Singapore in the context of "Han Chinese"

A city-state is an independent sovereign city which serves as the center of political, economic, and cultural life over its contiguous territory, as opposed to a regular state or country comprising a capital city and other cities and/or a countryside. City-states have existed in many parts of the world throughout history, including cities such as Rome, Carthage, Athens and Sparta and the Italian city-states during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, such as Florence, Venice, Genoa and Milan.

With the rise of nation states worldwide, there remains some disagreement on the number of modern city-states that still exist; Singapore, Monaco and Vatican City are the candidates most commonly discussed. Out of these, Singapore is the largest and most populous city-state in the world, with full sovereignty, international borders, its own currency, a robust military, and substantial international influence in its own right. The Economist refers to it as the "world's only fully functioning city-state".

A microstate or ministate is a sovereign state having a very small population or land area, usually both. However, the meanings of "state" and "very small" are not well-defined in international law. Some recent attempts to define microstates have focused on identifying qualitative features that are linked to their size and population, such as partial delegation of their sovereignty to larger states, such as for international defense.

Commonly accepted examples of microstates include five historic European microstates: Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino, and Vatican City. Malta and Luxembourg are sometimes included in that list but are generally considered too populous to be genuine microstates. Other examples are small, isolated island states in the Pacific Ocean: Nauru, Palau, Niue, Cook Islands and Tuvalu. Some small Caribbean countries such as Saint Kitts and Nevis, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines may be considered microstates by some but are often not included due to them being grouped together as small island countries. Singapore and Bahrain are sometimes considered microstates but some argue are too populous, self reliant or powerful to be considered true microstates and their island status can play an important factor too.The smallest political entity recognized as a sovereign state is Vatican City, with fewer than 1,000 residents and an area of only 49 hectares (120 acres). Some microstates – such as Singapore, Monaco and Vatican City – are city-states consisting of a single municipality.

The Singapore dollar (sign: S$; code: SGD) is the official currency of the Republic of Singapore. It is divided into 100 cents (Malay: sen, Chinese: 分; pinyin: fēn, Tamil: காசு, romanized: kācu). It is normally abbreviated with the dollar sign $, or S$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) issues the banknotes and coins of the Singapore dollar.

As of 2024, the Singapore dollar is the 13th most traded currency in the world. Apart from its use in Singapore, the Singapore dollar is also accepted as customary tender in Brunei according to the Currency Interchangeability Agreement between the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Autoriti Monetari Brunei Darussalam (Monetary Authority of Brunei Darussalam). Likewise, the Brunei dollar is also customarily accepted in Singapore.

Determining the boundaries between the continents is generally a matter of geographical convention and consensus. Several slightly different conventions are in use. The number of continents is most commonly considered seven (in English-speaking countries) but may range as low as four when Afro-Eurasia and the Americas are both considered as single continents. An island can be considered to be associated with a given continent by either lying on the continent's adjacent continental shelf (e.g. Singapore, the British Isles) or being a part of a microcontinent on the same principal tectonic plate (e.g. Madagascar and Seychelles). An island can also be entirely oceanic while still being associated with a continent by geology (e.g. Bermuda, the Australian Indian Ocean Territories) or by common geopolitical convention (e.g. Ascension Island, the South Sandwich Islands). Another example is the grouping into Oceania of the Pacific Islands with Australia and Zealandia.

There are three overland boundaries subject to definition:

Chinese characters are logographs used to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represent the only one that has remained in continuous use. Over a documented history spanning more than three millennia, the function, style, and means of writing characters have changed greatly. Unlike letters in alphabets that reflect the sounds of speech, Chinese characters generally represent morphemes, the units of meaning in a language. Writing all of the frequently used vocabulary in a language requires roughly 2000–3000 characters; as of 2025, more than 100000 have been identified and included in The Unicode Standard. Characters are created according to several principles, where aspects of shape and pronunciation may be used to indicate the character's meaning.

The first attested characters are oracle bone inscriptions made during the 13th century BCE in what is now Anyang, Henan, as part of divinations conducted by the Shang dynasty royal house. Character forms were originally ideographic or pictographic in style, but evolved as writing spread across China. Numerous attempts have been made to reform the script, including the promotion of small seal script by the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE). Clerical script, which had matured by the early Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE), abstracted the forms of characters—obscuring their pictographic origins in favour of making them easier to write. Following the Han, regular script emerged as the result of cursive influence on clerical script, and has been the primary style used for characters since. Informed by a long tradition of lexicography, states using Chinese characters have standardized their forms—broadly, simplified characters are used to write Chinese in mainland China, Singapore, and Malaysia, while traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

Javanese culture (Javanese: ꦏꦧꦸꦢꦪꦤ꧀ꦗꦮ, romanized: Kabudayan Jawa) is the culture of the Javanese people.Javanese culture is centered in the provinces of Central Java, Yogyakarta and East Java in Indonesia. Due to various migrations, it can also be found in other parts of the world, such as Suriname (where 15% of the population are of Javanese descent), the broader Indonesian archipelago region, Cape Malay, Malaysia, Singapore, Netherlands and other countries. The migrants bring with them various aspects of Javanese cultures such as Gamelan music, traditional dances and art of Wayang kulit shadow play.

The migration of Javanese people westward has created the Javanese culture in a small part of the northern coast that is distinct from the Sundanese culture in the majority of West Java and Banten. Being the largest ethnic group, the Javanese culture and people influence Indonesian politics and culture, a process sometimes described as Javanisation.

Bahrain, officially the Kingdom of Bahrain, is an island country in West Asia. Situated on the Persian Gulf, it comprises a small archipelago of 50 natural islands and an additional 33 artificial islands, centred on Bahrain Island, which makes up around 83 percent of the country's landmass. Bahrain is situated between Qatar and the northeastern coast of Saudi Arabia, to which it is connected by the King Fahd Causeway. The population is 1,588,670 as of 2024, of whom 739,736 (46.6% of the population) are Bahraini nationals, and 848,934 are expatriates (53.4% of the population). Bahrain spans some 760 square kilometres (290 sq mi) and is the third-smallest nation in Asia after Maldives and Singapore. The capital and largest city is Manama.

The area that straddles the present-day territory of Bahrain was once the site of the ancient Dilmun civilisation. It has been famed since antiquity for its pearl fisheries, which were considered the best in the world into the 19th century. Bahrain was one of the earliest areas to be influenced by Islam, during the lifetime of Muhammad in 628. Following a period of Arab rule, Bahrain was ruled by the Portuguese Empire from 1521 until 1602, when they were expelled by Shah Abbas the Great of the Safavid Iran. In 1783, the Bani Utbah and allied tribes captured Bahrain from Nasr Al-Madhkur. It has since been ruled by the Al Khalifa royal family, with Ahmed al Fateh as Bahrain's first hakim.

The Sinosphere, also known as the Chinese cultural sphere, East Asian cultural sphere, or the Sinic world, encompasses multiple countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia that were historically heavily influenced by Chinese culture. The Sinosphere comprises Greater China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and historically the Ryukyuans. Other definitions may include the regions of modern-day Mongolia and Singapore, due either to historical Chinese influence or a contemporary overseas Chinese population. The Sinosphere is different from the Sinophone world, which indicates regions where the Chinese language is spoken.

Imperial China was a major regional power in Eastern Asia and exerted influence on tributary states and neighboring states, including Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. These interactions brought ideological and cultural influences rooted in Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. The four cultures were ruled by their respective emperors under similar imperial systems, furthermore, the adoption of the Confucian-based imperial examination system deeply influenced the bureaucracy and social structure of Korea and Vietnam. Chinese inventions influenced, and were in turn influenced by, innovations of the other cultures in governance, philosophy, science, and the arts. Literary Chinese became the written lingua franca for bureaucracy and communications, and Chinese characters became locally adapted as kanji in Japan, hanja in Korea, and chữ Hán in Vietnam.