No country has changed my outlook on the world like Singapore. The tiny city-state island at the tip of the Malay Peninsula may be the world’s greatest social-political-economic experiment.
When I first went to Singapore – I was utterly shocked. My friend and I sat there, eyes wide open on the taxi ride from the airport to the hotel – silent until he said, “It’s Disneyland!” And so it seems and feels, especially at first. Clean to the point of eerie perfection, modern, orderly, flowing traffic, English speaking people, multi-ethnic – everything looks familiar and yet, devoid of a certain character and roughness that comes with anyplace “lived in”. And even had I not later lived there, I believe I would have all the same been drawn to study Singapore – and understand it. Living there worked out very well for satisfying my burning curiosity.
Let’s stop and take a moment for the obligatory disclaimers and acknowledgements. Singapore is highly controversial. Many things about it bring up strong criticism, from both Western and Eastern societies – but especially from the Western liberal-democracies.
In one way or another, Singapore challenges everyone’s sensibilities. Which is remarkable for a country with conservative Asian values and which has a British Parliamentary Constitution. But for a moment, suspend your preconceived ideas and ready-at-hand criticisms – and look with fresh eyes and in a new way.
Because Singapore, like a Mad Scientist, has perhaps isolated and created vaccines to some of our world’s ills – even if it’s been done with methodology not everyone approves admires. Still, a cure’s a cure and it exists. We can debate the merit of using human test subjects in a different discussion.
Singapore’s top Mad Scientist – founding father and architect of modern Singapore, Lee Kwan Yew – had a stated goal: to accelerate Singapore’s economic and social development fast enough to allow and ensure its survival.
He and his brilliant group of colleagues came up with a more comprehensive – far reaching plan than I think even they had initially imagined. But the principles they discovered were simple and perhaps have far-reaching implications.
Distribution of Ownership. People will only be tied to their country’s success if everyone owns his/her piece of it. People don’t want to send their sons to die for someone else’s land – but they’ll do it when it’s their very own homeland. Additionally, they financially succeed with ownership, and they are more likely to take care of their neighborhoods and communities.
This isn’t mind blowing. Most of us read it and think “yeah, that seems obvious”. But name a country that set out to ENSURE a distribution of ownership?
Using a special hybrid of Socialism with Capitalistic method, Singapore’s government built condos (known as Housing Development Board or HDB flats), created a bank to help people get their needed home loan (Development Bank of Singapore – DBS) and then allowed them to withdraw from their government withholdings (known as the Central Provident Fund – CPF, which is similar to our FICA, Medicare, etc withholdings) to help with the down payment.
Everyone, regardless of economic class, was helped into home ownership. And they could and can have this special help with the down payment up to two times in their lives.
This brilliantly changes the entire definition of “have not’s” – because no one is bereft of assets. And poverty – especially abject poverty – takes a giant hit.
Interestingly, the only other place I’ve seen anything similar is in Bali, Indonesia where Balinese all have a family homestead. Every family has their piece of land – and thus even the cash poor are not destitute, and there’s a higher degree of social equality than in most places in Asia – including other places in Indonesia.
Now, think about this compared to the United States where we see people struggle harder now than ever for home ownership. Crime increases in the areas of renters. The gap between our rich and poor are the most extreme in the world.
Even Europe with several Socialist nations – creates the effect with high taxation and wealth re-distribution. As a result, industrial sectors hurt. People have less reason to take capital risks and come up with new inventions – because they won’t see the fruit of their labor so easily. And in some countries – like France and Germany – foreign immigration is breaking their Socialist system as they struggle to keep their principles and still keep their social welfare systems afloat.
In Singapore, they pay their mortgages, their down payments were from their own earnings withholdings, and in the end, they’ve earned those homes. They just had a little help getting there.
Lee Kwan Yew (and I agree with him) attributes Singapore’s incredibly low crime rate mostly to this very fact. Ultimately, no one wants to see problems in their own neighborhood. And when every neighborhood belongs to its inhabitants, it’s a strong deterrent toward crime.
Here’s where many will bring up Singapore’s severe stance on crime too. In Singapore, if you commit a serious crime, you’re lucky if you only go to jail. Murder, rape, drug trafficking, major theft – result in capital punishment. And ever since Singapore, in its earliest days of independence, hung two Indonesian sailors for committing murder – despite Indonesia’s protests and threats – everyone knows Singapore will distribute justice as its laws prescribe, without fear of intimidation.
But another amazing and perhaps transplantable Singapore discovery is the social integration piece. Singapore is made of three primary ethnicities – Chinese, Malay and Indian. Among those Chinese – who form the majority – are five or more dialects and sub-groupings of people from various parts of China, including the Cantonese, Hokkien, Teochew, Hakka, and Hainanese. These all came to Singapore and the Malay Peninsula for trade and merchant opportunities under the British – who did not control immigration.
Malays are the indigenous population. And the Indians – primarily Tamil speaking from Tamilnadu and Sri Lanka – were brought by the British as clerks and laborers.
Singapore became its own country almost by accident. It originally planned to be part of Malaysia until political disagreements caused a separation while both were still planning their independence under British auspices. When the British pulled out ahead of schedule, leaving Singapore with no reliable source of water, a poor economy, and a hostile Malaysia to the north, and an even more hostile Indonesia to the south – Singapore entered a state of emergency.
Lee Kwan Yew and his fellow Cambridge educated colleagues understood that Singapore’s biggest threat was within. If the multi-ethnic population didn’t begin to identify as Singaporean and come together very quickly, their own internal squabbles and fighting would be Singapore’s immediate demise.
But while these populations lived side by side for more than a hundred years, they remained speaking their own languages, living in their own communities, and having little to do with one another. They of course harbored prejudices about one another and had their axes to grind – especially as all were used, exploited and divided by the British.
Singapore again, socially engineered. Besides the original leaderships amazing speeches in the streets calling for people to come together for their own good – which they amazingly did – Singapore created infrastructure to break down barriers quickly.
Singapore publicly funds places of worship. It says that religion and values are good - and that all faiths belong. However, in order to get the funding, a place of worship must be built in another ethnicity’s neighborhood. So, there’s a giant Hindu temple and Mosque in Chinatown, and a beautiful Taoist temple, next to a Hindu temple, in a traditionally Malay neighborhood downtown.
People were called out of their comfort zones, and learned to pray where others lived – and vice versa.
Government built condo complexes (HDB flats) can have no more than 70% of any one ethnicity. People must live side by side.
And perhaps most significantly – English became the national language with all educational instruction in English – because English was none of their native tongues. No one culture would dominate the others – they would all have to bend.
Interestingly, since schools also teach each ethnicity’s “mother tongue” as a secondary language – similar to a foreign language requirement – the barriers within the Chinese community were broken down by making Mandarin the only Chinese language taught, when in fact none of the Chinese groups were Mandarin speakers.
Later, students were allowed to take ANY of the mother tongue languages – so Chinese could have Malay as their second language, and Indians could learn Mandarin. The barriers were completely removed.
Singapore coerced its people into interaction with one another. It ended the voluntary segregation that characterized its society.
But most importantly, it began turning Hokkiens, Tamils, and Malays into Singaporeans.
If we’re all vested in it – we all eat off the same table, and we can all see each other as people, we can survive, and possible succeed. And in tiny Singapore, that cooperation is very literally necessary.
How many multiethnic countries have true integration? How many have economic success? How many can say they did it in less than 30 years?
Well, for a larger country, I think 30 years is improbable.
But the idea of aggressively helping people to find common ground, and break down barriers is fantastic. Doing it without wealth distribution or giving anyone a “cut in line” like affirmative action, is innovative. Everyone – including the majority – had to bend to accommodate one another.
So, we’ve talked about the Economic and Political “vaccines” of Singapore. The ticket to quick acceleration of social and economic development.
But Social and Economic changes don’t exist on their own - the Political is always linked. They are three heads on the same body.
It’s in the Political that we find the most controversial, and yet, perhaps, the most interesting and useful lesson of all.
Singapore made a trade-off. No doubt about it. While it technically had a British Parliamentary Constitution with open elections, only one party has ever held a majority – the People’s Action Party (PAP). Lee Kwan Yew was Prime Minister for 33 years. And, in effect had the powers of an autocratic leader.
He and his ruling clique also, like in a State of Emergency”, suspended or curtailed many liberties and freedoms – including a truly free press or the ability to purchase any product one wanted – like smutty movies (not just porn, but anything too explicit – like Sex and The City), or even chewing gum. Demands were placed on people to flush public toilets, avoid jay-walking, or severely curtailing the affordability of a car or private automobile.
Did it have merit? That’s probably where we could see the giant schism between liberal Western thinking and traditional Eastern thought.
But that right there is the lesson itself. None of the ethnicities and cultures of Singapore had ever known economic and political freedoms in their entire histories. Even under the British, they were more curtailed and enslaved than they had ever found themselves in the Republic of Singapore.
What they got in the trade-off was newfound economic power, and newfound peace amongst each other.
Sure, they could no longer spit on the sidewalk or get away with dumping their human waste behind their homes in ghetto neighborhoods as they did under the British. But they also saw a great reduction in Malaria and other communicable diseases. They also didn’t create tension among each other – as Malays were no longer repulsed at the Chinese habit of spitting betelnut juice…
As the system successfully lifted them out of poverty and into jobs, home ownership, better education, clean streets, and peace among neighbors – what did they actually lose? The ability to read an article criticizing Singapore in an American newspaper? Before, most of them weren’t literate enough in their native language, let alone English to have done that anyway.
Sure, they SHOULD be able to. And I believe they eventually will.
But three ethnicities who had always been under autocratic rule – who in their native societies were the poorest of the poor with limited – if not restricted opportunities due to castes – found new opportunities and freedom of choice due to the economic and social changes of Singapore.
And looking at modern Singapore, I firmly believe that the liberties and freedoms are developing. Singaporean passports are allowed EVERYWHERE – usually without the need for visas (including in the US). Gum chewing is back! More risqué movies are allowed in Singapore – as are Sex Shops now.
Most importantly, Singapore’s younger generations often go abroad for education and work. They bring back ideas from the UK, Australia, the US – and their laws relax, and liberties increase.
Now that Singapore has made it to first world, has property rights, economic success and general unity among its people – the big dangers have passed.
It provides an interesting example of a society with not only no democratic or liberal background, but also diverse and multi-ethnic that has achieved, where so many third world countries only struggle.
Does it have significant challenges and issues for the future? Absolutely? Is it a panacea? Absolutely not. Is Singapore ideal? By no means.
But it has Social, Economic and Political achievements that provide excellent ideas and clues for addressing these issues in other places.
Most importantly, it shows us that if we build property rights, and help build ownership in the society – that the weight of these things helps propel a society forward. That distribution of wealth – as Europe often points out – is important. But that it doesn’t have to be done only through traditional Socialist wealth distribution, but through Capitalistic opportunity and the creation of wealth.
I believe that Singapore has found answers adaptable to parts of the post-colonial third world, as well as perhaps other first world nations.
It’s not anyone’s cure – but maybe the beginnings of a vaccine?
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