God Bless Singapore : Feng Shui masters' views on Singapore prosperity

Abstract

This research paper examines Feng Shui masters’ explanations on Singapore’s prosperity. It compares Feng Shui masters’ explanations to various justifications provided by governement officials and economists. There is a strong desire among the Singapore populace to understand Feng Shui masters’ perspective on how Singapore is able to reach prosperity within such a short period of time, from gaining independence to today. Scholars often propose that Singapore owed her prosperity to her implementation of a judicious mix of political and economic policies. They believe that People’s Action Party adopted effective and efficient policies which gave the nation the knowledge and skills to achieve economic prosperity. However, Feng Shui theories often offer different explanations behind Singapore’s prosperity. It seems that the general Singapore population believes in Feng Shui masters’ explanation and percieves that the government is utilising Feng Shui to aid Singapore’ prosperity. It is not the intention of this paper to analyse whether Feng Shui practice is effective, but rather to report what Feng Shui masters say and the response of the Singapore people. Through this paper, I aim to show that to Feng Shui masters and the Singapore’s population, Feng Shui theories can be an alternative argument for Singapore’s economic prosperity or at least fill in the gaps in which scholars cannot explain for. I argue that these Feng Shui theories help to ease the scepticism among citizens who felt that scholars and governmental explanations were simply insufficient to explain for Singapore’s prosperity.