Singapore stays part of Malaysia

[Flocculencio]

In 1965, Singapore left the Federation of Malaysia due to the percieved irreconcilable racial, social and political differences between the two governments.
What if Lee Kuan Yew had managed to establish his views as the dominant ones in the Malaysia government?
Would a Federation of Malaysia by the beginning of the 21st Century run along meritocratic, capitalist lines be an economic power to rival maybe Japan?

Would the Indonesian government possibly see this entity as a threat leading to a mini cold war in SE Asia? Maybe we would see a war between the two nations resulting in the annexation of Kalimantan from Indonesia along with support to the insurgents in the various Indonesian islands.

 

[Leo Caesius]

I don't know that Lee Kwan Yew would have been able to impose his views upon the rest of Malaysia, but I'm fairly certain that resulting state would not only be much more powerful, economically, but also much fairer in its treatment of minorities (in this case, Chinese and Indians). Malaysia today has a rather awful system of quotas for these groups, forcing many of them to go abroad for their education and careers. There is a very palpable glass ceiling for minorities in Malaysia today, from what I understand. If this were not the case, Malaysia would not suffer from such a brain drain, and would almost certainly have a much more dynamic economy than it has today. Singapore, however, would probably suffer in the long run (as HK is suffering now, joined to China).

 

[Flocculencio]

I don't know that Lee Kwan Yew would have been able to impose his views upon the rest of Malaysia, but I'm fairly certain that resulting state would not only be much more powerful, economically, but also much fairer in its treatment of minorities (in this case, Chinese and Indians). Malaysia today has a rather awful system of quotas for these groups, forcing many of them to go abroad for their education and careers. There is a very palpable glass ceiling for minorities in Malaysia today, from what I understand. If this were not the case, Malaysia would not suffer from such a brain drain, and would almost certainly have a much more dynamic economy than it has today. Singapore, however, would probably suffer in the long run (as HK is suffering now, joined to China).

While I agree that it's implausible that LKY would be able to impose his views on Malaysia, I agree with your predictions for Malaysia itself- the bumiputra policy (literally meaning Princes of the Earth, bumi- earth, putra- prince, referring to the malays and other native races of the Malay peninsula) gives unfair quota limits for higher education etc. to prevent minorities gaining too much power. Also, any company over a certain size must have a bumiputra on its board of directors.
I don't know if Singapore would suffer in the long run. I think there would be a very good chance that it would be the New York of the Malaysian Federation- sort of like the US where the political capital is Washington DC but the real financial power lies in New York. Also, Singapore might be a bit less Sino-centric in its own internal policies.

 

[S. Amir]

Malaysia is now slowly moving away from the quota system by reducing the bumiputera quota and 10 percent of places in public university given to those who made the grades regardless of their race. Scholarships offered by the gevernment and the National Petroleum Company are given based on meritocracy. Plus majority of those who didn't secure a place in a public institution turn towards private institution. Actually many prefer private institution as 70% of employers prefer those who held degrees from private or foreign institution due to the fact that these institution use english as a medium while public institution still uses malay except for science and mathematics. The quota system was introduced as measure to help bumiputeras which was back then the most backward of all etnic groups in malaysia. The idea was after a few decade, when bumiputeras could compete fairly with non-bumiputeras, the government will abolish it. Sadly bumiputeras begin to see this as some sort of birth right they feel they're entitled to, that is why the government is slowly abolishing this policy before the bumiputeras become too dependant on the system.

 

[wkwillis]

Ethnic cleansing in Indonesia?

If the postwar political problems in Indonesia had been more severe, so many Chinese might have moved to Malaysia that it would no longer have been practical for the Malaysians to expell Singapore. This would especially have been true if Indonesia had split up along ethnic lines and all the islands had been independent. Singapore would have wound up with all the Chinese anyway, as all the islands used them as a port and service center.
Borneo and Sumata would have had most of the mineral and lumber resources, but Java was big on agricultural exports.
Later, the Phillipines would have entered into the common market for commercial reasons. Lots of factories in Singapore with management by Chinese and labor by all of South East Asia. For that we need a less colonial postwar situation.
Maybe the Russians are in the Netherlands because the Allies were successfully penned up in the Normandy peninsula by a fortuitous German discovery of the real invasion site? They pull enough troops out of Norway to defend the south of France, too. After 1943 they had all the iron ore they needed considering that the Russian conquest of Rumania was collapsing their industry anyway.
So the Germans start pulling their people out in the winter of 1943, and they are gone in the spring of 1944. Say, let them pull out the antiaircraft guns and the armored divisions. They had transit rights across Sweden. The Norwegians would have let them leave without a fight since they weren't really interested in fighting pitched battles in their own cities.
The German industrial collapse is just as bad as in OTL, but their aren't any allied troops in Europe outside Normandy when Bagration succeeds in breaking the German lines. The Germans were really in bad shape after Normandy because the Allies kept knocking out their tanks. But if the Germans had had an extra few divisions along the coast they could have kept the Allies penned in the bocage for a lot longer than a few months, and given them time to build successive fortifications for when the Allies blasted their way through each one.
They wouldn't have stopped the Allies completely, just bled them enough that they didn't have the capability to invade like they did.
The retreat to the West Wall takes place in the winter, after the French harvest is in and has been moved to Germany. Say, about February. The line is drawn along Calais to the Ardennes, and then the Westwall. With all summer to build lots of fortifications, the US is faced with digging in, in frozen soil, against a well fed enemy, and with a hungry France behind them needing to be fed with the convoys of ships that would otherwise have carried ammunition to the US army.
And that way the French don't have time to rebuild their army in time to participate in the attack. Neither do the Belgians. The Netherlands was of course still occupied up to the last days of the war.
So France wouldn't have had the organized troops to take Vietnam, and with the Russian army across the Rhine they wouldn't have been all that enthusiastic about taking what troops they had been able to train in the last few months after the German retreat and sending them halfway around the world.
Make that essentially all of ASEAN in the Singapore Co-Prosperity Sphere.
As for the question of the Russians adhering to Yalta, Yalta was where we promised that we would share the burdern of the war with Russia, and we certainly did not in OTL.
In this ATL, we sandbagged even more than in OTL. Russia might have made a separate peace in 1945 sheerly because of bitterness over our treatment of them in 1942-1945. We would have wound up fighting the all the Germans instead of just some of them, and Germans that weren't surrendering to us to avoid being captured by the Russians.
If the Germans had shot Hitler in January of 1944, and then pulled their troops out of Normandy to reinforce France by summer, we really might not have been able to set up the West Europeans in charge of their Asian colonies again.
If we had used up our nuclear weapons on Germany, then we also would have faced a Japan that could have just turned their weapons over to the natives instead of handing the colonies back to the French, the Dutch, and the British. Without our using nuclear weapons on them, they wouldn't have surrendered. The Russians might have occupied all of Korea and refused to give us half if we hadn't done at least some of the fighting in Germany as we did in OTL.

 

[Redbeard]

Wouldn't that just increase religious/ethnic tensions, the Chinese non-Muslim part of the population now being much bigger and probably with a firmer grip on economy etc.? I guess the Chinese are less likely to resigning into a submissive 2nd. fiddle role and how will the Muslim Malays take that?

Regards

Steffen Redbeard

 

[wkwillis]

My bad.

I drifted off topic. It was what if Singapore stayed in Malaysia. I wrote assuming that Singapore would be involved in a very loosely federated group of islands, not as if it was still part of Malaysia.
Now Malaysia consists of Malays, Chinese, Indians, and Dyaks. The Dyaks are from Malaysian Borneo and have the most oil, gas, fish, lumber, rubber, coconut, rice, and I think minerals like tin and iron ore per capita. If there were more Chinese in Malaysia, then the other ethnic groups would outvote the Malaysians and the Malayans would no longer be able to exploit the Chinese and Indians for their hard work and skills, and the Dyaks for their oil, gas, fish, lumber, rubber, coconut, and maybe minerals.
It would be a multiparty state.
Singapore Island was part of Malaysia, but the value of the island is low. There are many islands in the strait of Malacca and the Chinese could have built an industrial economy on pretty much most of them. Check it out on a map sometime. It's not valuable because of the land, but because of the people.
Perhaps the Chinese and Indians might have wound up in Borneo. They would have done just as well as in Singapore.
So if there were more Chinese in Malaysia, they would have just made it richer than it is, as rich as Malaya is right now. Same thing happens if there were more Indians. As long as the local Malayans can't overtax them, they will do very well off them. As it is, the Malayans are not overtaxing the Chinese and Indians and are shearing them like sheep, that is, very carefully, so as not to injure them. Works pretty well, so far. It would have worked as well if the Chinese had enough votes to make sure that they couldn't overtax them, in coalition with the Dyak natives and the Indians.