ABSTRACT
Since the early 1980s, China has entered into an economic transformation period, moving toward reform and opening to the outside world. At the same time, the third generation of the Singaporean Chinese was also growing up. Singapore’s government has completed a comprehensive English-based educational system. The national education’s emphasis on local identity and consciousness has also being gradually perfected. The first language of Singaporean Chinese growing up at this period of time is English. Because of that, the China they recognized is the China they learned from English reading materials. Like people in the West, Singaporeans’ attention to China also focuses on China’s economic potential and how much profit can be generated from trade within the Chinese market. Along with the practical economic orientation, the closest connection between Singaporean Chinese and China is not the sentiment of family members and relatives of the clan, but the business investment opportunities and business contacts. They regard China as ‘other,’ a nation, one of many countries in the world, with no nostalgia for their ancestral land or special feeling as the first generation immigrants did. By this time, the contemporary Singaporean Chinese recognition of China has changed from the ‘motherland recognition’ of the earlier period to ‘China recognition.’
