A curious thing happened in Singapore last week. A Chinese blockbuster, a sprawling tale of dynastic intrigue and martial valour, shattered box office records. Yet the real drama unfolded not on screen but in the soul of the city-state.
Singaporean commentators, with the anxious alacrity of a Victorian governess caught without a corset, began to wring their hands over a supposed 'identity crisis'. Are they Chinese or are they Western? Or, as the more sophisticated wail, are they simply 'Singaporean'?
This is, of course, nonsense of the most precious sort. Singapore has always been a cultural chameleon, but its true colours have never been in doubt. The British Empire may have retreated, but its cultural shadow lingers like the scent of stale Earl Grey.
The island's elite still send their children to Oxbridge, its courts still quote English common law, and its intellectuals still measure civilisation by proximity to London. Yet the global tectonic plates are shifting. China, once the exotic Other, now produces the cultural goods that command attention.
The 'Chinese' film is not merely a film: it is a reminder that the Anglosphere's cultural monopoly has expired. Singapore, ever the pragmatic merchant, must now choose between its sentimental attachment to Britishness and the hard realities of a Sinocentric future. This is not a crisis of identity but of power.
The real question is not who the Singaporean is, but whose cultural hegemony he will serve. The British, of course, will lament this as further proof of their own decadence. They will comfort themselves with memories of Shakespeare and the BBC.
But the writing is on the wall, and it is written in Mandarin.
