Was Christmas Island really ever a part of Singapore?

Hi there guys, I'm going to look at a piece of Singaporean history in this blog post and address a myth that Singaporeans have been talking about for decades: I wonder how many of you are familiar with Christmas Island, located to the south of the Western tip of Java? It is a tiny island - just 135 km²  and with a population of just 1843 in the 2018 census, it is probably easily forgettable since little goes on there but it has just made the headlines again recently when the Australian government has decided to reopen a detention center for refugees on the island. Now the myth that had been around for decades was that Christmas Island was a part of Singapore or that it used to belong to Singapore - in fact, if I may quote the Straits Times in an article from December 2017, "Christmas Island was named on Christmas Day 1643, and was part of Singapore until 1957, when it was sold by the British to the Australian government for 2.9 million pounds." In fact, many did blame Lim Yew Hock (then Chief Minister of Singapore, from 1956 to 1959) for the loss of Christmas Island to Australia, with some audacious stories even claiming that he personally benefited financially from the sale of the island. There are so many misconceptions, half-truths and misrepresented facts here in the story surrounding the links Christmas Island had to Singapore. In this blog post, I hope to separate the facts from the lies in the age of fake news.

So here's the thing that many Singaporeans who know a bit about Christmas Island don't understand or get confused about: they forget that the transfer of Christmas Island to Australia started in 1957 and was completed in 1958, it was a deal done between the British and the Australians whilst Lim Yew Hock had no say in what was discussed. Singapore was only granted self-governance in 1959 and it was effectively a British colony until 1963 - so even though the sparsely populated Christmas Island was administered from Singapore prior to 1957, was it ever a part of Singapore? What does it mean to be a part of Singapore then? Let's compare this to another ongoing dispute in the South China Sea: the Spratly Islands. Many countries including Vietnam, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia have laid claim to the islands and this is because it would grant them rights to the vast quantities of undersea oil and gas reserves in the region. The islands have no indigenous inhabitants though many countries have sent people to live on some of these islands in order to stake their claim there. What many countries in this dispute have done to legitimize their claim is to demonstrate historical ties of these islands to their countries - so for example, they have produced historical documents which demonstrate that in the past, people from their country have settled and lived on some of the islands. This is an ongoing dispute with no resolution in sight, especially with China being determined to win this battle by any means necessary but the other countries being unwilling to be bullied by China. So with that in mind, let's analyze Singapore's relationship to Christmas Island to see if we can find any real connections between Christmas Island and Singapore.

Were there close economic, social and cultural ties between Singapore and Christmas Island prior to 1957? The simple answer is not really and the reason is very simple: the two places are very far apart, as the crow flies they are 1372 km apart. You may not think that doesn't sound too far in 2019, but let's rewind back to 1957. Even though commercial flights were available in the 1950s (mind you one of the world's oldest airline KLM was founded in 1919), they were extremely expensive and most ordinary folks simply couldn't afford them until prices started coming down steadily until the late 1970s, when flying became a more affordable way to travel. For the people in British Malaya (remember, this was way back in the pre-independence period) at that time, the only affordable way to get around was either by bus or by rail. No, the people of Singapore then had far closer ties to the people of Malaysia rather than Christmas Island. The inhabitants in Christmas Island then did have some links to both Singapore and Malaysia as many of the workers recruited to work on the phosphate mines there were from Singapore and Malaysia. Hence Malaysia has as much claim as Singapore to Christmas Island! The population of Christmas Island today are a mix of white Australians, Chinese, Malays and others. Did the migrant workers retain close ties with their relatives back in British Malaya? Well, I'm sure they sent letters from time to time, but you have to remember that it was an arduous journey to get from Singapore to Christmas Island then and you couldn't simply hop on a flight back to Singapore easily if you missed home. After 1957, many of these migrant workers chose to stay on in Christmas Islands and took on Australian citizenship rather than return to British Malaya.

Even today, there are no commercial flights between Singapore and Christmas Island and the only regular commercial flight (we're excluding chartered flights - a few do exist) is from Perth, Western Australia. There are also flights from Christmas Island to the Cocos Keeling islands - an even more remote Australian island territory in the Indian Ocean. It is notoriously difficult to get to Christmas Island from anywhere but Perth - there are chartered flights from Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur once in a while, but these are completely dependent on demand and are highly irregular. Contrast that to the fact that I can easily get a direct flight from Singapore to places like Paris, Auckland, Addis Ababa, Moscow, Seoul, Johannesburg, Helsinki, Istanbul and even New York - this at least demonstrates a link between Singapore and those far flung places, be it cultural, commercial or social. There's something quite basic about looking at these airline routes: these airlines want to make a profit and if there's little or no demand between two destinations (such as Singapore and Christmas Island) then no airline would want to fly a nearly empty plane between the two destinations as that route would simply lose the airline a lot of money. Christmas Island is at best an interesting topic in a history textbook about Singapore but there are really no tangible ties between the two places today. It has been 61 years since Christmas Island was no longer administered from Singapore and since then, the inhabitants of Christmas Island have only grown closer to Australia and not Singapore - for example, since there are no universities on the island, the locals who wanted a degree would have gone to an Australian university rather than come to a university in Singapore (as a foreign student).

So there is really little to suggest that Christmas Island was ever a 'part' of Singapore, apart from the fact that a lot of migrant workers from British Malaya (ie. both modern day Malaysia and Singapore, not just Singapore) did settle there to work in the phosphate mines - but then again, by that same token, a large number of migrant workers came from China to settle in Singapore, which is why Singapore is an ethnically Chinese-majority country today. Does that mean that Singapore was ever a part of China? Of course not. It doesn't work like that. Furthermore Christmas Island was merely administered from Singapore - that doesn't make it a part of Singapore: after all, Australia gained its independence from Britain way back in 1901 so by default, the next closest part of the British empire to Christmas Island was Singapore which sat at the southern tip of the Malaysian Peninsular. But given its geographical isolation and small population, it was simply more convenient to incorporate it into a lot of the administrative structures that governed British Malaya rather than to try to set up a completely unique government framework to govern Christmas Island back then. So despite the fact that it was 1372 km away, Singapore just happened to be the nearest part of the British empire at that time. Given the close relationship between the Australian and British governments, the British could have also tried to administer the island from Australia but given that the closest part of Australia to Christmas island was the remote, extremely sparsely population northern part of Western Australia - that wouldn't have been any easier logistically and it just wouldn't make much sense. So there were some historical ties to Singapore (and by the same token to Malaysia too), but to all intents and purposes, Christmas Island was never really a part of Singapore - apart for some arbitrary administrate purpose.

So let me give you an analogy to show you how silly Singapore's claim to Christmas Island is: when I was a child, my parents had a green car. I was about 12 then, so obviously I couldn't drive it but I benefited from the presence of the car of course. Did I contribute to the purchase of the car? No I didn't, I was a kid, I had no money. Did I own the car? No it was registered to my father though I washed the car for him from time to time. I remember my father selling the car as he wanted a different car, I objected to it as I liked that green car - but of course, as a child, I simply didn't get a say. It was my father's money, he could do what he wanted and I had no say in the decision making process. This is quite different from the situation now that I'm an adult in my 40s, I now earn my own money and can decide what I want to do with it - be it investing in property or buying a car or going on holiday etc. I don't need my father's permission to make any of those decisions and even if he had an opinion about any of my decisions, I can quite easily dismiss it (the same way my opinions about the sale of the green car were dismissed). After all, it is my money - I worked hard and earned it, I didn't get the money from my father (it wasn't inheritance), so I could do whatever I wanted with my own money. None of the details in this story would be surprising of course, but compare that to the political situation in Singapore during the sale of Christmas Island from British Malaya (note I've used the term British Malaya and not Singapore) to Australia in 1957.

The sale of Christmas Island commenced in 1957 and was finalized in 1958. Singapore had only been granted partial internal self-government in 1955, which meant that it didn't have a say over Christmas Island at all back then (just like the way I didn't have a say what my father wanted to do with his green car). In fact, Singapore only attained full internal self-government in 1959 and that lasted till 1963, when Malaysia declared independence from Britain and Singapore was a state within Malaysia for two years until a rather messy divorce in 1965, when Singapore emerged as an independent nation for the very first time after being unceremoniously kicked out of Malaysia. If you are Singaporean, then this is a part of your history that you ought to be very familiar with. In short, British Malaya selling off Christmas Island to Australia is just like my father selling off that green car when I was a child - it wasn't my car, it didn't belong to me, it belonged to my father and I had absolutely no say in the sale, nor did I have any power then to prevent or stop it. Singapore was but a colony then and it wasn't an independent country - the concept of Singapore as an independent, sovereign country didn't exist until 1965. Hence it is rather misleading to claim that Christmas Island was a part of Singapore - no it was a part of British Malaya that was administered mostly from Singapore. Claiming that it was a part of Singapore then would be like me claiming I had a green car when I was a boy when really, it is not like the car was ever really mine - it was my father's car. But of course, for many of the younger Singaporeans today born after independence, they simply have no concept of what it was like living in a British colony where the locals had little or no say over what the white rulers did.

So why are Singaporeans so keen to lay some kind of 'claim' to Christmas Island then? There are a number of factors of course: firstly, Singaporeans have a habit of laying claim (and credit) to anything and anyone who has some kind of tenuous link to Singapore. The best example I can think of is the violinist Vanessa-Mae: she was born in Singapore but left at the age of 4 for London. She holds two nationalities: British and Thai. To all intents and purposes, she is British, grew up in London and continues to live here but to compete in the 2014 Sochi Olympics, she chose to represent Thailand - since her birth father is Thai, she is eligible for a Thai passport. She may have been born in Singapore and lived in Singapore as an infant, but she is now totally estranged from her Singaporean mother (Vanessa-Mae has made claims that she had been extremely abusive) and has no real links to Singapore anymore. Yet despite all that, I remember how the local Singaporean media went out of their way to celebrate the fact that she was a local Singaporean talent when her first album became extremely successful. This begs the question of course: Singaporeans may try to lay some kind of claim to Vanessa-Mae, but does she actually identify herself as Singaporean or at least from Singapore? Who should get a say about her ties to Singapore: should it be the Singaporeans who are desperate to claim her as one of their own or should we actually ask her what she thinks about her identity? It should be pretty obvious: of course she gets the final say and the fact that she chose to represent Thailand and not Singapore at the Sochi Winter Olympics should tell you a lot more how she views her own identity. So here's a video of her proudly waving the Thai flag in Sochi.

Why did they try so hard to claim Vanessa-Mae as one of their own then? I suppose it was because she was cool - she was successful, talented, beautiful, sexy, rich and confident. Of course when somebody like that is in the headlines, you would want to claim some kind of link or connection to her no matter how tenuous. Let's compare that to another Singaporean who made the headlines for the wrong reasons: remember the Singaporean scholar Ouyang Xiangyu who was arrested in America for trying to murder her lab mates? Yeah, she must be talented in her own ways (otherwise she wouldn't have become a scholar in the first place) but good grief, she was arrested for attempted murder. She wasn't even very successful in killing her lab mates as well, she tried to poison them but failed to kill them, only to get caught in the process. Furthermore, allow me to be painfully blunt: Ouyang is ugly, good grief, she looks like the kind of geeky Chinese student with chunky glasses who is so focused on scoring straight As she doesn't know what conditioner or deodorant is. Oh but putting her appearance aside, she is a dangerous psycho who turned to coldblooded murder when she couldn't resolve her social conflicts with her lab mates. Whilst Vanessa-Mae was a confident, passionate, sultry Asian sex siren, Ouyang is the opposite of all that. So when she made the headlines with her arrest in America for attempted murder, many Singaporeans immediately tried to distance themselves from her, "aiyoh look at the spelling of her name in Hanyupinyin, she is clearly not a real Singaporean but she must be some kind of recent PRC migrant. She is from China, please lah, she is not a proper Singaporean." Ironically, Ouyang Xiangyu had far more links with Singapore than Vanessa-Mae ever will - at least Ouyang has a Singaporean passport but no, Singaporeans not that keen on her!

Secondly, there is an element of Singaporeans being angry at the idea of Christmas Island being neglected and undeveloped - I have even heard Singaporeans make claims like, "if only we held on to Christmas Island, it could be turned into another Sentosa! Look at how amazing Sentosa is today, just give us more land in the form of another island and see what Singapore can do with it." Yeah, Sentosa is so close to Singapore you can now walk there via the 670 meters long Sentosa Broadwalk (a very pleasant walk indeed, but don't do it during the hottest part of the day).  As the crow flies, Christmas Island is as far away from Singapore as Pattaya in Thailand at 1327 km. That flight would take about 2 hours 30 minutes. And okay, even if we do get the developers from Singapore to build an amazing resort on Christmas Island as brilliant as Resorts World Sentosa, who is going to make the long journey to Christmas Island from Singapore when there are far cheaper and nearer alternatives in Malaysia. A resort needs to be near its customers and that's the problem with Christmas Island, it is so remote and whilst the nearest big city is in fact Jakarta, the rich people in the Indonesian capital have plenty of local resorts throughout Indonesia to choose from and are not at all attracted to Christmas Island. In fact the Australian government did try to build a resort and casino on the island in 1993 but it closed in 1998 due to (yup, you've guessed it) the lack of tourists who were willing and able to make the journey to Christmas Island. The resort reopened in 2011 without the casino, but tourist numbers are still very low. Hence even if Christmas Island did remain in Singaporean hands, I'm not sure what the government would have done with it given its isolation.

The whole reason why people go to Christmas Island today is because they want to see something that is not touristy, they want to go to a quiet beach where they don't have to jostle with hoards of noisy Chinese tourists and that's how they end up well off the beaten path on Christmas Island. Whilst researching this article, I looked up the price of a ticket to Christmas Island on a chartered flight from Kuala Lumpur and it was A$12000 (S$1160 or £665). Goodness me, that's hideously expensive. For that amount of money, I could fly from London to Sydney and back - it is just hideously expensive to get to Christmas Island because of the low number of flights there. Contrast that to the route like London to New York - that is an 8 hours 15 minutes flight but because of the large number of passengers using that route, the competition between the airlines drives down the prices and thus it is possible to find really quite cheap bargains if you wish to use that route. Contrast that to the number of people wish to travel to Christmas Island from, well, just about anywhere and if you're determined to make it to Christmas Island, then you're at the mercy of the few airlines that do ply that route and you have to pay whatever they want to charge you to get you there and back - there are absolutely no bargains to be had and once you get there, things aren't cheap as you're paying for everything in Australian dollars and not Indonesian Rupiah or Malaysian Ringgit. Oh it would turn out to be one frightfully expensive holiday! Hence despite the fact that the island does have magnificent beaches, stunning cliffs and incredible scenery, few tourists ever contemplate going there and usually end up somewhere like Bali instead because it is just so much easier to get to Bali. 

Thirdly, there are some Singaporeans who feel that the British have effectively behaved like an irresponsible parent squandering their child's inheritance when they sold Christmas Island to the Australians. So let me tell you a true story - my friend Wei used to have to surrender his 红包 ('Red Packet') money to his parents every Chinese new year; his parents claimed that it was not safe for him to keep so much cash in the house and that they would put the money for him in the bank, where it would be managed and invested. He believed that for many years until one day when he was about 16, he saw something very expensive in the shop that he really wanted to buy. So he asked his parents for the money but they said no - he then asked, "what about all the 红包 money then? Surely that's still my money and I know there will be plenty of so can I use some of it then?" It turns out that his parents were telling him a complete lie when they claimed to have been putting his money in the bank - every Chinese new year, they had to give out so many 红包 to the many relatives and neighbours that they felt the only way they could recoup some of that money is by taking their son's 红包 money. They never viewed the money as Wei's in the first place, for them it was merely and exchange of 红包 money amongst the parents. So Wei felt well and truly betrayed by his parents because he genuinely believed that the money belonged to him but his parents felt otherwise and considered the money was theirs but as Wei was still a child, it was not an argument that he could win despite feeling extremely resentful about the situation. Thus with Christmas Island, yeah many Singaporeans feel the same way as Wei did about his 红包 money, but no amount of resentment and anger can change the situation - Christmas Island was sold to the Australians whilst Singapore was just a British colony.

Did the British behave that irresponsibly? I'm not sure - trying to get Christmas Island to join Malaysia in 1963 would have been practical as it is a lot closer to Indonesia and there would have been the risk of Indonesia simply annexing the island the same way it seized West Papua (also known as Irian Jaya) and East Timor. And even if the British did not sell the island off to the Australians in 1957, who knows what would have happened to it in 1965 when Singapore left Malaysia? Let's explore this hypothetical situation - despite the fact that Christmas Island was administered from Singapore previously, it would have joined Malaysia in 1963 and even if Indonesia didn't invade by 1965, would Singapore have gladly continued to want to hold on to it given how expensive it would have been to try to maintain some kind of military presence on Christmas Island to ward off anyone (well, the Indonesians) who may want to invade the island? What if Malaysia then said, "hang on, you can be independent but we're holding on to Christmas Island. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to go to war over it?" In such a situation, Singapore would have probably simply backed down rather than risk a prolonged conflict with Malaysia over Christmas Island. Everyone from Britain to Japan to Australia to Singapore were interested in Christmas Island for the phosphate deposits there, but what real value would the island have once those deposits were exhausted? I refer you to the case study of Nauru (please watch the short video below) - another island which had substantial phosphate deposits but has since become impoverished and totally dependent on Australian government support. Christmas Island basically faced the same problem when the phosphate ran out and they had little alternative sources of income on the island, except of course, Christmas Island was already a part of Australia and hence it became Australia's burden to bear and thankfully, not Singapore's nor Malaysia's problem.

Like Nauru, Christmas Island is now being used by Australia to house refugees and those seeking asylum in Australia - this continues to be a contentious issue today. I'm not sure what Singapore could do with an island like that - even if you were to build loads of housing there, what would the people living there do for jobs? They would have to be professionals like coders or designers who would be able to work from home, as there are very few jobs on the island. Would you be happy doing that, knowing you're so far away from the nearest big city? Perhaps the only thing I can foresee Singapore doing with such an island is building a lot of nursing homes for the elderly there - given how there's a huge scarcity of housing in Singapore, you could offer retirees a package to resettle in Christmas Island and they would be able to live out their later years in a far more peaceful, serene environment. It may sound cruel to uproot them from the places where they have been living for a few decades, but since they are no longer economically productive, they are the very kind of people who can actually quite happily live somewhere like Christmas Island whilst mainland Singaporean would be reserved for those who are in the most productive years of their lives. This would mean cutting off the elderly from their children and grandchildren who may not be willing to make the trip to Christmas Island regularly given how far away it is but what else are you going to do with a remote island in the ocean like that then? If you wanted to go down that route, there are plenty of Indonesian islands within the Riau archipelago so much closer to Singapore than Christmas Island.

Okay so that's it from me for now on the topic of Christmas Island - what do you think? What have you been told about Christmas Island's history with Singapore? Have they been accurate or a bunch of half-truths? Would you like to visit Christmas Island for a holiday one day? What would do you think Singapore would have done with Christmas Island if it was still part of Singapore today? Please leave a comment below and do share your thoughts. Many thanks for reading.