Singapore has
been an upwardly mobile Asian phenomenon for decades. But Americans were the
last to realise the extent of the achievement. Until recently, the US
establishment media smugly scoffed at this soft-authoritarian-style city state.
But, over time, facts do
matter: lately, its role in Asia – especially as a non-ideological signpost for
those leaders of China who wish to implant further mile-markers down pragmatism
road – is increasingly apparent.
Singapore has been an absolute
stand-out, particularly for a small city state (think Norway, sort of, but
warmer). It bobs at the top of the charts in the gold-medal statistical
metrics: high per capita income, exceptional governance, internationally lauded
health care, scary-smart kids in well-run schools and so on. Its ministers and
civil servants generally outshine other countries’, especially in ethically
challenged Southeast Asia. It has sported notable prime ministers: the late,
legendary whizz Lee Kuan Yew; the underappreciated, charming Goh Chok Tong,
and, since 2004, the well-serving, intelligently determined Lee Hsein Loong.
All were nurtured in the ultra
clean, tightly wound People’s Action Party (PAP), which until relatively
recently hovered over Singaporean politics, not wholly unlike the Chinese Communist
Party in the way no one seriously challenged it. But the PAP is now under a
measure of other-party competition (with some even hailing the birth of genuine
two-party democracy).
Recent health downturns within
the reigning elite serve to remind Singaporeans that nothing is forever. Last
year, at 91, founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew died; earlier this month,
current prime minister Lee, one of Lee Kuan Yew’s two sons, suffered a collapse
during a speech and had to be revived; also this month, an ailing finance
minister emerged from hospital, and a former president, S. R. Nathan, passed
on, to a proper state funeral.
This thought about a
redemptive Singapore road is anything but new; but in America it is almost
novel
Right, nothing lasts forever –
except surely China, which accounts for about a fifth of the global population.
It’s not ever going away, but unwise Americans sometimes almost seem to wish it
would, as if viewing nations and governments like imperious TV producers
pondering whether to renew a sitcom series (“Gaddafi’s ratings are down – maybe
we should cancel?”). One father of that “wishful” thought is
Cornell-University-educated Gordon Chang, who in his book The Coming Collapse
of China declaimed: “The end of the modern Chinese state is near. The
People’s Republic has five years, perhaps 10, before it falls.” This came out
in 2001.
For myself, predicting China’s
collapse seems joyless speculation. The resultant suffering and sadness (not to
mention world economic collapse) would be immeasurable. Nowadays, our more
sophisticated China-critical crowd narrows the scope of its Sino-failure
prediction and focuses on the Communist Party, which has a public relations
image in the West today not unlike that of Singapore’s PAP decades ago.
One exemplar of the
pessimism-revisionism school is Professor David Shambaugh, the respected
director of the China Policy Programme at The George Washington University who
– unlike Chang – sees a way out for China. It should draw on the political
model of Singapore’s PAP. His important new book, China’s Future, makes
the case that the Chinese government must turn away from its constant
defaulting to the repression option that “like chemotherapy for someone who has
cancer, can work for a while, but not forever”. Instead, it should maturely
accept a more evolutionary approach: “This would entail a real opening of the
political system to embrace many of the elements and attributes of the
semi-democratic systems currently operating in Hong Kong and especially
Singapore.” If it doesn’t, Shambaugh predicts, the Communist Party “will
gradually lose its grip on power”.
To the far-flung, worldwide
secular clergy of political scientists, this thought about a redemptive
Singapore road is anything but new; but in America it is almost novel!
Singapore’s political system as the better way now for China? “It is not
democracy as it is known in the West (indeed it operates more efficiently),”
writes Shambaugh the pragmatic. “[But] even Singapore has rid itself of the
more draconian aspects of its authoritarian past. For China to go down this
path would still require a significant and far-reaching transformation of its
current political system.”
Singaporeans deserve to enjoy
a chuckle over its new status as a positive model after decades of detention in
the public-opinion purgatory of relentless Western human-rights condemnations.
But this brilliant country is changing, too. In 2011, the PAP was rocked when
it got “only” 60 per cent of the national vote. It rebounded in 2015, but the
theoretical possibility was set: the ruling party could be voted out.
On the mainland, of course,
that prospect is about as easy to imagine as finding deeply discounted Mao
posters for sale on Taobao. Shambaugh agrees. “Would the [Communist Party] be
willing to undertake … constraints on its complete monopoly of power? The
chances are close to zero.”
Singapore’s foreign policy
also seems under reorientation. In the past, it emphasised a balance towards
Beijing and Washington. Now, the tilt feels more US-leaning than Sino-US
balancing.
Thus, as a model to emulate,
it becomes a somewhat problematic target when it itself is in flux. Yet,
nudging China into more suave, cosmopolitan politics would add to stability in
Asia and the world, and merit Singapore something like a Nobel Peace Prize (at
least!).
In that sense, one might
almost wish that the city state stuck to its old ways but, of course, I
personally cannot suggest this: after all, I am from America, which itself is
stuck in its old ways.
Columnist Tom Plate, Loyola Marymount University’s distinguished scholar
of Asian and Pacific studies, has just been appointed vice-president of the
Pacific Century Institute, based in Seoul and Los Angeles. He is the author of
Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew, in the Giants of Asia book series
This article appeared in the
South China Morning
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