The Dangerous Influence of “Chinese Privilege” in Singapore

When this article was first published, it gained a largely mixed reaction of supporters and detractors. See my response to the critics of this article here.

When I met UK Member of European Parliament (MEP) Daniel Hannan in 2019, he curiously inquired about Chinese Privilege in Singapore.

I was somewhat taken aback by the fact that a UK MEP would be interested in the racial relations of a small city-state. But what I told him was that “Chinese Privilege” is mostly a hackneyed importation of “White-Privilege”-style social justice arguments from the West, propounded by a minority group of young radical Lefty activists that spent a little too much time reading Marx when they should be reading Hayek instead.

I’ve followed discussions on Singapore’s “Chinese Privilege” closely for several years now. I still think the notion of Chinese Privilege is one that is prevalent mostly in the minds of a younger minority.

Yet, I’ve slowly observed the nascent usage of the term that once exclusively existed in the marginal corners of Facebook slowly trickling into sociopolitical discourse.

The latest wave of Chinese-Privilege-style posts follows in the wake of the George Floyd riots in the U.S. Although this was an American media story, it has prompted no shortage of local activists, public commentators and social media influencers coming out the woodwork with public condemnations of racism and their own social commentary of racism in the Singaporean context.

I try to read many of these with an open mind. But in my years of following the “Chinese Privilege” discourse, I’ve given up on finding an original and persuasive argument. It wasn’t any different this time round.

What I do find, when I decide to sieve through social media posts, are emotionally-charged anecdotes of racism. Alfian Sa’at — arguably the loudest cheerleader of the Chinese Privilege brigade — is particularly effective at recycling these stories. So when I saw him pummeling the emotional console in another one of his viral Facebook posts this week, I rolled my eyes. Then I cringed, because he had to reach as far back to an incident in 2016 to say something relevant in order to capitalise on the ongoing media hype.