Let’s look at Singapore—known as the Switzerland of Southeast Asia where a student might be caned for talking back to a teacher. For sure, he will be fined and caned for spitting gum on a sidewalk. But not in America where we are free to do what we want even if that means defacing or stealing someone else’s property.
Singapore City View
I’ve heard and read more than once that Singapore was the economic model that China was watching closely—not America with its chaotic market system that expands and collapses like a popped balloon.
This sounds like the China we often hear about in the Western media or out of the mouth of an American politician. “…is a socially engineered, nose-to-the-grindstone, workaholic rat race, where the self-perpetuating ruling party enforces draconian laws … squashes press freedom, and offers a debatable level of financial transparency—”
That description was not about China. It was for Singapore, a city-state that has a government-enforced savings plan and an average unemployment rate of about three percent.
Return to Part 1 of The Reasons Why China is Studying Singapore or go to Part 3
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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Singapore, of more than a million trees, multiracial, multicultural city state with a democratically-elected transparent government that actively promotes racial harmony and religious tolerance (kudos!), encourages foreign talent and investment from overseas, no-nonsense approach to crime, one of the world’s busiest ports with enviably quick turn-around times, excellent infra-structure, clean, well-maintained roads, parks and gardens, efficient, very affordable public transport system, strong emphasis on acadmeic achievement and qualifications but of late moving outside that box to encourage lateral thinking and personal creativity.
Singaporeans are passionate about – some say obsessed with – food, shopping and electronic toys, eager to have European designer goods, don’t like getting wet, a little ‘precious’ perhaps but practical and goal-driven.
A friend of mine sums it up with: “Singapore has a clockwork inevitability.”
This comment arrived as an e-mail so I pasted and submitted it for John Flanagan.