Singapore (II): Economist

choi

The July 18, 2015 issue of Economist contains a special report “Singapore,” whose introduction is “The Singapore Exception.”  (See my posting dated July 19, 2015.)

I will chose two essays in the special report, one in this posting and another in the next.

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Land and people | Seen Million Is a Crowd. Space on the island is getting tight. Singaporeans fear that foreigners are taking up too much of it.

Quote:

“The shortage of land is compounded by government policy on how it [land] is used. One-fifth of the total, mainly secondary jungle, is reserved for the armed forces. Once space is allocated for industry, reservoirs, housing, roads and parks (including golf courses, which covers about 2% of the country), the squeeze is obvious.

"the population [of Singapore], of about 5.5m now, has doubled in the past 30 years and is still expanding. In 2013 a government white paper forecast that it would increase to * * * 6.5-6.9m by 2030. * * * These projections have caused alarm.

"The government argued the proposed levels of immigration would be necessary to maintain even moderate [population, not economic] growth because Singaporeans are not reproducing themselves. Last year the 'total fertility rate' (TFR), a notional estimate of the number of babies a woman will have over her lifetime, was 1.25 * * * (Japan * * * is actually a little more fecund [1.4 -- each year from 2010 to 2014 (inclusive)]).  What is exceptional about Singapore’s TFR is that it has stubbornly resisted efforts to change it, stretching over more than 30 years * * * In that time the country’s Chinese citizens, for example, have learnt Mandarin, which hardly any of them spoke as their first language. Many children, fluent in English and Mandarin, struggle to communicate with their grandparents, who speak other regional Chinese languages.

My comment:
(a) There is no need to read the rest.  
(b) Regarding quotation 1.  A chart in this report shows that in 2014 of the 5.5m, “the number of ‘non-resident’ foreign workers [is at] the present 1.6m”--with “citizens & permanent residents” making up the rest.