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I might be entirely wrong, but I wonder if it’s shared culture with other SE Asian countries?

Having spend time in SE Asia, I’ve found the “collective mindset” to be inaccurate. People there are just as likely to screw over their fellow man as any other country.

What’s different is the deference to authority. When the govt cracks down, people don’t really complain or push back. They accept it much more readily. Not sure if it’s the belief that leaders need an “iron will” or what, but it’s very different than North America or Europe where protesting the govt is almost expected.




Maybe, but that's what comes to my mind first. The media/NewsCorp basically program the country to accept whatever they want passed, seemingly overnight. Most people are quite apathetic politically too, or just willing to accept whatever they hear on TV.


They're collective in that they're strongly monocultural.


Singapore isn’t and still highly collective.


It seems about as multicultural as HK is, which is not very.

You can tell by the amount of racism that is permitted.

Also, can a White person truly be Singaporean?


I mean Singapore has 4 official languages, 3 major ethnic groups (Chinese, Malay and Indian), and ~50% of the population are foreigners.

And yes, you a white person can be Singaporean. There aren't many, but there are Singaporean politicians who are white but Singaporean by birth.


I didn't mean legally. I meant culturally. Are they able to be just as culturally connected as everyone else, or would some people assume they are a foreigner even if they were born there?


My experience there was that if you fit within one of the 3 core ethnic groups people would assume your Singaporean. But if you’re in the “other” group then yeah, people would assume you’re a foreigner.


That sounds like HK.

I guess HK and Singapore are multicultural in that you are rather limited in what you can assume is general knowledge.

They don't seem anywhere near as multicultural as places where you hear a wide variety of ethnic groups using the same kind of accent though.




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