The one before Yew's times was still a British colony port overlooking a critical shipping route. I'm not sure how such arrangement may not result in significant economic development. Hong Kong didn't have Yew but it had significant quality of development.
Bangladesh is also on critical trade routes. The Port of Chittagong is one of the few things from Asia on Greek maps from the 2nd century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Chittagong. Chalking up Singapore’s success to geography is probably missing the point.
>Geography was pretty much the only thing we had going for us. That and amazing leadership.
The biggest asset, aside from being a port on a great location, was the right alliances, and foreign countries being the island being let mostly alone, and you not having valuable resources, plus the desire of the rich in countries around the area to use the island as a tax haven of sorts (and later, as their comfy home away from home).
Yew would have been thrown out of office in a week and some "coup" would have been organized if some big foreign power has special interests in the area and wanted him gone.
And if the island had resources like oil or such, it would have been invaded, occupied, "liberated" by some new traiting politician friendly to the outside, every second year.
the forming of those relationships, vision to form a tax haven and ability to stay in power by managing relationships between foreign powers to not experience a 'coup' is precisely leadership
It's leadership depending on the benevolence of outside factors, which is based on their strategic interests and what they want from you.
Doesn't work if you're just a land with resources to plunder and they have no interests in seeing you thrive, but the contrary.
Works even less if you have other ideas about your governance, trade, and allies that suit you, to what powerful countries taking an interest in your area want you to have because it suits them.
But if you don't have resources for them to covet, your existence fits a purpose in their plans, and you don't get too independent but always keep their preferences in mind, yeah, you can then apply leadership to make things better.
It's just leadership in much easier circumstances than elsewhere.
> Yew would have been thrown out of office in a week and some "coup" would have been organized if some big foreign power has special interests in the area and wanted him gone.
There was significant interest from foreign powers doing just that, look up Operation Coldstore and the history of communist insurgency in Singapore.
There was also heavy support for them from the local population and workers.
And of course the right wingers not only had "heavy foreign influence and support" on their side too (the whole country was established under heavy western influence and at its "benevolence"), but they also crushed them, undemocratically with the help of that foreign influence and support.
I mean to say Singapore’s success isn’t some inevitability due to its geography (which is an idea that gets trotted around). Lots of countries have something going for it they could capitalize on—most of them fail to do so. I think Singapore could’ve stagnated without good leadership and also a populace that was ready to rise to the occasion.
I would say the opposite - most of countries are more or less on the development level that their culture and geographic location permits, few countries are significantly below this level and fewer still are significantly above this level.
Singapore is exactly where it should be, given its culture, legacy, location, and the fact that it is a city-state. It would still be Singapore under your average ruler (of Chinese culture, not African). It has awesome hand so it does not take much skill to play it.
I could not repeat enough the argument of city-states being different, and usually very rich, so that's what I'm going to do. You should never compare Singapore's GDP growth with any country which has, well, countryside. Still, Taiwan will give Singapore a run on its money while not even being a recognized country.
Depending on how you define "city states", it might just be Singapore and a couple of petrostates. Slightly broader definitions give you Malta (average Mediterranean country) as discussed and some middle income Caribbean islands relying on tourists and tax avoiders. That isn't because being a city state is so amazing every city just wished it could shed its hinterland, it's because operating as an independent country with limited domestic food production capacity is hard (even without neighbours wanting to assimilate you)
Sure, cities have higher per capita GDP than their associated agricultural regions, but Singapore's GDP in 1963 was low relative to the agricultural regions of many countries it's since overtaken, its institutions were the colonial power's and much of its population consisted of uneducated coolies performing manual labour and living in squalid conditions. And it initially chose not to be a city state!
The only thing inevitable about Singapore's growth path is that if its first government had bankrupted the country and begged to be British or Malaysian subjects again by 1970, people would have said this wasn't at all surprising given its Asian culture (not so highly rated for business acumen in the 1960s!) and geographical disadvantages...
These are very broad generalizations you're claiming with no evidence.
> Most of countries are more or less on the development level that their culture and geographic location permits.
So, given this assertion, no developing country should ever hope to join the ranks of a developed nation? Unless they change cultural variables or conquer new lands. Yet we see this playing out in Europe and East Asia and now Africa and India.
> Taiwan will give Singapore a run on its money
Singapore's GDP per capita is $70,000 while Taiwan's capital city sits at $35,000.
You have to be careful looking at GDP per capita. That money doesn't always stay within the country, especially with tax havens.
Look at Ireland's GDP per capita - it's on par with Singapore! But a lot of that is due to the tax strategies of companies like Google that park their IP in Ireland, then "sell" it to countries in Europe. That's all GDP for Ireland. But what happens to the money? It gets pumped back to the US.
It's similar with Singapore. There are huge refineries, and pharmaceutical manufacturing on the island. The country makes these product (often of high value), which contributes to the GDP. But that money exits the country (save for the workers in Singapore) back to the HQ country.
If you look at median wages in Singapore, you'll get a much better sense of the wealth. But do note that the number the Singaporean government quotes doesn't include the 40% of the population that is migrant workers - it's only Singaporean citizens and PRs. So it ignores the bottom ~40% of workers (save for the highly skill people on work passes).
Would Singapore be a genuinely worse place to live if its GDP per capita would be "just" $35,000 instead of $70,000?
It would probably have slighly smaller population, less economic regulation and more sustainability. So the difference between Yew and "number two" is the difference between "Excellent" and "Great".
Come on, is that so important? I'd rather read on about a leader who turned "mediocre" into "pretty good".
Because most countries are not Singapore, they don't have what it takes to be even Taiwan.
"When a Rhino looks at the moon, he wastes the flowers of his spleen", as neither Japanese nor Chinese say.
This is just moving the goalposts and sophistry at this point. Your initial statement was Taiwan was measurably better per capita than Singapore, though the GDP and economic statistics show otherwise. You can also look at various happiness indices, where Singapore is #1 in Asia, since happiness is correlated with GDP per capita.
and If you really believe $70,000 is no different from $35,000, I urge you to donate all your income excess of $35,000 to me. I take Venmo, Cashapp.
I'm sorry, but Singapore came pretty close to collapsing in the 1960s, especially just after its expulsion from Malaysia. Just about only thing it had going for it was its geography. The UMNO in Malaysia was banking on Singapore asking to rejoin the federation on significantly more unfavourable terms than the latter got in 1963, after teetering on the verge of complete state failure.
Make no mistake—Singapore's prosperity today is no accident.
Your claim is essentially that cities, and therefore city-states, will naturally fall into wealth and prosperity. I wonder what happened to Athens, Venice, Genoa, and all the other merchant city-states, the equivalents of Singapore on the ancient, mediaeval, and early-modern world.
And they have fallen into relative obscurity, barring Venice. They're all not big, financial hubs pulling in hundreds of billions to trillions, like New York, or London, or Singapore.
The point is that cities don't accumulate wealth 'just because'. Wealth comes and goes. And this goes all the more for city-states with no hinterland nor strategic depth.
Compare Venice with Monaco in that respect. Or Hong Kong, which is waning because of that lost sovereignity but is still very rich. Or Luxembourg. Or Qatar. It's just great to be a small self-contained free port.
And Venice is not the worst place to be.
Now, we actually do not know what will be of Singapore in 50 years. May be many things.
SIngapore could've stagnated without good leadership?
Singapore did stagnate without good leadership for a couple of 100 years there, didn't it? Until it suddenly (over the course of a couple of decades) didn't.
> Its contemporary era began in 1819, when Stamford Raffles established Singapore as an entrepôt trading post of the British Empire. In 1867, the colonies in Southeast Asia were reorganised, and Singapore came under the direct control of Britain as part of the Straits Settlements.
> Later, in the 1890s, when the rubber industry became established in Malaya and Singapore, the island became a global centre for rubber sorting and export.
It was very new and fared very well all along, world wars excluded. Maybe it was mismanaged 1945 to 1960, that I cannot confirm.
Well I suppose it depends on your definition of a country stagnating.
I guess by your definition Indonesia and The Philippines where doing great as Dutch and Spanish colonies as well?
Sure, Singapore was doing great during that time (for the British), but if you look at measures such as % of the population living in extreme poverty, education, housing, healthcare, GDP, slavery, serfdom, etc it must be quite hard to deny that Singapore hasn't stagnated for centuries only to explode (positively) within decades.
> Geography was pretty much the only thing we had going for us.
Geography is important but so was singapore's chinese connections. Singapore's rise is tied to china's opening and economic rise. Singapore and Hong kong's ability to leverage their chinese ties and serve as imtermediaries between china and their colonial masters allowed them to get wealthy. The singaporean leadership was able to win the trust of the chinese and their 'former' colonial masters. Given the animus between China and the US, it was quite the achievement.
> Animus between China and US is a recent thing, like post 2015.
Are people this dumb and ignorant? Animus between China and the US dates back centuries to the opium wars of the early 1800s. And animus between China and the US has been the norm ever since. Your comment was flat earther level stupid. Crack open a history before commenting.
Learn how to read context before sperging out lol. Nixon visited China just a few years after Singapore became independent. And US companies then invested tons of money in China, built factories, trade relations, etc etc. Post 2015 is when animosity starts and now US is encouraging divestment from China.
> Learn how to read context before sperging out lol.
I did. That's why I quoted your entire comment in my response : "Animus between China and US is a recent thing, like post 2015."
> Nixon visited China just a few years after Singapore became independent.
You mean the anti-china warhawk nixon who made his name railing against china in the 50s and 60s? Are you talking about that nixon?
> Post 2015 is when animosity starts and now US is encouraging divestment from China.
Except US investment in china INCREASED under trump... Also how stupid do you have to be to bring nixon into this and claim the animus started post 2015?
You are still ignoring context (which includes the comment thread and topic being discussed, not simply my own comment in isolation; that's what context means) and sperging out. Singapore developed during a time where US-China relations were friendly. The current animosity is recent (post 2015) and previous animosities are pre-Singapore independence, so who cares.
Amazing leadership according to the leadership that controls the news media and holds sham elections where other parties get no media coverage until a few weeks before the election.
Don't get me wrong. Democracy is a total joke in Singapore. That's why I left. My dad has never voted in his life because there aren't enough opposition candidates. The police actively harrasses members of the opposition (I had a friend who's husband was an opposition MP).
But given all that could have happened, I do stand by that assessment.
It's a thinly veiled dictatorship, but OTOH it's stable, not particularly oppressive about non-political topics, takes good care of its citizens, and has done a hell of a lot to improve its citizens' lives while defusing, as much as possible, the various ethnic issues that have plagued other countries in the region.
Don't forget, it was a poor country at independence. Malaysia and Indonesia also face the Strait of Malacca, and I'd rather live under Singapore's government than either of those.
