Chapter 8: Students and Schools - Singapore-China Educational Exchanges
Zhao Litao’s chapter on educational exchanges reads like a story about two countries slowly figuring out they need each other’s schools. Not for sentimental reasons. For very practical ones.
Here’s the thing. Before the 1990s, educational ties between Singapore and China were almost nonexistent. The Cold War had them in separate camps. Different ideologies, different worlds. The first real move was small: in 1988, Singapore offered 35 scholarships to train English language teachers from Chinese universities. They would come to Singapore’s National Institute of Education for 10 months. That was basically it.
Then diplomatic relations started in 1990, and things moved fast.
The Scholarship Pipeline
Starting in 1992, Singapore began offering around 200 scholarships annually to students from top Chinese universities. This was the SM3 scheme (Senior Middle 3). By 1995, two more schemes appeared: SM1 and SM2, which recruited younger Chinese students at earlier stages of high school. The SM1 and SM2 programs brought in 300 to 500 students every year through the 1990s.
Think about that. Singapore is tiny. It was pulling hundreds of Chinese students in every year, giving them full scholarships. This wasn’t charity. Singapore needed talent, and China had plenty of bright students looking for opportunities abroad.
The big formal step came in 1999. Singapore’s Education Minister led a delegation to China and they signed a memorandum of understanding on educational cooperation. The MOU set up official channels for everything: student exchanges, teacher training, academic collaboration. Both countries opened education offices in each other’s embassies in 2000.
Chinese Students Flooding Into Singapore
By the 2000s, China had become a massive exporter of students worldwide. In 2012, nearly 400,000 Chinese students went overseas. Singapore got its share. A 2012 study estimated about 50,000 Chinese students were studying in Singapore, making up roughly 56% of all international students in the country.
That is a huge number for a small nation.
Those 50,000 were spread across every level. Over 10,000 in universities and polytechnics. Over 10,000 in public secondary and primary schools. The rest in private schools. Singapore was unique among destination countries because Chinese students showed up at every educational level, all the way down to kindergarten. You don’t see that in the US or UK.
Why did Chinese students pick Singapore? According to surveys, the top reason was quality of education (46.7%), followed by affordability (23.3%). But Chinese education websites listed ten competitive advantages, from “safe environment” and “bilingual education” to “good job prospects” and “best pathway to further study in the West.” That last point is interesting. Some students used Singapore as a stepping stone to Western universities. This created friction later, but more on that below.
Singaporeans Going the Other Way
Meanwhile, traffic also went in the opposite direction. In 2002, only 583 Singaporean students were studying in China. By 2009, that number hit 3,198. By 2013, it reached 5,290. Most were in short-term Chinese language programs, but over time students started branching out into law, journalism, medicine, and business.
Singaporean students had an edge in China. They adapted faster because of their existing familiarity with Chinese culture and language. Some chose China over local universities partly to avoid the intense competition for spots at home. Others wanted to build connections for careers with Singapore firms or multinationals investing in China.
Here’s what drove this growth on China’s side. China went from being nobody in the international student market to a major player in less than a decade. Foreign student numbers jumped from 52,000 in 2000 to 293,000 in 2011. China set a target of 500,000 by 2020. It wanted to use higher education as a soft power tool, and it was throwing serious resources at it.
The Mayors’ Class and Training Programs
This is one of the most interesting parts of the chapter. Singapore didn’t just take in Chinese students. It trained Chinese government officials.
The most famous program was NTU’s “Mayors’ Class.” Nanyang Technological University started training Chinese officials as early as 1992. In 1998, they launched a Master of Science in Managerial Economics targeting Chinese mayors and bosses of state-owned enterprises. In 2005, they added a Master of Public Administration for senior officials being groomed as next-generation leaders.
The numbers are impressive. The two master’s programs trained over 1,000 Chinese officials. Adding short-term courses in urban planning, public administration, and human resources, NTU trained about 13,000 Chinese officials total since 1992.
Then NUS got into the game. The Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy launched its own Chinese-language Master’s program in 2010. At the opening ceremony, a senior Chinese Communist Party official said something remarkable: “Out of all the destinations where we send our leading officials to receive training, Singapore is the top choice, because Singapore is the most sincere in helping China develop.”
Singapore’s Civil Service College also hosted delegations from China’s Central Party School (the training ground for Party cadres) every year since 2002. Chinese officials came to study Singapore’s governance, urban planning, and social policies. In return, Singapore sent its own officials to China to understand China’s developments.
In 2013, Singapore even formed the Talent Development Alliance, bringing together seven institutions to coordinate training programs for Chinese officials. They treated this like a business: Singapore had a “brand” in education and training, and China was the biggest market.
University Partnerships
The chapter covers several major university collaborations, all tied to the bigger political relationship.
NUS set up its first overseas research institute in Suzhou Industrial Park in 2010. Not random. Suzhou Industrial Park was the first major government-to-government project between Singapore and China. NTU did the same in Tianjin Eco-city, the second flagship project. The pattern was clear: education followed the money and the politics.
SUTD, Singapore’s fourth public university, partnered with Zhejiang University. Students could go to Zhejiang for courses or intern at companies like Alibaba. Zhejiang sent students back to Singapore. They collaborated on research in transportation, clean energy, and healthcare.
NTU also partnered with Shandong University to set up one of the earliest Confucius Institutes in the world, back in 2005. And Shanghai Jiao Tong University moved its graduate program to NTU, making it the first and only overseas graduate school of any Chinese university at the time.
School-Level Exchanges
It wasn’t just universities. Singapore’s Ministry of Education created a School Twinning Fund in 2004 so primary and secondary schools could partner with Chinese schools. The government set specific targets: 10% of primary students, 33% of secondary students, and 50% of university students should have at least one overseas trip during their school years.
In 2005, Lee Kuan Yew pushed for the Bicultural Studies Programme focused on China. Offered at four schools, it gave students intensive Chinese language training and multi-week immersion trips to China. The thinking was straightforward: Singapore needed people who could work with China, and the earlier you start building those skills, the better.
The Complications
Zhao Litao doesn’t hide the messy parts. The growing number of Chinese nationals in Singapore created social tensions. Some Singaporeans complained that PRC students used the scholarship system as a springboard to hop to the US or UK without fulfilling their service obligations to Singapore.
Some “immersion trips” organized by commercial agencies in China turned into disruptions for Singapore schools. Schools eventually refused to host them.
And for Chinese scholarship students in Singapore, the experience was mixed. They felt “privileged” for getting the opportunity but also faced prejudice and discrimination. Being labeled “foreign talent” came with complicated feelings.
The Big Picture
What Zhao Litao is really describing is how education became another pillar of the Singapore-China relationship, alongside economics and politics. Neither side was sentimental about it. Singapore needed talent and wanted access to China’s growing market. China wanted Singapore’s expertise in governance, urban planning, and public administration. Both benefited.
But the chapter ends with a question. Can Singapore stay relevant to China? As China gets richer and its own universities improve, why would it need Singapore? And as Chinese students have more options globally, why would they pick a tiny city-state?
The answer, Zhao suggests, depends on whether Singapore can keep adapting to what China needs. In the 1990s, it was English language training. In the 2000s, it was governance expertise. What comes next is anybody’s guess.