Finding somewhere to live
Businesses, universities, laboratories and the government select them as needed; those lucky enough to be chosen obtain a priceless piece of paper allowing them to remain for two to five years, sometimes more, according to an extremely rigid hierarchy. At the top sit highly qualified foreigners with an E (employment) Pass; just below are S (salary) Pass holders. Both can be hired only at wages at least equal to the highest-paid third of their field ‘to prevent social dumping,’ says the minister for manpower (formerly labour minister). They can bring family – if they have the means, as rent isn’t cheap. A young Australian researcher told me he pays around 10,000 Singapore dollars (US$7,300) per month for a four-bedroom flat on the city’s outskirts. Together, these rather pampered immigrants represent around 10% of the working population.
The other 30% of immigrants in the labour force are unskilled ‘work permit holders’ (WPHs). Their miserable living conditions are condemned by some lawyers, human rights activists and organisations like TWC2 (Transient Workers Count Too). The latter’s vice president, Alex Au, a retired business executive, received me at the group’s modest offices on the outskirts of the Indian district. He described the hellish life of these workers, without a minimum wage — a concept foreign to Singapore — and with no right to send for family. Even marrying a Singaporean is strictly prohibited (5).
Most work in construction, shipyards, oil and petrochemicals, and cleaning services, or hold menial jobs at cafés, restaurants and hotels. These natives of Myanmar, China, Malaysia, India, the Philippines and Bangladesh put in massive amounts of overtime, mostly unpaid, and work seven days a week despite a law mandating one day off. Its shrewd phrasing allows the employer to reduce an employee’s salary if he agrees, but if he does not, he loses his job and is sent back to his country. This assumes that a migrant worker has the power to resist such a request from an employer, says Alex Au. ‘As if the two were equal.’
To complement their arduous, underpaid jobs, workers sleep in rows of barrack-like dormitories, sometimes stretching for hundreds of metres and encircled with barbed wire. That’s the scene in part of the centre of Tuas, a good half hour by bus and on foot from the last metro stop. Lodging (if that’s the word) is provided by employers. Employees end up on the street if they quit, making them subject to deportation. Small construction trucks, open to rain and scorching sun, typically drive labourers to jobsites where they work in construction, road maintenance or manicuring residential lawns to painstaking standards. As Stéphane Le Queux puts it, ‘People are cheaper than weedkiller.’
During lunch breaks they can be seen napping on the ground, in the shade when possible; late at night, they squat at the roadside, waiting for their ride. Nearly all Singaporeans find this perfectly normal. After all, any ‘proper family’ has at least one ‘helper’, a live-in housekeeper from the Philippines, Myanmar, Malaysia or China. These young women have no set work hours and can be freely exploited – and sometimes literally abused. Alex Au said, ‘It took years of fighting to get them just one non-negotiable day off a month.’
‘Illiberal democracy’
In more than 70 years, Singapore has had just three prime ministers, including Lee Kuan Yew and his son Lee Hsien Loong. The latter, in power since 2004, has promised to retire soon, bringing a long-awaited end to the dynasty – but that wait goes on. Years before the expression (and the reality it describes) became widespread, Singapore established an ‘illiberal democracy’, which carries on to this day. People have the right to vote, but the opposition parties are kept in check; the right to strike is inscribed in the constitution but impossible to exercise – when bus drivers did so in 2012, their action was declared illegal and their leaders were arrested. There have been no strikes since.
Still, hardly anyone questions the system. This is partly because ‘we always feel like we’re in a battle for survival,’ says Wei Chen Tan, a former high official with a Chinese background, whose family arrived at the turn of the last century and ‘is nothing like the mainland Chinese’. Fear of immigrants, including wealthy ones from Beijing, Shanghai or Hong Kong, is high among the upper class.
What’s more, the government is not simply repressive, notes Stéphane Le Queux, a senior lecturer in employment relations at James Cook University. ‘It delivers wellbeing. The state, the union and employers share a common objective: ensuring social peace and economic growth.’ Indeed, in the 1970s and ’80s, this ‘red dot’ on the world map, as former Indonesian president BJ Habibie scornfully described Singapore, became one of the four Asian dragons – along with South Korea, Hong Kong (then under British rule) and Taiwan. Although their human rights records were less than dazzling, these dragons were a boon to the multinationals flooding the globe with low-end products. Over the following decade, Singapore would serve as a blueprint for Beijing as it built an export-heavy economy with its skilled and docile labour force, which would enjoy increasing quality of life and which will be replaced by immigrants in the future.
‘When China opened up, Lee Kuan Yew immediately saw that he should concentrate development on cutting-edge industries and leverage Singapore’s strategic location to make it an indispensable nexus,’ says Wei Chen Tan, who openly admires the ‘nation’s founding father’ for his foresight and focus on education. He neglects to mention that the island quickly took on the trappings of a tax haven to attract foreign investment, which came to nearly $200bn by 2022, the year Singapore became the world’s foremost financial centre; some call it the ‘Switzerland of Asia’, and it serves as a model for Dubai. Nearly half of the largest Asian corporations now keep offices there. Rumour has it (but no official would confirm) that many foreign companies active in Hong Kong have transferred their assets to Singapore. In any case, ‘family offices’ – wealth managers for the ultrarich from Hong Kong and China – have proliferated: the Monetary Authority of Singapore counted 700 in 2021, where there had been just a handful three years before.
But the city-state does more than just finance, banking and insurance. Singapore, at the end of the Malacca Strait and in the heart of bustling Southeast Asia, has become a commercial and industrial hub, partly because it boasts the world’s second-largest container port (after Shanghai) (4). Another colossal, fully automated port – being built in Tuas, at the island’s Western edge, on land reclaimed with sand from neighbouring countries – will subsume and augment the current one’s operations. This should keep Singapore near the head of the pack. Industry (refineries, chemicals, electronics plants etc) is expected to follow the relocation, newer technologies being primarily situated in the South and East. According to the World Bank, the two sectors currently represent nearly a quarter of GDP (compared to 17% in France) – no small change.
Together, the authoritarian state, which plans and finances development, the multinational corporations that benefit from it, and the unions that work for consensus have brought the country to new heights. Per capita income ranks among the world’s highest – US$77,000 – just behind Luxembourg, another tax haven. Everything seems to be coming up roses for this island no bigger than Paris and its close suburbs (729 sq km) and its nearly 5.5 million inhabitants – or at least for the two thirds who have Singaporean citizenship or permanent residency. These are the only people included in statistics (and in most social programmes). Others – immigrants – do not exist. And yet they are the country’s lifeblood, at 40% of the working population.
High on the steel-and-glass skyscraper – an unremarkable addition to Singapore’s imaginative skyline – red letters read ‘NTUC’. They stand for National Trades Union Congress, the country’s only labour union, which owns the tower. ‘This building was given to us by Lee Kuan Yew [the father of independence],’ Patrick Tay, the union’s assistant secretary-general, said proudly. ‘He wanted workers to have a true place. There was almost nothing around here when it was built.’
The government’s gift was to anchor a financial and tourist district: Marina Bay, a super-hip hodgepodge of the public and private sectors, ready for multinational corporations and lavish hotels like the iconic Marina Bay Sands, which opened in 2010. The Sands’ three 55-storey towers are connected by a 200m-high swimming pool crown; the ground floor holds a luxury mall, as well as a sprawling casino for workers to unwind and for mainland Chinese bored with Macao.
The ‘NTUC building’, as locals call it, stands in good company, hosting the offices of businesses like Samsung alongside government agencies. Patrick Tay, a dynamic 50-something, greeted me, out of breath, on the ninth floor, having raced over from parliament – the union leader is also an MP for the all-powerful People’s Action Party (PAP). He sees no problem with this, no inherent contradiction. ‘It’s a way to carry the workers’ voice to parliament. And I’m happy that, as a legislator, I can draft changes that benefit them,’ he said. He shuddered at the idea of unions acting as a check on political power. ‘Our mission is to avoid escalation. That’s why there’s a consultation process. This ensures the stability that Singaporeans desire.’ Employers, union leaders, senior officials and even government ministers coexist and sometimes slip from one role to another in a game of musical chairs.
So go social and political dynamics here in Singapore: there’s been a ménage à trois between the state, employers and workers (or rather their representatives) since independence in 1965. It’s so successful because all barriers to collaboration have been eliminated; the trio is tied at the hip, if not incestuous. Michael D Barr (1), who knows the ins and outs of the city-state, describes it as ‘an elite’ which has taken over power, quoting a 1966 speech by Lee Kuan Yew, who remarked that ‘the government is running on the ability, drive and dedication of about 150 people’ (2).
Even without counting how many families run the island, one thing is certain: by 1963, Lee had purged the PAP of its progressive wing and its sympathisers (120 were arrested) in an operation codenamed Coldstore. He used the same playbook with Operation Spectrum in 1988, in which some 20 figures (political activists, trade unionists, lawyers, students, intellectuals, etc) were charged with ‘Marxist conspiracy’.
Any talk of these periods remains taboo: screenings of the 2013 film To Singapore, with Love – by the popular director Tan Pin Pin, who is highly regarded by her peers – were forbidden to avoid ‘undermining national security.’ Artist and writer Sonny Liew’s masterful The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye – a graphic novel offering an alternative history (3) – was not censored quite as harshly upon its 2015 release, but its publisher was forced to reimburse the grant he had received from the National Arts Council, which could have put him in dire straits.
Oh I forgot to chime in with this article I read on Singapore in the latest Le Monde Diplomatique. It's a pretty good overview of Singapore as it currently stands. It's behind a paywall, so I'll post it as a reply chain below. Title is "Has the Singapore model lost its shine?: Singaporeans can vote, but the opposition is kept in check. They can strike, but never do. They depend on disenfranchised immigrant labour. But are cracks beginning to show in the ‘Singapore model’?" From: https://mondediplo.com/2023/09/03singapore
Also, interestingly Singapore has an air force. Like, a fairly massive one. Over 100 fighter jets, for a tiny country with 6 million people! Suppose it's a deterrent thing.
> I storm into the room, flinging the doors open
> "The Poles! They've stopped sending weapons to Ukraine because of their stupid little trade war over grain; the cracks are forming, the united coalition is splintering! How long can this last? Once the spigot dries up, how fast will Ukraine fold? What new horrors will be wrought in this new multipolar world?"
> my gf turns to me," what the fuck are you talking about, go make some tea"
> I go stare at a screen for eight hours pretending to care about "action items" as I mutter on about Lviv/Lwów
> Work Slack Channel: "Has anybody heard about this really old documentary called 'Tiger King'?"
Pondering the orb of global misery with y'all is fine but god damn do I sometimes feel insane.
Ah that makes sense, that's probably what's going on.
Yeah the militias in the Republic of Artsakh (the breakaway state in Nagorno-Karabakh) have surrendered, but sure there's still a few that might be fighting anyway because fuck it. However, Gegharkunik is a region of Armenia proper manned by the Armenian armed forces, not Artsakh militias.
Apparently that airport hasn't worked since 1990; it's the current headquarters of the Russian peacekeepers in the region.
Azerbaijani Armed Forces began to fire in the direction of Armenian positions in the direction of Gegharkunik region of Armenia.
Armenia's MOD confirmed the news that Azerbaijan began to fire on September 20, at about 22:50 using small arms.
From: https://nitter.net/301arm/status/1704582451081986067#m
Meanwhile the massive protests in Yerevan continue. Also rumours a Russian peacekeeping vehicle was destroyed with Russian causalities by the Azerbaijanis, but not comment from the Russian MOD.
I sure as shit hope you're right. So Armenia probably has until 2025 to prepare for that war, since that's when Russian peacekeepers pull out. Who knows what the world will look like by then.
So it's over, for now. It's a "ceasefire" but certainly sounds more like a complete surrender by the Armenians in Karabakh. I assume we'll be looking at an ethnic cleansing of some kind with mass migration back to Armenia. Maybe in the chaos of all that Azerbaijan will attempt to open up the land bridge to their enclave in Nakhchivan. Who the fuck knows anymore.