[LINK] "Singapore, the country run like a corporation"

[rfmcdonald]

Today, the day after the death of Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew, I thought I'd link to a June 1974 article in Fortune written by one Louis Kraar praising Singapore at the beginning of its economic boom. The article is worth reading, for all of its biases.

Pime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, a fifty-year-old lawyer educated at Cambridge, calls himself a “democratic socialist.” But he shows more concern with rates of return (for both investors and the state) than with political dogma. In fact, Lee rules as though he were the autocratic chief executive of Singapore Inc.

Under his tight managerial control, nothing is long tolerated if it interferes with economic performance. Young men are prohibited from wearing modishly long hair, which the chairman regards as a symbol of the Western counterculture and a menace to the work ethic that he prizes. Lee keeps the country’s labor force cheap and disciplined by setting strict guidelines for both wage increases and working conditions. Since he has the political power to enforce his rules, factory wages, which are about one-fifth of those in the U.S., help to keep Singapore products internationally competitive.

Lee’s economic philosophy is stern and simple. “We do not expect something for nothing,” he says. In a characteristic jab at his less energetic Asian neighbors, he explains: “We haven’t got oil and minerals on which other people have to pay royalties. So we develop a different approach to life.” He calls it “the rugged society,” but it is really his own special blend of pragmatic socialism, freewheeling capitalism, and plain opportunism.

The Prime Minister has hitched the island to the global economy through multinational corporations, which supply needed capital, expertise, and export markets. Singapore ardently woos foreign business, a rare policy among countries that have only recently emerged from colonialism. Besides providing such familiar tax incentives as a five-year income-tax exemption for coveted corporations, the government often shares the cost of training workers and even puts up part of the capital for plants and equipment.

[. . .]

An avowedly nonaligned foreign policy makes Singapore useful—for a price—to nearly every trading nation. Soviet merchant ships as well as vessels of the U.S. Seventh Fleet patronize its efficient port and repair yards. Peking maintains a busy Bank of China branch, while within walking distance Taiwan runs an active trade office. Arab oil producers, which provide most of the crude for the refineries, are now being urged to invest in Singapore industries. And Lee’s government has entered into a joint venture with an Israeli concern that produces communication equipment, and has hired Israeli military advisers to shape Singapore’s fledgling armed forces. His country’s real protection against undue influence by any foreign power, says Lee, is to maintain a balance of investment by the U.S., Japan, and Western Europe.