Replicating Singapore in China?

It was one hell of a kicker quote, but it probably summed up the appeal of Singapore’s model of governance for Chinese Communist Party cadres. “The Singapore model of development before democracy is something which suits China,” Lu Yuanli, a Chinese professor who studies Singapore, was quoted by The Straits Times to have said.

When I was back in Singapore on vacation last week, I stumbled on an article that ST carried in its print edition on June 24 about the “Singapore fever” among Chinese government officials. The full article is appended at the end of this entry, because you need to be a subscriber to access ST’s articles online.

Singapore’s system might be premised on too small a scale for China to copy its system entirely, but it can be and has been used as a template by many city officials eager to manage their own cities well. This symbiotic relationship probably started after what the same article called the “Second Wave” of Singapore “fever” after the late Deng Xiao Peng praised Singapore in the early 1990s.

There was the Suzhou-Singapore Industrial Park project that saw some hiccups a few years into its incarnation and then there is the program at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University that according to the ST article, has trained some 16,000 Chinese city officials.

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Looking Before Jumping Onboard

If you love freedom, you may feel inclined to “support” the protesters out on the streets in Iran right now. But before you act on that tweet getting you to “support” them, it is important to know who and what you are supporting. Caution and some healthy skepticism would go a long way.

As a blog post by The Atlantic’s political editor, Marc Ambinder warns, factions of Iran’s opposition elites may be manipulating the protesters for their own political ambitions. Where there is a political vacuum, another regime is always looking to take over power.

Even if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is ousted, there is still the question of who would take his place. There is no guarantee that the main opposition figure would be the one, even if there is an annulment of the elections (which, according to the BBC, has just been apparently ruled out).

Meanwhile, here’s a lowdown on who’s who in this whole Iranian political gridlock, from The Daily Beast. It’s quite basic, but it charts out the players in this charade.