SINGAPORE – Singapore will continue to welcome foreign professionals, but maintain a level of control so that citizens do not become a minority, Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said.

“If it is not controlled, I think we will be easily swamped,” he added. Foreign professionals are, however, needed to complement the Singaporean core, as they do add value to the economy, filling jobs in areas like construction and marine that Singaporeans shy away from, or in new areas where new skills are required, he said.

By maintaining tiered levels of control in bringing in such professionals, Singapore can benefit from a “net plus for all” scenario, he pointed out.

He cited the example of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) where citizens make up only less than 10 per cent of its population. Singapore “cannot afford” such a state of affairs, he said, as it does not rely on oil and gas revenues to provide for its citizens, unlike the Middle Eastern country.

Due to this difference, while the UAE allows foreigners to come in freely, the approach is not possible in Singapore, DPM Wong said.

He was speaking to The Economist in a wide-ranging interview on May 6, ahead of his succession to prime minister on May 15.

DPM Wong noted that the period of effortless growth for Singapore is over as the country is at a high level of development, and labour is just one of its issues.

“We will be expensive. I mean, you cannot expect high wages and low cost. Wages and cost are two parts of the same coin. We have high incomes, costs are high, we will have to keep on innovating, restructuring and then pushing the productivity and innovation frontier to justify the premium,” he said.

Given the challenges ahead, Singapore has to continue attracting cutting-edge investments here, pushing the frontier, and be prepared to let non-viable businesses fade away so that resources can be freed up.

“It is very much the process of churn, which can be very disruptive to workers, but that is why we have also put in place a lot of efforts to help workers retrain, reskill and upskill,” he added.

Can S’pore become race-blind?

Whether Singapore can be a society that can do away with its categorisation of ethnic identities under Chinese, Malay, Indian and Others was another topic delved into, with the interviewer asking if Singapore can truly be post-racial.

DPM Wong said he is indeed eyeing evolving Singapore into a society that becomes “race-blind”, but he also has to be “very realistic”, given that recent events have continued to send reminders that the instincts of race are primal and emotive, even dormant, among citizens.

“They just lie below the surface. It only takes an incident, a bad actor, someone trying to stir things, to cause the dormant virus to flare up again. That is why we have to be vigilant and watchful,” he said.

DPM Wong cited the spike in race-related incidents during the Covid-19 pandemic as one example. 

Describing these incidents as “very sharp, very antagonistic”, he recalled the racial slurs made towards a person of a certain ethnic community seen walking around without wearing a face mask in a park, as well as the sharp reaction in response to an influx of arrivals from India. 

Stronger identity politics

Asked for his views on whether the rise of stronger identity politics as seen in the West is a threat to Singapore, DPM Wong said he takes a different approach in dealing with issues of identity.

It is not about assimilating into one single identity, but about allowing people who identify differently to come together and find ways to expand the common ground shared among Singaporeans, he said. 

But since deep differences surely exist, DPM Wong said people will need to learn how to find ways to accommodate, and even compromise.

“Compromise cannot be a bad word. Compromise cannot be an issue of dishonour to my tribe or to my identity. Because if that is dishonour, then it is all-out war,” he said.

In the interview, DPM Wong also identified as being the first prime minister to be born after Singapore’s independence, when asked for his take on how attitudes among the younger generation have changed.

Bunching himself as part of the generation that grew up knowing only an enormously successful and prosperous Singapore, he said: “All my predecessors sang two, if not three other national anthems – God Save The King, the Japanese Kimi Ga Yo and, briefly, Malaysia’s Negaraku. 

“I have only sung one national anthem, Majulah Singapura, our national anthem.”

DPM Wong said the values and principles that brought Singapore to where it is today, such as meritocracy, incorruptibility and racial harmony, remain intact.

At the same time, though, there are changes, he said, adding: “Many of the young people I engage would like to strive and work hard for their own aspirations.”

They envision a Singapore where broader definitions of success are embraced, where every job is respected, where there is a fairer wage for every job, and a greater sense of assurance and security for individuals to uplift themselves and bounce back through life’s setbacks, DPM Wong said.

Having distilled these from conversations with various groups of Singaporeans under his Forward Singapore consultation exercise, he said: “We are taking steps towards realising these goals.”