SINGAPORE

THE CITY OF NATION BUILDING

In 1991, I was offered my first teaching job, a post as lecturer in political theory at the National University of Singapore. I had just completed my doctoral thesis on communitarian theory and was doubly excited about going to Singapore because its government had recently put forward communitarianism, defined as “placing society above self,” as one of the country’s four core values that should be taught in schools, workplaces, and homes. I knew I wasn’t going to a liberal democracy—Singapore was basically a one-party state notorious for its constraints on privacy and free speech—but if its form of government meant rich and fulfilling communal attachments instead of the no-holds-barred individualism, rootlessness, alienation from the political process, and other phenomena stemming from the erosion of communal life in Western democracies, then it would be worth it. Perhaps the Singaporean model couldn’t be generalized, but it might be suitable for a “communitarian Canadian” newly married to a woman from mainland China. Three years later, however, I was packing my bags after being told by the acting head of the department that I didn’t “fit in.”

Singapore is a small tropical island roughly the size of Brooklyn; its current population is nearly five million, including more than one million migrant workers. The island was originally an outpost of the Sumatran Srivijaya empire and had the Javanese name Temasek, or “sea town.”¹ Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, the island was part of the sultanate of Johor, though Portuguese and Dutch colonialists had control at different times. In 1819, the British empire builder Thomas Stamford Raffles colonized the island. Sir Raffles is known as the “founding father of Singapore”—his statue still stands at the spot where he first landed in Singapore, and the city’s oldest and most luxurious hotel is named after him. Sir Raffles was an idealist opponent of the slave trade and he aimed to remake the island into a land of virtue and prosperity, though subsequent history did not always go according to plan. Singapore became an important trading center, with tens of thousands of migrants from China, India, and the surrounding Malay-Islamic archipelago. By the early twentieth century, the island was composed mainly of Chinese males who did not regard Singapore as home: “They came to make money and return home as quickly as possible.”² The Chinese settlers organized themselves into triads (crime syndicates), prostitution was rampant (and legal), and up to 70 percent of Chinese workers were regular users of opium. As in Hong Kong, British colonialists profited handsomely from the trade in opium: from 1824 to 1910, the tax on opium was the government’s single largest source of revenue.³

In World War II, the Japanese Imperial Army invaded Malaya, culminating in the Battle of Singapore. The British were defeated in six days and surrendered their supposedly impregnable fortress on February 15, 1942. The surrender was described by the British prime minister Winston Churchill as “the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history.”⁴ As in Hong Kong, the brutal Japanese occupation is generally portrayed as the worst period in Singapore’s history,⁵ but it also meant that the British lost their aura of invincibility.

The British returned to power following the war but eventually gave in to demands for self-government. In 1959, elections were held under a formula that granted Singapore control in all matters of government except foreign policy and defense⁶ (similar to the “one-country, two systems” formula in Hong Kong since 1997). The People’s Action Party (PAP), led by Lee Kuan Yew, won the election and declared full independence from Britain four years later. But the PAP leaders had doubts about the economic viability of a small, independent island without any natural resources and fought hard to join a federation with the surrounding territories so that Singapore could enjoy the benefits of a common market. Lee also used the opportunity to marginalize Chinese leftists in Singapore who preferred independence and still had moral legitimacy as a result of their courageous resistance against the Japanese during World War II. In 1963, Singapore, Malaya, Sarawak, and North Borneo formed a new federation—Malaysia. After two years, however, Singapore was expelled from Malaysia and forced to be independent (though Lee’s chief lieutenant, Goh Keng Swee, had already developed a secret plan for independence).⁷ The expulsion was partly due to ethnic differences—mutual distrust between the predominantly Chinese Singaporeans and their predominantly Muslim Malay neighbors. Disputes over economic policy and personality clashes between the leaders of Singapore and Malaya also played a role.

Lee famously wept in public when he announced the separation. Singapore did not have any difficulty in winning international acceptance of its independence, but the economic and security challenges lying ahead seemed insurmountable. Only a stable and united community could overcome these obstacles, and the PAP launched a massive nation-building exercise designed to forge a common identity that would motivate patriotic citizens to sacrifice on the nation’s behalf. Nation building, however, was perhaps Singapore’s greatest challenge. As Lee puts it, “[We had] to build a nation from scratch.”⁸ Fortunately, Lee and his lieutenants did not lack confidence. Like other nation builders, they needed to inculcate certain values—myths, as critics might say—to unify the population (the political leaders of other cities in this book, needless to say, did not face such demands). As Dr. Goh, the former deputy prime minister, put it in Singapore’s early days: “Without a widely accepted code of moral values, Singapore will remain what it is now—a community which is basically self-centred and selfish…. [W]hy do we want to turn out citizens of this kind, that is, with creative imagination, stout character, and a sound sense of moral values? I believe that without this kind of citizen, there is no guarantee that we can maintain a continuing basis for our survival and prosperity.”⁹

So, which values did Singapore’s leaders try to inculcate that would make Singaporeans into other-regarding citizens concerned with the fate of their new nation? The PAP is fond of acronyms, and one might label Singapore’s key values the three Ms: material well-being, multiracialism, and meritocracy. The PAP—which has ruled Singapore continuously since its independence in 1965—has worked tirelessly to promote these values. The problem is that these same values (as interpreted and promoted by the PAP) have also led to an extreme form of individualism—a more individualistic form of life than I had encountered in any Western country—that undermines the goal of creating patriotic citizens willing to sacrifice for the common national good. It’s when I realized the glaring gap between the communitarian rhetoric and the individualistic reality that I really turned against Singapore’s social and political system: in this sense, the head of the department was correct to conclude that I didn’t fit in. But I don’t mean to be too negative. When I visited Singapore fifteen years after I left in 1994, I saw more grounds for hope as I ate, drank, and talked with my old friends. Let me proceed with an argument that the three Ms undermine nation building, and I will end on a more optimistic note.

THE VALUE OF MATERIAL WELL-BEING

I had experience with odd jobs in the past: scything weeds on ski slopes, driving delivery trucks, serving food in cafeterias, sorting books in libraries. But I always knew those jobs were temporary, and the little money I made was used mainly for teenage hedonistic pursuits. My first full-time teaching job, at the National University of Singapore, paid surprisingly well for a new academic. About 40 percent of my salary was put in a forced savings plan called the Central Provident Fund, so I didn’t have to worry about the long term; the government would look after my financial future, which was fine with me because I had no interest or expertise in managing funds. University housing was subsidized, and there was plenty of money left over for fancy meals and traveling to seemingly exotic destinations like Malaysia and Vietnam. For the first time in my life, I did not have to worry about money. And my work was enjoyable: I was actually paid to read books and discuss political theory with friends and charming students only a few years younger than myself! Had I arrived in an ideal communist society free from material want, where people live to work rather than work to live, and where different kinds of people realize their creative essences in harmonious community?

More than two thousand years ago, Mencius argued that the government must provide for the people’s basic means of subsistence so they won’t go morally astray: “Lacking dependable means of support, they will go astray and fall into excesses, stopping at nothing.”¹⁰ There is no point promoting moral behavior if people are worried about their next meal. Hence, the government’s first priority is to secure the basic means of subsistence. Such views have been influential in Chinese history. Karl Marx arrived at a similar conclusion in the nineteenth century: without an “absolutely essential material premise, want is merely made general, and with want the struggle for necessities would begin again, and the old filthy business would necessarily be restored.”¹¹ If communism is implemented without developing the productive forces that underpin material abundance, then it won’t work for long.

Lee Kuan Yew and his key aides espoused socialism, at least in the early days. Yet they were also realists wary of utopian plans for social change and moral transformation. Hence, it should not be surprising that they felt the most urgent task after Singapore’s unhappy beginnings was to promote economic development that would underpin material well-being for all, a necessary condition for cultivating a strong sense of commitment to the nation and other forms of other-regarding behavior. Once the basics are taken care of, then Singapore can become a nation that “demands passion of a higher order. It is passion for a country and a people, the desire to belong, to identify, to pay back in loyalty, in sacrifice, in life itself.”¹²

In the early 1960s, few would have predicted Singapore’s economic success. The 1960s, as Singapore’s textbooks repeatedly emphasize, were characterized by violence and disorder: “the economic disaster following the British withdrawal of the military bases; the race riots between Chinese and Malays; Indonesian president Sukarno’s Konfrontasi campaign to topple the newly formed Federation of Malaysia; the Chinese students’ demonstration over conscription and other issues; and of course, the heart-wrenching disappointment of Singapore’s expulsion from the Federation.”¹³ Yet Singapore succeeded, as Lee titled his memoirs, in moving “From Third World to First.” In two decades, Singapore was transformed from a seedy Asian port to a gleaming metropolis and major manufacturing center that delivers employment and high-quality housing, health care, and education to its people.¹⁴

My wife, Song Bing, obtained a job writing reports on Chinese legal reform for the Singaporean cabinet shortly after we arrived in Singapore. She worked for a think tank then called the Institute for East Asian Political Economy, headed by Goh Keng Swee. We were flattered when Dr. Goh invited us to dinner on several occasions. He commanded respect: he was truly brilliant as well as charming in conversation. He floated creative ideas for improving Singapore that sometimes verged on the eccentric, if only to see what his dinner companions would make of them. Dr. Goh went to China on several occasions in the late 1980s and early 1990s and saw the potential for development there before it had registered elsewhere. He was a good listener, though he stuck to his guns once he made up his mind. Once, he proposed alterations to his office. An interior designer raised some objections, but Dr. Goh impatiently said, “That’s the conclusion.” The office was redone in accordance with Dr. Goh’s specifications.

Dr. Goh is widely regarded as the architect of Singapore’s economic miracle.¹⁵ He had already formulated the main lines of Singapore’s economic strategy before the 1959 election, when he was appointed minister of finance. Dr. Goh set up the Economic Development Board (EDB), which aimed to facilitate financially sound projects by investors, both local and foreign, who were putting up factories in Singapore.

Shortly after we arrived in Singapore, we were offered a subsidized flat in Jurong West. The housing officer at the university told us that it was a hip and multicultural district. But it was not an ideal location for young urbanites. We were surrounded by public housing blocs and factories and it was an hour-long commute to the university. After one year, we were allowed to move closer to the university because I had repeated eye infections that a doctor could plausibly attribute to pollution.

The most famous early EDB project was a plan to turn vast tracts of empty wasteland into an industrial zone in Jurong. The EDB spent large sums on building the infrastructure long before it had any clients to occupy it.¹⁶ At the time, critics referred to the project as “Goh’s Folly,” but it was eventually acclaimed as providing the foundations for farsighted economic development.

Dr. Goh also pushed for an investment policy that relied on manufacturing for export rather than import substitution. The idea was to use the EDB to search for entrepreneurs outside Singapore who would be willing to locate manufacturing facilities in, and export components from, Singapore. At the time, the strategy of opening the country to foreign investment was innovative. As Lee explains in typically blunt language: “Of course, the prevailing theory was that multinationals were exploiters of cheap labor and cheap raw materials and would suck [us] dry. We had no raw materials for them to exploit. All we had was labor. Nobody else wanted to exploit labor. So why not, if they want to exploit our labor? They’re welcome to it. And we found out that whether or not they exploited us, we were learning how to do a job from them, which we would never have learnt.”¹⁷

September 2009. I meet my old friend Chua Beng Huat, now head of the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. He picks me up in a fancy sports car, but we go to a working-class hawker center for a lunch of local delicacies. It’s hot and humid but quite comfortable in the shade, and we talk for several hours while nursing cold beers. I realize that the “strolling” methodology may not be applicable in Singapore: nobody walks for enjoyment in this tropical climate. The hawker center is the center of social life: it’s where friends meet and minds are set free to share stories and political gossip.¹⁸ Beng Huat explains that several historically contingent factors in the 1960s explain why Singapore did not develop into a liberal state. The cold war, the Vietnam War, the massacre of Chinese in Indonesia, and race riots in Singapore all played into the hands of a political elite that could rely on thuggish measures to crush alternative sources of power. Yet I wonder, was it really necessary? Hong Kong also faced huge challenges in the 1960s, such as violent extremists setting off bombs during the Cultural Revolution, yet the government did not embark on the road to repression and it still managed to develop economically. Perhaps a key explanation for the different political outcomes lies in the different economic models, as any good Marxist would say.

Multinational companies will exploit labor only if they are promised a stable and secure investment climate, particularly if they are asked to invest in a remote and inhospitable small city-state. In the early 1960s, however, the left-wing political movements and independent labor organizations in Singapore were strong players that did not necessarily welcome the opportunity to be exploited. Moreover, the PAP wanted more control over labor so that it could engage in long-term development planning. For example, it required every employee to put 35 percent of wages into the Central Provident Fund (employers were required to invest an amount equal to 5 percent of the worker’s wages in the CPF), which gave the government a considerable cash reserve necessary for urban redevelopment, public housing, and the upgrading of infrastructure.¹⁹

In 1991, my colleague and friend Chee Soon Juan, a young lecturer in neuropsychology, decided to join the opposition. Lee had stepped down as prime minister (though he still exercised influence as senior minister in the cabinet), and there was talk of democracy and civil society by young ministers such as George Yeo—in retrospect, cynics call this period the Prague Spring of Singapore. Dr. Chee drew huge crowds wherever he went, and no doubt the government was getting worried. He gave a talk to a packed house at my university and clearly outdebated the PAP MP Davinder Singh (who would go on to fight Soon Juan in the courts). Shortly thereafter, Dr. Chee was sacked from the university by his head of department, a PAP MP, allegedly for misusing a research grant. Most of my colleagues were outraged but we were too fearful to do anything; it was a depressing time. A few months later, I stumbled upon a beautifully written book titled The Mendicant Professor by D. J. Enright. The author describes his experience of being subject to public criticism by a PAP minister in the early 1960s in response to his inaugural lecture as professor of English. The university professors were unionized and hundreds of faculty rallied behind Enright in the cause of protecting freedom of speech. In the case of Dr. Chee, not one academic publicly rallied to his defense. What had happened to my university? I wondered.

The dark side of the Singaporean story is that the PAP, led by Prime Minister Lee, set out to crush alternative sources of power, especially opposition parties and labor organizations that threatened to disrupt their plans for economic development.

The same day I meet with Beng Huat, the Straits Times runs a report on a new book titled Men in White, which discusses the PAP’s political struggles in the 1960s. For the first time, Lee is quoted as admitting that the “communist” label was applied to a wide swath of political opponents who pursued left-wing political activities without necessarily being card-carrying communists.

In 1961, the left wing of the PAP split from the party, forming the Barisan Socialis (BS), or Socialist Front. Two opposing groups came to dominate the political scene, with the PAP and the progovernment National Trade Unions Congress (NTUC) on one side, and the BS and its affiliate body, the Singapore Association of Trade Unions (SATU), on the other. Following two by-elections in 1961, the PAP clung to power with only a tiny margin, and it was possibly around this time that the party, as Carl A. Trocki puts it, “began to plan its coup d’état, known as ‘Operation Cold Store.’”²⁰ On February 3, 1963, the security forces struck, and nearly 150 journalists, student leaders, labor activists, and opposition politicians were arbitrarily detained. No charges were filed and they were held without trial for more than three months in grim conditions at the Outram Road Prison. The government invoked the Internal Security Act, a product of colonial times that the PAP had promised to repeal—yet it remains in force today. The BS-associated SATU was legislated out of existence when its application for registration was refused, with the government-affiliated NTUC as the main beneficiary. As Lee explains, the militant labor unions did not aim “to get the economy cured and growing but to create more problems so there would be more unemployment, so the system would collapse…. Because if the economy got going, the system will prevail and communism will not take over. So … endless strikes, go-slows, sit-ins, all sorts of demonstrations to block the economy and slow it down…. Then after Malaysia, it began to clean up. If you call a political strike without taking a ballot, you get deregistered.”²¹ Basically, militant labor unions were curtailed and effectively barred from the political process,²² measures that would have been difficult, if not impossible, to implement in a democratic context. The economic model lasted for a couple of decades under the PAP’s nearly hegemonic political power.

Following the 1985 recession, the Singapore government decided to move out of manufacturing industries that depended on cheap labor and increase its dependence on small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to generate investment and employment, but new ventures were usually carried out by SMEs in partnerships with government-led corporations, with the result that government control over and involvement in SMEs actually increased.²³ Not surprisingly, curbs on independent labor organizations remained in place to ensure stability for economic actors, both foreign and local. Political repression has become more sporadic, but it is still effective at silencing dissent. Here too, Lee’s words tell the story. A government, he explains, needs “big sticks” in order to govern. No need “to use it often. Use it once, twice, against big people. The rest will take notice.”²⁴

The government also justifies curbs on democratic politics because of its approach to social welfare. It provides a large-scale, self-funded public housing program, a self-funded pension, and largely free education, but there is no unemployment insurance, free medical care, or state-sponsored pension plan for those outside the formal workforce.²⁵ The main concern is that state-funded welfare programs would slow down economic development and not be sustainable over the long term. Lee is explicit that opposition movements would seek to “break the bank,” with the implication that it is legitimate to use “big sticks” against them: “[Y]ou are competing against people who not only promise not to maintain the investment rate, but … to spend what there is [already saved] in the kitty … and if an electorate is sufficiently naïve to believe that these things can be done, you break the bank.”²⁶ Here too, democratic politics would have undermined the PAP’s economic plans.

The PAP is also notorious for intervening in “private” affairs for the purpose of economic development. From economic incentives for educated mothers to bans on the sale of chewing gum, the PAP has shown few qualms about interfering in the details of everyday life in its quest for prosperity. Again, Lee is very open about the government’s ways: “[W]e would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened in very personal matters—who your neighbor is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.”²⁷ The results of Singapore’s development model are captured in the Singaporean journalist Cherian George’s memorable metaphor: “Think of Singapore as the air-conditioned nation—a society with a unique blend of comfort and central control, where people have mastered their environment, but at the cost of individual autonomy.”²⁸

Why does any of this matter? Perhaps Singaporeans simply don’t value individual autonomy as much as, say, Americans. As Lee puts it, Singaporeans have “little doubt that a society with communitarian values where the interests of society take precedence over that of the individual suits them better than the individualism of America.”²⁹ But the problem is that political repression undermines communitarian aims, meaning that it actually promotes self-centered individualism rather than commitment to the national community. Even the occasional use of “big sticks” against opposition politicians such as Chee Soon Juan sends an unpatriotic message to the community: “in Singapore, better to mind your own business, make money, and leave politics to the politicians.”³⁰ Is it any wonder that Singaporeans, according to a recent survey, are the “most apathetic when it comes to involvement in political actions, whether in the form of signing a petition, joining in boycotts or attending lawful demonstrations. Singaporeans consistently ranked last among her five East Asian neighbors in all three areas of political involvement.”³¹

The majority of people may react to political repression by becoming apathetic, but some will become frustrated and seek opportunities elsewhere, with the result that Singapore has been losing some of its best talent to foreign states. A 2007 survey of young Singaporeans revealed that more than half wanted to migrate to another country. And many are acting on that desire, especially the upwardly mobile. The average outflow rate per thousand citizens is 26.11 in Singapore—the second highest in the world—at least partly due to the restrictive political atmosphere and a feeling that rules and regulations are excessive.³² Again, the government is aware of the problem: as former premier Goh puts it, “The more we educate Singaporeans, and the more opportunities we create for them, the more internationally mobile they will become. The more they gain from subsidized HDB housing, the more money they have to buy cheaper houses in Australia. Will Singaporeans be rooted in Singapore? Will enough Singaporeans stay here, to ensure our country’s long-term survival? … I take issue with those fair-weather Singaporeans who, having benefited from Singapore, will pack their bags and take flight when our country runs into a little storm.”³³ The government has responded by bringing in foreign talent, but most Singaporeans believe that foreign talent “will have no commitment to the country in times of crisis.”³⁴

As requested, I submit the reading list for my “Introduction to Political Theory” class to the head of the department. He calls me into his office, tells me to teach more communitarianism instead of liberalism and feminism, and emphasizes that I should not teach John Stuart Mill to first-year students because they haven’t yet reached the required level of maturity. Naturally, this makes me want to do the opposite. I teach Mill’s On Liberty, making sure to read the concluding sentences to the whole class:

The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it; and a State which postpones the interests of their mental expansion and elevation, to a little more of administrative skill, or of that semblance of it which practice gives, in the details of business; a State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes—will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything, will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in order that their machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish.

When political repression is combined with thoroughgoing paternalism, even of the well-intentioned kind that is designed for the present and future enjoyment of citizens, people become even more materialistic and less public-spirited than they would otherwise be. The Singaporean sociologist Kwok Kian Woon draws on Alexis de Tocqueville to lament what has happened to Singapore:

[Under a “good despotism,” citizens are ruled by] an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone their gratifications, and to watch over their fate…. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness: it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances—what remains but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?³⁵

Kwok further invokes Tocqueville to make the point that subjects of such a regime would lack trust in their fellows, have no interest in public affairs, and certainly have no inclination to sacrifice their own private interests for the sake of the public good. Instead, “citizens” would turn their main attention to the material aspects of their private lives, once again to the benefit of the government itself: “Everybody is feverishly intent on making money or, already rich, on keeping his wealth intact…. It is in the nature of despotism that it should foster such desires and propagate their havoc. Lowering as they do the national morale, they are despotism’s safeguard since they divert men’s attention from public affairs.”³⁶

The excessive materialism of Singaporeans is no great secret. The former foreign minister S. Rajaratnam once described Singapore’s mass ideology as “moneytheism.”³⁷ For Singaporeans, according to the former prime minister Goh Chok Tong, “life is not complete without shopping.”³⁸ The Singaporean dream is colloquially known as the “five Cs”: career, condominium, car, club, and credit card. In a recent survey, 50 percent of Singaporeans indicated that they were indifferent to national citizenship so long as they could attain wealth.³⁹

In Jurong West, my wife and I became close friends with a Chinese-speaking shopkeeper in our district. She hated the PAP, and Lee Kuan Yew in particular, and voted for the opposition Workers’ Party. The problem was not just that she worked hard for a low salary but also that she was constantly made to feel inferior by government inspectors and government propaganda against “backward” Chinese dialects. In our view, she was kind and intelligent. We celebrated Chinese holidays with her friends and she also became close friends with my parents-in-law. I had planned to see her during my last trip, but her mother had recently passed away and she would not leave her home, in accordance with traditional Confucian mourning rituals.

Singapore did indeed accomplish an economic miracle. Today, it has the world’s fifth highest per capita GDP. Its economic model has been borrowed by many developing countries and millions of people have been lifted out of poverty: even “communist” countries like China follow the Singaporean model of reliance on multinational corporations to import capital, provide employment, and build up management skills. Singapore has 250 billion Singapore dollars in reserves that it saves for “a rainy day.” (Following the global financial crisis of 2009, the Singapore government made the unprecedented decision to dip into the country’s reserves.)

Like most miracles, however, Singapore’s economic miracle is also something of a mirage. For Marxists, the problem is that people are still treated as means for economic productivity: they work long hours and treat work as a means to life rather than life’s prime want (even the elderly are made to work in greater numbers so that Singapore can stay ahead in the Darwinian struggle for national economic competitiveness: the portion of Singaporeans older than age sixty-five in the workforce increased 57 percent between 1993 and 2003, even though only 5 percent of Singaporeans want to work past the retirement age of sixty-five).⁴⁰ For liberals, the problem is that the government’s heavy hand curbs individual autonomy and creativity. For social democrats, the problem is the lack of state-sponsored welfare, which results in suffering for the disadvantaged and high income-inequality (in 2006, Singapore ranked 105th in the world in terms of income inequality alongside countries such as Burundi and Kenya; nearly 30 percent of households were not earning enough to afford the minimum standard of living).⁴¹ And for communitarians, the deepest problem is that the economic model is supported by an authoritarian and paternalistic politics that encourages self-centered individualism rather than public-spirited commitment to the national community. Again, Cherian George puts it well: “Singapore’s tragedy is not the absence of idealism, but that it systematically rewards the individualistic majority and discourages the socially-conscious minority.”⁴² No wonder Lee came to the realization that Singaporeans would need “another 30, 40, 50 years” before they would develop passion for the national community.⁴³ What he failed to add is that his political system is largely responsible for the slow pace of process.

THE VALUE OF MULTIRACIALISM

While going through some old boxes last year, I stumbled on a photocopy of the “mission statement” I wrote in 1990 when I applied for a job at the National University of Singapore. Here’s what I wrote: “I am most impressed by Singapore’s experience with multiculturalism. Here in Quebec, the Francophone separatist movement is still active and tensions between Francophones and Anglophones continue to erupt. Yet Singapore has managed to completely defuse ethnic conflict. Less than three decades after race riots in the 1960s, the different cultural communities coexist in harmony and equality. I plan to study and learn from the Singapore experience.” I laughed when I read it, thinking, “Did I really believe what I wrote or was I just desperate for a job?” I know I seemed naïve when I first arrived in Singapore—one of my colleagues would say, “He’s new here,” whenever I spoke—but was I really that naïve?

Singapore is an ethnically plural society and the British colonial regime divided the society into fixed racial categories and stereotypes that persist to this day.⁴⁴ The various groups did not always get along. In 1854, a riot between Chinese of different dialect groups lasted for twelve days and five hundred people were killed.⁴⁵ More than a century later, in 1964, riots between Chinese and Malays left thirty-six dead.

A diplomat friend told me about a meeting he had with a Singaporean minister. He praised Singapore’s efforts to sustain ethnic peace, but the minister laughed and said, “It’s not so mysterious. All you have to do is keep the guns here” (pointing under the table).

Since then, the PAP has cracked down hard on any manifestations of “ethnic chauvinism” that threaten to erupt into violence. It is not always easy to distinguish between “sticks” used to secure peace and those used to secure the power of the PAP—in one notorious case from the mid-1990s, the popular opposition politician Tang Liang Hong was hounded out of Singapore after the PAP accused him of being a Chinese chauvinist⁴⁶—but the PAP has successfully prevented any outbreaks of ethnic violence since it came to power. Religion in particular is carefully controlled by means of a host of laws designed to prevent ethnic flare-ups. The government limits proselytizing and tries to be sensitive about all religious matters, especially concerning Islam. As former prime minister Goh put it, “When religion is involved there is no way you quench the fire once it is started, and we are very fearful of that.”⁴⁷ The basic idea is to keep the followers of different religions separate as a way of securing a modus vivendi, rather than fostering interreligious dialogue and mutual understanding that might lead to a greater sense of national community.

Outside the religious realm, however, the PAP did try to pursue more integrative policies. The main aim was to combat ethnic parochialism by fostering the growth of a new Singaporean identity that would underpin security and prosperity. Hence, it adopted “multiracialism” as a founding principle, meaning that the different groups should mix in social settings while maintaining their distinctive cultural practices and live in equality and peace. One integrative policy was the national public housing program known as the HDB (Housing Development Board). Before HDB flats were built, the population resided in relatively discrete and homogenous ethnic enclaves. To foster “racial harmony,” the government has enforced physical integration of the races within the housing estates. It broke up “racial districts through squatter clearance and re-housing different residents into high-rise, high-density, public-housing estates. The different races have been redistributed by quota into each housing estate and into each block of public housing. As it stands, each block of public housing will reflect approximately the proportion of the racial composition of the total Singaporean population; approximately 75 percent Chinese, 17 percent Malay and 8 percent Indians.”⁴⁸ The integrative housing policy has obvious disadvantages, such as uprooting people from their communities, freezing racial categories, imposing costs on “hybrid” families, and making it harder for minority groups to pursue their religious activities (e.g., the proximity of the toilet to the kitchen in HDB flats, a practice inherited from the design of colonial Chinese shop houses, makes it harder for Hindus to follow traditional rituals of cleanliness).⁴⁹ But it also helps to explain the absence of violence between the different racial groups since the PAP took power. And the fact that people living in publicly subsidized housing have been given a sense of ownership (today, 85 percent of the population lives in HDB housing, of which 80 percent have ninety-nine-year leases on their flats) means that most Singaporeans now have a stake in the nation’s prosperity, one of the key pillars of nation building.

It took a while to gain the confidence of my students. Eventually, however, the students loosened up, especially during small-group tutorials in my office. Shortly before I left Singapore, I asked a few students how many would willingly sacrifice their lives for their country in the event of a war, and nobody answered affirmatively (one said he would do it for his family but not his nation).

Another integrative measure was national service. Lee did not have confidence that Singapore could be independent in providing its own security, but he was persuaded by Dr. Goh to build up a national army and to implement compulsory military service. Singapore did have a model—Israel—in meeting its security challenges. As a small country surrounded by large, potentially hostile, and predominantly Muslim neighbors, Singapore looked to Israel for guidance. As Lee put it, “We intend to fight for our stake in this part of the world, and [to] anybody who thinks they can push us around, I say: over my dead body…. We opted for the Israeli fashion, for in our situation we think it might be necessary not only to train every boy but also every girl to be a disciplined and effective digit in defense of their country.”⁵⁰ Lee’s government invited a group of Israeli military advisers (disguised as Mexicans to avoid upsetting the Muslim neighbors) to provide covert training of Singapore’s defense force, and in 1967 Singapore introduced an Israeli-style policy of compulsory national service. The effectiveness of national service as an integrative device, however, has been limited. Only men are conscripted (unlike in Israel) and there is limited enlistment of Malays, who could not be trusted to fight for Singapore in the event of a war with its neighbors⁵¹ (though national service has been more open to Malays of late). Plus, Singapore (unlike Israel) has not fought a war since independence, and the value of national service is frequently questioned, especially in private. As Straits Times columnist Koh Buck Song put it, “There is, quite clearly, some cynicism about the whole business of defending a country…. I have seen some, from bosses to observers without vested interests, not only being dismissive of the sacrifice involved in National Service, but also apparently devoid of any patriotic feeling.”⁵²

With respect to language, the PAP felt it had to make even more unpopular decisions. In the early 1960s, it decided to have four official languages (Malay, Mandarin, Tamil, and English) with Malay as the national language. Singapore’s future was viewed in the context of a merger with Malaya, and non-Malays were encouraged to learn Malay. The Malays were also given special recognition as indigenous peoples, mostly symbolic, in the Constitution.⁵³ After independence in 1965, however, the PAP veered away from the “Malay-centric” ethnic and language policies. But it could not create a new identity by favoring Chinese culture and language without causing serious internal tension and inviting criticism if not aggression from neighboring countries. Hence, the government decided to promote English as the main language of education, with “mother tongues” as secondary. English also had the advantage of being the main language of international commerce and trade, and thus widespread use of English would give Singapore a competitive edge. The promotion of English also involved overriding the wishes of all groups, however, including the majority Chinese. Lee explicitly states that Singapore’s language policy was incompatible with majority rule:

Supposing we had chosen Chinese or tried to sponsor Chinese, how would we make a living? How would we fit ourselves into the region and into the world? We could not have made a living. But the Chinese then would have wanted it. And if we had taken the vote, we would have had to follow that policy. So when people say, “Oh, ask the people!”, it’s childish rubbish. We are leaders. We know the consequences…. They say people can think for themselves? Do you honestly believe the chap who can’t pass primary six knows the consequences of his choice when he answers a question viscerally, on language, culture, and religion? But we knew the consequences. We would starve, we would have race riots. We would disintegrate.⁵⁴

Of course, the English language policy also served the PAP leaders’ interests. For one thing, they were part of the minority of relatively privileged English-educated Singaporeans whose power could be made more secure in an English-speaking environment. Christopher Tremewan argues that the PAP could also use the English-educated to demolish the Chinese-educated and destroy the Chinese working-class political opposition.⁵⁵

Though such autocratic measures—the breaking up of ethnic enclaves, compulsory military service, and English-language education—were highly unpopular at first, it could be argued that they were gradually accepted by the population at large. By the mid-1980s, for example, most Singaporeans were comfortable with English as the leading medium of education and government, and few argued for the reestablishment of residential ethnic enclaves. Perhaps nation building really was on the verge of success.

September 2009. After a couple of hours with Chua Beng Huat at the hawker center, we are joined by another old friend, the political theorist Benjamin Wong. Ben and Beng Huat greet each other warmly and break out in a more heavily accented Singaporean English, an accent I’ve always found appealing because it reminds me of the way some Francophones speak English in Quebec. After more hawker food and cold beer, I ask Ben what one thing he thinks the Singapore government could do to improve. He says that the government should loosen up on the regulation of culture and language. He points out that Toronto, where he did his doctoral work, is even more multicultural than Singapore and yet the various groups generally get along fine and don’t need to be constantly reminded of language and culture difference, made to feel inferior if they speak “hybrid” languages like Singlish, or forced to fit into different racial classifications.

At that point, the government could have loosened up on the regulation and remaking of culture, allowing for more natural expression and evolution. Perhaps it could have progressively reduced, if not eliminated, compulsory military service, moving to a Costa Rican model of demilitarization rather than continuing with the Israeli model. It could also have pursued integrative policies of a softer character, like a one-year compulsory period of national civil service open to young Singaporeans of both genders. And the whole process could have been accompanied by political liberalization and more freedom of speech, since the government would have less need to rely on strong-arm measures to secure domestic tranquility.

But history took a different turn. The PAP decided to prioritize ethnic identities, especially Chinese (Mandarin) language and culture. It launched “Speak Mandarin” campaigns that encouraged Chinese Singaporeans to speak Mandarin rather than dialects in social settings. In education, the government placed more emphasis on mother-tongue teaching, with children of each “racial group” being forced to study their “own” language in addition to English (though the government has since recognized that the bilingual policy was too demanding, and it has cut back on language requirements for admission to university). In the late 1980s, the government also promoted religious education in secondary schools, with different religions corresponding roughly to the different ethnic groups. Most controversial, the government promoted ethnic-based welfare by scrapping the idea of a national organization for the underachievers of all ethnic groups in favor of an ethnic-based welfare scheme, with each group looking after “its own” poor.

It is worth asking why the government’s official rhetoric and policies took an ethnic turn in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The most charitable explanation is that Singaporean leaders were driven by economic imperatives. They had sufficient foresight in the late 1980s to anticipate the economic and political rise of China and decided that Singapore should emphasize its “Chineseness” to maintain its comparative advantage in the international marketplace. As it turns out, China has become Singapore’s third largest trading partner and biggest investment destination, and the two countries signed a free-trade agreement in late 2008.

Another possible reason for the renewed emphasis on ethnicity may lie in Lee’s own personality and the fact that other “founding fathers” (who had lost political clout) were less able to constrain Lee’s own preferences than they had been earlier.⁵⁶ Lee never hid his outlook: “You know there are innate prejudices. And I don’t pretend that I don’t share those prejudices. I do. If one of my sons had come back and said, ‘I’ve got this American lady who I met in America,’ my first question is, what color is she?”⁵⁷ He is also explicit that his own racial identity actually strengthened over the years: “Everybody knows that we are a long way, very long way from a real, genuine, Singaporean Chinese…. One reason why I am now perhaps more Chinese than I was 30 years, 40 years ago, is because, as a result of learning, reading and so on, growing old, I understand that human nature does not change.”⁵⁸ Perhaps he came to the “realization” that those prejudices are also deeply held by others, with the implication that it’s best to work with them rather than to put forth policies based on the utopian assumption that they can be transcended.

Ethnic-based welfare has been criticized because it imposes costs on children of mixed marriages who are forced into the government’s racial categories.⁵⁹ Moreover, the formal equality among ethnic groups tends to mask the fact that legal equality of treatment favors the disproportionately well-off Chinese group.⁶⁰ With a lower demographic and financial basis, Malays do not have the same capacity to help underachieving and relatively poor Malays, so the inequalities between groups are perpetuated, if not exacerbated.⁶¹

In 1992, I was asked to teach a large (more than three hundred students) first-year “Introduction to Political Theory” course. I had replaced an expatriate who relied solely on Western sources, and I decided to give greater recognition to Asian civilizations in the course curriculum. The course started off with the theme of “Politics without Morality,” but instead of Machiavelli, I decided to draw on the ancient Chinese thinker Han Feizi (ca. 280–233 BCE) a profoundly cynical proponent of realpolitik who is regarded as a founder of the Legalist school in Chinese political thought. I used Chinese characters from Han Fei’s original text during the lectures, which most students could understand. In the next part of the course, on “Morality without Politics,” I discussed the views of anarchist thinkers but made an effort to discuss the views of Daoist thinkers as well. And for the last part, on “Morality and Politics,” I drew on Aristotle and Mill but also discussed the views of Confucius. I hoped that students would appreciate my attempts to incorporate more Asian viewpoints in the course syllabus.

Shortly before my last lecture, a student slipped a letter signed X under my office door. It was not friendly. The student accused me of racism—more specifically, of glorifying Chinese thinkers and denigrating the cultural contributions of minority groups. I tried to rebut the accusations in class, but a Singaporean colleague and friend pointed out that I was partly to blame because I had discussed the contributions only of Chinese thinkers. The point is not whether I actually endorsed their arguments; merely presenting them in class showed that I took them seriously. And by excluding the contributions of Muslim and Indian thinkers from the curriculum, I was implicitly sending the message that their views were unimportant and uninteresting—or at least that is how it would be seen by Malay and Indian students. My use of Chinese characters further contributed to the alienation of minority students, since they would not be able to follow. I subsequently tried to correct the bias by incorporating relevant readings from classics in the Islamic and Hindu traditions and sticking to English in class.

Combined with the “Speak Mandarin” slogans plastered all over Singapore and Lee’s open defense of the idea that “strong Chinese values” can and should influence non-Chinese Singaporeans, such de facto favoritism for the relatively well-off Chinese majority exacerbated the political alienation of minority groups in Singapore.⁶² The PAP responded with measures to increase minority groups’ political representation, such as a system of guaranteeing a seat for minority candidates in multiseat constituencies termed the Group Representation Constituency (GRC) system. But such measures were also designed to solidify the PAP’s grip on power: the political motivation was made explicit shortly before the 1997 election when the PAP increased the size of GRCs from four to six seats without increasing minority representation.

Obviously, such ethnic-based policies seem particularly problematic from the perspective of nation building because the government is effectively sanctioning the privileging of attachment to the racial group over attachment to the nation. As the opposition politician Chee Soon Juan puts it, “These race-based communities will become increasingly inward looking and their concerns more communally parochial. It is difficult to see, in such a set-up, how a strong national spirit can be forged.”⁶³ In view of Singapore’s sensitive geopolitical context, it is worth inquiring further about political motives that may help to explain the renewed emphasis on ethnicity, and Chineseness in particular. Whatever the costs to nation building, Singapore’s call for pride in Asian culture also coincided with the interests of leaders of less than democratic neighboring countries, so there was less to worry about on that front.

A couple of years into my contract, I attended a talk at the National University of Singapore by a prominent Singaporean diplomat and public intellectual. It was titled “Why Southeast Asia Is Doing Better than Southeast Europe”—at the time, Indonesia was politically stable under President Suharto and Yugoslavia was breaking up into warring ethnic tribes—and his answer was basically that authoritarian regimes helped to secure the peace and provide the foundation for economic development. (Suharto’s regime collapsed a few years later and Indonesia has become a flourishing democracy.) Although I have a strong aversion to Western political preaching, I was really put off by the speaker’s smug tone and could not restrain myself. I went up to the microphone, said that I’m also interested in comparative politics, and asked why Singapore is the only developed country, other than a few oil-rich states in the Gulf, that hasn’t adopted political democracy. I regretted my words as soon as I spoke, knowing that I had fallen into the trap of a great polemicist. The speaker responded that I’m a typical Westerner with an imperial mindset who thinks that democracy is best for everybody, and I should reflect more on my own prejudices. Most of the audience applauded.

It is no coincidence that the renewed emphasis on Asian pride and heritage took place at the same time the Soviet empire was collapsing and liberal democracy seemed to be sweeping the globe. Singapore’s leaders became concerned about the inroads made by Western culture and values, especially ideas of political democracy. Their response was to construct the notion of “Asian values,” a term devised for the purpose of challenging Western-style civil and political freedoms. The most common argument put forward in the name of Asian values was that such freedoms need to be sacrificed in order to meet more basic material needs.⁶⁴ But the Asian values message soon came under critical scrutiny. Even if it is true that freedoms need to be sacrificed in the early stages of development, why should they continue to be sacrificed now that Singapore has become one of the world’s wealthiest countries in terms of GDP per capita? Is the argument really about values or is it an empirical argument about tradeoffs between competing goods? And what exactly are the values that are supposed to be shared throughout a region as diverse as Asia? Does democratic India also share those values? In response to such criticisms, Lee soon shifted ground, claiming that he was really referring only to values shared by East Asian countries with a Confucian heritage underpinning their economic development. But are they really “Confucian” values?

Shortly after I left Singapore, I had lunch with an influential proponent of Confucianism who was teaching at a major American university. He had been invited to help design the Confucian ethics curriculum in Singapore schools in the late 1980s (as part of a religious ethics curriculum that was ultimately abandoned because it threatened to reignite religious controversies) and had had personal interactions with Lee Kuan Yew. I asked about Lee’s interest in Confucianism, and my interlocutor simply sighed and said, “He doesn’t understand, he doesn’t understand.”

Confucianism is a rich and diverse tradition with certain common threads. In politics, it emphasizes rule by ritual and moral example rather than reliance on punishment, the pursuit of harmony rather than conformity, and a political ideal of a peaceful and borderless world. In addition, the dominant Mencian strain holds the optimistic view that human nature can flourish with the right sort of moral education. The early Confucians were severely criticized by Legalist thinkers such as Han Feizi on the grounds that light rule would lead to disaster in a dangerous world full of self-interested political actors. Hence, state power needed to be strengthened by means of laws and harsh punishments. Han Fei’s aim was nothing less than total state control, and he repeatedly stressed that moral considerations should not get in the way. Not surprisingly, rulers were quite receptive to this sort of advice, starting with the ruthless king of Qin who ascended to the throne in 246 BCE and drew on Han Fei’s advice to conquer and rule all of China under the title of First Emperor of the Qin dynasty. As well as building (part of) the Great Wall and the necropolis complex of terracotta warriors, the king of Qin buried several hundred Confucian scholars alive with their books. This dynasty was short-lived but Han Fei’s influence persisted.

So yes, Lee Kuan Yew may have been influenced by Chinese political culture. But the Legalist influence is far more apparent. To be fair, Lee has yet to kill any of his political opponents or openly defend the killing of innocent people. But his cynical view that you “either dominate or you are dominated,”⁶⁵ his reliance on harsh punishments to control the lives of his subjects, his aversion to pluralism, his lack of humility, his hardball tactics against critical journalists and opposition voices, and his calls for a “rugged society” to underpin a strong and rich state all point to Lee as a modern Legalist. Perhaps that’s the key reason Lee turned away from nation building and integrative policies in the mid-1980s. At that time, nation building could have been enhanced by political liberalization. But instead Lee needed to emphasize racial divisions because there’s no better means to smother calls for political liberalization. The aim, in his mind, is to build a strong state rather than a strong nation.

THE VALUE OF MERITOCRACY

A letter, sent by regular mail to my mother’s address in Montreal, informed me that I’d be interviewed for a teaching post in the department of political science at the National University. I prepared diligently for the interview, reviewing the greats of political theory as well as recent debates. I expected to be interviewed by a panel of experts who would aim to pick the best candidate by testing knowledge of the field. They paid for my ticket to Washington, DC, and I took a taxi to the address on the letter. To my surprise, it was the Singaporean embassy, not a university. I was ushered upstairs and, to my further surprise, I was met by the Singaporean ambassador to the United States. The ambassador greeted me and asked me to sit down. First question: Why did you go to Cuba in 1985? I wondered how he had found out—to this day, I still don’t know the answer—and told him it was part of a tour organized by McGill University to learn about tropical agriculture. Second question: Are you a communist? No, I answered, definitely not; I’m a communitarian. It’s a movement in political theory that calls into question the individualistic tendencies of liberalism. He seemed satisfied by that answer and said, “Enjoy your stay in Singapore.” End of interview. I was pleased by the outcome but puzzled by the process and harbored doubts about whether I truly deserved the job. Had I been hired because I was the best candidate or just because I espoused communitarianism?

The government of Singapore is elected by the people, but the electoral process is not democratic, even according to the minimal definition of democracy as holding free and fair competitive elections for the country’s most important political decision makers. As Samuel Huntington notes, such elections are possible only if there is some measure of free speech, assembly, and press, and if opposition candidates and parties are able to criticize incumbents without fear of retaliation.⁶⁶ But in Singapore, individual ballots are numbered (the government, at least in principle, can check who voted for what party, which could be a restraining influence on those who might otherwise vote for the opposition); promising opposition candidates are publicly humiliated, bankrupted, and/or sacked from their jobs on dubious grounds; the government explicitly threatens to withdraw services, such as upgrading of public housing, from constituencies that support the opposition; and the progovernment media provides little, if any, time and space for the opposition to present its views But such antidemocratic practices should not come as a surprise, given Lee Kuan Yew’s very public arguments against democracy. His son Lee Hsien Loong, the current prime minister of Singapore, made similar arguments: “Suppose you have 10, 15, 20, opposition members in Parliament. Instead of spending my time thinking what is the right policy for Singapore, I’m going to spend my time thinking of ways to fix them, to buy my supporters ‘vote.’”⁶⁷

In the minds of most foreign observers, Singapore should be labeled an authoritarian state. But Singapore’s leaders do not accept the premise that a state should be described as either democratic or authoritarian. Rather, they argue that the concept of meritocracy best describes Singapore’s political system: given Singapore’s small population and limited resource base, the country should be led by the people with the greatest talent and best characters, chosen according to merit. Let us borrow Lee Kuan Yew’s own words once again:

Singapore is a society based on effort and merit, not wealth and privilege depending on birth. [The elite provides] the direction, planning, and control of [state] power] in the people’s interest…. It is on this group that we expend our limited and slender resources in order that they will provide the yeast, that ferment, that catalyst in our society which alone will ensure that Singapore shall maintain … the social organization which enables us, with almost no natural resources, to provide the second highest standard of living in Asia…. The main burden of present planning and implementation rests on the shoulders of some 300 key persons…. The people come from poor and middle class homes. They come from different language schools. Singapore is a meritocracy. And these men have risen through their own merit, hard work and high performance.⁶⁸

The basic idea of meritocracy is that everybody should have an equal opportunity to be educated and to contribute to society and politics, but not everybody will emerge from the process with an equal capacity to make informed moral and political judgments. Hence, the task of politics is to identify those with above-average ability and to make them serve the community. If the leaders perform well, the people will basically go along.

My wife and I attend a meeting of Singapore’s Oxford/Cambridge Society, with a Singapore government minister as guest speaker. The speaker is asked why the government needs to limit distribution of periodicals such as the Far Eastern Economic Review, given that they can be easily obtained by crossing the border into Malaysia. He replies, laughing, “Of course we know that. We’re not worried about you. The smart ones will find ways to get information; that’s fine. We’re worried about the HDB heartlanders [lower- to middle-class people living in public housing]; they’re the ones we need to look after, to make sure they are taken care of and not exposed to too much information that can play on the emotions.”

Such an approach resonates strongly with the Confucian ideals of Singapore’s Chinese community: as Lee Hsien Loong explains, “many Confucian ideals are still relevant to us. An example is the concept of government by honourable men (junzi), who have a duty to do right for the people, and who have the trust and respect of the population. This fits us better than the Western concept that a government should be given as limited powers as possible, and always be treated with suspicion, unless proved otherwise.”⁶⁹

It is easy to dismiss such statements as the self-serving arguments of leaders who seek to justify constraints on democracy. But the Singapore government, perhaps more than any other government in the world, has attempted to institutionalize the ideal of political meritocracy. The Singapore educational system is ruthlessly competitive, with the top performers “groomed for future command.”⁷⁰ Cabinet ministers have outstanding educational and performance records, and an increasing proportion of political leaders enter government service through an achievement-based government scholarship.⁷¹ In the late 1960s, the PAP fielded several candidates with PhDs, but Lee discovered that academic achievement alone was not sufficient, eventually turning to technocrats with proven records of performance. By the mid-1980s, party recruitment also included a growing number of “scholar-soldiers” from the Singapore Armed Forces. Dr. Goh worked out a more formal and standardized selection process influenced by the Shell Corporation’s system of choosing executives with “helicopter quality,” meaning the ability to focus on critical details while keeping the big picture in perspective. The process involves recommendations by government and corporate leaders, “tea parties” with ministers, an extensive probe into a candidate’s character, motivation, and ability to be a “team player,” and then interviews with top government officials. Candidates are then deployed in different constituencies to undergo basic training and engage in political work at the grassroots level, and those with ministerial potential are given one and a half days of psychological testing, involving more than one thousand questions. The examinations are meant to test for power of analysis, imagination, and sense of reality.⁷²

Still, it’s worth asking if the rigorous selection process adopted by the PAP is as meritocratic as it could be. For one thing, the system seems biased in favor of high performers in the same academic areas pursued by government leaders when they were students. The chosen individuals tend to have “backgrounds in law, engineering, science, business management and other essentially formalist or quantitative disciplines.”⁷³ Is it possible that the selection of high performers in the humanities could lead to a more humane form of government? If the government were really inspired by Confucian ideals, it might consider the view that political leaders should be trained in the “six arts,” including music, designed to improve moral judgment and the powers of empathy, not simply the ability to manage the state in the most efficient way.

The selection process also seems to reinforce traditional biases, meaning that the opportunities for mobility in education and politics may not be as open as advertised. The gender bias is most evident—there has yet to be a single female cabinet member in Singapore’s political history, and the increased reliance on “scholar-soldiers” (who have never done any actual fighting) does not augur well for change. The system also seems to reward political conformity and to exclude creative and critical voices that may not look like team players. Despite some scholarships designed to pay the school fees of the few needy students who excel against all odds, Singapore-style meritocracy is severely constrained by the operation of class and privilege: “the elite schools have been ‘elite’ not only in the sense that they have exceptionally high academic and teaching standards, but also in that they cater almost exclusively for children from socially and financially privileged families.”⁷⁴ And the overlap of class and race—with the Malays being the poorest community in Singapore—means that the system also has a built-in ethnic bias.⁷⁵ And things are getting worse: since the 1980s, the position of non-Chinese in the educational stakes has deteriorated.⁷⁶ The increased prominence of scholars with a military background among the political elite, along with the institutionalized discrimination against Malays in the military, can only exacerbate discrimination against minorities in the selection process for the political elite.

A friend reports meeting with a former government minister. The former minister, visibly upset, asks, “Who is the most hated man in Singapore?” My friend replies, “You mean Lee Kuan Yew?” The former minister says, “Yes! He doesn’t trust anybody except his own family!”

Lee Kuan Yew has lived by the Machiavellian maxim that it is better for a political leader to be feared than to be loved. His outspoken support for crackpot eugenics theories,⁷⁷ and his attempts to institutionalize them through schemes such as incentives for educated mothers to have babies and sterilization for the less-educated, were highly controversial—if only because they deviated from the value of equal opportunity that is at the heart of the meritocratic ideal—and this was one of the few times he was forced to retreat from his political goals. But the most controversial feature of Singapore’s political life—and the most obvious challenge to the ideal of meritocracy—is that fact that the Lee family controls so much of Singapore’s political and economic power. Lee himself chairs the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC), the opaque sovereign wealth fund with estimated assets of U.S. $330 billion.⁷⁸ His son is prime minister and vice-chairman of the wealth fund. His son’s wife, Ho Ching, heads the government-linked Temasek Holdings (previously, she was chief executive of Singapore Technologies, the country’s biggest government-linked conglomerate). Ho Ching was supposed to resign following Temasek’s recent economic reversals but she has continued to serve since an American businessman declined the offer to head the organization. Lee Kuan Yew’s youngest son, Lee Hsien Yang, was CEO of SingTel, the nation’s telecommunications giant (and its largest listed company, with the government as the majority shareholder).⁷⁹ He is now the nonexecutive chairman of Fraser & Leave Limited (a major property developer and juice manufacturer) and chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore. No doubt the Lee family is talented, and its members have proven their ability in competitive academic settings, in business, and in politics. But it seems hard for anyone outside the Lee family to believe that their achievements are based entirely on ability, that family connections are only incidental, and that no one else is qualified to do what they’re doing.

Another controversial feature of Singapore-style meritocracy is the idea that, as Lee Hsien Loong puts it, “in a meritocratic society, earning power corresponds to ability.”⁸⁰ Since government officials are supposed to be among the country’s most talented, they receive handsome rewards for jobs well done. High-performing administrative officers in their early thirties get paid “hundreds of thousands [of Singapore dollars].”⁸¹ At the apex of the pay scale are government ministers, with the prime minister himself receiving 3.1 million Singapore dollars a year, five times more than the salary of the U.S. president.⁸² Obvious questions come to mind. Given that the government votes itself such salaries in the context of a severely authoritarian political environment with a compliant media, can such payments be described as legalized corruption?⁸³ And why should pay correspond to ability? Karl Marx said that the lower form of communism would be characterized by the meritocratic ideal—“from each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution”—but he went on to argue that “it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment and thus productive capacity as natural privileges.”⁸⁴ Why should people be rewarded according to natural talents that, as John Rawls famously put it, are “arbitrary from a moral point of view”? The Singapore government explains that such high salaries are necessary to prevent corruption and to attract persons of talent from the private sector,⁸⁵ and it might add, in a Rawlsian vein, that such highly paid political rulers enact policies that end up benefitting the worst-off Singaporeans. Nonetheless, it is hard to believe that astronomical salaries are really necessary to attract political talent.

From a nation-building perspective, here’s the key objection: such salaries send a profoundly unpatriotic message to the community at large. If even founding fathers and the sons of founding fathers need to be motivated by obscene sums of money to serve the political community, why would anyone else bother serving the community?⁸⁶ The PAP itself often appeals to the Confucian idea that political leaders are supposed to serve as political exemplars for the rest of the community, but the model they set is that nobody should sacrifice for the national good without being paid lots of money for it. In 1998 and 1999, in the midst of the Asian economic crisis, ministerial and civil service salaries were frozen, but Central Provident Fund contributions of employers were scaled way back—in effect, a salary cut for most employees. As one letter writer to the Straits Times commented, “We will endure if our leaders endure with us.”⁸⁷ Yet one year later, huge salary increases were announced for government ministers (20 percent) and civil servants (13 percent) before ordinary people’s pension contributions were restored.

But the “model from the top” may be just the surface manifestation of the atomizing effects of Singapore-style meritocracy. The deeper problem lies with the educational system that instills ultracompetitive behavior at young ages. In 1979, an education study team headed by Dr. Goh responded to the finding that many children did not cope well with learning two languages by proposing early “streaming” (tracking) for children at the end of primary 3 (third grade). An unintended effect of early streaming is that parents did all they could to prevent their children from being labeled as “failures,” leading to a drastic increase in recourse to private tutors and pressure on children to cram and get top results throughout every step of their school careers.⁸⁸ The pressure-cooker school system exacerbated “kiasuism,” a Hokkien term that literally means “afraid to lose,” referring to all kinds of small-mindedness and selfish behavior to get the better of others. The state attempts to counter kiasuism by means of public campaigns aimed at promoting gracious and civilized behavior, “but the spirit of competition and self-interest always seems to make a higher claim on people’s behavior.”⁸⁹

PATRIOTISM AND POLITICAL REPRESSION

September 2009. Following a long absence, I return to Singapore for research. On the taxi ride from the airport, I ask the driver what he likes about Singapore. He says he’s proud of his country, mentioning the cleanliness, the food, and the greenery. I ask if there have been any changes since I left in 1994, and he mentions the Flyer (a big Ferris wheel). I ask about politics, and he says it’s pretty much the same: “We don’t talk about politics here.” I tell him I now live in China and say a few things in Chinese, but he says he was educated in English and doesn’t speak much Chinese. He says he works twelve to fourteen hours per day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. His wife stays at home, and he has a sixteen-year-old daughter. He says he must pay for her schooling and asks me if it’s true that education is free in Western countries. I tell him secondary education is usually free, but we don’t get subsidized housing. Now that our conversation has become more intimate, I try to return to the theme of politics. He repeats the claim that we can’t talk about politics. I ask why not, and he mentions Article 23, the internal security act that allows for detention without trial. I tell him surely nobody will get thrown in jail for talking about politics in a taxi, and he responds, “Why talk about politics? We have food, lah.” He then asks if I want some jewelry for my wife; he knows where to go. I tell him no thanks. Then he offers to take me to Orchard Towers, the complex in downtown Singapore colloquially known as “four floors of whores.” I say no thanks.

My argument so far is that the Singaporean government has promoted three values—material well-being, multiracialism, and meritocracy—in ways that have systematically undermined the aim of nation building. Instead of forging a Singaporean nation composed of public-spirited citizens ready and willing to sacrifice for the common national good, the government has effectively promoted an extreme form of individualism that justifies ultracompetitive and selfish behavior. And yet, somehow, a nation seems to have emerged from the wreckage. According to a survey of 1,451 Singaporean citizens conducted by the Institute of Policy Studies, Singaporeans are very proud of their country, ranking third out of twenty-four countries, ahead of Canada and on a par with the United States. Almost all citizens—95 percent—agreed or strongly agreed that they were proud to be Singaporeans and that they loved Singapore. Among the various ethnic groups, Indians and Malays scored higher than the Chinese, and those with higher education scored lowest. Three in four Singaporeans said that they would not leave the country in the event of war, while two in three said that they would defend Singapore even if it meant losing their lives.⁹⁰ I was initially skeptical of these findings, if only because they seem much more positive than survey results quoted by the opposition. Is it really the case that Singaporeans love their country to the point of being willing to die for it? And how can it be that ethnic minorities and the poor, who are supposed to be victims of the system, are more patriotic than the rest? Perhaps their answers were not sincere? And perhaps the respondents were fooling themselves; when push comes to shove, will they really fight for their nation?

During my 2009 visit, I am graciously hosted by the East Asian Institute, formerly the Institute of East Asian Political Economy, where my wife used to work. I learn with sadness that Dr. Goh’s health is not good.⁹¹ At the initial meeting, one of my wife’s former bosses notes jokingly that I was not always a “harmonious” presence in Singapore. I laugh and say, yes, perhaps I was too impatient and confrontational in those days.

But then it hit me. What if my theory was wrong? What if Singaporeans really are true patriots? Perhaps my own motivation should be questioned. I may have been looking for certain conclusions because of my own less than happy experience in Singapore, having arrived at a time when the nation seemed poised to embark on a path of political openness (perhaps only newly arrived foreigners like me were deluded). It could be that my expectations of a communitarian alternative to liberal individualism were romantic delusions. And maybe my own experience at the National University of Singapore was unusually bad luck: today, the department of political science is run by a respected American political theorist who applies the same meritocratic criteria that would operate in universities elsewhere. Perhaps I spent too much time talking with foreigners and critical intellectuals. Can it be that most ordinary Singaporeans view the country as a land of opportunity and upward mobility, particularly if they compare their fate to that of earlier generations and people in surrounding countries?

But my argument can’t be entirely wrong. It draws on the words of political leaders and three years of lived experience, as well as social scientific research and in-depth discussions with reflective Singaporeans. Here’s what may have happened: Singaporeans have become more patriotic since I left, a finding supported by the survey quoted earlier, which compares results with 1993. How could that have happened? For one thing, time may have done the trick. No matter what the government does, most people need a sense of belonging, and people grow attached to the place where they were born and bred. In the case of Singapore, one would expect more patriotism among the new generation, which did not experience the freer atmosphere of the 1960s and may not view their country as an “accidental” state. Food may be part of the explanation. As Lin Yutang put it, “What is patriotism but the love of food one ate as a child?”⁹² It is certainly not hard to imagine growing attached to Singapore’s magnificent and diverse cuisine.

My hotel, as it turns out, is two blocks away from Orchard Towers. Out for a stroll, I walk into the Towers and am immediately propositioned by a tall “lady” of ambiguous gender characteristics. I say no thanks and turn inside to make use of the toilet facilities. A female voice on a loudspeaker says that smoking is strictly forbidden on the premises, but “other than that, have a good time.” I continue my stroll, but it’s too hot. I descend into a bar in the basement of the Grand Hyatt, right in the center of town. There is an excellent reggae band, and I’m immediately propositioned by a classy lady of the evening. When I say no thanks, she turns to a businessman at the next table. Yes, I knew that prostitution is effectively legalized in Singapore—more than fifteen years ago, my own wife accompanied some Chinese officials on a tour of state-sanctioned brothels to learn about how the Singapore government manages sex workers—but the place seems to have become a hotbed of the official and unofficial sex trade. I retreat to my hotel room and continue to reevaluate my earlier perceptions of Singapore.

Over the course of the past fifteen years, the heavy hand of the state has loosened somewhat. The period of compulsory national service has been shortened from two and a half years to two years. Laws that have made Singapore the butt of jokes, such as the ban on the sale of chewing gum, have been relaxed or repealed (technology has taken care of some problems; for example, the invention of self-flushing urinals means that it’s no longer necessary to fine people who don’t flush toilets). It’s fair to say that the old pun about Singapore—“It’s a fine city”—has become obsolete. The government no longer sends constant reminders of how great a job it’s doing, instead letting actions (such as its effective measures to lead Singapore out of the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and the global financial crisis of late 2008) do most of the talking. The art scene is more lively, and satirical movies and works about Singaporean society and politics are tolerated, if not encouraged.⁹³ Even immigration policy has loosened up somewhat, with citizenship being awarded to American businessmen⁹⁴ and others who do not fit neatly in the government’s racial classification of the Singaporean person.

My old friend Kevin Tan, formerly a professor of constitutional law at the National University of Singapore, takes me out to dinner with his family. He has pulled his two girls out of the school system in favor of home schooling. Kevin was indirectly criticized in a parliamentary debate by Lee Kuan Yew himself, and has been passed over for tenured positions, despite his outstanding scholarly output and teaching contributions. Today, he must content himself with part-time teaching appointments. He writes books on leaders in Singapore’s political history and heads a nongovernmental organization (NGO) known as the Singapore Heritage Society. The NGO organizes talks on history and mobilizes to protect Singapore’s historical sites and buildings. Patriotism, he explains, is more than just material interest; there must be an emotional attachment to a place, and familiarity with history and buildings is part of the story. And his NGO is not just for Singaporeans: many foreign longtime residents are members. Kevin mentions the case of former Australian prisoners of war who mobilized to prevent the destruction of Changi prison: the Australian government became involved, and eventually a compromise was reached to preserve parts of the jail that date from World War II. After dinner, we visit the Asia Insurance Building, a beautiful 1954 structure in art deco style that was once the tallest building in Southeast Asia. Kevin’s NGO had mobilized to prevent its destruction, and today it’s the fancy Ascott Hotel, tastefully combining modern amenities with the original décor.

Asia Insurance Building (designed by Ng Keng Siang), Singapore. Photograph © Jeremy San Tzer Ning / Stzern Studio with permission.

Most significant, the government has loosened its hold on civil society. Perhaps the government has finally acknowledged that a vibrant associational life is the real secret to patriotism. The basic idea is that intermediary associations between the family and the state are essential for patriotism because they break down social isolation and allow people to cooperate and to discover common interests and values that may otherwise have gone unnoticed. As Tocqueville put it, associations are “large free schools,” where citizens “take a look at something other than themselves,”⁹⁵ and where political interests are stimulated and organizational skills enhanced. Such associations counter the disposition to give precedence to personal ends over the public interest and they lead to a broader sense of public spiritedness. Of course, civil society can also take nasty forms, as in Ku Klux Klan associations, but the Singaporean government has intervened to protect the liberal character of civil society. In one case, after a group of evangelical Christians resorted to dubious means to take over leadership of AWARE, a feminist NGO, the government lent implicit support to restoration of the previous leadership. In another case, the nominated MP Thio Li-Ann gave an inflammatory speech in Parliament arguing against a measure to decriminalize homosexual sodomy on the grounds that homosexuality is a “gender identity disorder,” and that anal sex was akin to “shoving a straw up your nose to drink.”⁹⁶ The measure failed to pass, but the government rarely if ever enforces the law against sodomy. Today, the gay scene in Singapore is one of the most vibrant in Asia. It’s as though the government recognizes the need to appease a deeply conservative constituency by means of legal forms, while turning a blind eye to behavior that doesn’t harm others.

More talk at the hawker center with Beng Huat, who is known as one of Singapore’s most prominent liberal intellectuals. He says it’s better for kids to be brought up in a conservative environment, and once they grow up they can choose to live in a liberal society if they prefer. If they’re brought up in a liberal environment, with easy access to temptations such as drugs and activities that interfere with schoolwork, they may be damaged for life and, even if they get through it, they are not likely to appreciate the virtues of living in a conservative society. In other words, their choices as adults will be more limited. As the father of a sixteen-year-old son (and with memories of my own somewhat decadent teenage years, which I somehow managed to survive), I find myself agreeing with Beng Huat, and I’m happy that my son is being brought up in the relatively conservative atmosphere of Beijing. It also occurs to me that my son was conceived in Singapore, and that—as a Eurasian (to borrow Singaporean terminology) who speaks English and Mandarin and has a soft spot for high-quality food—he might actually “fit in” there later.

I do not mean to imply that Singapore has become a liberal society. The government still takes harsh measures against those who disrupt social order, such as the famous case of the American teenager Michael Fay, who was sentenced to caning for theft and vandalism. It sends police to monitor the potted plants of Singaporean residents to ensure that they do not serve as breeding grounds for dengue fever–spreading mosquitoes. The death penalty is mandatory for possession of small amounts of drugs, and the police have the power to subject drug suspects to urine analysis. Such measures are not nearly so controversial in Singapore as they might be in Western countries (for example, 79 percent of Singaporeans strongly agree that criminals should be caned for serious offenses),⁹⁷ and they may simply reflect a different morally justifiable way of drawing the line between the competing goods of social order and individual freedom.

September 2009. My friend and former colleague Chee Soon Juan comes to greet me at my Orchard Road hotel, and we exchange hugs. He is accompanied by his Taiwanese wife and three lovely children, who seem excited about hustle and bustle of downtown Singapore (Soon Juan tells me that his family rarely comes to Orchard Road). Soon Juan, who heads the opposition Singapore Democratic Party, has been jailed seven times for various political offenses that would be regarded as trivial in other developed countries. The following morning he is due to go on trial again, and may soon go to jail for an eighth time. (He declines an offer of my recent book on the grounds that it is too thin: he is allowed four books for every two weeks in jail; hence, the books must be thick or he will run out of reading material.) Soon Juan was once the most promising opposition candidate in Singapore, but the government’s campaigns against him have taken a toll. Lawsuits launched against him by the Lee family and other top PAP officials have made him officially bankrupt, and therefore he cannot leave the island-state (he has not left for three years) or participate in the next elections. Yet he remains optimistic. I ask him if he feels attached to Singapore—personally, I would regard it as a prison sentence if I were barred from leaving the tiny island—and he says of course; it’s his home. He worries about the effects of increased immigration on the sense of nationhood, citing the example of Singaporean schoolchildren who cheered for badminton players of an opposing school because their own team was composed of players from mainland China. He says that his struggles have contributed to some progress; for example, now it’s possible to organize demonstrations at Speaker’s Corner. He says the Web is free of political censorship (more free than in China, I think to myself) and he has dedicated activists to help with his party’s website, which has become the most popular political party website in Singapore, with more than two million hits per month. His books are sold at two bookstores in Singapore (here too, greater freedom than in China). Still, I can’t help but feel sad. If he had been left alone by the government when I first knew him in 1992, I might be talking to the prime minister today.

What hasn’t changed in Singapore is the elite politics. It is still monopolized by the PAP and the domestic TV and print media still serve mainly as the mouthpiece for the government. (To be fair, coverage of opposition parties was less skewed in the run-up to the May 7, 2011 general election.) Yes, Singapore finds itself in a dangerous neighborhood, and the terrorist plot to attack Singapore embassies in 2001 serves as a useful reminder. Still, the government doesn’t have to be so thin-skinned, nor do security concerns justify intimidating domestic and foreign critics using every means at the government’s disposal. Nor does the government have to be so inhumane to those without social power, such as foreign domestic workers, who are treated far worse in Singapore than in Hong Kong.⁹⁸

Upon my return to Beijing, I talk with my wife and she notices that I still get upset about politics in Singapore. We lived for eight years in the relatively open and civil political environment in Hong Kong, and I never did seem to care that much about political democratization in Hong Kong (in fact, I often sided with those who argued against rapid political democratization) or about Hong Kong politics more generally. So what is it about Singapore? My wife puts forward an unsettling idea: perhaps the occasional “big stick” increases attachment to the community. It gives people something to fight against, particularly if the stick is wielded by a well-known leader of a relatively small community. In a harmonious city like Stockholm, where things seem to go well, there is no reason for people to get so passionate about the fate of their community. If Montreal had been ruled by Lee Kuan Yew, perhaps I’d still be there struggling to improve it. If Singapore had been ruled by Hong Kong–style hands-off rulers, perhaps my public-spirited academic Singaporean friends would have moved to low-pressure cities like Melbourne, where they could live in fancy suburban homes with gardens. It’s like being ruled by a stern father who is generally benign but occasionally cruel and irrational: the children are more likely to be attached—to be bound—by him than if they are ruled by an indifferent father who just lets the children go their own way (and admits substitute fathers). So here’s my conclusion. I’d still like to think that the more democratic the society, the more the sense of patriotism—in the context of this book, the more democratic the city, the more the sense of civicism—but I’m less sure that the political reality corresponds to my ideals. Maybe the Spartans were just as patriotic as the Athenians?