Image is of President Hakainde Hichilema and President Xi Jinping on September 15th, from this article.
Zambia is a country of 20 million people, located in southern Africa. Breaking free from British rule in the 1960s, the new government was a one party state ruled by the socialist UNIP party with its leader Kenneth Kaunda, who was a strong supporter of the Non-Aligned Movement (and was its chairman from 1970-73). Its economy has been and remains characterised by copper exports - it is the second-largest copper exporter in Africa - and the economy deeply struggled in the 1970s due to the price of copper plunging. After the fall of the USSR, and due to violent protests, Kaunda stepped down and instituted a multiparty democracy, which has been maintained without (successful) coups to this day, though there are warnings by the leader that some are plotting a coup, given the trend right now.^AA^
Earlier this year, in June, Zambia struck a deal to restructure the $6.3 billion in debt that they are burdened with, of which China is the single largest creditor.^Reuters^ Though he has typically been more West-friendly, last week, President Hichilema traveled to China for two days, meeting with various companies, and Xi Jinping himself. They elevated their relationship to that of a comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership.^Xinhua^ He and Xi have agreed to the increased use of local currencies in trade.^BB^
Hichilema said Zambia thanks China for supporting the African Union's entry into the G20 and China's positive role in resolving the Zambian debt issue. The Zambian side abides by the one-China principle, highly appreciates the guiding philosophy and principles of Chinese modernization, and hopes to learn from China's development experience.
Hichilema has also said:^AN^
"We can do more, faster, because the needs are tremendous in Zambia. I heard some of the solutions are here. All we need to do is to combine the two together."
Check out @[email protected]'s discussion of The Wretched of the Earth!
The Country of the Week is Singapore! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
The news summary for last week is here!
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last week's discussion post.
I've been trying to find decent histories and analysis of Singapore as part of the COTW and it's been extra challenging this time, and until a few hours ago today, I didn't know why. So I plunged into the first book I could find that seemed tolerable, which was Singapore: A Modern History by Michael Barr, published in 2020. He seems pretty lib to me, but has a ton of other work on Singapore. I got through Chapter 1 and I can't say I'm a big fan of how the book is structured and what it focusses on (Chapter 2 is literally called "The Idea of Singapore", going into what the elites think about Singapore - I want more nitty gritty stuff on the actual people, which the article posted by @[email protected] very helpfully provides) and it doesn't really go in chronological order either, so I don't plan on finishing it.
But now I understand a little better about the situation, so here are my notes I made while reading the first chapter, which is called "Let’s Talk About 1819: Reorienting the National Narrative":
So, fueled by pure Dunning-Krueger from reading one and a half chapters of a book and a Le Monde article (though also bits and pieces across the internet in my search), here are my attempted answers to the homework:
Singapore is essentially a one-party capitalist state. The opposition does technically exist and has a few seats, but the history of Singapore since its independence in 1965 has been rule by the People's Action Party, first led by Lee Kuan Yew, then by Goh Chok Tong who was in office from 1990 until 2004, and now Lee Hsien Loong (the son of Lee Kuan Yew, by the way), who has been Prime Minister since 2004. They are anti-communist nationalists who believe in Singaporean exceptionalism.
I'm not really sure, but three factors that are at least pertinent are a) the demographics (~75% Chinese, the rest Malay and other groups) which has previously led to racial violence and sinocentrism, as well as all the foreign workers which support these citizens and yet mostly live in bad conditions and are repressed; b) absurdly high rent/housing prices, though GDP per capita is pretty decent if you ignore all those aforementioned foreign workers; and c) the fact that Singapore's land is very limited (though land reclamation from the sea is occurring) which limits new construction and such.
Essentially there's five major periods of Singaporean history - the first is the pre-colonial period, stretching back definitely hundreds, probably thousands of years. Then there's the British colonial period, which essentially began in 1819 when Sir Stamford Raffles, which is the most British imperialist name ever, took control of the island for the British Empire. Then, the war period (Singapore was relatively unaffected by WW1, but in WW2 was occupied by Japan from 1942 to 1945). Then the pre-independence period up until 1965, which seemed to have a fair amount of turmoil and desire for independence from Britain, and in 1963 they were briefly part of Malaysia before shit kinda fell apart and they became their own country in 1965. And finally, the post-independence period, which has lasted until this day.
Singapore uses a UK-inspired parliamentary system, with Members of Parliament. As mentioned before, the PAP has been totally dominant since independence (currently 79 seats), and the Workers' Party is the main historical opposition, and tends to skew a little left (but communists have been historically purged in Singapore such as in Operation Coldstore and Operation Spectrum), with 8 seats currently. The Progress Singapore Party is a recent addition, created in 2019, and seems pretty liberal as far as I can tell, mainly just arguing that the PAP is doing capitalism a little incorrectly; it has a grand total of 2 seats. There are also a small number of independent MPs.
Singapore has been and still seems to be relatively LGBTQIA+ friendly, with sex reassignment surgery legalised in 1973, though homosexual sex between men was technically illegal up until last year (it was de facto legal since 2007) - for women, it's always been legal. Same sex marriages are not currently recognized though.
I can't really speak on ethnic equality, but the whole "foreign worker" thing kinda makes that point anyway.
75% of their exports go to countries in Asia, and a third of their exports go to China + Hong Kong - compared to 8% to the United States. Due to all the ethnic Chinese people, I get the vibe that they have good relations with China culturally, though they also have a decent relationship with the UK. Looking at Pew poll, apparently two thirds of Singaporeans had a positive view of China in 2022, but as tensions and Western propaganda ramp up I think that number will go down.
It feels like Singapore managed to get a relatively good end result out of its colonial period, but this is probably more to do with its strategic location on the Strait of Malacca (which also has a shitload of undersea cables going through it) than anything else. At the very least, the Singaporean elite seem to have accepted their British heritage and history, even actively liking it, and the UK has been a very popular place to send students overseas. How the rest of society feels about the UK's colonial impact, I'm not so sure.
I think the honeymoon period of the country has been over for a number of years now - in the 1990s and 2000s, the vibe was "This is a hypercompetent government with no corruption and we're the best in the world in This and That", whereas now, the cracks are showing. Nonetheless, it still feels like enough people are behind the PAP that their position is secured for the years to come.
All the parties are functionally identical to each other, the ruling PAP has even accused the Worker's Party of copying their manifesto lol
The only difference is mostly aesthetic differences on social issues (LGBTQ rights etc)
The only real issue of substance is immigration, where the ruling party wants to increase immigration to counter an aging population and keep the economy running
And opposition wants to limit immigration, motivated by concerns of the strain on housing and transportation (and also xenophobia)
thank you for your comments comrade! extremely useful for my (and our) understanding.
Most foreign workers dont really have a political voice or any representation in society, most of them are on short term contracts and have very limited contact with society at large
There are essential 3 types of foreign born workers in Singapore
short term workers in manual labour (mostly construction) mostly from south Asia and China, they are usually cloistered in worker's dormitories and have very limited connection with society at large especially since they would not usually stay long in Singapore
Domestic maids who live in their employer's home, mostly from other SEA countries, likewise they have very limited contact with people outside of their community or their employers
More long term workers in other industries who can afford their own housing and have the ability to apply for long term residence (this includes your "expats")
For LGBTQ rights, its very limited
Male Homosexuality was recently discriminalised, but that law was not being active enforced so its essentially a token gesture
And in the midst of doing that they "sneakily" altered the constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman, meaning a constitutional challenge would be required to allow gay marriage
On transgender rights while its true that sexual reassignment surgery is allowed, its incredibly difficult to get medical clearance for it, and a change in your stated gender is only possible after bottom surgery, this also means that AMAB people are still subjected to conscription unless they can get their surgery before 18 (practically impossible)
If anyone's interested in a literary/artistic depiction of the "The Singapore Story" historical narrative, I recommend Sonny Liew’s 2015 comic book The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye (copy on a website that rhymes with "giblen" but I'm not sure if I'm allowed link it here directly). I recently got to reading it for a class that I was auditing, and it was a really fun and accessible introductory look at the hegemonic official narratives about Singapore's independence and postcolonial national identity, told from the metafictional perspective of an author insert character that's pretty much hinted to be a communist sympathiser/fellow-traveller. It's a pretty interesting critique of the historical narrative-crafting perpetuated by the PAP throughout Singapore's nationhood.
Fun fact about the book's publication: It was originally funded by the Singapore government through a National Arts Council grant, but funding was withdrawn at the last minute - like, the first publication run was already printed and had to have blank stickers on the publishing details page to cover up the NAC logo printed there. (If you look at the publication timeline, it's interesting to note that the book was published around around the time when Lee Kuan Yew died.) But then after the book became a commercial & critical hit and started winning international awards, suddenly the NAC was more than OK with having its name printed on subsequent editions.
This reads to me as "Western expat goes to Asian country and accuses their national identity of not existing because obviously only superior Aryans™ can have nation states and everyone else is simply terra nullis, especially if they're not ethnically homogenous".
My anecdotal experiences with Singaporeans is that it is probably the only economically developed country that is truly multicultural. Ethnically, Singapore consists mostly of Chinese, Malays, and Tamils (the fact that the article doesn't mention Tamils makes me extremely suspect, imagine an article about America that handwaives American demographics as "60% White, the rest Black and other groups".). From what I can tell people of all three languages have something called a "home language" class where they learn their respective ethnic languages. My experience with Chinese Singaporeans is that these classes are fairly effective in teaching their heritage languages at roughly the same level they would've been taught in countries where these languages are the majority language. In contrast to America, also an Anglophone country, where you will meet Hispanic-Americans born in Mexico who can't even speak Spanish or Chinese-Americans who get offended at the very idea that they should be able to read/write Chinese. IIRC there's a California proposition that straight up bans bilingual education. On the other hand, Singaporeans do have their own national identity and culture. The vernacular dialect of English spoken is Singlish (although in the past the government has tried to eliminate it) which is distinct from American English and has fairly strong Chinese/Malay/Tamil influences. Singaporeans as a whole do not seem to identitfy with other Anglo countries, especially younger Singaporeans. Chinese Singaporeans are also probably the only Chinese diaspora group that isn't openly hostile towards China itself, while also maintaining a distinct identity. Most importantly, Singaporean law doesn't fall into the "freeze peach" trap and actively eliminates speech that promotes ethnic or religious tension.
You will see a fair bit complaining about the anti hate speech thing and other Singaporean laws by
types and from what I can tell the average Singaporean will push back and defend their country's policies. Ironically Singapore is probably the Asian country that imo has the least amount of xenophilia towards the west. In situations such as this article, where western "journalists" do their standard routine of mischaracterizing Asian countries they do not understand, I see a fair amount of backlash and resentment from Singaporeans. I'm sure if you showed this article to a Singaporean, especially a leftist one, they would have some strong words to say about the article.
If you see the actual history of Singapore, at least as it is viewed by the average Singaporean, very little attention is paid towards Raffles or the British, instead there's a lot of hagiography around Lee Kuan Yew. the gist of it is: When the Japanese invaded Singapore the British were inept at defending it, the Japanese then proceeded to massacre the Island's Chinese population, leading to the death of any notion of English superiority. Post WWII the island became independent and Lee Kuan Yew wanted make it a part of Malaysia. The Malaysians didn't want Singapore to be a part of Malaysia because of the large population of Ethnic Chinese and also because they suspected Lee's party of being Communists, so they kicked them out. There's also this belief among Lee idolizers that Lee wanted to eventually become the president of Malaysia and the Malaysians expelled Singapore for of fear of this. If you watch old Lee Kuan Yew interviews there are quite a few anti-west moments such as when he complained about western journalists being hypocritical of their coverage of Singapore, or when he accused the CIA of trying to bribe him and started taunting them.
If you take into account the fact that Malaysia literally kicked Singapore out of federation due to its ethnic composition, combined with ongoing resentment towards the British/other Anglos, then no, you can't claim as the author does, that Singapore's national identity is somehow artificial or that they're "all the same".