Singapore's woke crowd has taken issue with Lee Hsien Loong's argument that, quote from his NDR speech: "Chinese Singaporeans made some concessions for the greater good. For example, to put the ethnic minorities more at ease, we adopted English as our lingua franca. The use of English put those who spoke only Mandarin and dialects in a disadvantageous position."

Of course the first to tweet (cluck) about it was our favorite Hen.

What I find particularly entertaining about the people on the left is that they are typically the loudest preachers of multiculturalism and diversity, professing how much they are interested in other cultures but somehow they don't seem to be able to observe simple facts about them - even if they are just next door.

Singapore is a 75% Chinese-majority country which is using English as its de facto main language, has four official languages and a national language, Malay - if only for mostly ceremonial purposes.

To understand why this can be considered a concession by the Chinese community - which could easily dominate every aspect of running the country - you just have to look across the border, to the place that Singapore was kicked out from: Malaysia.

Malay majority in Malaysia (67%) is smaller than the Chinese majority in Singapore (75%). Just like Singapore, Malaysia has significant ethnic minorities: Chinese (24.5%) and Indian (7.3%).

Yet, the official language is solely Bahasa Malaysia.

In certain cases the use of English is permitted and, particularly in urban areas, it may often be a de facto main spoken language, but the reality is that most of the education, national laws and most local jobs require use of Bahasa — while no other language gets official recognition, despite the fact that for 1/3rd of the country it is not necessarily the first one.

This isn't where it ends, of course, given the existence of overtly racist Bumiputera policies, which discriminate - by law - all ethnic minorities in Malaysia.

Of course, this is not to say that it's an ideal or desirable state of affairs - but rather to highlight what happens in countries typically dominated by a single, huge ethnic majority.

Singapore's political leaders - led by Lee Kuan Yew - made a conscious choice to, first, promote a multiethnic, multicultural Malaysia which would treat all people equally — and when they got removed from the federation, they implanted these ideals into the nascent city-state of Singapore.

To dismiss this as unworthy of praise, to not recognize it as a globally rare and historically momentous gesture by the Chinese majority to build a peaceful, cooperative, tolerant, multicultural society reeks of both ingratitude and ignorance.

And exhibited by whom? By someone who's making snide remarks about "selling ourselves to Western investors" while Kirsten Han herself sold her services in smearing Singapore day and night for thousands of dollars to foreign grants and donations, without which her literary existence wouldn't be even a blip on the radar?

By someone so devoutly anti-Singaporean that she saw fit to do a pilgrimage to Mahathir with her sidekicks in the midst of the worst bilateral tensions in years in 2018?

Finally, by someone who decided to cast doubt on the world's most successful contact-tracing program TraceTogether, endangering lives and livelihoods of millions of Singaporeans, just so she could stick a needle into the local government's side?

There are many people in Singapore - most of Singaporeans, in fact - capable of extraordinary gestures, tolerance, cooperation across ethnic divides, in a constructive service to the nation.

Kirsten Han and her buddies are not among them. Quite the opposite, in fact, they only seek to do harm.

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