Editors’ Note

Napier’s paper, presented in the early years of the Society, is significant for its comparison of Dutch and English colonial systems at a time when the subject of land policy was being debated in the colony. In comparing the two systems, Napier joined a tradition of contrasting the Dutch Cultivation System with Britain’s liberal colonial policy. This was prominent in the writings of Stamford Raffles and John Crawfurd in the early nineteenth century. So too was it prominent in J.W.B. Money’s journey to Java in the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny of 1857, as well as later in Alfred Russel Wallace’s support in The Malay Archipelago (1869) for the Dutch protectionist system, which he saw as superior to the exposure of native populations to free competition.

The paper compares the British and Dutch systems by focusing upon the divergent principles which underlay their approaches to land policy. British liberalism, with its aim to produce a market in land, was criticized by Napier for its tendency to lead to the displacement and indebtedness of native populations. This was contrasted with the “picture of prosperity and order” he had witnessed in the Dutch Indies, based upon their protection of customary land law. These positions reflected earlier debates between Swettenham and Maxwell in Malaya. On Napier’s part, whilst he was not uncritical of the Dutch, his experience led him to call for a more protectionist ethos and he would go on to provide justifications for Malay land reservations: “where a race is found by a conquering European power to be in possession of the land of the country, it is permissible—nay, it is the duty of that power by its legislation to prevent that race being ousted”.

Ridley, in his response, also criticized Britain’s liberal approach. He argued that the “natives” did not appreciate the “high technicalities” of English law, and suggested that in other areas the British could learn from the Dutch. They could follow the Dutch regulations on the movement of natives and their curfew system.

Editors’ Note

Unlike Kynnersley’s 1901 essay, Ridley’s essay on the future of the Malay race offered a more pessimistic outlook for the Malays. Ridley, informed by his social Darwinism, argued that the Malays lacked the racial character to prevent subsumption by immigrant races, in particular the Chinese. He foresaw the Malay race intermixing with the Chinese and disappearing as they were integrated within a more dominant Chinese race. At the same time, he argued that two trends may delay this subsumption. The first was the presence of Islam as a differentiating factor between the Malays and Chinese, and the other was the presence of the British who may for some time artificially protect the Malays from external competition. In response Hanitsch, a botanist, Curator of the Raffles Library and Museum, and a colleague of Ridley, argued, against Ridley, that the long-term protection of the Malay race might be possible, but only on the basis of the restriction of immigration and through a system of education which would build upon existing trades and protect the current state of Malay society. To justify ongoing British protection of the Malays, Hanitsch noted:

I take the title, the Future of the Malay Race, to refer to the distant future of the race—its final end, if ended it should be before the great globe and all that it inherits shall dissolve—and therefore I will attempt to study the probable end of the race. At the present time I think it is clear that the Malays are increasing in number, at least in the Peninsula, although successful reproduction of the race is not large, Malays have comparatively small families, and are losing a considerable number of children very young.

Editors’ Note

As with the sex trade, the opium trade was another contested area of British policy in the Straits and one which was the object of discussion in the Society in 1893 on an evening in which two papers on the topic were presented. At this time the colonial policy of revenue farming was coming under pressure from moral reformers and Liberal politicians in Britain and by 1893, a Commission was appointed by Gladstone to investigate whether the trade should be suppressed across the Empire. In 1893 the Secretary of the Anti-Opium Society would arrive in the Straits to study the situation in the colony, whilst there was also emerging a growing anti-opium movement led by missionaries such as Rev. W.G. Shellabear, Rev. A. Lamont, Rev. J.A.B. Cook and Straits Chinese thinkers like Lim Boon Keng and Tan Teck Soon. As with Galloway’s essay, a dominant theme in Reith’s essay was how, in the face of liberal criticisms, an exception could be made for the colony, and the opium trade justified. In doing so Reith would follow arguments not dissimilar to those made by Galloway. An exception was firstly justified because the scale of the use of opium in the colony made demand difficult to eradicate. Secondly, suppression of production in British India would only drive traders in the colony to source opium from China, sending the trade underground, increasing smuggling, and harming the tax revenue of the colony. Finally, he argued that suppression of the trade would worsen relations between the Chinese and Europeans, citing recent disturbances in Kulim as proof. In this way Reith resurrected the spectre of the violent and difficult to govern Chinese to justify the continued trade in opium.

Though the object of a Philosophical Society is to dig about the roots of things, to question fact or imagination about the causes of things, and to weave theories about the moral bearing of things, yet the Straits Philosophical Society can hardly discuss the much discussed question about the opium traffic, without having much to say about the opium problem as it presents itself to this colony.

Editors’ Note

In one of several presentations that he made to the Society on education, Tan took up the issue of the modernization of Chinese education which he saw as central to the question of social reform amongst the Chinese. His essay is also notable for the attention it gives to the educational challenges faced by other communities and his criticism of British neglect. A notable intellectual and social activist, Tan, anticipating Furnivall’s much cited work on the emergence of the plural society almost fifty years later, was critical of the development of the colonial plural society in which “except as regards the strenuous pursuit of dollars, each leads a life of his own entirely indifferent to the existence or proximity of the other”. This was particularly true of the Europeans who, he argued, lived a separate social existence in the colony, governing only with regard to their own ideals and making only “feeble and spasmodic attempts” to understand and influence non-European populations.

Tan’s essay can be seen as an early pioneering call to the British for a greater focus on modernizing and reforming Malaya’s different communities. At the same time it is not surprising to find in his discussion on the Malays important discursive overlaps between Straits Chinese and European thought. The Malays were defined by Tan as characterized by a laziness induced by the tropical climate. Thus their “want of stamina and character is inherent, and if entirely left to itself the race will in all likelihood degenerate and die away in a not very distant future”. And whilst he would argue, alongside other members of the Society, that racial mixing was slowly improving the Malays, he also reasoned that as the “child of the soil” the Malays required special protection from the British, as well as the education of Malay women and the formation of model farms to teach them agriculture. These were themes which European members of the Society were also inclined to support (see Section 3).

INTRODUCTION

Brunei is a predominantly Muslim country with a population of 459,500 in 2019 (Department of Economic Planning and Statistics 2019). As one of the oldest monarchies in the world, the sultanate of Brunei began in the fourteenth century when Awang Alak Betatar converted to Islam and married a Johore princess. He was coronated as the first Sultan of Brunei in 1368 and became Sultan Muhammad Shah. Despite political turbulences, foreign interference, economic instability and substantial territorial loss at the end of the nineteenth century, the monarchical system remains intact until the present day.

There are many factors that contributed to the continued existence of Brunei’s monarchical system. Hamzah (1989) considered the skilful tact, diplomacy and political experience of the Brunei Sultans in dealing with external pressures as the main factor that overcame the political deficiency that could jeopardize the integrity of the monarchical system. Whereas Talib (2013) emphasized “the traditional and religious sources of legitimacy” from which the Brunei monarchy draws its strength as fundamental to the country’s survival.

In the present day, Brunei’s monarchy implements a unique governance model that strikes a balance between tradition and modernity. The traditional components are solely implemented in the royal court whereas the modern elements of governance shape the present-day state administration (Asiyah az-Zahra, Siti Norkhalbi and Noor Azam 2017, pp. 4–5). As will be discussed later, this unique model shapes what Talib (2013) regarded Brunei as a neo-traditional polity that enables the country to respond well to the changing needs of the modern globalized world.

THE BRITISH RESIDENCY 1906–59)

Before the turn of the twentieth century, Brunei was in a deep political crisis, following a substantial territorial loss to the Brookes in Sarawak and the British North Borneo Chartered Company in the present-day Sabah. By the turn of the century, Brunei was truly desperate to retain and ready to fight for what was left of its sovereignty. After several pleas made by Sultan Hashim (r. 1885–1906), the British agreed to the establishment of the British Residency in Brunei. With the signing of the Supplementary Agreement between Brunei and Britain in 1905/1906, Malcolm McArthur was appointed as the first British Resident.

INTRODUCTION

There are three main characteristics of a rentier state. First, oil revenues are paid to governments in the form of rent. Second, oil revenues are externally generated from exports. Third, oil revenues are directly accumulated by the state (Benli 2014). Furthermore, in order to qualify as a rentier state, oil should account for at least 40 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). Usually, only a small percentage deals directly with the extraction of the natural resources. The majority participates in the distribution and utilization of the natural resources (Belbawi 1987).

Brunei is therefore a rentier state; its vast income from oil and natural gas provides its basis as a rentier state. It is among the world’s most dependent economies on oil and gas, which accounts for around half of its GDP and 90 per cent of export revenues (Department of Economic Planning and Statistics 2020a). Revenues from oil and gas have made the GDP per capita levels in Brunei the second highest in Southeast Asia (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development 2018).

Mahdavy (1970) and Beblawi (1987) argued that overdependence on oil revenues can have negative political, economic and social impacts on a rentier state. On the economic side, it can cause enclaved development which is termed a “resource curse” or “Dutch Disease” whereby the booming oil sector distorts the growth of other sectors. The role of most rentier states is largely limited to the distribution of rent earnings among the population by providing goods and services for the community welfare and by acting as the major employer in the country.

Brunei is not an exception. Employment in the government sector entails high incomes and is a major vehicle for redistributing the rents from oil revenues. In 2019, the public sector employed 33.78 per cent of the country’s total employed persons. It employs more locals—49.53 per cent of the total locals employed—compared to non-locals who constitute 2.5 per cent of the total non-local employed persons in Brunei. It should be noted that the 66.50 per cent of the total employed persons are locals.

To judge of a religion from its literature is not perhaps entirely satisfactory, for there are influences which cannot be expressed in writing, and can only be gauged from their results on the lives of individuals, and on the progress and social condition of races. The investigation which is before us tonight has, however, the advantage of that accuracy which attaches to documentary evidence. In regard to those statements which are found in the works which Islam has produced in such abundance there can be no mistakes, except the bare possibility of errors of translation, which in these days of intensive linguistic studies are not liable to be frequent or important. The liability to pass an unfair judgment on Mohammedanism from a study of its literature is therefore confined to misinterpretations of the text, or to a one-sided selection of the works to be studied, or an unfair selection of extracts from those works. It will therefore be my endeavour to consider Mohammedan literature from many different points of view, and to take as great a variety of works as possible under review, in the hope that we may obtain as broad a view as possible of the teaching of Islam.

In the first place it seems obvious that we should devote a good deal of attention to the Koran itself, after which I propose to consider the main teachings of the Koran, the Traditions, and other current Moslem literature on certain fundamental subjects, such as the doctrine of God, the universe, science, the future life, sociology etc., in order to show the influence of their literature upon the Mohammedans themselves.

The Arabian prophet left nothing to his followers in his own writing. Moslem authorities are not even agreed as to whether he was able to read and write. It is quite certain, however, that the Koran is his own composition either written down by his amannenses, or immediately committed to memory and afterwards recited from time to time at public worship. The commentator Bukhari states that it was not until about a year after Mohammed’s death that the Koran was first collected as a whole.

Editors’ Note

Questions of the modernization of the Malays were also raised in a discussion in the Society begun by Rev W. Murray’s “The Influence of Modern Civilization on the Malay” and responded by David Bishop. In Murray’s piece, which provided the standard characterization of the Malays by Europeans of that period, Murray rooted their character not only in the effects of climate. He also attributed it to the nature of the pre-colonial system of governance which had left the Malays “unambitious and lazy”. The British presence had been able in part to counteract this by providing a system of peace and law and order which had been able to effect external changes in the Malays. This, he argued, could be translated into internal changes that would modify the Malay from “a pirate and warrior … into a lover of peace and order”. This image which Murray expressed in terms of the domestication and taming of the Malay character did not, however, suggest for his critic, Bishop, that the Malays would modernize fully. In his view the Malay character and nature would require their continued dependence on British tutelage as “the Malay has been slow to adopt Western ideas and manners”. Arguing that, despite exceptions, the Malay is “conservative and suspicious of innovations, unambitious and unprogressive”, he noted that “[t]he great majority of the Malay lads in school are deplorably devoid of ambition, and seem only to desire to get along with as little trouble and as little exertion of brain-power as possible. The forces of heredity are apparently too strong.”

If the Committee of the Society, in fixing the subject of this paper, contemplated the Malay in widest sense of the word—that is, as a race peopling not only the Malay Archipelago generally so called, but also Formosa, the Philippines, Madagascar, and South Africa—it proposed a subject far greater than I can possibly deal with. Even in the narrowest sense of the Malay resident at our doors, I am afraid that all I can offer is an essay somewhat disjointed and incomplete.

In 2017, the Vietnamese government began drafting eighty-five articles of a regulatory bill to open three special economic zones (SEZs) in Phu Quoc, Van Don and Bac Van Phong that offered foreign investors fewer regulations and greater fiscal incentives. The SEZ project first appeared in Quang Ninh province’s proposal for the establishment of Van Don in 2014 after Pham Minh Chinh’s meeting in 2013 with Chinese SEZ researchers from the China Center for Special Economic Zone Research (CCSEZR) of Shenzhen University. The initiative was then expanded into Bac Van Phong’s and Phu Quoc’s economic zones of Khanh Hoa and Kien Giang provinces, respectively, at the “International Science EEZ development – Experience and Opportunities” conference, which was co-organized by the Quang Ninh government and CCSEZR on 20 March 2014. The seminar brought together more than four hundred provincial government and private industry leaders, policy experts and academic professors to discuss “the mechanisms and specific policies for the special economic zones” (Tuan Anh 2015).

In October 2017, the SEZ draft bill was proposed and submitted for revision at the fourth session of the 14th National Assembly (NA), and then re-submitted at the fifth session. On 23 May 2018, Nguyen Khac Dinh, chairman of the 14th NA’s legal committee, announced that the majority of NA delegates agreed on the necessity to open public discussions on the bill’s regulatory scope and potential benefits of SEZs for the Vietnamese economy (Lawsoft 2018). According to the Politburo’s Conclusion No. 21, the reasons for opening these economic zones include “taking advantage of the regional potential; attracting strong investment capital, advanced technology, new management methods; generating more resources and motivations; and helping accelerate the process of economic development and restructuring of provinces, regions and the country as a whole” (Le Kien 2017). The draft law contains a controversial provision permitting the foreign lease of land in SEZs for up to ninety-nine years, and this sparked numerous waves of demonstrations and riots between June and September of 2018. At the sixth session, the NA conclusively approved the withdrawal of the SEZ bill. Out of 483 delegates, 423 of them voted in favour of the postponement, only 8 voted against it, and 55 abstained.

China’s role in Vietnam’s rapid economic development is significant but contentious. In the past two decades, Vietnam has significantly benefited from integration into the regional production network anchored in China. Yet there have been mounting concerns in Vietnam that close economic ties between the two countries are asymmetrical, and that the Vietnamese economy is increasingly dependent on China. For years, policymakers, experts and observers have expressed worries about the country’s high reliance on Chinese inputs in its export industries and the deep penetration by Chinese firms in its domestic consumer and construction markets (Tran 2019; Tuoi Tre News 2013; Ngan 2014). Of particular concern is that, despite the exponential growth in Vietnam’s exports and the number of free trade agreements (FTAs) signed by Vietnam to diversify its trade relations, raw materials and equipment used by the country’s manufacturing exporters continue to be dominated by Chinese products, and there is no evident sign that the situation is improving (Ngan Anh 2014).

That this is taking place amid increasingly complex geopolitical competition between the United States and China adds another layer of complexity (Vu 2015; Vu 2017, pp. 297–8). China has increasingly leveraged its economic might to achieve foreign policy goals by employing various inducements and sanctions (Chheang 2018; Reilly 2013). Inducements, such as infrastructure projects under the Belt and Road Initiative, may be attractive to many, although simultaneously China is increasingly using economic sanctions to change the behaviour of other states (Hufbauer and Jung 2020). It is unsurprising that economic dependence is considered to pose a much greater political risk in Vietnam because of its territorial dispute and historical tensions with China (Tuoi Tre News 2013).

Concerns over Vietnam’s economic dependence largely arise from the fact that China is its largest trading partner. Moreover, Vietnam continues to record a large trade deficit with China. The asymmetric nature of bilateral trade between Vietnam and China worries many. For Vietnam, China is too big and too important. In contrast, for China, Vietnam is a relatively small trading partner in its global trade.

A study of UNCTAD (2013a) indicates that about eighty per cent of global trade (in terms of gross exports) is associated with the international production networks of multinational enterprises (MNEs). It means that a large number of products are produced from different locations across borders around the globe.

It is believed that developing economies embedded in low-value-added chains can improve their position in GVCs. One of the most useful ways to do this, and one which is widely applied, is by further attracting and improving the quality of inward FDI flows. FDI may create both direct and indirect effects on a country’s participation in GVCs. The direct effect is that foreign and domestic enterprises in a joint venture are likely to produce sophisticated products and deepen their participation in GVCs, while the indirect effect is that FDI can create spillover impacts (including horizontal and vertical spillovers) on the level of innovation of local firms (Javorcik 2004, 2008). After having accumulated sufficient capabilities, many of these local firms undertake outward international expansion and become MNEs. Alternatively, to enhance their position within GVCs, firms from developing economies that started off at the lowest position can use international expansion as a way to move up to a higher value-added position. The primary direction of their move depends on the governance structure of the value chain.

Thanks to the growing importance of global FDI and trade, particularly of the manufacturing sector, a large body of research on the nexus between GVCs, FDI and economic growth has concentrated on China (Yao 2009; Fu 2011; Zhu and Fu 2013; Swenson and Chen 2014; Wang and Chen 2020). Meanwhile, little attention has been paid to the GVC participation of smaller developing countries such as Vietnam. A large number of studies on Vietnam have focused on the country’s conventional trade (Tran and Heo 2009; McCaig 2011; Truong et al. 2019; Nguyen et al. 2016; Nguyen 2015; Ha and Tran 2017).

Along with the implementation of economic renovation, total commodity trade exchange between Vietnam and the rest of the world grew rapidly from only $13.6 billion in 1995 to $157 billion in 2010 and $518 billion in 2019.

In the early summer of 2018, a rare wave of protests rocked Vietnam. Believing the draft law on Special Economic Zones (SEZs) would give China the right to occupy strategic geopolitical positions across the country, many thousands of angry citizens poured out on to the streets demanding it be withdrawn. In Binh Thuan province, protesters burned police cars, vandalized the provincial government office and attacked members of the police force (Duc Trong 2018). In response the National Assembly voted to withdraw the SEZ law, although this was seen by the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) as a priority to boost economic development. This was not the first time the regime had to back down because of popular pressure. In 1997 a revolt by farmers against corruption in Thai Binh province ended with a government concession. The then permanent member of the VCP’s Secretariat, Pham The Duyet, holding the fifth most powerful position in the party, was sent to discuss matters with the enraged farmers. In the aftermath of the Thai Binh revolt, the VCP issued the grass-roots democracy directive, which aimed to prevent such incidents from happening in the future. Mr Duyet stayed on in his position until the end of his term.

It is striking to compare responses to similar incidents in China. In early 1989, a series of protests broke out across the country, most prominently at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The then general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Zhao Ziyang, visited the site and talked with the protesters, urging them to end their hunger strikes. He was among the CCP faction that wanted to seek a peaceful solution. The ultimate result, however, was the opposite: On 4 June 1989, tanks and soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) invaded the square and massacred hundreds—if not thousands—of protesters. Mr Zhao was himself a victim: he was stripped of the party chief’s position and placed under house arrest until his death. The Tiananmen incident created a path dependence for the CCP to solve popular tensions: coercive actions are preferred over making concessions, particularly for incidents that are deemed threatening to the regime.

Higher Education Governance and Political Regimes

Probably nobody would deny that higher education cannot be isolated from politics. The politics of higher education has been addressed by many higher education researchers, especially those in the United States (see McLendon 2003). For instance, a significant number of studies, including a seminal work by Burton Clark (1983), have critically analysed how higher education is governed by the state, and how such a relationship has been fundamentally restructured in the era of neoliberalism. But apart from notable exceptions such as Levy (1980; 1981) and Jungblut (2015), most higher education scholars tend to treat the state quite homogeneously. In other words, these scholars do not usually differentiate state models in their analyses of higher education governance.

In fact, higher education is governed by different logics in democratic and authoritarian regimes. In multi-party democracies the state cannot easily twist the arms of universities, although through financial policies, for instance, it is possible to exert indirect influence. In contrast, although authoritarian regimes generally have the power to dictate the internal affairs of universities, they are deeply perplexed when making policies. The logic, in its simplest form, runs like this: since universities usually nourish the democratic spirit (Bueno de Mesquita and Downs 2005; Sanborn and Thyne 2014), authoritarian regimes normally try to abolish the higher education system entirely (as illustrated by the Chinese Cultural Revolution), hamper the expansion of higher education, or adopt preferential admission and funding schemes to channel most higher education benefits into the regime’s loyal constituencies (Hanson and Sokhey 2020). But when it comes to the largely unquestionable contribution of higher education to economic development (Lane and Johnstone 2012), authoritarian regimes seem to be left considerably bewildered. Simply put, economic development could be a double-edged sword for these regimes. It contributes to social stability, a primary source of legitimacy for the regime’s resilience, but at the same time produces the middle class that will normally demand more autonomy from the state. Recent empirical evidence, however, tends to challenge this simplistic prediction of modernization theory, and shows that authoritarian regimes are markedly adept in reaping the benefits while significantly reducing the threats of economic development (see Wright 2010 for the case of China).

Throughout its history, the Vietnamese Trade Union has accompanied the ruling Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) at the national and sub-national levels (Collin 2020; Schweisshelm and Do 2018). In the global economic crisis of the 1930s, the working environment in Vietnam under French rule was tough. Trade unions were illegal as strikes were repressed and activists were stifled by the colonial power (Pringle and Clarke 2010). In 1929, the VCP established the Red Federation of Trade Unions (Tong Cong Hoi Do), its first trade union federation, to call workers to fight for national independence (Collin 2020). From the beginning, the trade unions not only prioritized protecting the interests of members and combating exploitation by employers, but also liberating the country from foreign invaders. In 1946, a year after the formation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the North, the Red Federation of Trade Unions was renamed the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour (VGCL). Leaders of the VGCL were members of the VCP. During the subsequent war against the United States, the union became an essential wing of the VCP to gather workers for war-oriented production in order to build a socialist economy in the North and to assist the national revolution in the South. In contrast, labour associations emerged in the South along with an explosion of strikes (Schweisshelm and Do 2018). This included organizing thousands of strikes with the Trade Union of Southern Liberation Vietnam (Lien hiep Cong doan giai phong mien Nam Viet Nam) during the 1960–1970s (Kerkvliet 2010; Schweisshelm and Do 2018).

After the war ended, when private enterprises were confiscated and became state-owned, the two unions merged. Trade unions continued to serve as the “transmission belt” of the government and the extended personnel department of state-owned enterprises in order to achieve economic targets and social stability (Collin 2020; Zhu and Fahey 2000). Before Doi Moi, the legitimacy of Vietnamese trade unions depended on their alliance with the Communist Party at the national and sub-national levels, and with managers in the state-owned enterprises and community-owned enterprises—the only form of enterprise at that time. The VCP controlled all aspects of labour relations, while the unions mostly played an administrative role rather than a representative function (Zhu et al. 2008).