This reads to me as "Western expat goes to Asian country and accuses their national identity of not existing because obviously only superior Aryans™ can have nation states and everyone else is simply terra nullis, especially if they're not ethnically homogenous".

My anecdotal experiences with Singaporeans is that it is probably the only economically developed country that is truly multicultural. Ethnically, Singapore consists mostly of Chinese, Malays, and Tamils (the fact that the article doesn't mention Tamils makes me extremely suspect, imagine an article about America that handwaives American demographics as "60% White, the rest Black and other groups".). From what I can tell people of all three languages have something called a "home language" class where they learn their respective ethnic languages. My experience with Chinese Singaporeans is that these classes are fairly effective in teaching their heritage languages at roughly the same level they would've been taught in countries where these languages are the majority language. In contrast to America, also an Anglophone country, where you will meet Hispanic-Americans born in Mexico who can't even speak Spanish or Chinese-Americans who get offended at the very idea that they should be able to read/write Chinese. IIRC there's a California proposition that straight up bans bilingual education. On the other hand, Singaporeans do have their own national identity and culture. The vernacular dialect of English spoken is Singlish (although in the past the government has tried to eliminate it) which is distinct from American English and has fairly strong Chinese/Malay/Tamil influences. Singaporeans as a whole do not seem to identitfy with other Anglo countries, especially younger Singaporeans. Chinese Singaporeans are also probably the only Chinese diaspora group that isn't openly hostile towards China itself, while also maintaining a distinct identity. Most importantly, Singaporean law doesn't fall into the "freeze peach" trap and actively eliminates speech that promotes ethnic or religious tension.

You will see a fair bit complaining about the anti hate speech thing and other Singaporean laws by types and from what I can tell the average Singaporean will push back and defend their country's policies. Ironically Singapore is probably the Asian country that imo has the least amount of xenophilia towards the west. In situations such as this article, where western "journalists" do their standard routine of mischaracterizing Asian countries they do not understand, I see a fair amount of backlash and resentment from Singaporeans. I'm sure if you showed this article to a Singaporean, especially a leftist one, they would have some strong words to say about the article.

If you see the actual history of Singapore, at least as it is viewed by the average Singaporean, very little attention is paid towards Raffles or the British, instead there's a lot of hagiography around Lee Kuan Yew. the gist of it is: When the Japanese invaded Singapore the British were inept at defending it, the Japanese then proceeded to massacre the Island's Chinese population, leading to the death of any notion of English superiority. Post WWII the island became independent and Lee Kuan Yew wanted make it a part of Malaysia. The Malaysians didn't want Singapore to be a part of Malaysia because of the large population of Ethnic Chinese and also because they suspected Lee's party of being Communists, so they kicked them out. There's also this belief among Lee idolizers that Lee wanted to eventually become the president of Malaysia and the Malaysians expelled Singapore for of fear of this. If you watch old Lee Kuan Yew interviews there are quite a few anti-west moments such as when he complained about western journalists being hypocritical of their coverage of Singapore, or when he accused the CIA of trying to bribe him and started taunting them.

If you take into account the fact that Malaysia literally kicked Singapore out of federation due to its ethnic composition, combined with ongoing resentment towards the British/other Anglos, then no, you can't claim as the author does, that Singapore's national identity is somehow artificial or that they're "all the same".