkang may be reckoned to pay for itself in three trips. The smugglers make their money both coming and going. In place of the rubber and copra that they take to Singapore, they load up with consumer goods, and, judging by the quantity exported in this way to the adjoining Riouw Archipelago, the inhabitants of those islands must have enough pens, radios, bicycles, sport shirts, and other bric-a-brac to equip a population ten times greater. On the profits of this trade, Singapore’s standard of living has been rising at the rate of more than 5 per cent a year; and the per capita income of $400 a year is several times greater than that of most Asian countries.

Last year the Singapore government briefly considered imposing a purchase tax on luxury goods. The plan was hastily dropped when it was discovered that almost all consumer goods were reexported to countries that imposed a purchase tax. Of 134,500 radio sets imported into Singapore over a three-year period, for instance, only 31,000 sets were either officially re-exported or sold for use locally; the rest, it was clear, had left the colony in the bottoms of the tongkangs and junks that crowd into the Singapore River.

Population boom
With the exception of Tokyo and Peiping, no Asian city in recent years has grown, or improved, more rapidly than Singapore. A slum clearance program by the official Singapore Improvement Trust resulted in the rapid construction of scores of new apartment buildings, which were made available at low rates of rental to families that had hitherto existed in cubicles. The boom in rubber and tin during the Korean War also sparked private enterprise into action, and with a plenitude of unskilled labor, modern, California-style bungalows appeared like mushrooms in the residential suburbs.

Magazine Cover image
Explore the May 1958 Issue
Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.

View More
Nevertheless, the annual natural increase in population of more than 50,000 continues to outstrip the colony’s building and construction capacity and, despite the progress of the last decade, slum dwellers continue to number an estimated 10 per cent of the population. There are also serious income inequalities. On the one hand there is a substantial Chinese class that is wealthy, on the other an infinitely larger section of the population that works for a living in sweatshop conditions.

Since the Europeans total fewer than 20,000, the exploitation here is largely by Chinese of Chinese. The British have long been conscious of this situation, but remedial action has always been difficult in the face of what appears to be a complete lack of community consciousness among the majority of the population. Kidnaped Chinese millionaires pay the ransom rather than invoke police aid.

Life in Singapore, in fact, invites comparison with a Ferris wheel, with the Indian, Pakistani, Malay, European, and Eurasian minorities in their own little compartments revolving helplessly on the periphery of the closed Chinese circle. By dint of much hard work, the British secured three hundred Chinese detectives for the Criminal Investigation Department and another hundred and fifty for the uniformed branch, but in a police force of approximately four thousand only slightly more than six hundred arc Chinese.

Gang wars
From the earliest days of Singapore the Chinese secret societies have acted as a state within the state, making their own laws and ruling with the knife and the gun. By conservative estimate there are still three hundred secret societies with a total membership of ten thousand in the colony. They have turned the city’s shady night life into a vast protection racket, with taxi dancers, hawkers, and bar owners all paying protection money or the bloody penalties exacted by the societies’ thugs. Early this year a society member was shot dead by a detective as he hacked at a hawker with a parang, the sharp-bladed Malay knife. Next day sixty members of the society, their faces shielded behind fans, attended their comrade’s funeral.

Before World War II, the Kuomintang flourished in Singapore despite repeated British pleas that the Chinese when they came to Malaya should leave their domestic politics behind. But the Kuomintang’s decline was accompanied by a corresponding increase in Communist support. The semiautonomous nature of Chinese society in the colony provided almost unlimited opportunities for subversion in the Chinese schools, which had become “little Marxist academies” before anyone suspected the danger.

The Communists also worked hard on the industrial front, finding mass support in factories and shops, where conditions of employment were often cause for legitimate grievances. Thus, the British found themselves confronted with a twin threat to their new Far Eastern headquarters: an inevitable demand for an increasing degree of self-determination, coupled with the unpalatable evidence that by granting a large measure of self-government they might find the air and naval bases that they proposed to retain in Singapore established in a de facto colony of Peiping.

Qualified autonomy
Second thoughts about the folly of separating Singapore from Malaya could not put the pieces together again. Malcolm MacDonald, former British commissioner general in Southeast Asia, saw a solution in the creation of a new British dominion that would include the Federation of Malaya, Singapore, and the British Borneo territories of Sarawak, Brunei, and North Borneo. The proposal had merit, but little that the colonial territories could see.


Singapore was anxious enough to join Malaya, but Tengku Abdul Rahman shuddered at the thought. Singapore’s Chinese population, added to Malaya’s, would eliminate the Malays’ already thin numerical majority and reinforce the ranks of the Malayan Communist Party.

Under normal circumstances Singapore, which is joined to Malaya by a causeway three quarters of a mile long and which handles most of Malaya’s rubber and tin, as well as its banking and insurance, is, in effect, the New York of Malaya, and the separation of the two territories makes little economic sense. But since Malaya does not want Singapore, and the Borneo territories do not want one another, little progress has been made toward unification.

Instead, Singapore has moved steadily, if sometimes tempestuously, toward a form of self-government that will give it qualified autonomy. Britain will continue to accept responsibility for its defense and external affairs while a committee, under the chairmanship of the United Kingdom commissioner and consisting of two other British members, the prime minister of Singapore assisted by two ministers, and one minister from the Federation of Malaya, will have overriding authority in matters concerning the new state’s internal security.

After a false start in 1956, an agreement was successfully negotiated in London in 1957 by an allparty delegation from Singapore, led by Lim Yew Hock, head of the Labor Front Alliance government. In his period as chief minister, Lim, a former trade union organizer, has been vigorously and courageously anti-Communist. Despite repeated threats against his life, he began a campaign to break up the Communist groups in the Chinese schools and dissolved the Chinese Student’s Union, whose ten thousand members were a rioting force.


Lim then turned his fire on the Communist-led Singapore Factory and Shopworkers’ Union and the Communist wing of the People’s Action Party, using his special powers under the public security ordinance to throw the leaders into jail. His firmness encouraged both Whitehall and anti-Communists in Singapore to view the future with optimism.

Events in recent months have brought new clouds to the Singapore scene, however. In City Council elections, the anti-Communist Labor Front was eclipsed by the People’s Action Party under the leadership of Lee Kuan Yew.

Political high jinks
Of the half million on the electoral rolls, only 176,000 turned up to cast their ballots. Lim is fighting for time. He plans to postpone the legislative assembly elections, which were due to be held in August as a prologue to self-government, until April of next year. He is also investigating the Australian system of compulsory voting, in the hope that by sending the politically ingenuous to the polls he may submerge the obedient and indoctrinated ranks of the extreme left wing. He concedes that his chances are doubtful. Both the left wing and the right wing of the People’s Action Party have substantial mass support, and it is far from clear where the two divide.


Lee Kuan Yew, who studied law at Cambridge and is a gifted orator, represents the right wing. He is shocked by the extent of the Communist following in Singapore and in his own party, yet he often outbids the Communist wing of his party in his vituperative outbursts. He saw in the Indonesian expulsion of the Dutch a precedent that might well be followed in Singapore.

His colleague, Ong Eng Guan, the new mayor, also represents the right wing of the People’s Action Party. He began his period in office by throwing out the mace as a “colonial relic,” tearing down the Union Jacks in the council chamber, and inviting party followers to watch the council at work. Hundreds of barefooted and shirtless Chinese youths crowded into the chamber, jeering and hooting when council members spoke in English and cheering Ong and former Chief Minister David Marshall, who saluted his followers’ applause by waving a huge hammer, the symbol of the new left-wing Indian Workers’ Party.

Singapore was still ruefully analyzing these high jinks when the British Government announced in its defense report that it planned to maintain an all-purpose naval force there. To many this seemed to point to the abrogation of the new constitution and a return to colonial rule.

Prime Minister Macmillan quickly scotched these rumors when he passed through Singapore at the conclusion of his Commonwealth tour. “We shall proceed with what we have undertaken,” he said. “I regret Communism everywhere, but the proper people to deal with Communism in Singapore are the people of Singapore.”


This shock treatment produced some unexpected results. Businessmen of all nationalities realized that they would have to prepare to live with the People’s Action Party. It was also suggested that Mayor Ong was perhaps speaking the truth when he referred to the incompetence and corruption of previous city administrations.

Safeguard against extremism
The People’s Action Party, which had been confidently predicting that it would win the assembly election and be denied, by Britain, the opportunity of forming a government, reacted unpredictably to the Macmillan statement. If it was too much to hope that the prospect of responsibility would breed responsibility, there were now some indications that it might beget moderation.

Realizing that socialism will not work in such a small entrepot state, Lee Kuan Yew’s objective is to persuade Tengku Abdul Rahman to accept Singapore as Malaya’s twelfth state, thus providing him and his party with a wider and more fertile field for their endeavors. His chances are remote now; they would be wholly destroyed by irresponsible government. Here, then, is one unexpected safeguard against extremism. But the question for Singapore, for Southeast Asia, for Malaya, for Britain, and for Lee Kuan Yew himself is whether he has the power to control the Communists in his party.