Morgan Chua

Biography

The first issue of National Pioneer came out with a cover of plain text and a photograph. Morgan Chua’s drawings appeared only in the second issue and those after it.

The magazine was published by the Singapore Armed Forces, and in 1967 Chua was in the first batch of young men called up for national service. He worked for the publication voluntarily: he said he had realised that a cartoon could carry the voice of the people, and added, “I will always serve my people and my country.”

Morgan Chua Heng Soon (in Chinese 蔡興順) was born on 3 May 1949 at Byrne’s Maternity Clinic in Singapore, then a colony. He was the eldest of seven children, with five younger sisters and a younger brother. His father, Henry Chua Peng Yam, was an electrical and sanitary contractor, and his mother was Lily Teo Wah Sek. As a child Chua drew little animated strips on rolled paper for his sisters, his brother and the children of the neighbourhood. Many thought such drawings were good enough to get him into the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. He went to the Presbyterian Boys’ School and belonged to the 5th Singapore Company of the Boys’ Brigade. He was born in the Year of the Bull and the month of Taurus, and the bull became his signature mascot.

In 1970 he joined the newly founded daily The Singapore Herald as chief editorial artist. In 1971 the government closed the paper, accusing it of plots financed from abroad. The paper had been critical of the prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew. Chua’s cartoon showing Lee on a tank threatening to crush a baby that stood for press freedom is reported to have caused the closure: the prime minister was offended by it.

Chua moved to Hong Kong, to the newly founded weekly The Asian. Derek Davies, editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER), had noticed him back in Singapore. After three and a half months of travelling and working in Europe, Chua began drawing for that magazine in late 1972, and on 1 December 1972, at the age of twenty-three, he was appointed its first art director. In those years he drew Prince Sihanouk, Tun Abdul Razak, Indira Gandhi and Lee Kuan Yew. The magazine grew rapidly for almost twenty years. Among Chua’s notable covers are “Superman Li”, showing Li Ka-shing, and one with Margaret Thatcher leading a surrender. In 1981 Li Ka-shing sent him a letter about the “Superman Li” cover; according to Chua, the idea was partly suggested by his son. Books followed too: “Ying & Yang” (1975, a series from the magazine), “Yum Char’s Travels: A Voyage to Gnokgonh” (1976) and “Hong Kong Book of Records” (1979).

In 1988–89 he took a sabbatical to travel the Silk Road and other parts of China. In the spring of 1989 he was there at the height of the Tiananmen Square protests, and on 4 June they were broken up. Chua was so shocked that he drew more than a hundred cartoons; in the same year they were published as the book “Tiananmen”. An edition for the twenty-fifth anniversary appeared in 2014.

He left the Far Eastern Economic Review after changes at the publication and out of a wish to live closer to his Singaporean roots. In 1999 he returned to Singapore and for almost twenty years divided his time between it and Tanjung Pinang on Bintan island in Indonesia. He said himself that he had accepted the limits of cartooning in Singapore, and the country’s leaders came to regard him with tolerance. He published a book of cartoons about Lee Kuan Yew, meant, in his words, “to show the humane side” of the leader. The books of this period include “My Singapore” (2000, expanded edition 2008), “50 Years Ago” (2009), “Chronicle of Singapore” (2009) and “Divercity Singapore – A Cartoon History Of Immigration” (2010). Chua worked with publishers and inspired young cartoonists and illustrators.

In 2011 came the series of drawings “In Memory of Kwa Geok Choo (1921–2010)”, about Lee Kuan Yew’s late wife. Chua received appreciative letters for it from Lee Kuan Yew and Lee Hsien Loong, which, he said, meant more to him than the Cultural Medallion, Singapore’s top arts award. In 2013 he illustrated the former president Sellapan Rama Nathan’s book “50 Stories From My Life”. In 2015 the BBC published his drawings for the case of Zhou Yongkang, who had been convicted of bribery, abuse of power and the intentional disclosure of state secrets.

Morgan Chua died on 22 March 2018 on Bintan, where he had been taken to hospital. His son accompanied him, and on 23 March they returned to Singapore.