Republic Plaza at street level, 28 July 2024. (Source: Cedric Chin, copyright waived)
At the heart of Singapore’s central business district, on prime real estate, stands a 280m-tall skyscraper named Republic Plaza. The building is not visually striking, and most Singaporeans would be hard-pressed to point it out amongst Singapore’s skyscrapers. But the deal that led to its construction was anything but ordinary. Republic Plaza was, in effect, bought for a song. The deal to construct and then own it was engineered by none other than Kwek Hong Png, the patriarch and founder of Hong Leong Group.
Kwek Hong Png was one of the pioneering businessmen who helped shape Singapore into an economic powerhouse. Born to farmers in a village in southern China, he arrived in Singapore at the age of 16 in 1928, armed with a blanket, a mat, and the address of a brother-in-law he had never met. Kwek started as a clerk in his brother-in-law’s hardware store and worked his way up to become the general manager. Over a decade later, he used $7,000 of his savings to establish a rival company. Kwek’s brother-in-law, his former boss, was outraged, and threatened to bankrupt him. Kwek responded, “I don’t want to disturb you. But if you want to fight with me, I’m not scared and I will take you on.” He named his new venture Hong Leong, which means “plentiful harvests” in Cantonese.
Soon after Kwek launched his venture, Japan invaded Singapore. This occurred in 1942, and was the region’s introduction to World War 2. Faced with the threat of starvation for his young family, Kwek resumed his business after a few months, when he found an opportunity to trade ropes from Singapore for much-needed rice from Thailand. This was the official story, retold in Peh Shing Huei’s 2024 biography of Kwek Leng Beng — Kwek Hong Png’s son. In reality, it is likely that much of Kwek Hong Png’s wealth from this era stemmed from smuggling Indonesian rubber and trading with the Japanese. In Joe Studwell’s 2007 book Asian Godfathers, Studwell interviews an old family friend who declines to be named. The two narratives will be laid out here.
Peh’s reason for Kwek Hong Png’s changed fortune during the war is more prosaic. According to Peh, Kwek reasoned that the occupation would not last beyond a few years, so he chose as much as possible to be paid in British currency instead of Japanese military notes. As such, he earned a tidy sum and was well-placed to rapidly expand his business after the Japanese surrendered.
This is unlikely to be the whole story. The most lucrative opportunity available to many Singapore-based traders in the post World War 2 period was smuggling Indonesian rubber in exchange for weapons — intended for Indo ...
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