Stand on a clear day atop Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands hotel
In the foreground, a flotilla of ships lies at anchor, a physical reminder of how Singapore grew rich servicing the immense volume of global trade squeezed through the chokepoint of its narrow strait.
On the horizon, you can just make out the coastline of Indonesia, a country with almost 50 times Singapore’s population.
The city was established by the British to bypass the Dutch stronghold in Java, and its most important nation-building projects in the 1960s and 1970s repeated the model by making it a key node of emerging commercial networks, from oil refining, to container shipping, to long-haul aviation.
David Fickling Bloomberg October 28, 2026
När Kinas nye ledare Deng Xiaoping hösten 1978 besökte Singapore imponerades han av välståndet, de ekonomiska frizonerna och hur detta kombinerades med en auktoritär politik.
Lee Kuan Yew var det självständiga Singapores förste premiärminister mellan 1959 och 1990.
Besöket skulle i grunden rita om världsekonomin
Deng visited Singapore in November 1978
Singapore did not inspire him because of its level of development. If that were his priority, many cities in Japan or the West would have impressed him more.
Singapore was special because it represented the achievement of an estranged relative. Nowhere else outside China was there a country with ethnic Chinese in its majority.
(Taiwan kände Deng väl till, men dit kunde han ju inte åka utan att tappa ansiktet.)
Lee Kuan Yew told him that if Singapore Chinese who were the descendants of poorly-educated coolies could make good, how much better mainland China could be if the right policies were adopted.
https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2021/03/deng-visited-singapore-in-november-1978.html
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