Can a country preserve its culture nowadays?
             The world has shrunk. A few decades ago, the world was a big place and what happened in one part of the world took months or even years to reach other parts of the world – if at all. At that time, each country was wrapped up in itself. Each believed its own culture to be the best and few exposed at all, it was usually for short periods of time and not enough to influence them. With television, radio, books and movies being so readily available everywhere, today it is difficult for any culture not to be influenced by other cultures.
             The great influences are radio and television. There is no way that any government can keep radio waves out of its own radios, and the service is free. For television, there is some means of control. In Singapore, people are forbidden to install antennae which can receive from satellite transmissions. Hence we cannot receive transmissions from all over the world, much as we would like to. However in such cases, it is probably an attempt to protect the local television stations rather than to keep out foreign culture. Anyway, transmissions from nearby countries cannot be stopped. For example, in Singapore – in order to discourage the use of Chinese dialects – all the Chinese transmissions are in Mandarin. However, people who wish to see dialect programmes tune in to television Malaysia – which provides a generous number of dialect programmes.
             When we look at it in one way, we see that it is a good thing that the countries of the world now find it so easy to learn about each other. This learning will promote greater understanding of and appreciation for each other's cultures. It may make the country progress faster when it learns from what others are doing. One such country which progressed very fast because it opened itself to outside influence is Japan and another is South Korea. Japan was closed to foreign influence before the
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