Is Singapore a Model for the West?

SINGAPORE IS ASIA'S DREAM COUNTRY. Almost anywhere else, Goh Pang Meng, the son of a poor immigrant street vendor from China, would still be struggling to survive in a thatched hut like the one in which he grew up with 11 brothers and sisters. But at 44, Goh owns a comfortable five-room apartment and lives, like 87% of his countrymen, in a government housing project. He has three children, the minimum politically correct number preferred for the well- educated by a eugenics-inspired government: he received a $12,500 tax credit for the third birth, and his wife, who helps out in his business, got an additional 15% annual tax cut, because she had advanced past high school. He runs a firm with 17 employees making computer screens, and rents factory space in one of the 28 government industrial parks scattered around the island republic.

Last year Goh won a $15,600 government grant to upgrade his factory equipment. He winced when he paid $38,000 for a small Datsun, but says the steep price was worthwhile because it helped the government prevent traffic jams by limiting car ownership. "Overall," he says, "life in Singapore is pretty good." Sultan Ahamed, an ethnic Indian Muslim spice trader with strong family links to his strife-torn homeland, speaks for many Singaporeans when he declares, "What shall I say? This is a paradise."

In today's global tumult, a country that enjoys full employment and stability -- along with no crime, no pornography, no drugs, and no dirt to speak of -- may strike many as at least a reasonable facsimile of paradise. Singapore, long an object of curiosity for its unique blend of open economics, authoritarian politics and social engineering, is attracting attention as a model modern society. Francis Fukuyama, the author of The End of History?, says the "soft authoritarianism" of countries like Singapore "is the one potential competitor to Western liberal democracy, and its strength and legitimacy is growing daily." Tiny anticommunist Singapore (pop. 3.1 million) has even found an ardent fan in mainland China (pop. 1.16 billion), where officials are studying the city-state for ideas on how they can throw off Marxist economics but keep dictatorial political control.

One of Asia's four rapidly developing "Little Dragons" -- along with South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong -- Singapore is the smallest and in some ways the most successful. The former British colony at the tip of the Malay Peninsula only achieved full independence in 1965, yet it boasts Asia's highest living standard after Japan, an average per capita income of $15,000 (about the same as the U.S.) and by far the world's highest per capita cache of foreign reserves.

In contrast to other booming Asian cities that teem with noise, dirt and crowds, Singapore is orderly, regimented, well-planned -- and rather boring. With low pollution, lush tropical greenery, a mix of modern skyscrapers and colonial-era buildings, the city resembles a clean and efficient theme park; even the subway stations are as spotless and shiny as Disney World. There are no traffic jams, even during rush hours. The multiracial population -- 78% Chinese, 14% Malay, 7% Indian -- uses English widely.