What contribute to Singapore success?
To answer this question, let’s look back to the history of Singapore. Thanks to the generous idea given by Sir Raffle, that Singapore was to be a free trade zone as he realized the history of Tamasek – a lively of trading island in about 800 years ago, studied from the Chinese record. It was this idea that brought Singapore from a green island with only forest covered to a lively cosmopolitan city. Many left their homeland to Singapore, most of which were Chinese, to enjoy the benefit of having no taxations and cheap price products. However, that is just only at the front stage, while at the back stage since it was so free a society , criminals , prostitution and opium were the big challenges for the people of Singapore in that age. The East Indian Company was unwilling to solve nor any idea to stop it. When Lee Kuan Yew came back from England where he got his degree in Law and Economics, he convinced himself and a few of his friends to run a political party. The question is how did he get the supports? He looked around and be friend with 2 worker leaders and was able to convince the two to join party PAP, People Action Party. The people went on to strike against the British for independence; hence many people were detained including the 2 worker leaders. This had paved the way for Lee Kuan Yew to go gain the support without obstacle and soon became the Singapore priminister. He went to Malaysia make a political union and put Singapore under a state of Malaysia. In the 1960s, Malaysia was afraid of overwhelming of the Chinese population and thus wanted Singapore to follow Malay new constitutional law, which discriminate against the Chinese, however, it was apposed by PAP. After the worst racial violent had happened, Malaysia decided to abandon Singapore and gave independency to Singapore. It was thought a sugar coat to Singaporean and even Mr. Lee was giving his speech live on television with tear. What should Singapore do next? How could Singapore survive in such a small island without the support of Malaysia?
Thanks to the Cultural Revolution and political uncertainty in China, most western company moved from Taiwan and Hong Kong to Singapore and the government the played the role of making a trouble free and investment friendly environment to potential investors. Cheap and productive labor, 100% foreign ownership, no frightening strike, low crime rate and robbery, Singapore could attract more and more investors. In the 1980s, it became the most leading electronic product producer in Asia. Not just waiting for the action from entrepreneur, the government itself went further with their own investment, where Singapore Airline was born. Lee Kwan Yew strictly advised the company to make profit rather than just being used by the government officers. Later , he went on to housing control and so on so forth.
To sum up in short, the answer is LUCK + PEOPLE.
