How did Singapore advance so fast?

[Blanquist]

It was a colony of the British and now it is now a global financial center with a very high quality of life.

I understand it is a bit authoritarian. What exactly did they do to achieve just dizzying success?

[hatzel]

You know even before independence it was pretty much just Venice...

[Blanquist]

You know even before independence it was pretty much just Venice...

But I just read that their GDP /cap was on the same level as Mexico and Chile in 1960-65. So, I don't think you can say that they always were developed. They have one of the highest GDP's per-capita in the world now, and I don't think Mexico is even close.

[Fennec]

- Singapore’s level of inequality is the highest in the developed world, except possibly for Hong Kong’s. Its bottom quintile is the poorest in the developed world except for Portugal’s.

- Only 25% of Singaporeans aged 16-17 go to junior college, the equivalent of high school. The rest don’t participate in the international reading and math tests; that’s how Singapore always places number 1 on these tests.

- Singapore’s per capita military spending is second only to Israel’s, even though Singapore is not at war nor will it ever be. That last fact doesn’t prevent the government from engaging in a propaganda campaign aimed at convincing the citizenry that it is.

- The combination of low wages, no social safety net, and a social security system that has no redistribution of wealth at all means that lower-class people often have to work into their 70s and 80s to survive.

- Singapore’s literacy rate is 92.5%, just above this of Palestine and just below this of Thailand.

- Despite the country’s cult of economic growth, its GDP per capita has stagnated since 2000.

- Despite draconian sentencing laws for violent crime, Singapore’s crime rate remains far higher than Japan’s.

[Deicide]

Here's someone's dissertation.


This dissertation explores the development of Singapore in the period from before Singapore’s independence (in 1965) until today. Singapore went from being a third world to becoming a first world country in a matter of decades. The change involved an impressive economic growth as well as an intensive modernization process. This paper answers questions concerning the effects of the modernization process in Chinatown and Little India in Singapore. How has the modernization process affected the built landscape, how has it changed the perception of the landscape, and what are the effects of conservation?
This paper argues that Singapore’s Peoples Action Party (PAP) government was influenced by the ideals of modernization theory when laying the foundations for the coming growth of Singapore, as western countries formed the ideal for Singapore’s future development. Theories of landscape, ethnicity and modernization make up the theoretical foundations of this paper.

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&ved=0CFIQFjAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Fntnu.diva-portal.org%2Fsmash%2Fget%2Fdiva2%3A124648%2FFULLTE XT01&ei=TyqdT7uMHOLC0QWZlZX9Dg&usg=AFQjCNF_FmNxp_2VLD3QI8DuGPLKe1HFXw&sig2=fCgG3KQZYCnvGNcXFOu8og