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Washington Post losing its mind over the fact that Singapore is not as rabidly anti-China as the US wishes
(www.washingtonpost.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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I know nothing about this subject. Is it sort of like what happened with Hong Kong and/or Macau?
Somewhat.
I think the key point you need to know is that most of the political parties in Singapore, and all the left-wing ones in Malaysia before independence and even after, wanted a unified country, and many in Malaysia even sought for a "Pan-Indonesianism" which would fit into the historical cultural realm of the Malay archipelago (the spoken lingua franca of the entire region prior to European influence).
Thank you!
If reunification has become less popular, is there a general cause of this that wouldn't require you writing out a treatise for the sake of an offhand question?
I tried to keep it short and I began to write an entire monograph lmao.
TLDR: It just isn’t as materially important.
People can easily travel between the two states, there’s iirc hundreds of thousands that pass through the immigration bridge weekly.
Families are not separated and both states maintain cordial relations.
Personally I would obviously like to see it happening, but when it isn’t necessary, you get limited by political bureaucracy than anything else.
Makes perfect sense, thank you. I would have had no problem with an explanation of any length (and the forum might be interested in you making a post on this topic at some point) but I respect your time and patience.
Yup - I also did a quick double check with the stats, its more like hundreds of thousands (400k) per day.
Apparently it is literally the busiest or one of the busiest land borders on Earth.
I have a lot of ideas on this topic regarding Southeast Asian history in general - but I always seemingly want to cover a certain book before I start it, and never get round to actually drafting/creating a post.
I come from a family of academics, and there's a word of advice that I remember hearing said to others since I was a kid "If you want to write a thesis, you will always feel that you have not done enough research. Eventually, you need to actually write despite that feeling." Perhaps you could include the books you haven't read as a little "further reading" section.
Post Independence from Britain Singapore wanted to federate with Malaysia but Malaysia kicked them out because they didn't want a city full of Chinese and also because they were afraid of Lee Kuan Yew.