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Modern Singapore has been a focus of contact between the three cultural blocs of China, India, and Indonesia, and between Orient and Occident. Asian migrants came as laborers, artisans, and entrepreneurs; the much smaller European migrant group introduced western economic and administrative institutions. Subsequent modernization and development, necessitating improved coordination and development of all resources, has been hampered by substantial cultural divergences relating to economic and social practice and attitude. Contrasting cultural patterns are commonly identified with ethnic differences and can most readily be analyzed on this basis; the ethnic data utilized in this paper serve to highlight significant cultural differences which are only gradually breaking down despite sustained locational contiguity and the unifying force of political independence within, and subsequently outside the Federation of Malaysia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]