Size matters. One has only to think of the undersized schoolboy who is constantly teased and bullied by his bigger, taller, sturdier classmates. If he grows into adulthood still undersized, he is at a serious disadvantage in the courting and mating game where the big guys get the girls.
And if, by some metaphysical quirk, he comes back into the next life reincarnated as a tiny city state, he is looked down upon by the bigger states in the neighbourhood and the rest of the world.
Little Singapore, an island measuring no more than 693 square kilometres, and not much bigger than any of the metropolises in countries such as the US, China and India, has had a long history of the ‘size matters syndrome’. Once a Taiwanese official, nettled by some remark that a Singaporean official had made in connection with his country’s prickly relations with China, retaliated with a comparison that was downright rude. He said Singapore was no more than a piece of dried snot which, after being picked from the nose, could be flicked off between thumb and forefinger.
The remarks from Malaysia, the neighbour just across the Causeway, contained no such crude imagery, but were no less cutting. ‘Singapore? Why, we can just go to the top of our highest building to have a full view of the country!’ ‘One of these days, little Singapore will sink under the weight of all those big buildings she keeps putting up!’ ‘Well, if the buildings don’t do the sinking, a rise in sea level from global warming will!’
But the label for tiny Singapore that is best known comes from Indonesia, the neighbour to the south. Some years ago, an Indonesian politician who was piqued, like his Taiwanese counterpart, by something that Singapore had said about his country, wryly described the city state as no more than just ‘a little red dot’ on the world map. A little red dot. A mere punctuation mark which, if not for the colour, would be invisible. Something even smaller than that awful bit of throwaway snot.
The lesson to be learnt from all these insults from neighbours is, well, not to provoke them in the first place, or simply to ignore them as something one can’t do anything about.
But Singapore has done much better than that with the little red dot belittlement. She has actually embraced it, and turned it into a badge of honour! And she has done this by the simple device of dressing it up as a paradox. Little big red dot. Little big Singapore. Beneath the seeming contradictions lies a wealth of meaning.
Little? The country is so only in the physical sense of length and breadth. But it is big in the more important sense of prosperity and stability. Hey, you big neighbour across the Causeway, do you have the same GDP? The same level of economic development? The same vast national reserves?
Little? Only in the sense of having no natural resources, through an oversight of Mother Nature. But it is big in the development of its human resources, which ultimately is a more important factor in a country’s development. Hey, you even bigger neighbour, favoured with vast natural resources of oil and minerals and timber, why is there so much mismanagement, why are your people still living in poverty, why is the literacy rate still so low? Mother Nature, do learn a lesson. It’s the familiar story of the spoilt, pampered son who squanders away his inheritance, while the poor little ill-treated stepson makes good on his own.
No more than a little piece of human residual matter that is flicked off the fingers? Alright, you boast your larger size, your longer history, your being much better known in the world. But have you ever been ranked, year after year, in the top three places in international surveys on business attractiveness, global competitiveness, use of advanced technology?
Small is big. Little is nimble. Tiny is successful.
A small fish swimming in a huge ocean among its monster denizens? Well, its swift, agile darting movements enable it to escape the net and the harpoon that the clumsy monsters can’t. A shrimp, that least significant, most helpless creature in the sea? But this one is different. It is a shrimp with teeth.
In a sobering moment, as must happen on one’s 50th birthday, Singapore realises that name-calling, cocking a snook, pulling a long nose, are all just so much juvenile behaviour that should have been left behind a long time ago. Years ago, as a member of ASEAN, she had made the commitment to be friendly and helpful towards her neighbours, in the sombrely expressed philosophical stance of ‘Prosper, not beggar thy neighbour.’ Trading verbal barbs cannot be part of this stance.
Singapore, on her 50th birthday, has grown and matured to the point where it can absorb any derogatory remark and turn it into something that actually enhances rather than diminishes her international standing. So she now wears the ‘Little Red Dot’ badge in proud testimony to a success all out of proportion to her diminutive size as she takes her position on the world stage with fellow nations that tower over her.
At home, the label has inspired all kinds of enterprises that take advantage of its rather cutesy connotations, for instance, newspapers and magazines targeted at schoolchildren, playschools and kindergartens, toys and children’s clothes, kids’ TV programmes, etc.
A distinctly adult — and more tantalising — use of the label was inspired not by the littleness but by the colour. Some years ago, the Red Dot spawned the Pink Dot, a predominantly gay group that embraces every kind of sexual orientation because its logo is ‘Freedom to love’. It is a rapidly growing organisation that holds peaceful annual mass gatherings in officially approved venues. Everyone comes dressed in bright, cheerful pink; everyone is laughing and in celebratory mood, watched by wary government officials in a society that only recently de-stigmatised gay behaviour. On this special occasion, the little three-letter word can be used in both its new and old meanings to allude, respectively, to the participants and the mood of the event.
In 2014, for the first time, a dissonant note was set by conservative Muslim and Christian groups who disapproved of what they deemed to be godless behaviour. Not to be outdone in the visual impact of colour, they came up with the idea of wearing pure, austere white on the same day as the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transvestite (LGBT) celebrants were flaunting their pink outfits.
Red Dot, Pink Dot, White Dot. The creative use of colour is likely to be seen in an increasingly active civil society that is not afraid to promote its special interests. A Green Dot for environmentally conscious Singaporeans? A Blue Dot for writers promoting a return of Romantic literature in the school syllabus? A Yellow Dot for anti-West activists triumphantly proclaiming that the old Western fears about the ‘Yellow Peril’ may be founded after all, with the spectacular rise of China and Southeast Asia? A Brown Dot, after the 50th birthday celebration of Singapore, to signify a blending and merging of all the different ethnic colours into one neutral, unifying national colour?
Once, in a moment of cynicism, when I was writing about the lack of direction in the political leadership, I churlishly described it as ‘The bland leading the bland’. A Colourless Dot. But no, on the occasion of this wonderful and joyous jubilee, negative feelings are not in order, and so I’ll settle for the pleasing imagery of the Rainbow Nation.