Singapore is a city-state located in Southeast Asia. This small country with an area of 728 square kilometers and a population of only 6 million is one of the most developed countries in the world. The per capita GDP of is as high as US$100,000, which is currently the richest in the world. One of the countries is .
Compared with other Southeast Asian countries, Singapore’s development in the fields of economy, society and national education is relatively excellent, and it can even be said to be at a completely different level. For such an excellent country, everyone may think that when they were independent, they were celebrating the whole country and indulging in a sea of joy. On August 9, 1965, when Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew declared independence, it was not for Singaporeans at the time. A day worth celebrating , independence for them is a situation that everyone does not want to see. It is more like a shackle on them by a strong family, and even a shame, because Singapore is a country that has been expelled , is the abandoned son of another country , and the country that expelled Singapore is their neighbor Malaysia.
How is Singapore independent? Why are they forced to become independent instead of fighting for independence by ? What are the grievances between Singapore and Malaysia?
On January 1, 1959, under the leadership of Singaporean party leaders such as Marshall, Lee Kuan Yew, Wu Qingrui, Singapore succeeded in obtaining complete autonomy from the British. Since then, Singapore has finally suffered Ushered in the era of real autonomy. But after gaining autonomy, Premier Lee Kuan Yew discovered that what he took over was a mess.The development of Singapore after its self-government was not as good as imagined.
After World War II, the British power was greatly reduced, and the colony was weak, and it was sooner or later to give up Singapore. Singapore is just a small island city with a very small population. I am afraid that even the security and survival of the country will not be guaranteed in the future.
Singapore's domestic resources are very scarce, and fresh water is even scarce. Local water sources alone cannot meet the daily needs of the people. In the face of various internal and external troubles, Lee Kuan Yew set his sights on Malaya . Lee Kuan Yew knew that the merger with Malaya to form a powerful federal state would enable Singapore, a small island city, to achieve long-term development.
Singapore and Malaysia are a natural whole in terms of politics, economy, culture, and history. Although the two places were divided into two independent political units to manage after World War II by the British government, they still Maintain very close contact. Therefore, after the Singapore-Malaysia merger plan is proposed, although some people will think that this will obliterate Singapore's unique geographical advantages, for the governments of the two places, the merger is undoubtedly the best practice in the interests of both sides.
For Singapore, the merger of Singapore and Malaysia will help establish a single common market between the two places and share resources with a common currency. Singapore needs Malaysia as an economic hinterland and sales market. For the Malayan government, Singapore, which has recovered after the merger, will pay a certain fiscal tax to the central government. This tax can not only make up for the Malayan government’s fiscal deficit, but also It can also rescue Malaysia, which is on the verge of bankruptcy, and most importantly, after the merger, it can allow the Malayan government to crack down on the activities of Kung Chang International in Singapore more effectively.
This plan is welcomed by the governments of the two places,The two parties immediately started negotiations, but in the course of the negotiations, the two parties of could not reach a consensus on one issue, that is, the issue of the balance of ethnicity and population ratio .
Singapore is a society with more than 1 million Chinese. After being merged into Malaya, Malaya’s originally very fragile racial balance will be broken. The proportion of Chinese will rise from 37% to 42%, surpassing Malays. became the largest nation in the country. Under such circumstances, for Umno, which controls the Malayan regime, this will threaten their absolute dominance in Malaya .
On May 27, 1961, Malayan Prime Minister Tunku Abdullahman proposed the Malaysia plan. will establish a plan in Malaysia that includes Malaya, Singapore, The political alliances such as Lai, Sabah and Sarayue , local governments hope to combine the above-mentioned regions into a new and powerful economy, so that regions can communicate with each other and eliminate trade barriers and economic competition between each other. Can maintain the Malay population advantage.
After two years of negotiations and struggles, the Singaporean government formally got rid of British colonial rule on September 16, 1963, and established the Federation of Malaysia together with Malaya, Sarawak, and Sabah. On September 16, 1963, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur held a national celebration together to celebrate the establishment of Malaysia's performance .
After the establishment of the Federation of Malaysia, the governments of Singapore and Malaysia have cooperated seamlessly. You come and go between the two sides. The previous cooperation plan has also been carried out perfectly after the formal merger.
But only a month later, the Malaysian Federal Government and the Singaporean government began to have conflicts. Not only did the two sides have different views on economic policies, but there were even huge differences in governance policies. . On December 21, 1963, the Singaporean and Malaysian governments first had an open conflict. At the Malaysian Parliament, Lee Kuan Yew, the representative of the Singapore government, criticized Malaysia. criticized the government for not giving Singapore enough budget. Instead, Singapore had to bear more The state has a larger tax , and the two sides also hold their own opinions and do not give in to each other.
During the negotiation of the Malaysian plan, Singapore once established a single market between New Marsala and Sabah. The Malayan government also agreed to gradually implement it after the merger. The single market policy condition is that Singapore wants to lend Sala Yue and Sabah a loan of 150 million ringgits, and this debt must be paid off within 15 years. However, after the merger, Singapore unilaterally complied with its commitments. In contrast, the federal government not only did not implement a single market. Progress also requires Singapore to increase the loan amount and extend the repayment period to 20 years.
The economic contradiction quickly evolved into a political contradiction. The main reason is that the federal government headed by Tengku Adu Rahman upholds the political principle of Malay supremacy. They hope to establish a Malay Malaysia, and the Singapore government represented by Lee Kuan Yew, hopes to build a Malaysian Malaysia. These two political principles seem to be only two words apart, but the connotation is actually the difference between Tianyuan and Tianyuan.
The main ethnic group in Malaya is the Malays. After getting rid of colonial rule, the Malays who turned themselves into the masters of course hope to control the power in their own hands, but when the Federation of Malaysia was established, the ethnic Chinese The proportions of the population of, Indians and other ethnic minorities have increased significantly. Among them, Chinese has not only become the second largest ethnic group in Malaysia,It has also become a point of view of the Malaysian economy. The population advantage of the Chinese and the huge gap between the rich and the poor between the Malays and the Chinese have made the Malay politicians who control the Malaysian government always worry that one day the Chinese will replace them. , Malay leaders began to discredit Singapore, saying that Singapore’s policies were the main cause of poverty for many Malays.
The original harmony between the Chinese and Malays also began to change. Finally, on July 21, 1964, conflict broke out between the two ethnic groups in Yalong, Singapore, resulting in 23 deaths and 45,054 injuries.
On September 21, 1964, another ethnic riot broke out in Singapore, resulting in 12 deaths and 109 injuries.
On May 3, 1965, Lee Kuan Yew's highly controversial remarks delivered a fatal blow to the relationship between Singapore and Malaysia after the race riots. This sentence completely destroyed the last hope of the merger of the two places. He claimed that one-third of the new immigrants of Malays had arrived in the past 100 years. The Malays believed that this was an adjustment of their privileges and an ideological challenge to the state religion of Islam as the state religion.
In July 1965, the stormy political tension in Malaysia still had no intention of easing. For this reason, then Malaysian Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman proposed a motion to expel Singapore from Malaysia in the Malaysian Parliament in order to avoid another ethnic conflict.
After a month of discussion and voting. On August 9, 1965, the Malaysian Parliament voted 126 in favor and 0 against, agreeing to expel Singapore from the Federation of Malaysia. Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew held a press conference at the same time, tearfully announcing that the Republic of Singapore was officially established. Since then, Singapore and Malaysia have been separated into two independent countries after more than 100 years of reconciliation, and the two places have also become completely different from then on. Different development paths, so far one has become a developed country, while the other country is striving to develop in the right direction in a divided ethnic political environment.
When looking at the split between Singapore and Malaysia, some people will think that Malaysia’s expulsion of Singapore from the federation was a wrong decision. Others will use Singapore’s standards to measure the development of the two places, but everyone Think about it, is it really a wrong decision for Malaysia to expel Singapore from the federation? Is it really fair for Malaysia to measure the development of the two places by Singapore's standards?
Looking at it from another angle, although Singapore and Malaysia have amazing similarities in politics, history, and culture, they are also because of historical reasons. The values among the people have completely different orientations. Ever since the British colonized Singapore and Malaya in the 18th century, the two places actually developed in different directions.
Singapore is a freely developed trading city under the British rule, while Malay Peninsula is relatively conservative, with different ideologies, so that British colonists must adopt a different approach. Treating the people of the two places, this also explains why Singapore and Malaysia are not suitable for merging together from the beginning. Although Singapore is indeed better than Malaysia in terms of development, the situation between the two countries is really different.
There is no perfect country in this world, there is only one country that is most suitable for people to live in.
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