Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore Story (2023)
historytoday.com
historytoday.com
"I resolved to enable every household to own its own home. If we were going to get the people to take National Service seriously, I could not ask their sons to fight and die for the properties of the wealthy. We worked out a personal savings scheme that allowed them to own an apartment painlessly through instalments over 20 years. We sold the apartments to them at below cost to enhance their assets. Today, 95 per cent of Singaporean households are homeowners. It has immeasurably increased their wealth and our social stability. Without home ownership, we would have become like Tokyo, Seoul or Hong Kong, where the voters in the cities are disaffected because they pay a large proportion of their salaries in rents.”
https://sgmatters.sg/i-could-not-ask-their-sons-to-fight-and...
Ownership is closer to 90% now or something and the 30% of non resident foreigners will have much lower ownership obviously.
And then you kind of go on to imply that because they avoid being multicultural they instead are detail oriented and technically competent.
A lack of multiculturalism seems…like a very very nonsensical claim to make about Singapore. Its one of the most celebrated intersectional cities merging the identities of three different major regions.
They have quotas to prevent enclaves, they actively manage immigration to keep it about 3/4 Chinese, there are a lot of restrictions on speech and the ways you're allowed to organise.
The things Singapore does to manage their ethnic diversity 100% would not fly in the west.
The Chinese population share in Singapore is similar to the white population share in Nebraska (75%). And Singapore has maintained the same 75% Chinese supermajority since 1960, despite Malays having about double the total fertility rate of Chinese since the 1980s.
The why of this is not explained by you nor the original comment referring to the lack multiculturism, it is simply asserted. That's why the original comment came off as nonsensical. More than a quarter Singapore's population are foreign workers, and they make up at least 40% of Singapore's entire workforce. Seeing as the workforce that is driving Singapore's economic growth is not a monoculture your claim needs a little tweeking I would think.
I'm not claiming this means Singapore is embracing multiculturalism in the same way I don't claim the UAE embraces multiculturalism due to similar foreign workers dynamics, but not putting a disclaimer involving these stats while talking about the benefits of monoculture and lauding a country for its realism is a ridiculous sidestepping of reality. Both Singapore and the UAE are extremely cosmopolitan.
>Multiculturalism is essentially pacification because obviously this is unpopular
Why would it be unpopular to the dominant monoculture to maintain the monoculture? Who is being pacified when a country embraces multiculturalism? Please explain.
1) The countries that are less multicultural than Singapore are more technical?
2) The countries that are more multicultural than Singapore are less technical?
3) The diversity of foods, religions, ethnic backgrounds, and economic backgrounds in Singapore celebrated here [0] is completely fake?
Citizen is a pretty key word there - things are pretty okay for most citizens, damn fine for the elite, and rosy for the well heeled ex-pats and foreign STEM workers.
There's an underside of non citizen day workers that stream back and forth, and a deeper layer of hell for indentured "lesser" Asians of the region that are looked down upon and struggle.
It's mainly its strategic location and it's always been the the busiest maritime route chokepoint since recorded history between east and west, specifically between India and China two of the most populous nations in the world.
It sit right at the tip of the Strait of Malacca, the busiest and the longest strait in the world. This one famous quote by a 16th CE Portuguese explorer Tomé Pires, who declared: "Whoever is lord of Malacca has his hand on the throat of Venice".
Secondly is the people, and the third is the governance policy. Essentially, you must have be a bone-headed to screw up Singapore, like the one who can bankrupt a central bank.
My original top most comment on the great lie of Singapore was just an obscure fishing village during the early colonial time but it's has already downvoted to oblivion, you can check them out if you want.
My comments point at one time at double figure and then it went south to zero now, but it probably can be negative soon, c'est la vie.
The place that is now Singapore had less than 1,000 people when Raffles got there. So what happened?
There’s lots of places with strategic locations or natural resources or such advantages. The U.S. has the largest contiguous stretch of fertile land connected to one of the largest navigable river systems in the world. But the north american indians did essentially nothing with it. It’s not easy to make a modern civilization out of even a favorable geographical situation.
The British took over Malaya from Dutch with minimum effort, by exchanging some of their Indonesia colonies after an agreement with another colonial power. Fun facts, that's how Batam Islands got under Indonesia.
The first thing they did was to create Strait Settlements with strategic and rich Malayan States including Penang, Malacca and Singapore, definitely any of these was not an obscure fishing village [1]. These are the major trading ports for Asian major empires including Langkasuka, Srivijaya, Majapahit, Chola, Malaccan Sultanate, etc.
[1] Straits Settlements:
LKY chalked it up to good, pragmatic policies implemented in a culturally sensitive way: https://paulbacon.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/z.... (Read the whole thing. The first part is about culture, while the second part starting on p. 114 is about how he implemented western economic policies without trying to import western style social policies.) Singapore focused on neoliberalism within a social and cultural framework that accommodates the Chinese, Malay, and Indian communities that compose the country. It focused on anti-corruption and government efficiency, a major weak spot of nearly all developing countries. But it didn’t try to go straight from fishing village to liberal democracy. Like other countries that developed rapidly in Asia (Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and now China) development of state capacity and civil institutions happened under soft-authoritarian, one-party rule.
To put it in one sentence: LKY was a bog standard neoliberal who didn’t suffer from the neoconservative delusion that American-style individual rights and populist democracy can be transplanted into any country hand-in-hand with neoliberal economic policies.
edit: wikipedia says 25% of the world's trade flows through the Straight of Malacca - it's a big deal!
A better comparison might be Alexander Hamilton or Abraham Lincoln’s view of free markets combined with an interventionist government. But we don’t really have a neat label for that. In the U.S., free markets get conceptually lashed together with individual rights and limited government.
It is a kind of workers paradise. If you're well behaved and don't shout you get a good education, health system and housing. 95% owner occupied is pretty damn good.
Huge dependence on south Malaysia migrant workers shuttling over the bridge every day, so it's "homes for us but not for thee" however he did cry when the greater Malaysian dream fell apart.
The arguments over his house and garden post death sum up the legacy well: he did not seek ulogising or mythologised shrine status, the apparatchiks can't resist the temptation.
I see parallels to Britain's Enoch Powell. Super smart, highly educated, disinterested in what others think, Not afraid to be contrarian and not particularly interested in performative democracy but also a bit one eyed on his hobby horse. If Powell hadn't been a racist shit, he could have been as effective as Lee Kwan Yew was.
Trivialising Singapore-for-foreigners as "no long hair, gays, gum or spitting" misses the point. Singapore welcomes all kinds of people if they have money, contribute to society and are useful or rich. Modern Singapore has gays and lesbians and tattoos and long hair a-plenty. They're just in a "don't ask don't tell" demi-monde netherworld.
Many people would feel safer in Lee Kwan Yew's Singapore than in the USA. Better housing and health policy, less graffiti and street violence.
How do you compare Powell's "racism" and LKY's views on race and intelligence? By nearly all definitions of racism, Yew was a racist as well
"These are realities that, if you do not accept, will lead to frustration because you will be spending money on wrong assumptions and the results cannot follow. If I tell Singaporeans – we are all equal regardless of race, language, religion, culture, then they will say, 'Look, I'm doing poorly. You are responsible.' But I can show that from British times, certain groups have always done poorly, in mathematics and in science."
"If you don't reproduce yourself, what happens? Next generation you will have a less capable generation to run the country... We must go closer to the evidence of the experts, which shows that about 80 per cent of a person's makeup is nature, inherited, and only 20 per cent nurture, environment and training."
Governance is more important than one’s history when it come to success of a country.
Regardless many of the strategies these countries used are increasingly difficult for low income countries to do as these countries (China is the biggest example) themselves are protective of these industries, there's no push for globalizing and as factories got increasingly automated.
That's not to say that I believe governance isn't important but the one's history is important for governance itself.
Cost of housing in HK is going to be an embuggerance if they don't fix that, it may bifurcate into a more strong over/underclass imbalance. Taiwan is amazing but has thinner underpinnings now the US has demanded chip manufacturing moves to continental USA and the water supply issue is huge.
But your central point I agree with strongly: fix education, health, housing and provide at least some representation and you can do so much better than being a colonial outpost of somewhere else sucking value out.
Japan did not view Korea as a place to enrich for anyone's benefit but Japan. The same with their occupation of Taiwan.
meanwhile the british spent 200 years intentionally destroying pre-existing industries just to kill competition, and then dipped leaving 90% of the population illiterate , zero human capital. also US allowed Taiwan and South Korea access to market , and allow protect their own domestic markets.
None of the things that LKY did that made Singapore great are unique to a dictatorship but him being the spiritual head and huge focus on education is critical. Interesting the USA has a good appetite for spending lots of money on students, but the education outcomes are really bad compared to places with half the spending
Of all the things wrong with the USA, when picking just two, it seems strange for one of them to be graffiti. I have lived in the USA all my life, in some more and some less urban areas, and even from the people most afraid of cities I have never heard graffiti mentioned as a serious worry or complaint.
I may be displaying my age. Feeling safe equates to being on the street, and unafraid. The tagging isn't the problem the social conditions which ignore it, maybe are.
But where I am from, there are two kinds of graffity:
- Cool elaborate pictures, usually in "legal zones" walls city dedicated to it. They take time to create, hence preference for legal place and are made by artists.
- Less cool stuff created by skinny "edgy" teenagers, who are jerks to the owners, but also completely harmless.
If you're down Proudhon's "all property is theft" then graffiti is a kind of tragedy of the commons. Go ahead. Graffiti the Uffitzi, Nelson's column, the Plaka. Stick it to the man!
> If you're down Proudhon's "all property is theft" then graffiti is a kind of tragedy of the commons. Go ahead. Graffiti the Uffitzi, Nelson's column, the Plaka. Stick it to the man!
I honestly don't get what are you on about here. I never seen anyone interpret graffiti as some kind of political statement, unless it is swastika or some such. I genuinely doubt any teenager doing graffiti has any kind of idea about any of those names.
Nothing more irritating that having your apartment building get a fresh coat of paint, look great, and then someone writing scribble tags all over it.
I think that this sounds good and is a sensible hypothesis, but it's far from clear to me that the corollary of prosperity for those without property is true in practice.
I don't know. Do you? If the latter answer is correct and it's backed up by quantitative evidence, then I guess that I have to accept at least some form of the corollary, although there are still games that one can play with measurement (for example, it's possible that being numerically richer in those richer settings can still result in poorer overall quality of life).
When Singapore was squirted out from Malaysia in 1965, it had no natural resources, surrounded by hostile Muslim nations ( though not as bad as Israel, but still), and no one to depend on, except themselves.
The Malaysian Ringgit vs Singapore dollars was 1 to 1 back then in 1970s. And now it's 3.1 to 1. This alone is a testament how far Singapore has come.
One important factors separating Singapore and Malaysia is Malaysia's affirmative action (or quota system) that favors the majority, the Malay Muslims, which gives preference to Malay and Islam in all things including tertiary education, GLC opportunities. If you want to get listed in Malaysia stock market you need to have certain quota reserved for the Malays. It was supposed to ensure social justice and diversity, equality and inclusivity for everyone; why should Chinese monopolize all the opportunity to make money and leave Malays poor? This was so unfair.
This affirmative action was started in 1970, after the famous May 1969 racial riot incident. The argument was the riot happened because that the Malays were badly left behind by circumstances; they suffered so much injustice that they had to release it out on others, and the government must do everything to improve their socioeconomic status, lest the same thing happened again. It originally lasted only 30 years but in 2000, the government deemed that the Malays need more help still, and so it's still in effect today.
The affirmative action initiative by Malaysia government would have made any DEI adherents proud for it's thoroughness. Yet when you look at the results you must have wondered whether we did anything wrong. For if it was done right then why, by the affirmative action supporters own admission, the gap didn't close? And why Malaysia lagged so much behind Singapore? And how much minorities were driven away-- and many of them went to Singapore, to contribute to the economy there-- precisely because of affirmative action?
But I do think many of those policies are no longer needed - many of the Malays are more educated and smarter compared to 50 years ago. Right now those policies likely doing more harm than good - driving brain-drain and limiting economy growth, but any government try to remove those policies is just suicidal.
What a bizarre non-sequitur.
Despite Singapore's geographical advantages, Lee's achievement in transforming it into a great financial hub is certainly a testament to his capability. However, when you consider his track record 'Operation Clodstore;, the suppression of freedom through defamation laws, and Singapore's early streaming education system — it ultimately seems like he only nurtured people from his own faction, believing that parental background matters.
While criticizing Singapore like this, I suddenly looked up Singapore's statistics. To my surprise, its intergenerational social mobility ranks 20th in the world — higher than I thought. Moreover, I found data showing that South Korea's social mobility is even lower than Singapore's. That made me feel depressed. Of course, with a population of just 5 million, Singapore is easier to manage than larger countries. but stil it functions properly as a nation.
And since Singaporeans reportedly have high life satisfaction, it even makes me question whether authoritarianism is really that bad. But I still dislike authoritarianism based on my personal values.
Still, maybe this is just blind hatred — because I've never been at the center of any industry in my entire life; I've always been an outsider
I am not a fan of "authoritarianism" but I do recognize that Singapore had a lot of the same issues and Lee Kuan Yew effectively used authoritarianism to drive it out. But one thing to keep in mind is that Singapore got very lucky in getting Lee Kuan Yew as their leader, someone who was very idealistic in his goals and had the pragmatism to execute it. Such a person is very rare and even rarer is for someone like that to rise to a position of power.
Even more dangerously, I think they're even rarer than people who can convincingly pretend to be one. So even if you go looking for such a person you're heading into the danger zone.
They do not; in fact, they're the least happy country in SE Asia.
https://www.hcamag.com/asia/specialisation/employee-engageme...
[1]https://ourworldindata.org/happiness-and-life-satisfaction
When I learned English writing, I was taught to use an em dash after words like 'by the way' or 'to add to that' — as a kind of aside. For hyphens, I was taught to use them in compound words. And for semicolons, I learned to use them when moving on to the next sentence within the same clause.
Actually, this is formal writing — techniques I learned in graduate school. Is this 'AI writing'?
It's hard because I'm not a native speaker.
Regardless of whether you're using AI (please don't btw) or coming by your em-dashes honestly, people who fixate on trivial obvious cues will notice your em-dashes and assume you're using it.
In Korea, it's not that difficult to input an em dash because you can type it using 'ㄱ + chinese characterbutton' (both based on the Korean keyboard). But I guess it's hard for people outside Korea.
Actually, since Korean doesn't have em dashes or hyphens, you could simply not use them at all. However, in 'formal' writing, I was taught that you should use them. just like you should use 'could' instead of informal alternatives.
This is really tough. When I use Hacker News, I keep a machine translator and DeepL open next to it. When I translate that way, em dashes sometimes appear, and that's what I'm worried about.
I thought this was obvious, but it seems like writing in Korean and then using an AI translator would be much better. The problem is that on this site, I'm not really allowed to use an AI translator either, so I'm almost being forced to write everything manually. The goal is to get overseas freelance work.
I had no idea that typing an em dash is difficult overseas. For me, it's just two buttons I never imagined that would be an issue. Thank you.
It’s not. On Apple platforms, you can type two hyphens in a row and let the default text replacement convert it; or you can hold down the hyphen and pick from hyphen, en dash, or em dash; or you can press Option-Shift-Hyphen. I think it’s about as easy on other platforms as well.
Don’t listen to them. The em dash is not some obscure punctuation nobody but AI uses.
As he described it, people crammed into shophouses, kampongs (villages) and squatter settlements with no proper toilets (human faeces and urine were carted away by "night soil" men carrying them in open containers in the streets), no clean water, no drainage, no fire safety.
In 1959 barely 9% had public housing. The streets boiled over with riots, strikes and communist agitation, one bloody flashpoint after another.
Work was casual and wages were thin. The British still ruled but had lost all moral authority after the Japanese rolled over across the northern causeway with not much of a resistance from the brits (the idiots were stationed in the southern island of sentosa with their guns pointing south thinking the japanese will invade from the sea) and buggered them in the war.
Singapore was a poor, overcrowded, combustible place with no business surviving, let alone becoming a nation. The hard truth the world forgets: Singapore is an improbable nation. By all logic, it had no right to exist. No natural resources. No hinterland. No oil, no land, no army, no water of its own. Thrown out of Malaysia in 1965, a tiny island of immigrants with three races, four languages and nothing in the bank. By every textbook measure, it should have failed.
It didn't, because of one man's sheer will.
My father now is 90 years old, worked his way up as a menial laborer, put himself through night school, became a successful businessman, and built a family. To my father and his generation, LKY will always be their hero.
From a shit-hole to the first world. In one generation.
Be mindful of using terms that are widely recognized as racial slurs.
"They are implacable in wanting to put down all who do not agree with them."
"What role does Islam itself play in fueling Islamic extremism? Muslims want to assimilate us. It is one-way traffic…They have no confidence in allowing choice.12 Samuel Huntington sent me a piece he was writing in Foreign Affairs called the “Clash of Civilizations.” When I saw him, I said, look, I agree with you only where the Muslims are concerned, only there…Hinduism, Chinese Confucianism or Communism, Japanese Shintoism, they are secular really. They know that to progress, you must master science and technology…But the Muslims believe that if they master the Qu’ran and they are prepared to do all that Muhammad has prescribed, they will succeed. So, we can expect trouble from them and so, it happened.13 Muslims socially do not cause any trouble, but they are distinct and separate Islam is exclusive."
This is one of the greatest lies ever told, that Singapore was an obscure fishing village when the colonial powers came to "modernise" Singapore.
Read the history books, Singapore is bang in the middle of ancient super powers of India and China. It's has been and always has been for most of its history a successful entreport for several thousand years before the colonials first visited, and the later Chinese immigrants settled in Singapore.
The founder of Malacca, where the Strait of Malacca name originated from, was himself a prince from Singapore and at the time better known as Temasek.
The people who originally settled in the Malay Archipelago several thousands years ago were successful maritime explorers. Their descendents discovered and migrated to wider Austronesia including Madagascar to the west, and New Zealand and Hawaii to the east several thousand years before the colonial powers "re-discover" these places. They also who speak their ancestors derivatives languages until now, that at one time US government tried to ban.
I can assure you Ptolemy never been to India let alone Singapore.
But hey you just deleted your Ptolemy narrative, are you misleading a narrative?
Ironically although Ptolemy never been to Singapore it's apparently recorded in his book as Sabana [1]. Perhaps that the reason you deleted your Ptolemy entry.
It's also recorded in ancient Chinese record in the 3rd CE Chinese traveller's record describing an island at the same location called Pú Luó Zhōng a transcription of Singapore's early Malay name Pulau Ujong, literally meaning Tip End Island because it's located at the southern most tip of Malaysian Peninsular.
The famous Indian Emperor Chola also said to briefly conquer Singapore/Temasek in the 11th CE [1].
Singapore by any definition for the past two thousands years was not an obscure fishing village. It's always has been a bustling metropolitan with international entreport status. Anyone who said otherwise is lying through their teeth and pushing their own wicked narrative.
[1] Early history of Singapore:
As to your other point, again, you’re overlooking that places change over time. The Arabs built a huge civilization a thousand years ago. But by the 19th century, there wasn’t much left.
What was the population of what is now Singapore when Raffles landed there? Wikipedia says that under the Sultanate the population was under 1,000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Singapore
Not much change for Singapore, I know this because I learnt my history and geography properly, I hope you too.
Strait of Malacca has always been the busiest maritime trade route in the world continously since recorded history even until now, and at the heart of it is Singapore Strait where Singapore or Temasek is located.
Even until now most of the world's trade are performed via maritime route even with advent of aircraft, and guess what most of these trades when through Malacca and Singapore Straits. Maritime industry called these Straits the world's busiest trading choke-point. I'm not even exxagerating to say that Strait of Hormuz is nothing compared to this chokepoint, especially in the ancient time.
On top of that, more than quarter of the world's population since recorded history are living in China and India, and in between these two most populous nations are connected via maritime sea route through Straits of Malacca and Singapore.
In the old days, or most of our maritime trading history for thousand of years, we do not have engine for ships neither steam nor fuel, only for very short period recently starting from late 19th CE [1].
During most of our maritime history we use sails. People or sailors travelling between India and China, and returning back rely entirely on wind power that are based on alternate monsoon seasons. This where we got the famous saying of "time and tide wait for no man".
For one season (half a year) they used for travelling westward and another half season they travelling eastward. Either way, ancient sailors from Europe/India/China/Arab/Japan they need to stop over somewhere (read Malay Peninsular or Singapore/Temasek) while waiting for monsoon to change before returning back home. Since Singapore/Temasek at the end of this Peninsular, it's the most natural transit point for these ancient/modern sailors. Whenever you fly over Singapore take a look down to see these multitude of these ships. Although now in theory they don't need to stop for monsoon due to fuel, but realistically the ships still need for refuel/rest/transit/etc.
[1] From Sails to Steam Power:
https://www.marinmuseum.se/en/visit/exhibitions/from-sails-t...
> However, by the time the Portuguese arrived in the early 16th century, Singapura had already become "great ruins" according to Alfonso de Albuquerque.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Singapore
How far back and how much context is required for a simple narrative to not constitute lying? And for a narrative about national origin, is it not also misleading to insinuate that successive settlements and polities constitute a singular, shared history?
And Europeans were not the first colonial powers to land on and assert control over the peninsula. In fact, the incumbent Muslim powers the Europeans encountered had colonized the peninsula only a couple of centuries beforehand. Aboriginal peoples (pre-history "colonizers") still live in Malaysia, and they're still as isolated and impoverished by the state as they were before Europeans arrived. Malaysia even has its own Plymouth Rock-like monument (on the coast somewhere near Malacca, IIRC), and it's not where Europeans first stepped ashore. And it seems a little odd to presume Singaporeans would identify with the political and social history of their Malay and aboriginal predecessors when Singapore, a majority Chinese community, was kicked out of Malaysia precisely because of racist and xenophobic sentiments of many Malays.
The racial politics of Malaysia and Singapore are at least as complicated as in the US if not more so. I count South Africa and Malaysia as the two countries where racial politics are not only as complicated, but open and explicit as in the US, and like the US the relationship between European colonizers and the "native" groups constitutes only a portion of that complexity. Many other countries have similarly diverse groups, but usually one group is unchallenged in its power and there's very little open discourse about the subject. But contemporary anti-colonial rhetoric whitewashes (figuratively and literally) all of this.
with separate schooling systems, many Malaysians grow up in ethnic silos, which fundamentally hinders national unity even beyond any legal framework
All these lands were Dharmic originally, all the way to Japan, before the various cults arrived.
What nonsense, colonizers do not live and settle there for thousand of years. Would you called majority Japanese now a colonizers since the originally come from Korea/China and before them they were people there?
>Singapura had already become "great ruins" according to Alfonso de Albuquerque.
Albuquerque was the first European colonial who conquered Malacca in the early 16th CE, later Dutch and then British. They all came because they wanted to bypass what they considered "trading bottleneck" created by Ottoman, the most powerful maritime empire in the Mediterranean and Europe for many centuries.
The local authorities most probably very well deployed a typical scorched-earth strategy to prevent the Albuquerque to fully utilize Singapore infrastructure. The British did exactly this to most part of Singapore including totally damaging the very important causeway when the were defeated by Japanese in the mid 20th CE. Fun facts, the world busiest causeway still not return to the its original sophisticated design with elegant pass-thru water design until today, thus pollution side effect are still happening and not being solved [2].
[1] Scorched earth:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_earth
[2] Why Singaporeans Are Fleeing to Malaysia Every Weekend | AB Explained [video]:
Depending on context, yes, especially considering that (AFAIU) there still exist identifiable (socially, not just genetically) ethnic groups on the Japanese archipelago who predate that colonization event, and who still experience forms of ostracization typical of such colonization. There'd be no cognitive dissonance for me because I refuse to internalize a definition of colonialism that tacitly presumes European exceptionalism and supremacy through a sort of reverse White Man's Burden logic of moral accountability and historical criticism.
For the same reason, I recognize that groups we (i.e. westernized, globalist, cosmopolitan, what-have-you types) typically call aboriginal in a homogenizing, undifferentiating manner were often colonizers themselves thousands of years ago, displacing other aboriginal groups that may or may not still exist today. There are multiple such groups in Southeast Asia. And the first such modern human aboriginal group may have colonized an area occupied by pre-modern, archaic humans. (Or possibly vice versa!)
Buying into the logic of modern anti-colonialism critical theory is not required to appreciate and criticize the harms European colonization inflicted and continues to inflict. But rejecting that logic might be a prerequisite to recognizing and appreciating the exact same dynamics and harms that played out and still play out today among non-European ethnic groups.
> they wanted to bypass what they considered "trading bottleneck" created by Ottoman
The Ottomans didn't exactly close the Silk Road, but they made it harder and more expensive to use it.
But the major reason for the maritime routes taking over the cargo traffic was that it's much more efficient to sail to Asia with your cargo than to walk it on camels.
So when the Portugese found the way around Africa and landed in Calcutta on May 20 1498, the trade patterns changed forever.
This new route discovery actually significantly increased the importance of Strait of Malacca and Singapore, not decreasing it.
Actually even before that important turning point event, the European already knew about about the importance of Strait of Malacca including both the metropolis Malacca and Singapore/Temasek. The is one famous quote by a 16th CE Portuguese explorer Tomé Pires, who declared: "Whoever is lord of Malacca has his hand on the throat of Venice".
To say that Singapore was an obscure fishing village is disengenious by the colonial powers and those believing this wicked narrative are in denial.
My once top comment about this "elephant in the room" has been downvoted to oblivion, but hey c'est la vie. There's a very popular saying, "you can fool some people all of the time, and all people some of the time, but you simply cannot fool all of the people all of the time".
There's also a narrative that if the tea via land it's called chai and if if the via sea it's called tea [1].
The Ottoman controlled both the land and sea route to Europe creating the trading bottleneck from the European perspective for many centuries to the far East, they never close it. Thats's why both Dutch and British created their very own East India Companies about the same time around 1600 CE as the vehicles to trade in Asia once they found the new trading route around Africa to Asia. Due to their highly profitable business endeavour, their governments willingly become the side-kick colonizers for their new companies and becoming complicit to wrestle and overcome any countries that refused to their own unfair business arrangements, terms and conditions including trading monopolies.
[1] Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea (317 comments):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16129454
[2] Dutch East India Company:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company
[3] East India Company:
That comment upset me as a Melanesian. I'm sorry, but I need to challenge the above statement as it is factually incorrect. What you are claiming is widely spread in a politicized way in Malaysia and Indonesia, and in a similar but different context in Thailand and Phillipines. Firstly, I'm sure you know that the actual original first peoples (called as "orang asli negrito" or "sakai" (derogatory) by "Malay" settlers) are Melanesian/Negrito/Aboriginal tribes. Again, Malay settlers are not the the 'people who originally settled' as you claimed, they took the land from Melanesians. To be precise, the original people are MT Haplogroup P, MT Haplogroup M/sub-R, Y Haplogroup K/F. They have predominantly jet black skin and curly hair or straight hair in the case of some Aboriginal tribes in Australia. These are the genuine first peoples. They were in South and South East Asia, Papua and Australia first prior to the Toba eruption 70ka ago. Today, they have been mostly genocided by 'Malay' (sometimes used to cloud the term Austronesian term) settler populations. You can see this process happening even today in West Papua where 'Malay' soldiers and settlers brought over from Java, Indonesia are genociding Melanesian men in West Papua and taking over their land. The indigenous Melanesians are now a minority in their own land. There's brutal horific videos you can find online of Javanese settlers attacking and skinning a Melanesian man alive inside an oil drum. Truly barbaric stuff. It is a slow genocide but you don't hear much about it, probably because the mines of Freeport McMoran and Grassburg supply a huge chunk of the copper/gold that's key for EV and other modern technologies. That's as much time as I can spend on communicating this right now. I hope this information will help you and others correct your misunderstanding and stop spreading such disingenous claims intended to enable land grab by settlers. Thank you.
The word one to ten in most Austronesian countries from Madagascar to Hawaii, spanning more than 17,000 km or 10,000 miles (about half of earth's perimeter of 40,000 km). These countries main languages including Malagasy, Malay, Indonesian, Javanese, Tagalog, Sulu, Palau (Micronesia), NZ Maori, Hawaii (Polynesia), etc are very similar. In particular, "Lima" meaning five/hand is the common and signature Malay/Austronesian world, even in Hawaii.
Based on your throw away name, most probably you're from Papua Island, you probably know that one of its original main languages, apart from the recent colonial based Tok Pisin, is the Malay Austronesian based Hiri Motu [2].
>Today, they have been mostly genocided by 'Malay' (sometimes used to cloud the term Austronesian term) settler populations.
What nonsense, as they said the proof is in the pudding. If genocide happened as you claimed most of these people are gone but they're everywhere. Please check Borneo Island for example, ruled by the Malay Brunei Kingdom for several centuries until the colonial Brooke the White Rajah came. This third largest Island in the world probably has the most diverse demographic population of indigenous peoples in the world [3].
Fun facts, as comparison the Champa Malay people were genocided by the Vietnamese warlords mainly by the Nguyen lords. They controlled majority of Vietnam for about two thousands years but now you hardly find this Champa Malay people, similar to what happened in muslim in Spain. The highly contested South Chinese Sea original name was Champa Sea [4].
>I hope this information will help you and others correct your misunderstanding and stop spreading such disingenous claims intended to enable land grab by settlers.
Since we are in the Singapore topic, by your own definition of land grab by settlers, the Chinese immigrants where the first PM LKY are from, that constitute majority of Singaporean were performing land grab by settlers because just 200 years ago majority were Malay?
[1] Asia’s secret World Heritage site:
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20160518-malaysias-11000-...
[2] Hiri Motu:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiri_Motu
[3] Borneo:Demographics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borneo#Demographics
[4] The Cham: Descendants of Ancient Rulers of South China Sea Watch Maritime Dispute From Sidelines:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/140616-so...
Earlier you claimed 'originally settled by Malays' now you're saying Malays inter-married with the actual indigenous population. That's like saying European Americans inter-married with actual native population and therefore European Americans are now the first peoples in America. I'm unsure if it is worth discussing further with someone that would manipulate facts in this way.
I'll also ask you to google about Y-haplogroup and MT-haplogroup statistics to see how it shows the disappearance of male Melanesian contribution to the population in Phillipines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand. Countries like Malaysia and Indonesia had official policies even going on today where indigenous Melanesian women were targeted to be impregnated by settler 'Malay Muslim' men. For example:
https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2006/06/27/incentives... 'Kelantan will offer RM10,000 to each Muslim preacher who marries an orang asli woman and naturally converts her'
I noticed you refused to address what is happening in West Papua.
Sadly, I think our conversation can't really continue effectively since you're starting to bring in unrelated topics like Spain and then you started talking about 'land grab by Chinese immigrants in Singapore' which is unrelated to the claims you originally made. Again, I sought to correct your statement claiming 'originally settled by Malays' which I notice you've now softened to 'Malays intermarried with the actual indigenous people'. I think that's the extent of the possible communication with you.
I said what you have quoted of me previously:
"The people who originally settled in the Malay Archipelago several thousands years ago were successful maritime explorers."
>you started talking about 'land grab by Chinese immigrants in Singapore' which is unrelated to the claims you originally made.
Please check your own comments regarding land grab (see below), that's why I asked you about that, I didn't mentioned about land grab earlier but you did. But since you have mentioned it yourself in the comments that's why I asked your opinion because we are in Singapore OP topic. If you do not want to answer the question that's fine with me, however personally I think it's very much relevant to the topic at hand.
>>I hope this information will help you and others correct your misunderstanding and stop spreading such disingenous claims intended to enable land grab by settlers.
You are again attempting to claim that 'Malays' or perhaps you're trying to imply 'Austronesians' are the first people to populate Phillipines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua. I think it isn't possible to have a useful conversation if you are repeating that falsehood. That's the exact equivalent of claiming 'the people who who originally settled the Americas were succesful maritime explorers' in an attempt to convince everyone that Europeans and Native Americans are now the same thing.
I have to remind you again since you refuse to acknowledge the issue. What is happening in West Papua is horrific. It is what 'Malays'/Austronesians have done repeatedly (to different extents) throughout South East Asia and Oceania and the world has let it happen because Melanesian lives don't even make the front page when one of us got skinned alive by 'Malay' settlers. [1]
I'm not sure what happened in West Papua but need to check that out, but what happened in Champa to Cham Malay people is even worst, they totally lost their country they resided for thousands of years to the north Vietnamese people, and being displaced to other countries like Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, etc while only very small minority still in Vietnam.
>You are again attempting to claim that 'Malays' or perhaps you're trying to imply 'Austronesians' are the first people to populate Phillipines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua. I think it isn't possible to have a useful conversation if you are repeating that falsehood.
IMHO, it's quite easy to settle this deadlock, get the original people of Hawaii Polynesia and Palau Micronesia for examples, to be properly tested on genetic ancestorial tracing to check whether they are partly decendent of the Perak Man community who originally settled in Malay Archipelago. As I've mentioned to you it's most probably inter-married but until then we can only guess.
“In 1969, in an event referred to by Indonesia as the ‘Act of Free Choice’ (Perpera), 1,022 delegates appointed by the Indonesian government to represent all the people of Irian Jaya "voted' to become formally part of the Indonesian Republic”
https://awpaadelaide.com/ likely has more details, as would wikipedia etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lim_Chin_Siong?wprov=sfla1
Operation Spectrum untracing the conspiracy' https://share.google/2mRpZk3RGaYUKCRXS
There are severe restrictions on speech, assembly, press and important legal and political barriers for the opposition parties. It is very easy to land in front of a tribunal for defamation or similar for expressing dissent or accusing the government of corruption.
The truth is that Singapore has been lucky that Lee Kuan Yew and most of his successors have been good bureaucrats and politicians. That makes the ruling party also somewhat popular.
Lee Kuan Yew has been an astonishing nation builder and an extremely brilliant man with a huge sensibility for politics and understanding the world.
But it's still a system that's waiting for the wrong people to be put in charge and test the limits of their "democracy".
I don’t think this is only by luck. Singapore made the decision to ‘pay the bureaucrats well’ so that they can build a career on it. This attracts more people to be a bureaucrat. The alternative is that only already rich people become politicians and bureaucrats or bureaucrats only getting their bag by joining lobbying firm after their time in government.
IMO, the hard part about implementing this ‘pay the bureaucrats well’ system is that it is often hard to determine the market rate as there are often no equivalent roles in the private market.
tbf that applies to all democracies, including genuinely competitive multiparty democracies. Would PAP accept defeat and cede power if they handled a crisis so badly an effective opposition party emerged? That's unclear, as is how many of their appointees would support them in that goal, though it is considerably more likely than nations which do not attempt to hold representative elections. But we've also seen the answer to questions of how much success will someone have in explicitly overriding democratic norms and revelling in open corruption be plenty in the United States with all its storied separation of powers and tradition of political freedoms, and perhaps more surprisingly he gave up quietly to wait for the next election was the answer to what would happen when a narrow majority rejected a guy who'd spent years turning Hungary into his personal fiefdom....
The other quirk about the PAP's paternalism is how many of their authoritarian type policies have been primarily driven by a culture of trying to avoid upsetting people, hence years of doublethink on homosexuality and newspapers being told that publishing aerial before and after photographs of Singapore's coastline might be a touch too provocative towards their neighbours.
democracy failed America
There's a reason why every single democracy to turn authoritarian in the last 60 years has been presidential or semi-presidential.
The only parliamentary democracy to turn authoritarian since the 60s has been Sri Lanka, there's not a single other example.
Very democratic country.
That being said, I would assume that a one party state isn't very democratic. It'd be an unstable democracy.
1. (an increasingly smaller portion) The PAP has done this well thus far and brought us to the first world 2. (a large portion) The PAP has too much power and can silence all its opposition - I don't want to suffer the consequences it has historically delivered upon its detractors by voting against them 3. (an increasingly larger portion) The PAP is good but it has too much power and has been allowed to engage in rampant authoritarianism and ivory tower bullshit - the opposition politicians would do a better job 4. The PAP is unequivocally bad and should never be in power (due to their historic actions like underpaying the Malay population for their land, operation Coldstore, etc.)
Additionally, the government blatantly engages in any tactics they can to get more votes, with documented widespread gerrymandering, holding snap election dates right after major PAP wins to capitalised on increased positive sentiment without giving opposition parties time to prepare, silencing/deplatforming opposition politicians, and enacting laws that prevent anyone but their chosen caste to be elected to positions of power
The PAP has ruthlessly gerrymandered their way into winning an overwhelming number of seats in recent elections. Most constituencies are Group Representation Constituencies (GRCs) [1], which mean that many new PAP candidates can enter by riding on the coattails of a higher-profile veteran.
In 2025, the PAP emotionally blackmailed Singaporeans into voting for a Deputy Prime Minister [2] who was shifted to an at-risk GRC, with promises to navigate Singapore through the US tariffs that came to naught (my eyes are rolling so hard at writing this statement).
The PAP effectively controls the electoral boundaries, because the chairperson of the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee [3] is the Prime Minister's secretary, and the other members are all career civil servants who are incentivised to not rock the boat.
If the opposition had been allowed to contest in 2025 again with 2020's electoral constituencies, they would more likely have had far better results [4][5].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_representation_constitue...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gan_Kim_Yong
[3] https://www.gov.sg/explainers/what-is-the-role-and-compositi...
[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/1jay630/how_did_...
[5] https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/1k6n1ps/another_...
Opposition can literally just converge to the PAP positions over time. Or internal factionalism causes a schism and leads to 2 parties forming from one overwhelming ruling party. In political settings there are enormous incentives to set up roughly 50-50 coalitions.
It seems that Singapore/PAP figured out that policy control could effectively keep power without the violence traditionally associated with authoritarianism. I wonder what other dark arts they employ.
China and Singapore showed democracy is not necessarily the most productive way to run a country
If Singapore isn't a democracy then the U.S is a dictature.
People throw out the word democracy like they know what it is.
How do you think Philiippines compare now to Singapore as a result of its "democracy" ?
One of the big questions of Singaporean politics is what would happen if there ever was a "freak result" (in LKY's words) and the opposition won a majority, since thanks to the first past the post voting system further exacerbated by mandatory "group representative constituencies" the winner always wins big and coalitions or minority governments are not an option.
This part of the history, only mentioned in this one sentence, is the most interesting and relevant for other countries, and is really what sets Singapore apart from other countries in the region.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62m7xrd2z0o
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/10/spanish-couple...
What does detaining someone over an unlawful (per the written law) protest have anything to do with corruption?
Corruption involves bribes, selective enforcement of the law, unethical favoritism when it comes to legal decisions, "favors", etc.
Your links just describe people participating in a protest that was against the law on the books, and then that law being enforced upon them. You can call that specific law unfair, undemocratic, authoritarian, etc., but what's the corruption angle here?
> a: dishonest or illegal behavior especially by powerful people (such as government officials or police officers) : depravity
> b: inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (such as bribery); the corruption of government officials
> c: a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct the corruption of a text; the corruption of computer files
> d: decay, decomposition; the corruption of a carcass
As far as I can tell the law was passed by the legislature, the police enforced the law, they weren't bribed to not enforce it or to enforce it.
Seems like the whole system worked correctly, legally and without corruption of any kind.
The way corruption manifests in Singapore is legally and baked into the system - we are a city smaller than NYC but have _five_ mayors, none of which an average citizen can name or even have heard of having a mayor. Party politicians sit on the boards or occupy high C-suite positions of major companies and collect salary from all of them. Government politicians and high-ranking civil servants enjoy the best quality of life possible in Singapore, funded by taxpayer dollars, and barely have to do any work for it once they are in the position due to the single party system and only having to vote along party lines to keep it.
Ah, yet another uncritical narration of the People Action Party's literal party line.
Singapore was the second richest city in Asia (behind Shanghai) before WW2. While the PAP obviously deserves credit for their economic management from the 1960s onward, their starting point was far from the opium-riddled fishing village backwater they like to paint it as.
There is a lot to learn from his philosophy and there used to be countries that were on a similar track that also saw similar transformation from a backwater agrarian society deciding from marxism to market economy.
His legacy speaks for itself and I love how he can make Western journalists completely shut up, a true Cambridge law student, he could speak English effectively out of all non-Western leaders.
The only problem is that he lost the war on the hot scorching weather, something that really takes a way from enjoying the country. If Singapore had cooler weather, it would've been completely flooded with all the disillusioned Westerners from democratic countries.
His legacy as a statesman is unparalleled, but his legacy as a parent falls short, given how poorly his son did at maintaining the country his father built. His father surrounded himself with smart people and welcomed criticism, while his son surrounded himself with yes-men and prosecuted critics. And now Singapore is becoming increasingly unappealing to MNCs due to recent discriminatory visa policies, and the rising cost of living is making life harder and harder for young people, with the fertility rate now under 0.9 as people can't afford to start a family.
None of the problems you listed are unique to Singapore. Chinese buyers who often serve as effective money mules for capital out of China have inflated real estate prices globally and the enablers at home profited from the transaction, fully aware of the demographic impact it can have.
Singapore acted the best for its citizens in protecting them from outsider speculation compared to Canada for example.