The ‘miracle' nation at 60: How Singapore thrived against the odds

Sydney Morning Herald

2 days ago

The Sound of Music is playing for the first time in cinemas, the Vietnam War has reached a midway escalation, and the Beatles have just released their seventh chart-topping, jiggly-bopping hit, Ticket to Ride. It's 1965, and in steamy South-East Asia, political differences between Malaysia and Singapore, which are joined in what is known as the Federation of Malaysia, a new and still-fragile alliance, simmer behind closed doors as their leaders debate their future together.
On August 9, the curtain drops: they have signed an agreement to sever ties, leaving Singaporeans to captain their own nation for the first time in its history. It's a great shock to the populace and a bitter disappointment for Singapore's prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, who had championed the federation. 'For me, it is a moment of anguish,' he tells neat rows of reporters in Singapore's Broadcasting House, before tearing up and lamenting his thwarted vision for unity across the neighbouring territories.
And so marked Singapore's first day of independence – not a euphoric dismissal of colonial overlords but cast adrift into hostile waters. 'That moment of vulnerability sticks with many Singaporeans still to this day,' says Terence Lee, an Australian media professor from Singapore, now at the University of Nottingham Ningbo in China.
'We didn't intend to become independent. We were not meant to exist as a country,' Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said on Saturday. 'The prevailing conviction amongst our founding leaders and pioneer generation alike was that Singapore had to be part of Malaysia. We were simply too small, too exposed, too vulnerable to stand on our own.'
As the island city-state proudly celebrates 60 years of self-rule, it is today best known to outsiders as a poster child for surreal growth, fantastical architecture, the novel and film Crazy Rich Asians and as a glittering destination for tourists (Qantas has flown there since 1935; 1.1 million Australians visited Singapore in 2024, its fifth-biggest tourism market).
Beneath the surface, though, is a hardworking, competitive society run by a government that occupies a unique middle ground somewhere between semi-authoritarianism, benevolent paternalism and Western-style democracy.
So, how did Singapore shape its independence? Is it true that every citizen gets a flat? And who are the 'crazy rich'?
Is life in Singapore anything like Crazy Rich Asians?
In Kevin Kwan's 2013 novel Crazy Rich Asians, New York academic Nick Young invites girlfriend Rachel, a fellow scholar, to a wedding in Singapore. Unaware that Nick is from one of Singapore's wealthiest families, Rachel is surprised to be thrust into a world of chauffeurs, private jets, eye-wateringly expensive real estate, Burmese rubies, ritzy hotels, Lamborghinis and complex etiquette reminiscent of Jane Austen's Regency England.
'This is Singapore,' Nick tells Rachel, where 'the idle rich spend all their time gossiping about other people's money. Who's worth how much, who inherited how much, who sold their house for how much.'
Today, Singapore's luxury image is hard to escape. The largest ever Australian-built superyacht, a multimillion-dollar, 84-metre trimaran, is owned by Singapore billionaire Goh Cheng Liang. The most desired mansions, the so-called Good Class Bungalows, change hands for upwards of $200 million.
More broadly, though, the city-state's economy is often referred to as the 'Singapore miracle': since 1965, its GDP growth has been among the world's highest, averaging about 7 per cent a year (Singapore is Australia's largest two-way trading partner in South-East Asia). In the past 20 years, the median wage for Singaporean workers has risen by 43 per cent, compared with 8 per cent in the United States. Today, its average wealth per adult is $682,000 ($US444,558) – the seventh-highest globally, ahead of New Zealand but behind Denmark and Australia.
Yet most experts we spoke with told us that inequality is the biggest issue Singaporeans contend with today. 'Singapore is a fabulous place to stop over on the way to somewhere else. Things work, services are generally high-quality. It's interesting and different for most people,' says Garry Rodan, an honorary professor in political science at University of Queensland. 'But that's not the daily experience of Singaporeans. Like in most societies, there are inequalities, and not everyone's experience is the same.'
The city has been ranked the world's most expensive to live in for nine of the past 11 Worldwide Cost of Living surveys, conducted annually by the Economist Intelligence Unit research group, although the Singapore government insists that much of this data applies only to expats, who pay through the nose for private rent and schooling (in 2024, about 30 per cent of the 6 million population were non-residents). Taxes are relatively low, but Singapore is still the costliest place in the world to own a car, thanks to the mandatory 'certificates of entitlement', which are sold at auction and can cost well over $100,000.
'Singapore's economy has both sophisticated areas of finance and pharmaceuticals research, and lots of other things, which attracts people from overseas who have to be paid high salaries in global headquarters for various operations,' Rodan says. 'On the other hand, there's a huge dependence on [low-paid] guest labour for areas of manufacturing, ship building and hospitality and, quite significantly, also for domestic help.'
More than 80 per cent of the citizen population lives in apartment towers built by the government's Housing and Development Board (known as HBD flats or 'government housing'), most as owners, in effect. The one- to five-room units come with 99-year leases. Couples aged 21 and older, and singles 35 and up, can apply for one. The flats can be sold on the open market after a five-year occupation period, taking into account the remaining lease (the most mature of which have just over 50 years remaining).
'There's a survey that talks about how Singapore has worked the longest hours in the region, in Asia broadly, and how Singaporeans are more sleep-deprived. It's constant.'
Media professor Terence Lee
Meanwhile, young people vie for places in top schools and tertiary institutes in a rigorous education system that winnows out stragglers. 'It's kind of a rat race environment,' says Terence Lee, who grew up in Singapore but chose to pursue his academic career overseas. 'There is a sense of, you know, getting ahead of everyone else, and that starts from early years of school,' he says. 'Beneath the veneer of a successful society are people who are burnt out. Almost every year, there's a survey that talks about how Singapore has worked the longest hours in the region, in Asia broadly, and how Singaporeans are more sleep-deprived. It's constant.'
Singaporean families place a strong emphasis on education for social mobility, Dr Woo Jun Jie tells us from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. 'Policymakers have sought to encourage students and parents to consider multiple pathways to excellence, which includes highlighting different vocations and educational outcomes. However, students often face pressure from their parents to choose educational pathways that lead to elite career options, such as law, medicine and technology.'
What was Singapore before it became a nation?
Raffles, the storied hotel, still trades on its colonial-era memories of Rudyard Kipling and Joseph Conrad lingering in its Long Bar, sweeping their peanut shells onto the floor as 'punkah wallahs' hypnotically pulled at ropes operating ceiling fans. You can still hear the thwack of leather on willow at the nearby Padang oval, home to the Singapore Cricket Club since 1852. Singapore's lush botanic garden, laid out at its current site in 1859, is today a much-loved oasis showcasing rare variants of the national flower, orchids, a walk away from the malls and office towers of nearby Orchard Road.
But, as many an Australian traveller knows, not much else remains of the old days. The Bugis Street neighbourhood, once renowned or reviled for its seedy bars and red-light establishments, has been turned into a shopping mall. Boat Quay, once the busiest part of the old Port of Singapore, is now a touristy restaurant strip. Virtually all of Singapore's mangrove swamps have been 'reclaimed': the island is 25 per cent larger than it was at independence.
Much of the ground that Changi Airport is built on used to be underwater, as was the footprint of the striking Marina Bay Sands casino resort. Raffles Hotel put up some resistance but eventually succumbed too, reopening after a renovation in 2019 bigger but with some of its earlier shabby-chic charm polished away.
What has never changed, however, is Singapore's geographical good fortune, its handy position in a choke point at the eastern mouth of the Strait of Malacca, a major shipping route. Singapore has probably been a port since at least the 12th century, when the island was known as Temasek ('Sea Town' in the local dialect). About 1300, the Malay prince Sang Nila Utama named a settlement on the island Singapura, from the Sanskrit 'Lion City'.
Much later, in 1819, Stamford Raffles, working for the British East India Company, landed here hoping to gain a foothold against Dutch dominance in the region, sealing a deal with an accommodating potentate to open shop on what became anglicised as 'Singapore' in 1819.
It rapidly grew from little more than a swampy hamlet into a thriving regional hub: growing pepper and gambier, a plant used in medicine and textiles; becoming a market for other spices and minerals, among them gold, and a useful refuelling and repair station for passing vessels.
Two local discoveries supercharged the economy: the first practical method, developed at the Botanic Gardens, of tapping the milky white sap of the rubber tree; and a natural latex called gutta-percha, which would make possible underwater telegraph lines (Singapore first linked to Madras, India in 1871, as part of a project to connect Australia with the UK, and today remains an important global node for subsea fibre-optic cables).
Life was particularly good for the British ruling elite. They occupied large 'black and white' bungalows (which today routinely change hands for tens of millions), employed 'help' to attend their every need and could retire of an evening to one of their beloved haunts, such as the Tanglin Club, founded in 1865 (and still a bastion of privilege), for a quinine-rich G&T to ward off malaria. Even the occasional tiger wandered into town, including one famously shot between the eyes in the Raffles billiards room in 1902.
All that came to an abrupt end, of course, in February 1942, when Japanese forces swept through Malaya and forced the British to surrender in just seven days. They renamed the island 'Syonan' (Light of the South), rounded up and massacred as many as 50,000 ethnic Chinese men, interned women and children and impounded Allied soldiers in the notorious Changi prison camp. One teenager, the story goes, only narrowly avoided the initial wave of executions by escaping from a guarded dormitory: future Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.
Who was Lee Kuan Yew and how did he change Singapore?
Often called the 'father' of modern Singapore, Lee was the first-born son of Peranakan (Chinese-Malay mixed heritage) parents. Known for his urbane and cosmopolitan outlook, he had attended the prestigious Raffles Institution, spoke English and Malay (his actual first name was Harry) and during the war, after his close shave, quickly learnt Japanese to make himself useful to the invaders as an interpreter.
After the war, he continued his education in Britain, at the London School of Economics and the University of Cambridge, where his group of equally clever friends, among them Goh Keng Swee (a future deputy prime minister), formed the core of what would later become Singapore's dominant political force, the People's Action Party (PAP), soon to be joined by Lee's future wife, the lawyer Kwa Geok Choo, as a co-founder.
In the 1950s, as Britain negotiated an exit from its South-East Asian 'possessions', it granted Singapore a form of self-government with authority over everything but defence and foreign affairs. Campaigning for full independence, rapid nation building and the need to stamp out endemic corruption, Lee's PAP won the 1959 election in a landslide, Lee becoming prime minister, a reign that would last for 41 years.
In 1963, Singapore joined with Malaya, North Borneo (present-day Sabah) and Sarawak to form the New Federation of Malaysia. Lee saw many advantages to being part of a greater whole, not least the opportunity for everybody to 'get a share of what is left after one hundred-odd years of British rule'. But the federation was beset with infighting, even sparking race riots. By August 1965, Lee and a handful of close confidants had decided Singapore had no option but to break free.
'You never see chaps sitting under a tree waiting for gold to drop down from the sky.'
Former Singapore leader Lee Kuan Yew
Disappointed, Lee nevertheless sold it as an opportunity. Plucky Singapore would thrive against the odds. Progress, he promised in a speech made later that year, would be 'spread equally, regardless of race, language or religion'. In fact, the main ethnic groups – Chinese (a 75 per cent majority), Malay and Indian – were encouraged to maintain their identities and languages, and to also speak English to one another (which would become the official language of the government). Don't expect actual welfare, as it is understood in the West, he warned. 'A civilised, advanced society will emerge because we've got an industrious people. You never see chaps sitting under a tree waiting for gold to drop down from the sky.'
Lee promised to quickly create between 8000 and 10,000 jobs for imminent school-leavers, but warned workers against going on strike because that would deter overseas investors. A new volunteer defence corps would make Singapore a 'poisonous prawn' for would-be invaders (compulsory national service for all men aged 18 remains in place today).
'I've been around a lot of places in this part of the world and I can tell you, quite frankly, there isn't a better place,' he said. 'You can go to more posh hotels in other capitals in South-East Asia. But the moment you step out of that hotel, you step out into filth, degradation and squalor. You don't do that in Singapore. You step out, and you still step out into a relatively civilised society. Ten years from now, it will be better than now.' In return, Lee expected Singaporeans to be loyal and disciplined, to 'belong' and 'to make this place tick'.
Urban planner Liu Thai Ker insisted apartment blocks have playgrounds, sports fields, shopping centres and (the now famous) food courts.
Living standards did improve as the government razed slum neighbourhoods and rehoused their occupants in the 'HDB' apartment blocks (Singaporeans love abbreviations: the 'mass rapid transport' train system is universally called the MRT, the car permit the COE, Lee Kuan Yew was 'LKY' and even the nation's birthday is SG60). Many residents went on to become homeowners – which the lifelong leases are seen as being akin to – although inhabitants of soon-to-be-bulldozed traditional 'kampong' villages were not necessarily happy to trade in their backyards, shade trees and free-ranging chickens. Later estates were overseen by the Yale-trained urban planner Liu Thai Ker, who insisted they have playgrounds, sports fields, shopping centres and (the now famous) food courts, where locals still eat cheaply and well.
Lee declared 'we need the greenery of nature to lift our spirits', inaugurating a nationwide tree planting campaign in 1963, the precursor to programs that have produced the lush, green city, drooping with vines, that we know today. Animals that had disappeared have returned, including otters, spotted even downtown to widespread joy, the blue-crowned hanging parrot and the glorious oriental pied hornbill.
Lee, who proved a skilled diplomat, courted foreign expertise and multinationals to invest in new industrial zones on very favourable terms: an entire island off the coast of the suburb of Jurong is now given over to petrochemical production. In 1972, Singapore became one of the first ports to containerise, which gave it an insurmountable lead over regional competitors.
In other words, Lee largely kept the promises he made in 1965. But there was a significant caveat: the People's Action Party demanded a firm hand on the tiller. It would brook no dissent. It came to effectively wield control not only over legislation and law and order but media, trade unions, culture, academia and even the land under people's feet, thanks to the Land Acquisition Act of 1967, which allowed the government to eventually become by far Singapore's largest landholder.
The government, which characteristically launched a 'courtesy campaign' in 1979, hectored its citizens to flush toilets and refrain from spitting, jaywalking and (famously) chewing gum. Some crimes, meanwhile, are still punishable by strokes of a rattan cane on bare buttocks or by death by hanging.
'He understood the exercise of power in all of its forms – economic, political, social, religious – and he was obsessed with taking control of that and using it and deploying it in his own little system,' historian Michael Barr tells us. 'And the saving grace for that was a strong element of public service wrapped up in it. He really did have, seriously, an ethos of being the benefactor for this country that he felt responsible for creating.'
'Singaporeans are a practical lot. They want somebody who can deliver something.'
Lowy Institute research fellow Rahman Yaacob
Everyday citizens, observes Barr in his book Singapore: A Modern History, accepted the loss of freedoms and political rights as 'a reasonable price to pay for the positive side of the struggle for survival: economic and industrial development, jobs, peace on the streets and a highly successful program of housing development'.
Those factors still dominate today, says Rahman Yaacob, a research fellow at the Lowy Institute who worked in Singapore's government for 18 years and has just returned to Australia from the island nation. 'Singaporeans are a practical lot,' he tells us. 'They want somebody who can deliver something. If there's economic prosperity, security and stability, they will go for that person.'
How does Singapore's government work?
There is an argument sometimes made by Singapore's ruling elite that the nation is the most authentic democracy in South-East Asia. Its High Commissioner to the UK, Ng Teck Hean, wrote in the Financial Times last year that 'almost alone among Asian countries, Singapore has never failed to hold regular elections; never once imposed emergency rule; and the ruling party has always kept open the possibility it could be voted out of power'.
It is true that the PAP faces competition: Singapore's constitution even guarantees 12 seats in parliament for its opposition lest they fall short at the polls. Yet the PAP has won 14 elections in a row since 1959, including a landslide earlier this year that new Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said delivered the government a 'clear and strong mandate'.
'There's a main opposition party but in the lead-up to every election, they would assure Singaporeans that voting for them is not going to change the government.'
Professor Terence Lee
Says Terence Lee: 'There's a main opposition party – The Workers' Party – but in the lead-up to every election, they would assure Singaporeans that voting for them is not going to change the government, which is quite bizarre when you think about it.' Lee says that, in general, for Singaporeans, 'It's almost impossible to imagine what life could be like after the PAP.' He notes this system comes with its advantages compared with Western democracies. 'That's why Singapore works; you can kind of make plans for the very long haul, knowing very well that they're never going to be voted out of office.'
Freedom House, a US organisation that produces an annual report on the state of global democracy, rates Singapore as 'partly free', noting 'the electoral and legal framework that the PAP has constructed allows for some political pluralism, but it constrains the growth of credible opposition parties and limits freedoms of expression, assembly and association'. The report highlights the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act of 2019, which ostensibly counters fake news but which any minister can employ to 'restrict access to content that was deemed false or contrary to the public interest'. Other laws restrict public gatherings and foreign media.
Yet a form of consultation is in vogue, too. The sophistication of this system relies on political co-option as much as legislative curbs on media reporting, free speech, civil society organisations and opposition political parties, Rodan says. 'Since the mid-1980s, creative and increasingly expansive public-policy feedback mechanisms and institutions have been introduced to engage individuals and organisations,' beginning with a forum in 1985 that is today named REACH (Reaching Everyone for Active Citizenry @ Home) – a government department that runs focus groups, surveys and platforms for citizens to ask questions, debate policies and make suggestions.
'Certainly, such extensive public consultation can come at a cost to policy efficiency,' Woo Jun Jie tells us from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. 'However, public consultation is now the norm across public agencies in Singapore.'
The catch, says Rodan, is there is no way for participants to hold authorities to account 'for failure to act on advice or suggestions'. In his view, the approach is about dissuading Singaporeans from looking to opposition parties. 'This strategy is not foolproof, especially among working-class Singaporeans who are worst affected by social inequality.'
Where to now for Singapore?
Prime Minister Lawrence Wong has said his nation's 60th anniversary of independence is an opportunity to consider how it will shape its future. 'We know deep in our bones that Singapore was built against the odds,' he said earlier this year. 'Every generation has done its part, strived for excellence, and made their tomorrow better than today. Now it is our turn to blaze a bold path forward.'
There is a simmering debate about the treatment of 'guest workers' – the 1.3 million manual labourers, factory workers and housemaids who prop up the economy on wages as low as $500 a month, reports the BBC. 'They are also often subject to abuses by recruitment agencies and their employers, including overwork, unpaid labour and poor living conditions.' The paucity of safety nets for Singaporean citizens also remains an issue for many. 'Social security is limited for certain people who can't make it in that economy and flourish,' says Garry Rodan.
'We must enable our people, workers and businesses to make full use of these tools, and sharpen our competitive edge.'
Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong
There are signs the government is beginning to grapple with the inequalities. In 2023, it provided more support for people wanting to buy homes on the open market and Prime Minister Wong has acknowledged that people seeking to buy their first home now find prices too high. Wong has also spoken of the need to help the recently unemployed, in April introducing the SkillsFuture Jobseeker Support scheme, although it lasts for just six months and payments are capped at a total of just over $7000.
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On Saturday in a speech at the Padang, he said that Singapore had to remain 'exceptional'. That meant embracing new technologies, particularly artificial intelligence and robotics. 'We must enable our people, workers and businesses to make full use of these tools, and sharpen our competitive edge,' he said, warning that not everyone would find the transition easy. The government would strengthen safety nets, he said, and help Singaporeans who faced setbacks to 'bounce back and press on'.
But it is the middle classes, in recent years, who have been truly squeezed, says Michael Barr: 'For those in the middle, the cost of living and housing has made it extremely stressful to make ends meet, especially if there are children to educate or aged parents to support. Singapore has delivered prosperity but has given Singaporeans a frantic edge. The one thing that seems to unite everyone is that life in Singapore has become uncomfortably crowded, frightfully expensive and, above all, unrelentingly busy.'