{"id":18112,"date":"2019-10-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-03T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/2019\/10\/04\/singapores-history-of-separation-sets-it-apart-from-hong-kong\/"},"modified":"2021-02-15T16:10:54","modified_gmt":"2021-02-15T08:10:54","slug":"singapores-history-of-separation-sets-it-apart-from-hong-kong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/2019\/10\/04\/singapores-history-of-separation-sets-it-apart-from-hong-kong\/","title":{"rendered":"Singapore&#8217;s history of separation sets it apart from Hong Kong"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_18113\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-18113\" style=\"width: 780px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-18113\" src=\"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2020\/08\/Wu-Gungwu.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"780\" height=\"520\" srcset=\"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2020\/08\/Wu-Gungwu.jpg 780w, https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2020\/08\/Wu-Gungwu-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2020\/08\/Wu-Gungwu-768x512.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-18113\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: The Straits Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>On 1 October, the final day of the two-day Singapore Bicentennial Conference, University Professor Wang Gungwu (NUS Department of History) delivered a session on the divergences between Singapore and Hong Kong \u2013 despite their similar histories as British colonies.<\/p>\n<p>Prof Wang argued that Singapore has since been successful in forging a national identity after a history of two separations (the first with the British empire, the second with Malaysia); on the other hand, Hong Kong, has instead always maintained deep historical connections to and reliance on China. He notes that even while Hong Kong was a British colony in 1840, China had always remained actively involved in its affairs \u2013 even more so after Great Britain\u2019s departure. Such close connections have made it hard for Hong Kong to forge its own identity, as shown by the recent weeks of prolonged protests against what started out as anger over China\u2019s extradition bill.<\/p>\n<p>While Singapore\u2019s history of separations has helped the city-state to establish comfortable relations with distant nations, Prof Wang underscores its difficulties in forming closer relationships with its neighbours. He believes that rethinking Singapore\u2019s history of connections and separations is imperative for Singapore to balance between establishing stronger ties regionally, while still continuing to maintain relations with its distant connections.<\/p>\n<p>Read the full article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.straitstimes.com\/singapore\/singapores-history-of-separation-sets-it-apart-from-hong-kong-historian-wang-gungwu\">here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On 1 October, the final day of the two-day Singapore Bicentennial Conference, University Professor Wang Gungwu (NUS Department of History) delivered a session on the divergences between Singapore and Hong Kong \u2013 despite their similar histories as British colonies. Prof Wang argued that Singapore has since been successful in forging a national identity after a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":247,"featured_media":18113,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4529],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/247"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18112"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28599,"href":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18112\/revisions\/28599"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}