This book is an attempt to understand socio-economic development in contemporary Brunei Darussalam, which highlights the country’s journey in diversification from the dominant oil and gas sectors. The book makes an important contribution to the handful of publications on Brunei and fills in the absence of a comprehensive analysis on socio-economic issues in Brunei.

The publication of this book comes at an important era of the twenty-first century, as Brunei is on its halfway mark towards its Vision 2035. The goal of economic diversification remains vital to Brunei’s long-term economic growth but, at the same time, is dramatically shifting toward a more varied structure of production and trade with a view to creating jobs, increasing productivity, and improving the resource efficiency of infrastructure and quality of life.

This is a reference book for students, academics, entrepreneurs, policymakers within and outside Brunei, as well as for general readers who are interested to know about the socio-economic conditions in contemporary Brunei.

The book is a product of the Centre for Advanced Research (CARe), under the leadership of former Director Dr Chang-Yau Hoon; in collaboration with the Institute of Policy Studies, under the leadership of Director Dr Mahani Hamdan; and with the support of colleagues from various faculties at Universiti Brunei Darussalam. As a premier empirical research centre at UBD, CARe has three missions: first is to develop research and data resources that address social issues in Brunei. Second is to be a platform for local and international interdisciplinary research collaboration. And third is to provide professional training to graduate students, university staff and researchers from various sectors. This book is a collective effort to address these missions at CARe.

This book would have never been possible without the strong dedication of the authors and conducive research environment provided by Universiti Brunei Darussalam. We are indebted to the unflagging support of the Vice Chancellor of UBD, Dr Hazri bin Haji Kifle; and the current Director of CARe, Dr Siti Mazidah binti Haji Mohamad. We would like to express our appreciation to the editorial team at ISEAS Publishing for providing us with constructive comments on the draft of the book and their willingness to co-publish it with UBD.

Editors’ Note

Alongside Lim Boon Keng, Tan Teck Soon was the other prominent, and longest serving, Straits Chinese voice in the Society. In their contributions, both challenged the less than liberal and often stereotyped views of the Chinese held amongst some prominent members of the Society (see Section 2). Although Tan’s main intellectual interests were focused on cultural and educational concerns related to Chinese and Western societies, this atypical presentation sought to share with his European audience insights into the Chinese conduct of enterprise and business—both the positive and negative aspects. The essay is noteworthy in outlining the case made by the acculturated English-speaking Straits Chinese elite which not only saw themselves a match in educational and social achievement with the British but also felt it necessary to emphasize the economic contribution the Chinese had made to Malaya. The Chinese, Tan argued, had developed the land of the Malay States at a time when the British had avoided intervention and had worked to facilitate trade into the interior, often in precarious circumstances and without government protection. Coinciding with the growth of Chinese nationalism amongst the overseas Chinese in Malaya, Tan, who had been educated in China and whose writings reflected upon the rise of a modern China, highlighted the importance of the China trade to the Peninsula and the difficulties faced by the trading community. Responding to the paper, J.M. Allison, a member of the Legislative Council and a manager of Barlow & Co, prominently involved in the rubber trade, had little sympathy for what he saw as Tan’s “exaggerated account” of the plight of Chinese traders. Disputing various points in the presentation relating to the contribution of Chinese traders and the Chinese population as a whole in Singapore, his main counter argument was to emphasize that Tan overlooked the benefits of trade under the British flag which provided the basis of prosperity for the trader and the colony.

In endeavouring to write an essay dealing with Chinese local trade for discussion at a meeting of this Society, I must first apologize for introducing into our syllabus a subject to which some objection could justly be made as hardly coming within the scope of the Society’s aims and objects as evidenced by its rules.

Editors’ Note

Whilst in his earlier essay on the Chinese revolutionary movement in Malaya, Lim Boon Keng suggested that he did not have the space to discuss the rise of socialism in China, his subsequent presentation to the Society a few months later in 1913 dealt with this topic. Initially tracing the Confucian origins of what he identified as socialist thought in China, he sought to distinguish this socialism from the modern socialism of Europe. Whilst Sun Yat-sen’s socialism mirrored, for Lim, the socialism of Marx and Engels, Sun remained for him also a Confucianist. Lim also sought to contrast Chinese socialism with the “Jacobins’’ of the European nationalist movement and the Westernized radical ideas of socialism being produced in China by “rabid communists, syndicalists, and socialists, and few even graduating as nihilists and anarchists”. This had culminated in the bomb-throwing in Peking in 1905, and attempts to uproot traditional Confucian culture. For Lim, Confucianists who “have striven to resuscitate the old Socialism based on ethics and the natural humanistic order” offered an alternative and more ethical model of modernity than the European socialism practised in Europe.

In any study of Socialism among the Chinese, the vast importance of the past economic history of the nation could not be overlooked. For thousands of years the Government of China has relied upon the economic principles of Confucianism and Chinese society has retained up to this day the peculiarities which patriarchic communism had imparted to it in the prehistoric era. The immense gulf separating the social conditions of the East and of the West explains the wide divergence of the methods of Socialism. The prevalence of serfs and slaves in Europe down to the modern ages, and the oppressed state of the labourers, who had in most Western States, become detached from the soil, explain why in the West the Socialistic movement has been carried on from the lower social orders. In China some form of Socialism has, until our own day, been always attempted by the Government, while the free people of China has been contented with their domestic and village liberties and immunities.

Editors’ Note

W.R. Collyer was a prominent lawyer in the colony who had earlier served in Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast before arriving in Singapore in 1892. His 1898 Presidential Address is notable for expressing a growing scepticism about the liberal aims of empire and its potential for civilizing and reforming colonized societies. In particular, Collyer highlighted a lack of faith in the “universal mission of our race” and the “missionary force and its power of assimilating other races”. For Collyer this was rooted in the reality of racial difference. Racial characteristics determined for him the “natural receptivity” of races to different cultures, and whilst the British had been able to spread European ideas to non-European societies, this spread remained limited. Drawing on the British experience in India where the Bramo-Samaj had emerged as a comparable culture to the English, Collyer noted that this had not passed down to the masses and therefore highlighted the unsuitability of Indians for self-government. Yet if liberal reform had failed, he did not believe that this should entail a wholesale abandonment of the civilizing mission. For him, emphasis should move from impressing the “natives with trumpets and drums and gunpowder” or hastening “to get rich with fraudulent goods and short measures” to a gradual process of persuasion and honest and considerate dealings with colonial peoples. This he saw as the more important mission for empire builders.

The subject I have chosen for my address tonight is “The Influence of Europeans Abroad upon Native Races”. It is a subject which must frequently suggest itself to all thinking Europeans in a place like this, and may, I think, be considered to a certain extent appropriate in a meeting of Western philosophers in an Eastern city, where, if anywhere, that influence should be exemplified in all its present features, and its strength and weakness, its success and failures, should be manifest to the ordinary observer. The ordinary observer, however, is apt to be very much taken in.

Editors’ Note

“The Chinese in British Malaya” is one of Lim Boon Keng’s clearest and most detailed writings on the history and position of the Chinese in British Malaya. The first half is devoted to documenting the migration of the Chinese to Malaya and describing the different dialect groups and their economic activity in the colony. Yet, more than a straightforward historical essay, the presentation sought to analyse and reflect upon the effects of life in Malaya upon the Chinese in a way which highlights Lim’s concerns around race, social Darwinism and nationalism. One significant factor that he identified was the effect of mixing Malay with Chinese blood; and his belief that life in the tropics was tending towards the degeneration of the resident Chinese race and was producing inferior offspring who “despise labour”. This, Lim argued, was mitigated by “Chinese blood from China” which continued to arrive in Malaya to check “the degenerative process”. The education of girls was also seen to delay “degeneration”, yet “unless young people are removed from the tropics, there seems very little hope of maintaining the stamina and the virile qualities of the race—attributes due principally to the Chinese environment”.

For Lim what was partly to blame was the system of education in the Straits which, unlike the system employed by the Dutch, he saw as deleterious to the handing down of trading instincts and other aspects of Chinese culture. He also rejected the idea of “Europeanization” which he argued was “unattainable and undesirable”. To halt this degenerative process, he advocated a return to the teaching of Chinese morality and an education system mixing manual labour with an academic curriculum. Such an approach in his view could lead to a positive re-sinicization emerging out of the climatic and social conditions of the Malay Peninsula.

At the same time, Lim’s concerns around race and social Darwinism led him to also address the position of the Malays in the colony in a manner which reflected the European thought of the Society’s members.

INTRODUCTION

Being situated in the northwest coast of the island of Borneo with flat coastal plains and having an equatorial climate, Brunei is vulnerable to extreme weather events and rising sea levels. Since the 1970s, Brunei’s annual mean temperature has been observed to increase by 0.25°C per decade; annual rainfall intensity has increased by 100 mm per decade, and; around 40 per cent of wildlife biodiversity were lost due to forest degradation (BCCS 2020). Coral bleaching was also observed in some shoals near Brunei-Muara district, and climate changes were expected to lengthen the transmission seasons of vector-borne diseases such as dengue, malaria and Zika (BCCS 2020).

In response to climate change threats, Brunei commits to international treaties and cooperation arrangements that address global climate change issues. The country acceded to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2007 and to the Kyoto Protocol in 2009. The country ratified the Doha Amendment to the Kyoto Protocol in 2014 and the Paris Agreement in 2016.

Brunei’s climate change policy, launched in July 2020, would be the basis for developing a response framework for the requirement imposed on Parties of the Paris Agreement. This international agreement aims to strengthen global response to climate change threat and limit the global temperature rise to below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Signatories to the Paris Agreement are required to submit a “nationally determined contribution” which specifies each country’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to impacts of climate change (UNFCCC 2015). A global stocktake will be undertaken every five years to monitor the progress in achieving the collective target.

Addressing climate change in Brunei requires a prudent approach to balance the interaction between key economic and environmental parameters. The country faces various economic and technical challenges in achieving a balanced mix of measures that satisfies various developmental concerns. While the new climate change policy appears to be skilfully designed to address the above concerns, its implementation, however, faces various challenges. In addition, the policy document states that the government pursues a whole-of-nation approach to policy governance, but the document does not present how the whole-of-nation approach was carried out to achieve these policy outcomes.

Editors’ Note

One important element of the social reform movement amongst the Straits Chinese was the anti-opium movement which called for the prohibition on the opium trade in the colony and treatment for opium smokers. As early as 1894, Straits Chinese members took the lead in representing the anti-opium cause at public meetings in Singapore. In doing so they challenged the view common in European circles, and expressed in the papers to the Society, that the Chinese community was averse to the banning of opium, Lim would continue to write on the issue in the Straits Chinese Magazine, seeing the issue as an opportunity to mobilize the Chinese community in Singapore. As highlighted in his paper to the Society, Lim was foremost in the use of medical arguments which highlighted the deleterious effects of opium, as well as in rebutting the belief that without opium, worse abuses would follow. Although he perceived that alcohol was no less an evil, Lim suggested that this abuse was less common amongst the Chinese, easier to detect, and more easily treated. Together with his brother-in-law, Yin Suat Chuan, he founded in 1906 the Singapore Anti-Opium Society, and ran an experimental rehabilitation centre funded by Baba merchants. This influenced Wu Lien-teh to establish a similar clinic in Penang, where an anti-opium movement also emerged. The movement was also supported by prominent missionaries active in the Straits Philosophical Society: W. Murray and William Shellabear, whilst D.J. Galloway would sit on the Opium Commission in 1908. The Commission studied the opium problem and put forward recommendations to restrict, but not to prohibit, opium, thereby protecting the colony’s revenues.

Lim’s essay and J.G. Campbell’s response highlight that, beyond moral reform and economic concerns, ideas of race and racial susceptibility to substances such as opium and alcohol were important to debates on social policy and reform.

Gentlemen, in my humble opinion, there is not much to choose between opium and alcohol, at least from the ethical and scientific point of view. It seems a great pity, indeed, that public discussion of the evil of the opium habit has led to the studious elaboration of facts and fancies into a very taking kind of hypothesis that as compared with alcohol-drinking the opium habit is, after all, a very desirable kind of virtue.

WHY DIVERSIFICATION IS NEEDED FOR OIL-DEPENDENT ECONOMIES?

The existence of oil and gas is often seen as a blessing for a country (Fasano 2002; Wright and Czelusta 2004). The revenue from oil and gas can be used to build human capital, including the promotion of entrepreneurship spirit and broadening of the economic base to create sustainable development. However, in most developing countries with abundant natural resources, the paradox of the plenty and resource curse (“Theory of Dutch Disease”) from huge reliance on revenue from oil and gas reserves may also distort the resource allocation of a country (including creation of dominance of public sector employment). It therefore jeopardizes future economic growth and stability of the country (Beblawi 1987; Mahdavy 1970). Based on a study on Saudi Arabia, Aljarallah (2021) concluded that the abundance of oil and gas will produce sustainable economic growth only when the country can utilize the current gain from oil and gas to enhance human capital, which eventually replaces oil and gas as the capital of economic growth.

Furthermore, the price volatility of oil and gas and its recent decline in the past decade, as well as the prospect of depletion of hydrocarbon reserves, and the global trend toward climate-neutral economies may endanger the energy future and sustainability of oil and gas exporting economies. Therefore, oil-dependent economies urgently need to diversify, while efficiently developing themselves using the remaining revenue from oil and gas (Alsharif et al. 2017; Callen et al. 2014; Filimonova et al. 2020; Hussein 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic, which caused a decline in global demand for oil and gas, may have resulted in dual shock (i.e., economic and health crises) in oil-dependent countries. This situation further escalates the need for diversification from oil and gas sectors (Azomahou et al. 2021).

Brunei Darussalam (hereafter, Brunei), the least populous and the second richest country in Southeast Asia, is one of the examples of an oil and gas dependent economy (Asiyah az-Zahra 2017; Hamdan and Hoon 2019). Since independence in 1984, this country’s national income has heavily relied on hydrocarbon resources, although plans for diversification and investment in renewables have been underway for decades.

INTRODUCTION

Parallel to demographic transition, Omran (1971) showed an epidemiologic transition, describing an expected change in mortality and the cause of deaths. It starts with the “age of pestilence” when the mortality rate is very high and fluctuates. Death mainly occurs because of infectious/communicable diseases. The second stage is the “age of receding pandemics”, when countries have well-managed the pandemics, and then mortality starts to decline. The third and last stage is when the primary cause of death shifts to degenerative/non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Olshanky and Oult (1986) added the fourth stage, the so-called “age of delayed degenerative diseases”, when people live much longer, and the degenerative diseases are compressed in shorter periods of the remaining years of life.

However, people in developing countries may not be able to successfully manage communicable diseases. At the same time, they experience the emergence of degenerative diseases as the cause of death, thus facing a “double burden of disease” (Tyagi 2014). The prevalence of degenerative diseases has aggravated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, often known as the co-existence of co-morbidities (Collins et al. 2020).

This epidemiological trend often goes together with the transition in nutrition. Popkin (1993) argued that there are five stages of nutrition transition. The first is the “food gathering” stage. Individuals consume high carbohydrate foods in this stage, followed by the second stage, known as the “famine” stage. People are hungry and then die. The third is “receding famine” when people have sufficient amount of food. They start consuming fruits, vegetables and animals. The fourth is the “degenerative disease” stage, sometimes called the “western” diet, in which individuals consume high meat diet accompanied by a sedentary life. The fifth is the stage of behavioural changes toward healthy lifestyles, including consuming healthy food.

Therefore, with this framework as the background, this chapter examines trends of population health outcomes and the determinants in Brunei, a high-income country with the second-highest per capita income in Southeast Asia, and its related health policies. It focuses on the landscape, challenges and opportunities related to population health in Brunei. It discusses mortality rates, non-communicable diseases, communicable diseases (especially the COVID-19), people with disabilities, and the ageing population.

Editors’ Note

Similarly to Ridley’s contribution of 1900, Gilbert E. Brooke’s paper of 1904 gave emphasis to social Darwinism and the problem of race in Europe and the colonies. Brooke, a doctor and medical officer, referenced the ideas of Herbert Spencer to reject the argument that the lower classes, including the native lower classes in Malaya, should have access to an education which would be beyond their needs. The paper is notable for appearing at a time when discussions on educational reform in the colony were developing, particularly in the Malay States where education had been made compulsory in 1895. And whilst these discussions largely favoured the extension of education to all groups, important debates had emerged around the kind of education that should be provided to rural Malays. Brooke’s paper is notable for its advocacy of social hierarchy and order, as against educational reform, as well as for its comparative discussion of the European and Malayan cases. For Brooke the education of people beyond their station would induce migration to overcrowded cities, lead the lower classes into crime and women into “bad habits”, and produce “neurotic degeneration” in society. So too would it raise people not suited into the station of the middle-class. What was needed then was to move beyond the anarchy of liberal theories of free trade towards an ordered society which he saw as endorsed by “modern social and political economy”.

Tan Teck Soon’s criticism is notable for its support of education as a societal good and his support for the Chinese system of education in the colony. For Tan this was not an abstract debate, but an important matter of social reform. From 1890 to 1894, Tan was the editor and proprietor of the newspaper, Daily Advertiser which kept the Chinese community in Singapore informed of developments in mainland China. He also ran the Singapore Chinese Educational Institute, a night school for working Chinese adults.

Editors’ Note

A more critical tone towards colonial government was also evident in James Aitken’s essay of 1907. Aitken, a Queen’s Scholar from Singapore and a lawyer who practised alongside Song Ong Siang, came to criticize in the Society what he saw as the failings of British policy in Malaya. The central issue of the ensuing debate with Arthur Knight was the standards to which British colonial policy was to be held. For Knight, British achievements had to be understood in relation to the condition in which they had found the Malay Peninsula and the improvement of this condition. Aitken, on the other hand, was concerned with the British failure to attain for the colony a fuller level of economic and social development and for the unevenness of their achievements. This debate came to focus particularly on the position of the Malays, and British responsibility to include them within the development of the colonial economy and colonial society. On his part Aitken would argue in a manner that was a precursor of later debates around affirmative action that whilst the Malays were “not likely for a long time to reach the standard of the European, Chinaman, or Tamil, he should be encouraged by Government, and the other races should even be slightly handicapped in order to advance him”. Arthur Knight’s critical response similarly emphasized objections to affirmative action which anticipate arguments raised in future debates. For him the current status of the Malays was an outcome of their nature. He argued that they had the formal right to study medicine and join the legislative council but lacked the inclination. He was of the opinion that their improvement could not therefore be forced. Moral reform and improvement for Knight appeared to be confronted with the reality of racial difference.

For the purposes of this paper British Malaya may be taken to be the Straits Settlements and the Federated Malay States, leaving out of account Labuan, British North Borneo, and Sarawak.

Editors’ Note

C.W.S. Kynnersley joined the Straits Settlements Civil Service in 1872, before becoming Superintendent of Prisons in Penang in 1877 and later served as a Magistrate in Penang. According to Ridley in Noctes Orientales his paper of 1893 was one of the few contributions to the Society to affect a policy change in the colony. As with earlier essays on sex work and opium, Kynnersley’s contribution placed emphasis on the Chinese population of the colony, who formed the bulk of the prison population, and who he saw as vital to study in order to understand the roots of crime in the colony. For Kynnersley, the realities of migration and the lack of traditional authority were central themes. In China the Chinese were “under restraint, like a child reverencing his elders and betters”, in Singapore they had no respect for European officials. In such a racialized context Kynnersley would reject liberal opinion in England which saw education as preventative of crime. Instead, he argued that what Singapore required was a better policing and penal system. At the same time he noted that the system’s focus on hard labour tended to produce only hardened prisoners and ignored the potential for their reform and improvement through work.

Tan Teck Soon’s contribution provided a counterpoint. Drawing on the discourse of moral reform in the colony he argued that a proper channel of communication between the Chinese and the authorities would make possible the use of education as a means to teach people the benefits and advantages of upholding the law. This was more than just a question of moral reform for Tan. For him, the Chinese were no longer just temporary migrants but had increasingly made Malaya their home, and the colonial government had an obligation to develop a civic basis for order in the colony. As one of the two Chinese members in the Society, it has been noted that Tan’s notable contribution, as an intellect and writer, was in reconceptualizing Chinese civilization as progressive and open to change, which challenged the prevailing Western idea that Chinese civilization was antiquated and unprogressive.

Editors’ Note

Rev. W.M. Runciman’s essay of 1915 highlights the continued importance of social Darwinist and environmental determinism in the Society’s papers. Runciman was a Presbyterian minister and associated with other ministers like W. Murray, who was also a member of the Society. Runciman’s essay took up the theme of environmental influence on character and race which had been the focus of Ridley’s earlier contributions. Whereas Ridley saw racial difference in far starker terms, and government attempts to intervene in processes of natural selection as harmful, Runciman would differ. Runciman saw climate as playing a determining role in racial characteristics, preventing permanent European settlement of the tropics and modifying settled races elsewhere. Yet this was not to assume that racial differences were solely subjected to the environment. He surmised that the development of human society, science and religion “of the right type”, could counteract the negative effects of climate on societies, thus making their reform and “improvement” possible.

To those who live among or have travelled among peoples differing widely from their own nation, there must always be a great interest attached to the study of the differences and the reasons for them. There are perhaps few places in the world so favourably placed as Singapore as a meeting place for various types of humanity, representing several races. Under our tropic sun we have men from the Land of the Midnight Sun, as well as those whose home is anywhere on that imaginary line that from time immemorial has been running round the earth. From many spots between the Arctic Circle and the Equator men have congregated in this land of sunshine and shower.

It is surely a useful question to ask if the change of climate has an influence, beneficial or disadvantageous, upon those who immigrate here, for short or long periods. It has been asserted that to man belongs the exclusive privilege of being a denizen of every region of the earth. While plants and animals have their particular habitats, man can make his abode anywhere, from the Torrid to the Arctic zone, from sea-level to mountain-top, from the depths of the sea to the heights of the atmosphere.