Choosing a language associated with any of the major groups as the language of government (especially if it had been Chinese) would have significantly disadvantaged the other two major groups. So the government made the same decision that had been made in many other parts of the former British and French empires, with the aim of avoiding ethnic conflict: they chose to stick with the colonial language. They also argued that being Anglophone would strengthen the nation’s capacity for effective participation in global trade, the lifeblood of a port city. At
