Essay on City-State of Singapore

Located at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, the city-state of Singapore is Southeast Asia’s smallest nation. It became independent in 1965 after breaking away from the Federation of Malaysia and Singa­pore. Selected in 1918 as a trading post by Stamford Raffles, halfway along the princi­pal trade route between India and China, it commanded a focal position at the south­ern extremity of the Malay Peninsula, dominating entrance to the Indian Ocean and China Sea, and became the main entre­pot of Southeast Asia.

The city lies on a small island, a mere 240 sq. miles (600 sq. km) in territory, but is blessed with a fine, natural deep-water harbor. Virtually with­out any natural resources besides the harbor, its meteoric rise to become a major financial, industrial and communications center, and a staging port in the transport of commodities, especially for oil from In­donesia and rubber and tin from Malaysia, is explained largely by its highly literate and energetic population approaching 3 million and the pragmatic policies of its ad­ministration.

It is the world’s second busiest port af­ter Rotterdam, and Southeast Asia’s largest port and an oil-refining center. As a duty­-free port it attracts annually more tourists than its permanent resident population. Thanks to its vast commercial success, it can boast of the highest standard of living in Asia after Brunei and Japan (the GNP per capita in 1997 was $33,000 distributed evenly over its population).

Singapore has no slums, almost no beggars, minimal un­employment, and a life expectancy of 79 for women and 75 for men. By all normal standards it is, thus, a developed and mod­ern nation. Following independence, Singapore’s government realized that the commercial sector alone could not sustain the island’s economic growth in the face of rapid population increase and rising competition from the neighboring countries of Malay­sia and Indonesia, the nation quickly embarked upon a crash programme of in­dustrialization during the 1960s and 1970s.

The country was singularly successful in attracting foreign investment in export-oriented industries because of its sound and aggressive planning, central location, po­litical stability, an excellent service infrastructure and the availability of skilled labor force. Its economic growth also profited considerably from the prag­matic, unorthodox, neo-socialistic policy of its administration, which encourages private enterprise and meritocracy; and from tax concessions given to investors, cheap and reliable labor, efficient public services, ethnic harmony, and political sta­bility.

There are nearly 1,600 factories manufacturing all types of consumer items, and labor-intensive plants specializ­ing in electronic equipment, industrial hardware, textiles, chemicals, food process­ing and ship-building. During the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, its growth rate averaged over 9 percent annually, a rate that was among the highest in the world.

Following the international crisis of the mid 1970s, it shifted emphasis to high technology pro­duction, such as electronic components, computer hardware, medical instruments, and metal engineering products which form the basis of its exports now. Very lit­tle industry is in government hands, yet the state offers more welfare benefits and services than any other nation in Asia. Its chief imports are petroleum, machinery, motor vehicles, and telecommunication apparatus.

Although the country imports food items, that category accounts for less than 10 percent of all imports. Singa­pore’s chief trading partners are the United States, Japan, Malaysia, Saudi Ara­bia and Hong Kong. Despite ethnic diversity, a happy part­nership of races has contributed to Singapore’s success story. The population is 77.0 percent Chinese, 14 percent Malay, and 7 percent Indian, with small minorities of Eurasians and other groups. Linguisti­cally, Chinese, Malay, Tamil and English are the official languages; English is widely used as a lingua franca.

Culturally, the na­tion is highly eclectic—the society is a religious mosaic composed of Buddhists- Taoists, Muslims, Christians, and Hindus that make up for 54, 16, 13, and 4 percent respectively of the population in addition to its 14 percent of the people declaring themselves as nonreligious.

In this mosaic each strand is distinct but interwoven into a cultural tapestry. Unlike Malaysia, ethnic and race riots have rarely marred the prevailing political harmony (except for brief riots in 1964). A remarkable transformation of Singa­pore’s landscape has occurred since the World War II. On the heels of the Japanese destruction of the city and their with­drawal from Southeast Asia in 1945, an ambitious plan of housing projects consist­ing of high-rise apartment complexes to shelter all sections of society was under­taken.

Each complex contained shopping, educational and medical facilities, conven­iently placed to serve the neighborhood. A group of several complexes had a town center with a wide variety of services. To­day, most of its population lives in this low-cost, state-subsidized housing under strictly enforced neighborhood laws. Only a few sections of the old city still retain the congestion of the past (some preserved as tourist attractions) but most citizens now live in modern apartments with mass tran­sit connecting all parts of the city.

Singapore’s planners expect and are making provision for the population to in­crease to no more than 4 million in future decades. The government has followed a strong—according to some critics intru­sive—policy of family planning. Between 1948 and 1958 its population had doubled and by 1965 the annual growth rate was more than 3 percent (usually symbolic of underdeveloped countries).

The govern­ment took action by enacting strong family planning legislation, including pub­licizing birth control methods, making abortion readily available, instituting male and female sterilization programs, and eco­nomically penalizing large families. In these efforts the administration’s campaign proved singularly effective and by the early 1980s, annual birthrates had dropped to one-half the levels of 1965.

Today, its rate of population growth is close to one percent a year, almost one-third of 1965s level. However, by the late ’90s the ad­ministration had become apprehensive of a potential shortfall in the labor force in the future, and began re-examining its popula­tion policy in order to make it more liberal. The city-state of Singapore has be­come in many ways a cultural, political and economic model to the developing na­tions.