Is Singapore Chinese?

An article in Weekend Today reads International school with a Chinese core

It is basically a report about Avondale Grammar School, the latest kid on the private school's block, offering Chinese Language as a core subject. So what is wrong with it. Absolutely nothing! It is great that an Australian international school has decided to embrace the plurality of 21st century existence by introducing a language and culture not of its kind.

What I found rather disturbing though is a comment that a parent, a certain Mrs McLean, made:
"We will be here for a least three years and we want [the children] to learn the language and culture of the country they are living in by the time we leave"

The LANGUAGE and CULTURE? The last I checked, this country is also made up of Malays, Indians, Eurasians and peoples of various cultures and languages. Strangely enough, I am not the least proud to note that someone has equated Singaporean culture and language to that of China's though by race, I am 100% Chinese. I am also a Muslim, married to a Malay man and my son is half-Chinese and half-Malay.

Perhaps I am blowing a fuse too quickly and jumping to conclusion.

Maybe what Mrs McLean wanted to say was:
"We will be here for a least three years and we want [the children] to learn ONE OF THE the languageS and cultureS of the country they are living in by the time we leave".

I wonder if the good reporter noticed that and pointed that out to poor Mrs McLean who is under the illusion that Singapore is a mono-cultural society or one that has brutally disregarded the sensitivities of everyone who has played a part to make it home.

I wonder.