Singapore's Success Story
MCCORD, WILLIAM AND ARLINE
THIRD WORLD REPORT— III Singapore's Success Story BY WILLIAM ANDARLINE McCORD This article resumes an intermittent series examining the records of liberal and authoritarian Third World...
...Its British rulers dealt roughly with the colonials who desired freedom...
...The People's Action Party led by Lee Kuan Yew has managed these accomplishments within the stable framework of a scrupulously incorruptible and essentially democratic political system...
...Put through its paces on the beaches of Australia and New Zealand as well as in the jungles of Malaysia and the Philippines, the Army is organized as a mobile strike force that could be deployed anywhere in Southeast Asia...
...Simultaneously, the country has become a major medical center, a heavy investor in biogenetics, an innovator in robotics, and a central financial hub where banks enjoy such facilities as high-speed digital data transmission over the public telecom network...
...Within weeks, the fares were lowered...
...By the 1970s, Singapore was the world's third largest petrochemical center (after Rotterdam and Houston) and a major electronics producer...
...Consisting of immigrants once racked by ethnic hostilities, Singapore has attained an impressive religious and racial tolerance...
...In the interim, the government uses the accumulated savings in the fund's 2.6 million accounts for countercyclical spending during times of relative recession and for further capital expansion...
...A score of parliamentarians were dumped in the 1984 elections...
...labor unions must "cool off' for two years before striking...
...Courts impose a $500 fine for littering in this gleaming city...
...Clearly, Lee—who won a double first with distinction in law at Cambridge and taught himself Mandarin as an adult— is trying to infuse the society with a "Confucian ethic...
...The government also has built three times more housing space per person than in Hong Kong, and made subsidized housing available to78 per cent of the population...
...Television carries parliamentary debates live, replete with attacks on the pap and vituperative rejoinders from government benches...
...On the basis of these developments the Economist predicts that Singapore will, in fact, have the highest growth rate of any region of the globe in the foreseeable future...
...In 1819, when he discovered the 55 equatorial islands that compose the country, even Stamford Raffles could not have envisaged so sanguine an outcome for his commercial enterprise...
...At the risk of losing their privilege all adults must vote, and clerks from the various parties count the ballots meticulously...
...Toh Chin Chye, a former vice chancellor of the National University, and J.B...
...Singapore is so "antiseptic" that some of its 3 million yearly tourists complain about the country not living up to their "image" of the Orient...
...Apparently impressed by the writings of Hans J. Eysenck, the English psychologist, Lee briefly attempted to go further and improve the local "gene pool" by promising extra privileges to university graduates who wed and had children...
...the surplus provides a superb educational system and essential services...
...Yet despite this handicap and other exceptional obstacles—a brutal Japanese occupation in World War II, a sudden British withdrawal of its naval facilities, the oil crisis, an abortive union with Malaysia, deep ethnic divisions, and a period of "confrontation" with Indonesia—it has surpassed both the material and the moral achievements of every other Asian "miracle economy" save for Japan...
...In 1985, with an avidly consuming population of 2.6 million Chinese, Malays and Indians, the largely urban society still must import everything from its210,000private automobiles to much of its drinking water...
...Divorce, discouraged by a law requiring a two-year waiting period and another condemning concubinage, is relatively rare among the Chinese...
...With the bsp petulantly boycotting the elections in 1968, the pap went on to win impressively over splintered opposition groups...
...Through satellites and underseas cables, it is now the telecommunications powerhouse of Southeast Asia...
...In the 1960s, as many countries succumbed to the lures of industrial self-sufficiency (and the consequent dangers of economic isolationism), Singapore opted for an export orientation...
...In addition to their ambitiousness, Singaporeans have perhaps the highest rate of savings in the world...
...Complaining about a decline in income, they assembled a 3-mile queue of idle cars, tying up traffic to Changi Airport...
...Goh Keng Swee, the finance minister credited with much of Singapore's economic success, and S. Rajaratnam, the party's chief ideologist, both quietly retired at age 65...
...Lee, returning home after completing his education in England, was threatened with "preventive detention" as soon as he stepped ashore...
...Singapore had developed the new industries—aircraft maintenance, helicopters, shipbuilding, radar capacity—required for exploration of this great market...
...An individual' s share of the $2.4 billion saved each year can be withdrawn at age 55 or for the purchase of a home...
...ThePAP has won stunning electoral victories for the past quarter century, and most recently collected 62 per cent of the popular vote...
...these allow a continuous upgrading of the highly productive work force which, in turn, attracts more foreign capital and export earnings...
...Recognizing the truth of Barbara Ward's assertion that 60 per cent of progress in modern economies stems from education and research, Singapore invests heavily in human talents...
...At present growth rates Singaporeans (who are producing a per capita GNP of $6,900 a year) will pass Americans in 16 years and the Swiss (the richest people on earth at $17,000 annually) in 19 years...
...A few weeks ago, Lee addressed his nation about the possible deterioration of the world economy...
...On the issue of birth control, for example, citizens willingly followed the pap propaganda and accepted sterilization, particularly for women, along with abortion...
...Lee, 62, has himself publicly swom he will quit in three years...
...Eleven people have been hanged...
...Second, Dr...
...The government bans pornography, even the import of Cosmopolitan, and considers homosexuality a crime...
...And, to the degree that the government refrains from suppression, it is felt that Singapore's "brain services" can meet an increasing demand for financial, legal, educational, scientific, technical, and economic advice in the world's fastest growing economic bloc...
...The step would destroy the free market for ideas that Singapore, possibly more than other societies, requires if its economy is to survive...
...Yet the different groups have one thing in common: They brought with them an "immigrant ethic"—a willingness to take risks, an openness to new experiences andideas, and a raging desire to improve their lot...
...Even the eloquence of Singapore's first elected chief minister, David Marshall (1955-56), a worldly Sephardic Jew whose family came from Iraq, had been unable to calm ethnic hatreds...
...Can all this last...
...Among Moslems it has dropped precipitously because of a stiffening of religious laws...
...The leaders of mainland China seem to agree...
...ThePAP, a Socialist party at the time of its initial parliamentary victories in 1955, was evenly split between Social Democrats headed by Lee, then suspected of Communist sympathies, and actual pro-Communists who eventually broke away to form the Barsian Sosialis Party (bsp...
...the sentence for drug peddling is death...
...Serious mental disorders have not increased, although psychiatrists report more treatment of minor psychosomatic ailments than 10 years ago...
...Combined with Singapore's pragmatism and stable consensus government, the high savings rate has helped to establish a rewarding cycle: increases in foreign trade yield a surplus...
...During the turbulent days of 1963, plagued by internal violence, Lee as prime minister used the old British preventive detention laws and jailed 100 bsp members unwilling to abandon violent tactics...
...A visit to the doctor or any amount of medicine costs 50 American cents, a fee imposed simply to deter hypochondriacs...
...Tony Tan...
...Adding to their concern, Goh Chok Tong, a possible successor to Lee, is gingerly endorsing the idea of a one-party state...
...All employees deposit 25 per cent of their income in the Central Provident Fund, initiated with the onset of prosperity after 1959, and employers match this sum...
...Twenty-six years later he is an entrepreneur conversant in six languages, travels freely abroad, votes in open elections, and often earns $ 150 a day—10 times what he once made monthly...
...90 per cent of the young have at least one close friend from an ethnic group other than their own...
...Since 1960, Singapore has sometimes grown at a pace of 12 per cent a year...
...The government's policy of encouraging communal integration has produced positive results: The majority of people identify themselves primarily as citizens of Singapore, rather than as members of ethnic units...
...It is indeed true that efforts to instill a respect for law, communal harmony, social order, patriotism, and an appreciation for the productivity of labor sometimes result in an ambiance of su-perdiscipline...
...In the economic area, for instance, the island republic's leaders have managed to shift gears with unequaled speed, peacefully, and usually about five years before the rest of the world recognizes a new economic trend or imperative...
...Singapore The whole family lived in terror, day by day, JL month by month," 46-year-old Tan Kok Seng, one of the few coolies who has written his life history, recalls...
...Gradually, the pap dropped its Socialist label and adopted the policies of a state-guided capitalist regime...
...In the middle of this century Singapore enjoyed few political advantages or protections...
...It offered tax incentives, a stable labor situation, and a solid infrastructure to attract foreign corporations possessing the capital, technology, markets, and managers it needed...
...Nonetheless, foreign capital continues to pour in, taking advantage of the well-educated labor force and new information-age industries...
...All 11 members ate tapioca twice a day, and little else...
...Since 1960, public housing flats have been allocated by lot in a conscious attempt to ensure equal status contact among Chinese, Malays and Indians...
...most men regard obligatory national service as a just duty...
...Jevaretnam, a devout Anglican who leads the Workers' Party—openly charge that the government is arrogant, overcentralized, and interferes in people's private lives...
...Willy-nilly, the country has imported Buddhist and Taoist, Tamil and Moslem, Western and Malay cultures...
...A dry-witted man with no infatuation for Marxism, he will oversee the modernization of China's entire coastal rim...
...The makeup of the society has ultimately contributed substantially to Singapore's success, too...
...the chances of falling victim to a violent crime, including murder or rape, are about one in 22,000 per year (in New York City, thereis one violent crime for every 47 people...
...The catch, of course, is that projecting current trends is a risky business...
...The swamps of Jurong were transformed into 14,000 acres of roads, buildings, railways, electrical stations, and a port to handle the requirements of the new industries...
...At least 40 per cent of the population is fluent in two languages (usually English and a Chinese dialect), and 86 per cent is literate in one language...
...That is hardly surprising in a country living off world trade and $2.7 billion in annual foreign investments...
...Meanwhile, the pap has been drawing a new generation of parliamentary candidates from the ranks of highly educated technocrats, union leaders and academics...
...Stymied by the broad public opposition, the government canceled its schemes after 18 months...
...Third, for many Singaporeans, including Lee Kuan Yew, the threat of protectionism resulting in economic isolation looms large...
...Similarly, when Lee raised taxi fares to reduce the number of autos on the road, the taxi companies (owned by the usually quiescent Trade Union Congress) quickly responded...
...Malays remain at the bottom of the occupational ladder, but they receive preferential treatment in university tuition, welfare grants and some government appointments...
...Several recent occurrences—a 1984 measure consolidating Singapore's six newspapers into one (privately owned) combine, a new eagerness to replace Western managers and technocrats with Singaporeans (or at least Asiatics) regardless of merit or qualifications, the tendency for second-class academics to wield dictatorial powers as heads of the University's departments , the need intellectuals feel to tape record their public speeches—have further prompted many here to warn, "The danger is we have no check on the use of power...
...and intermarriage, that most sensitive measure of tolerance, is steadily increasing...
...Posters exhort the people to "Work Harder for Singapore," to avoid spitting, and to learn Mandarin (a questionable goal where only 7 per cent of the population speaks the language at home...
...At the National University, women now exceed men in such fields as science and business administration...
...An officially sponsored campaign to encourage marriage among graduates expended $250,000 on teas, excursions and dances for singles—at a total profit of two couples who actually married...
...A suicide rate of 11 per 100,000 annually has remained stable for the past decade and places Singapore in the middle of industrialized countries...
...Between 1957-85, they cut their growth rate from a potentially catastrophic 4.4 per cent a year to practically zero—the first developing nation to achieve this goal...
...A gentleman adventurer, he fully appreciated the entrepot possibilities of Singapore'sdeep water port, now second in size only to Rotterdam...
...And being a true Victorian, he built a school as virtually his first act, creating an abiding faith that education leads to ever increasing productivity...
...Drug addiction, curbed by effective detection and rehabilitation programs, has dropped by 50 per cent since 1974...
...Modern medical techniques have reduced infant mortality to a lower level than that in the United States...
...In 1983 a consortium of Singaporean and foreign companies had the foresight to arrange a 17-year agreement with China to exploit the mainland's off-shore oil...
...William McCord's previous articles for the series were "China's Hong Kong Experiment (NL, August 6,1984) and "A Wager in West Africa" (September 3, 1984...
...While Singapore has modernized very rapidly, industrialization and urbanization have not been accompanied by anomie, or spiritual malaise...
...The babel of loyalties once raised the question of whether a national identity could survive...
...But Singapore offered little promise of eventually emerging as one of the world's wealthier dominions...
...Before China and India became serious competitors, Singapore had already abandoned its own light industries in favor of multinational assembly operations...
...Lee has constructed a moralistic meritocracy, tinged by Victorianism, that is ruled by an absolutely honest, if somber government...
...In present-day Singapore, Lee's critics—most prominently Dr...
...Students are streamed from the age of eight into various opportunities, but technical training continues throughout life...
...He frequently decries the "excesses" of Western individualism...
...Dev-an Nair, a trade union leader and later president of Singapore, was jailed in Changi Prison...
...Nobody wants to say anything...
...By 1985, Singapore started to make the transition into the "information age...
...When, however, the government's exercises in character improvement or nation building strongly irritate Singaporeans, they know how to convince the the politicians to back off...
...As Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew observed this July about Singapore's transformation into a high wage, high productivity area, "We are like a man on a flying trapeze who has let go of one swing and is now sailing through midair...
...Sixty-five per cent of Singaporeans own their own homes or apartments, compared with7 per centofHongKong residents...
...One reason for the relatively high degree of social stability and discipline is that the extended family system has not collapsed...
...Thus in the 1950s, while most of the Third World wasted its resources on abortive attempts to build heavy industry, Singapore concentrated on light, labor-intensive production of shoes, plywood, textiles, and hand-assembled machine parts...
...Japan currently invests more money per capita in Singapore than in the United States, Brazil and South Korea combined...
...Critics raise questions focusing on three aspects of Singapore's current overall course...
...On the Kerr measure, the Philippines scores 71, Thailand 68, Malaysia 66, Burma 51, Indonesia 48...
...Contrary to tradition, boys and girls are treated equally in the schools...
...Overgrown by tropical forests, populated by some 100 pirates and thousands of giant monitor lizards, it could not provide its own food...
...Then," Tan says of 1959, the year the People's Action Party (pap) assumed office, "politics hit us...
...Singapore has over the last 25 years regularly maintained a higher living standard than burgeoning Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea...
...On Clark Kerr's measure of the "physical quality of life" (a comprehensive index of life expectancy, infant mortality and literacy that finds Sweden at the top, scoring 97), Singapore secures a rating of 83...
...The U.S., the island's biggest trading partner, had invested $5.3 billion by 1985...
...One hears grumblings about machine-like maneuvers reminiscent of Frank Hague's New Jersey or Richard Daley's Chicago, yet the pap's severest critics acknowledge its willingness to dismiss officials tainted by greed, its readiness to listen to citizens' grievances, and its unbiased honesty in conducting the electoral process...
...Toh, long the chairman of the pap but a vocal critic since 1981, observes that "Singaporeans are so bloody scared...
...Correspondingly, his government awarded bonuses of $5,000to less-educated mothers who submitted to sterilization...
...Complexes are clean, comfortable and, unlikethose in Japan, have their own schools, garden areas, sports facilities, and community centers for the young and the aged...
...They're afraid of losing a license or their jobs...
...The Constitution provides special religious courts for Moslems, and guarantees that decisions in secular cases may be appealed before England's Privy Council...
...Today, moreover, a teen-ager in the island republic can reasonably anticipate that he will be a citizen of the most affluent country in the world before he reaches middle age...
...The local press—which like all other businesses must be licensed—operates under a strong dose of self-censorship, but often critical foreign journals circulate freely...
...First, skeptics like opposition leader Jeyaretnam have strong doubts about the sums being spent on the tiny republic' s mighty Armed Forces—trained by the Israelis and Taiwanese, and presumably aimed at Vietnam...
...Goh, stung bythePAP's 1984 electoral losses, made his ominous suggestion last June before an audience at the National University...
...A typical block had 1,900 inhabitants crowded into it, with some 40 people sharing each open bucket lavatory...
...With the growth of these new service sectors, a mixture of private endeavors andpublicworks,ithasbeen possible to phase out the "old" ones...
...The pap has acted with the same dispatch on the political level, retiring its aging leaders in favor of a new generation...
...Park acreage per person is five times that of Japan...
...Construction on the overbuilt island will drop and certain industries (particularly computers and petrochemicals) will decline in response to reduced world demands...
...Theisland nation has created a degree of welfare superior to any of its Southeast Asian neighbors, their natural resources notwithstanding...
...The rapid movement from distribution to labor intensive to assembly line to service industries—all telescoped within the space of 25 years—has involved massive educational and retraining efforts...
...Toh and others worry that given an economy dependent on unbiased knowledge and continuing creativity, mo ves to suppress criticism could turn the citizenry into "quality-controlled ball-bearings...
...Expenditures cover aiding displaced workers seeking another vocation, specialized high technology institutes, and lavish postdoctoral fellowships...
...This eminent flexibility—a pragmatic readiness to alter political ranks, economic policy and ideology to meet changing demands—accounts for much of Singapore's remarkable success...
...Nor is his an extraordinary case...
...Inthe 1980s—withHongKong and Taiwan swamping the computer market, and Malaysia and Indonesia building their own (uneconomical) oil refineries—Singapore miraculously began to change once more...
...The island has more armor than Indonesia or the Philippines and boasts sophisticated early warning aircraft, plus 32 Hunter and 117 A-4 Skyhawk jets...
...The Singapore of his boyhood was a torpid, depressed British colony where the average family earned $332 annually and lived in win-dowless cubicles...
...Fully 64 per cent of Singaporeans now engage in providing services of one kind or another, only 1 per cent are in fishing or farming, and unemployment has dropped almost to zero...
...All children receive free education, with 25 per cent proceeding to a university...
...Significantly, the courts in this carefully planned city-state are free...
...During the relatively depressed 1980s it has averaged an annual expansion of 6 per cent...
...Overnight, the Army can be swelled to 200,000 men—roughly the size of Australia's Army, although it defends only .007 per cent of the territory...
...Last February, Beijing hired 66-year-old Goh Keng Swee, Singapore's retiring finance minister, at a reputed salary of $500,000 a year...
...In a healthy reaction, it has so far been met with thunderous opposition from students, intellectuals, those members of the public (38 per cent) who vote for opposition parties, and even from more sensible competitors for the pap leadership, such as Dr...
...All classes perceived the experiment as unwise and unfair: Women university students sprouted T-shirts announcing their opposition, scientists condemned the Prime Minister's assumptions, and lower-class women avoided the sterilization clinics...
...Split by Chinese-Malay riots and lacking natural resources, Singapore could have been a prototype for Henry Kissinger's future list of "basket cases...
...The republic similarly outdistances China (69), the ancestral home of many of its inhabitants...
...In 1985, a bad year for export manufacturing, advances will be confined to certain sectors such as port services, communications and finance...
...Meanwhile, local capitalists have turned their attention away from the traditional hinterland of Malaysia and Indonesia to the new frontiers of China...
...Schools in this meritocracy stress that educational opportunities must be earned intellectually...
...The streets are safe...
...THIRD WORLD REPORT— III Singapore's Success Story BY WILLIAM ANDARLINE McCORD This article resumes an intermittent series examining the records of liberal and authoritarian Third World governments.William McCord, professor of sociology at the City University of New York, and his wife Arline, dean of social science at City College of New York, have recently returned from a year at Singapore's National University...
...Children usually live with their parents in the new housing developments until they reach their mid-20s, and grandparents often secure an apartment next to their offspring...
...The news may not have made headlines in the United States, but it represents a tangibly sincere tribute to Singapore and its people as a source of development talent...
...Proponents insist the $1.4 billion it eats up annually pays ample dividends in improving general technical proficiency and in national cohesion...
...Gaining the middle ground politically and delivering on its election promises of better pay, more housing and new schools, the party forged a majority consensus for its approach...
...Early pap governments had to grapple with street violence plus a Communist insurgency...
...It already has more foreign reserves than Australia or Canada, a capital surplus of $30 billion, and next to Switzerland the lowest inflation in the world...
...Still, the diversity, capital resources and flexibility of Singapore's hybrid economy, along with its overtures to China, offer reasonable hope that new ventures in financial services, plant genetics, robotics, and telecommunications will prosper...
...This year, for the first time," he said, "I have to sound the alert...
Vol. 68 • August 1985 • No. 10
