Results for “singapore” 498 found
Singapore and China, in history
Chinese national identity has long been considered to have been an obstacle to Singapore’s nation-building efforts. This is mainly because China was suspected of using its ethnic links to encourage Singapore’s communist rebellions during the 1950s and 1960s as Lee Kuan Yew was working towards establishing the city state. This study reviews Lee’s exchanges with Beijing and argues that he gave China the impression that he was building an anticolonial, pro-China nation. Beijing therefore responded positively to Lee’s requests for support. Reiterating its overseas Chinese policy to Lee, Beijing sided with him against his political rivals and even acquiesced in his suppression of Chinese-speaking “communists.” In addition, China boosted Lee’s position against Tunku Abdul Rahman, supported Singapore’s independence and lobbied Indonesia to recognize the territory as a separate state. China thus actually played a helpful role in Singapore’s nation building.
That is from Philip Hsiaopong Liu, via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
No sweet spot for Singapore in US-China tensions
That is the title of the new and remarkable Bilahari Kausikan Op-Ed in The Straits Times. I will serve up some bits, and please note this is now the world we live in:
Evoking the Long March [by Xi] is intended to prepare the Chinese people for a prolonged struggle with the US. It was, in effect, a tacit admission of the CCP’s mistakes with the consequent need for a retreat, while holding out the promise of ultimate victory…
The Chinese have long memories. Despite our constant denials, they still consider Singapore a “Chinese country” and may feel entitled to our support and will not quickly forget if we are regarded as insufficiently helpful in their time of need.
Some in the Trump administration also seem inclined to view the issue in racial terms. As the only ethnic Chinese-origin majority sovereign state outside greater China, we may be subject to special scrutiny.
What Singaporeans need to understand better is that, under present circumstances, there may be no sweet spot we can occupy that will keep both the Chinese and the Americans simultaneously happy. There is no silver bullet, and it is a fool’s errand to look for one.
Neither can we just lie low and hope for the best. You may not look for trouble but trouble may come looking for you. And trouble is all the more likely to seek you out if either side thinks you are, or can be, intimidated.
We must have the courage to pursue our own national interests. Sometimes our national interests may lead us to tilt one way, sometimes the other. But it must always be our national interest that guides us and nothing else.
Both the Chinese and Americans may not be too happy with us for pursuing our own interests. But Singapore does not exist to give joy to American or Chinese hearts. So long as neither side is so unhappy that it dismisses us as unredeemable, we can live with their unhappiness and manage it…
Our more complex domestic politics is a complication. I see still faint but distinct signs that some section of our population – how large, I do not know – either for transactional economic reasons, or unthinking ethnic sympathies, or sheer chauvinism, is beginning to look at the current US-China tensions through a racial lens.
As US-China competition heats up, this tendency may be accentuated. This is the greatest danger to Singapore in this new phase of US-China competition. It is still at a nascent stage and must be checked, if necessary by the prophylactic exercise of the coercive powers that are the legitimate monopoly of the state, before external and internal forces act and react with each other in a vicious spiral downwards.
If we hold together, we can manage the external complications. If we do not, and the social compact which is the foundation on which modern Singapore was built is strained or broken, these internal stresses may make the external complications unmanageable.
Since this period of US-China tensions will be prolonged, this is not a challenge that lends itself to definitive solutions. Managing it requires continual vigilance and periodic decisive action. It is our own Long March.
Do read the whole thing, as I said above this is now the world we live in.
What will Singapore do with its NIRC?
‘NIRC’ – it’s a uniquely Singaporean economic abbreviation that stands for net investment returns contribution…
The total size of Singapore’s total reserves is a state secret, but estimates by most analysts put it at well above S$500 billion (US$370 billion)…
The Temasek Holdings chief executive wrote about how returns from the firm she leads, as well as GIC Private Limited, and the foreign reserves held by the central bank were the “single largest contributor” to the Singapore budget.
“Without tapping on the dividends or returns from GIC, [the Monetary Authority of Singapore], and Temasek, the government would have had to raise taxes long ago for social spending,” Ho wrote.
Without the NIRC, the Pioneer Generation Package – a S$9 billion programme unveiled in 2014 to help cover the health care costs of citizens born before 1949 – would probably have been funded by “higher taxes or cuts to other essential programmes”, according to Ho.
Here is the full story, via a loyal MR reader. If you wish to understand Singapore’s relatively low rates of taxation, you also need to understand NIRC. Here is my earlier post Singapore as financial corporation.
*Singapore, Singapura: From Miracle to Complacency*
By Nicholas Walton, here is my blurb for the book:
“What better way to discover Singapore than to walk across it? In this splendid book, Walton serves up riches of the island’s history, geography, economics, and, most of all, serendipity.”
Due out March 1, pre-order here.
My take on why Singapore works so well
That is the topic of my new Bloomberg column, of course I am considering only one small piece of a larger puzzle. Here is one bit:
I view the development of Singaporean civil service culture as one of the world’s great managerial and political success stories of the last 50 years, though it remains understudied and underdiscussed in the West.
Singapore also mixes many of the virtues of both small and big government. The high quality of the civil service means the country gets “good government,” which pleases many liberals and progressives. The high quality of the decision-making means Singapore often looks to market incentives – congestion pricing for the roads is one example of many – which pleases conservatives and libertarians…
Is Singapore a small government or a big government country? The correct answer is both. Government spending is about 17 percent of GDP, which makes it look small and helps hold down taxes, which is good for business and productivity. (And there are no additional state and local governments.) But if you look at stocks rather than flows, the government owns shares in many critical Singapore businesses, plus it de facto controls lucrative sovereign wealth funds. The government claims ownership of the land, although it allows for active markets for transferring rights of use. All of these resources give the government the ability and credibility to get things done.
I even take on the chewing gum caricature…do read the whole thing.
Brutalism in Singapore
Is this article evidence that we (I?) are living in a simulation? Or did the editors of The Economist place it as an Easter Egg for me?:
The building, which was once called a “vertical slum” by a Singaporean legislator, is a densely packed mix of residential and commercial units. Along with People’s Park in Chinatown (pictured), which has been praised by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, it is among a handful of Brutalist buildings that were built in a surge of architectural confidence after the country became independent in 1965. They are particularly adored by those who love concrete, as well as bold and wacky colours.
Modernist buffs have started to fret that many of these Brutalist buildings will soon be gone. In February one of them, Pearl Bank, once the highest residential tower in Singapore, was sold for S$728m ($544m) to CapitaLand, one of Asia’s largest real-estate developers. The company plans to demolish the yellow horseshoe structure and build a “high-rise residential development” of 800 flats in its place.
Here is the full story, here is a related article from Malay Mail.
Singapore crime fact of the day
In 2016, the island nation’s police reported 135 total days without any crimes including snatch-theft, house break-ins and robbery. That low crime rate means many small businesses enjoy little concern about shoplifting.
In fact, as CNBC recently observed, many local businesses take few precautions when closing shop at night.
For instance, in the ground floor lobby of a mixed-use building in the downtown business district, many shops don’t have windows, locks — or even doors.
Here is the full story.
How they eat at the National University of Singapore
Visitors to the 700-seater Flavors food court can choose their reasonably priced meals from more than a dozen separate outlets, each offering a different type of cuisine from Southeast and East Asia, including Thai, Indonesian, Malaysian, Korean and Japanese. It is not even the biggest dining area, either: a further three 850-plus-seat canteens and numerous smaller restaurants and cafes are dotted around the university’s Modernist campus. In total, they feed about 50,000 people each day, serving a meal every 1.4 seconds on average.
…While the incredible variety of dining options on campus might seem incidental to this success, [recently retired president] Tan believes that it has played an important role in the university’s improvement on his watch.
“These are not just places where you eat — it’s where students and staff linger, mix and also learn from each other,” he said, adding that this element of campus life is “a cultural dimension that makes Singapore special.”
Here is the full story from Jack Grove.
The culture and polity that is Singapore, strategic sand reserve edition
Lim had told me that Singapore holds a strategic sand reserve, for emergencies. It lies somewhere near the area called Bedok, I said. I spotted it one day as I rode past in a taxi. The site was strewn with No Trespassing signs, installed by the Housing and Development Board, a government agency. Fenced off from the public, the giant trapezoidal dunes shone bone-white in the sun and caramel in the shade, as the sand waited to be summoned.
That is from an excellent piece by Samanth Subramanian (NYT), about Singapore, land, and preparing for climate change. The Singaporean constitution also devotes several pages to outlining how the government will manage its investments.
*Singapore: Unlikely Power*
Authored by John Curtis Perry, this is a good one-volume introduction to the history of Singapore, with the most interesting section being the one on the Japanese wartime occupation. Here is one excerpt:
For the Indonesians, struggling against the Dutch, freedom from colonial rule did not satisfy; they wanted as well to redraw geographical lines of sovereignty. Their new leader, Sukarno, in 1961 announced an aggressive policy of Konfrontasi (Confrontation), dreaming of forming a vast united Malay state, “Maphilindo,” to include Indonesia, the Malayan Peninsula (and implicitly Singapore), all of Kalimantan, and even the Philippines.
Indonesia by size and population would naturally dominate such an aggregation. Sukarno vowed to use force to crush Malaysia calling it “neo-colonial.” His people seized Singaporean fishing boats; he ordered sabotage carried out on Singapore’s port and a boycott that hurt Singapore’s trade. These threats and acts did nothing to advance his cause but fanned Singapore’s sense of vulnerability.
Recommended.
The polity that is Singapore cybersecurity
This was decided earlier in the year:
All computers used officially by public servants in Singapore will be cut off from the Internet from May next year, in an unprecedented move to tighten security.
A memo is going out to all government agencies, ministries and statutory boards here about the Internet blockade a year from now, The Straits Times has learnt.
There are some 100,000 computers in use by the public service and all of them will be affected.
“The Singapore Government regularly reviews our IT measures to make our network more secure,” a spokesman for the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) said when contacted.
The move is aimed at plugging potential leaks from work e-mail and shared documents amid heightened security threats.
Trials started with some employees within the IDA – the lead agency for this exercise – as early as April. Web surfing can be done only on the employees’ personal tablets or mobile phones as these devices do not have access to government e-mail systems. Dedicated Internet terminals have been issued to those who need them for work.
The Straits Times understands that public servants will be allowed to forward work e-mails to their private accounts, if they need to.
Here is the article. Here is Catherine Rampell on Trump and cybersecurity, she seems to be critical of what is possibly a Trump idea to have a White House without computers (without internet?). That to me seems the only good procedural/bureaucratic idea I have heard from the incoming Trump administration. Note that the government in Singapore is one of the smartest, forward-looking, and sophisticated in the world. On this they are ahead of the curve (by the way I write more on the broader question here in my forthcoming The Complacent Class).
First self-driving taxis hit the road in Singapore
Singapore’s nuTonomy, founded by two researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said Thursday it began testing a free taxi-hailing service in a small business district in Singapore called one-north, a campus-like space dominated by tech firms and biotechnology companies. Other tech companies including Chinese internet giant Baidu Inc. have been testing self-driving cars on the roads for years, but this is the first time the vehicles have been open to public use.
…Mr. Parker said the Singapore government had laid out a series of milestones for nuTonomy to achieve before it is allowed to extend its trials to other areas of the city. He declined to provide details on those milestones, but said the next stage would be to expand the service to a neighborhood adjacent to one-north.
Here is the WSJ piece, here are other articles. I recall predicting about a year and a half ago that Singapore would be the first to do this. A Singaporean countered me, and interjected they were very worried that their plans were falling behind. I said: “That is exactly my point. You are worried that you are falling behind. Congratulations.”
Worry. Singapore. Think about it.
The culture and polity that is Singapore, Germany, and Belarus
Singapore leads the way, offering three-quarters of a million U.S. dollars to gold-medal winners, followed by Indonesia ($383,000), Azerbaijan ($255,000), Kazakhstan ($230,000) and Italy ($185,000).
I would say Italy should not be on that list, as they have some fiscal troubles, plus plenty of other sources of national pride. And there is this:
…other countries offer alternative bait — like military exemptions (South Korea), a lifetime supply of beer (Germany) and unlimited sausages (Belarus).
Here is the article, via James Crabtree.
Driverless taxis coming to Singapore
Delphi Automotive Plc, the vehicle-electronics supplier that last year conducted the first coast-to-coast U.S. demonstration of a self-driving car, will begin testing autonomous autos in Singapore this year that may lead to robot taxis by the end of the decade.
The test will involve six autonomous autos, starting with the modified Audi Q5 the supplier used last year to travel from San Francisco to New York in self-driving mode. In Singapore, the cars initially will follow three predetermined routes and by 2019 will range freely based on customer requests, without a driver or a human minder, according to Glen DeVos, a Delphi senior vice president.
“We actually will have point-to-point automated mobility on demand with no driver in the car,” he said at a briefing with reporters at Delphi’s Troy, Michigan, operations base. “It’s one of the first, if not the very first, pilot programs where we’ll demonstrate mobility-on-demand systems.”
Here is more from Keith Naughton.
My worries about Singapore
Singapore is a well-run place by world standards, and has perhaps the world’s highest quality bureaucracy, yet right now the country faces a somewhat menacing constellation of silent risks, none of their own making:
1. It is possible that the role of the United States in the Pacific Ocean is rewritten rather suddenly. This could come about through either a Trump presidency, or a successful Chinese attempt to grab more in the South China Sea. Can you imagine a Singapore that had to court Japan and India rather than relying on the United States for protection? In this same world Japan is probably more militarized than in the status quo, and possibly even a nuclear power.
2. Singapore sovereign wealth funds and related institutions have been pulling in high returns since the 1970s. Yet the opportunities in both China and Singapore’s own real estate just aren’t there any more. They would be very lucky to pull in four percent a year looking forward. While fiscal risk is minimal, this will crimp expansion plans, especially if Singapore ends up needing to spend more on national defense.
3. It seems increasing pressure is being brought to bear on the Chinese currency yet again. China would like to lower rates to stimulate its economy, and the Fed is likely to raise rates at least once more this year. There is surely a chance that the renminbi simply snaps due to capital outflow. During the Asian currency crisis, the Singaporean dollar fell about twenty percent as a side effect of the turmoil elsewhere. Yet now China is much bigger than South Korea + Thailand + Indonesia were in 1997. Furthermore Singapore is much more of a financial and clearinghouse center. How insulated is Singapore from this China risk? Does anybody know? To what extent might a flow of capital into Singapore mitigate some of this risk?
4. Climate change could well lead to rising water levels for island nation Singapore. Investing in sea walls and other forms of protection could take what percent of gdp? The Dutch are already putting 0.5% of gdp a year into a fund for future water defense.
From this list, #2 and #4 are more likely problems, whereas #1 and #3 are more speculative, but by no means in the realm of science fiction. There is the possibility of a perfect storm from all four.
And yet think of how things must have looked in 1965. The Vietnam War was going badly, and most of the trends in Southeast Asia were negative. Chinese Communism was at its nadir with the Cultural Revolution. Indonesia had just massacred 500,000 citizens, many of them Chinese. Singapore itself had just been kicked out of Malaysia, an outcome which its key founders mostly opposed. There was not yet evidence that what later became “the Singapore model” was going to work, and even Japan was not yet an evident success. It was commonly believed that Singapore, Malaysia, or both might collapse into a kind of ethnic civil war. British military expenditures were about 20% of Singapore’s gdp, and it was widely understood that source of income would be going away. Somehow they managed, most of all with the aid of human capital and being in the right place at the right time.
Here is the Singapore Complaints Choir, one of my favorite music videos.
In any case, I am happy to be here once again. For dining, I recommend Sinar Pagi Nasi Padang, at Geylang Serai hawker centre, get the beef rendang. National Kitchen, in the new National Gallery is also very good for a more traditional kind of dining.