The Economist’s Clinical Analysis of Singapore and Lee (I)

choi

Lee Kuan Yew | The wise man of the East; Authoritarians draw the wrong lessons from Lee Kuan Yew’s success in Singapore. Economist, May 28, 2015.
www.economist.com/news/leaders/2 ... -singapore-wise-man

Quote:

“Singapore’s leader from before ‘self-government’ from Britain in 1959, he [Lee] was prime minister until 1990, leaving the cabinet only in 2011.

“Mr Lee got many things right, especially in his choice of economic managers. They [managers] kept government small, the economy open and regulation simple, transparent and effective. Singapore often heads the World Bank’s ‘ease of doing business’ rankings.

“it [Singapore] shines by comparison with its less well-run neighbours. Rather as Hong Kong’s prosperity was based on being Chinese but not entirely part of China, Singapore has flourished by being in South-East Asia, but not of it.

“Unlike many other independence leaders, Mr Lee designed a system to outlast him.

“Even in Singapore the model may not long outlast its creator. Singaporeans are having few children and ageing fast. The government faces demands for more social spending. Growth depends on immigration, angering natives who feel the influx is suppressing their wages—and making it impossible to get a seat on the tube. That balance between competition and inevitable re-election is shifting. The Singapore model may yet prove unsustainable even in Singapore.

Note:
(a) “China’s leaders, especially, are fascinated by Mr Lee’s firm grip on power: it is no accident that the second-most-powerful man in the Chinese hierarchy is not running the economy or the interior ministry, but is President Xi Jinping’s enforcer, Wang Qishan (see article).”

There is no need to read the article in the same issue of the Economist, about Mr Wang Qishan. It does not say anything new.

(b) “Throughout, Mr Lee’s own People’s Action Party (PAP) has had a vice-like grip on power. * * * Constituencies have been designed to magnify the distortions of a first-past-the-post system. In the most recent general election in 2011 the PAP won 60% of the votes, but more than 90% of the seats.”
(i) vise
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vise
(vise (American English) or vice (British English))
(ii) constituency (n):
"1b: ['a body of citizens' or] the residents in an electoral district
c :  an electoral district"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/constituency
(iii)
(A) first-past-the-post voting
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting
(section 1 Overview)
(B) For etymology of the term, see plurality voting system
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurality_voting_system
(was coined as an analogy to horse racing, where the winner of the race is the first to pass a particular point (the "post" or finish line) on the track (in this case a plurality of votes), after which all other runners automatically and completely lose (that is, the payoff is "winner-takes-all")

(c) “Critics mock Singapore for being like North Korea or ‘Disneyland with the death penalty,’ as William Gibson, an American novelist, described it in 1993.”
(i) Disneyland with the death penalty
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disneyland_with_the_Death_Penalty
(a 1993 non-fiction)
(ii) Why the title?

William Gibson, Disneyland With the Death Penalty; We sent William Gibson to Singapore to see whether that clean dystopia represents our techno future. Wired magazine, September/October 1993.
archive.wired.com/wired/archive/1.04/gibson.html
(Web page 1: "The sensation of trying to connect psychically with the old Singapore is rather painful, as though Disneyland's New Orlean Square had been erected on the site of actual French Quarters [in New Orleans, Louisiana], obliterating it in the process but leaving in its place a glassy simulacrum. The facades of the remaining Victorian shop-houses recall Covent Garden on some impossibly bright London day")
(A) New Orleans Square (Disneyland)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans_Square_(Disneyland)
(B) simulacrum
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacrum
(from Latin [noun] simulacrum, which means "likeness, similarity")
(C) Covent Garden is the name of a neighborhood in West End of London. "part of the area was walled off by 1200 for use as arable land and orchards by Westminster Abbey."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covent_Garden


(d) “But outside Singapore, maintaining probity requires checks and balances.”

probity (n; Latin [adjective masculine] probus honest)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/probity
(e) “impossible to get a seat on the tube”

Singapore Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) 新加坡地铁 (大众捷运系统) is not called Tube, unlike London’s. The journalists if the Economist is addressing readers, as if the latter were the British.