DPM Tharman Shanmugaratnam at the Spring Reception 2016 on 10 February 2016

Mr Chua Thian Poh and all the committee members of the SFCCA, Business China and Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre. Friends and guests who are here this morning.

各位嘉宾，朋友们，大家早上好。祝大家新年快乐 (In Mandarin: Good morning to all guests, friends, and everyone present. I wish everyone a happy Lunar New Year).

Thank you very much for inviting me. I think Mr Chua has just given us a very good speech covering what SFCCA, Business China and the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre will be doing in the next year, and in the coming years.

We are all looking forward to the opening of the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre later this year in Shenton Way. It is an important new centre for the Singapore Chinese community, but it will also help in our efforts to develop our Singapore identity and culture, and I will talk more about this a bit more.

I think we are at a very interesting stage, having completed 50 years of national development and now looking to the future. Not just for our economy – which is of course important – but also for our culture and our identity as Singaporeans. And I would like to make a few remarks about three things that we have to focus on in this regard, and which I know that the SFCCA, Business China and the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre can play a very useful role in.

First, we have to deepen our Singapore identity in the coming years. Second, we have to intensify our efforts to integrate new immigrants in our society. And thirdly, we have to make sure that the culture of contributing back to community and country remains strong, not just for the current generation but for future generations. I believe these should be three important priorities in evolving our culture.

First, deepening our Singapore identity. It’s remarkable where we are today – that we are a peaceful, multiracial society, a rarity internationally. That’s why it is normal for an Indian minister to be the guest of honour for this event. It’s normal, not a novelty or something very unusual.

But for the future, we have to deepen our Singapore identity, because we live in a troubled world – a world where divisions will grow rather than get less. And it is not just for defensive reasons. It is also because there is an opportunity for people to develop greater pride in their identity as Singaporeans and in a multicultural Singapore.

But how do we do it? When I say deepen our Singapore identity, I do not mean we dilute each of our cultural identities. I do not mean we try to fuse everything into one culture. I think if we try to do that, we will end up with a weak and confused culture, and a weak and confused sense of identity amongst Singaporeans.

We have to preserve and in fact deepen our respective cultures. But that alone is not enough. It is not enough to just deepen our Chinese, Malay and Indian cultures in Singapore. We must also take a keen interest in each other’s cultures and participate wherever possible in each other’s cultures.

That is why I mentioned that the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre will be not just for Singaporean Chinese, but for all Singaporeans to learn about our evolving Chinese culture in Singapore. Just as the majority community should take keen interest in our Malay, Indian and other cultures.

So let’s not dilute our cultures, and certainly not fuse everything into one culture – because that will leave us with a weak and confused identity. We should instead evolve, adapt and strengthen our own cultures, and take a keen interest in each other’s cultures. This will allow us to deepen our Singapore identity, and take real pride in multiculturalism in Singapore.

We can’t force culture too much. But if you look at what happens among our schools, every time you see a very high standard performance – primary school, secondary school – sometimes you watch a Chinese dance performance, a very high standard and you feel proud. You watch a Malay dance performance – very high standard you feel proud. But when you see a Malay girl doing a Chinese dance also to high standards, there’s an extra flutter in our hearts. And when you see a Chinese doing Indian dance, there’s that added flutter in the heart.

So don’t weaken it; don’t lower the standard. Don’t go for fusion for its own sake. But encourage keen interest and participation wherever possible in each other’s cultures. That’s how we strengthen our unique Singapore identity.

Secondly, we have to pay more attention to integrating new immigrants. If we do it well, over time they too will contribute to evolving our culture, but very importantly, it also means ensuring immigrants assimilate within our multicultural environment. Just as they do when they go to the United States or Australia, immigrants want to assimilate as much as possible. The second generation especially always wants to assimilate, they don’t want to be different from the local community. Our second generation of new immigrants, I believe, will assimilate well and contribute to Singapore. But for the first generation too, we must make more effort to help them integrate. Learn to converse with locals, learn conversational English, mix in the community, take part in activities together. It is happening and we want it to grow even further. So this is the second very important priority.

Thirdly, there is something in our cultural identities that was about the ethos of contributing to the community. After independence especially, it was not just about contributing to your own community, but contributing to our country.

It was always there, from the earliest times in the Chinese community and that is why the clan associations were formed – to help each other. In the old days, it was about helping one’s own clan, in fact an even smaller group than your clan. It evolved, and especially after independence, we developed more of the ethos of contributing to a broader society. We saw the same thing among the Malay and Indian communities. But that was for a generation that went through great difficulty themselves. It came naturally to them. (Before independence, the colonial government was not really interested in developing social support systems or schools for all, so it had to be left to the communities to do it for themselves. Now we have a government that wants to take care of the people and has strengthened institutions of social support. But there is still a very important role for this culture of contributing back to society.)

I do worry if 30 or 40 years from now we find the next generation not having that same instinctive ethos: when you do well, you want to contribute back. This is a very important part of our Singapore culture and we must make sure that with each new generation, with our children and our grandchildren’s generation, we preserve this culture of contributing back to society. It does not come automatically. We have to work at it through our schools; work at it through our community activities. I hope that SFCCA, Business China and the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre will also work on keeping alive this aspect of our culture.

To conclude, I think we can look forward to evolving our culture in a way that strengthens our identity. That’s after all how it was in the past too - the Nanyang Style was about adaptation, not just preserving past tradition. The Nanyang artists brought about a mix of techniques and styles, Chinese and Western, and focused on local subject matter in our region. Adaptation did not mean a weakening of culture and tradition, but evolving it to keep the culture dynamic.

That is the way it was done then, and that is the way it has to be done in the future. Keep evolving, keep adapting, assimilate from different cultures, and make each of our cultures even richer.

Once again, I want to thank all of you for your commitment to strengthening our culture and nation. We can do much more in the future together. I would like to wish you once again, 身体健康, 万事如意. (In Mandarin: Wishing everyone good health and every success)