Happy Birthday to the Corporation/City/Republic of Singapore

Singapore is a country that is the size of a city that runs like a corporation. Let me explain.

This last Sunday was Singapore National Day - commemorating the 44th year of Independence of the Republic of Singapore. On Aug 9, 1965, the Father of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, with tears in his eyes, announced that Singapore would be an independent country due to being expelled from the Malaysian Federation. At the time Lee Kuan Yew considered this a blow to the Singaporean people as he felt that his country had the best chance for prosperity as part of Malaysia. In his speech he broke down emotionally and uttered, "For me, it is a moment of anguish. All my life, my whole adult life, I have believed in merger and unity of the two territories."

In 1965 Singapore was not much more than the colonial shanty town. The GDP/person was on par with most of the other third world countries of the region and now Singapore was on its own without many natural resources, water supplies, or security forces to protect it from it's neighbors. The challenge was at hand and as the first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew was up to the task.

He first set up a few main goals for the Singaporean people: establish Singapore's sovereignty in the world, set up an armed forces and security force to protect it's people, encourage education and social moral value, and infuse the economy with a mixture of capitalistic spirit and heavy government, corporation-like oversight. This formula combined with the rich diversity of the people and the controllable size of the country resulted in one of the most single greatest rags to riches stories of any nation in history; Singapore was able to increase its GDP by a factor of 260 in just 50 years!! (See Graph)

Now I say that Singapore operates like a corporation in that many of the national decisions and the overall atmosphere here seems to operate with regards to the bottom line. Lee Kuan Yew's son, Lee Hsien Loong, is the nation's third and current prime minister and in his National Address to the public on Saturday he first and foremost mentioned that Singaporeans mustn't give up hope because the second quarter GDP numbers were not as bad as the predictions had shown. It sort of sounded like the type of presentation a CEO would give to the BOD - a lot more financial terminology than I expected. He went on to encourage the public to keep up the efforts in terms of security, harmony amongst cultures, etc. to maintain this trend - it's almost as if this financial number was the main benchmark and the aforementioned benefits were just a means to this end. A few of the strict rules here also remind me of working in a big corporation - "don't chew gum and throw it on the ground", "don't cause problems by publishing something that would upset the cultural balance.", "you can't look at anything you want on the Internet". These are all the types of things that Americans see everyday in their companies/jobs.

The result of this type of prosperity-focused culture are apparent in the way Singaporeans value their stuff: shopping, eating out, and working are basically a few of the main national past-times (...hmmm, remind anyone of the USA?). However, despite living in this fast-paced, capital-focused society, the people heavily concentrate on their families, respect for elders, and individual cultural traditions.

In conclusion - I have observed many interesting characteristics of the culture here, and whether you love them or hate them - Singapore is one of the most successful, safe, and culturally diverse yet tolerant cities in the world; pretty good for only 50 years of work!

Now that the 9th grade essay portion of my blog is over, here are some videos I took from the National Day Celebration. The first is a mock naval battle of the Singaporean Navy vs a "terrorist" on a jetski (I didn't have a very good view); the others are self explanatory....