The Nature of Singapore's Economy Part I

Since its independence, the PAP government has been very concerned about how Singapore is portrayed abroad, and is at pains to make Singapore look good internationally, to foreigners.

Part of the rationale behind this is to portray Singapore as an investor-friendly place to attract investments, and hence create jobs for its multitudes of unskilled labour—a feature of Singapore in the 1960s.

However, within this process and over 50 years, the government has not managed to be cognisant of how Singaporeans see Singapore, of the reputation of Singapore amongst Singaporeans, and what Singapore stands for.

History of the Chinese People

The cultural glories of the Han people have been grossly overstated. The last time the Han people could be truly proud of themselves was during the Tang and Song dynasties, the former for its military might, and the latter for its cultural achievements. Yet, even so, it was not a purely Han effort. The Tang empire was built upon marriages with the hardy nomadic tribes in the northwest. Some of that gung-ho nomadic spirit definitely filtered through.

The next time China came under Han rule (the Ming dynasty), innovation was all but lost and the empire harked back the glorious days of the Han, Tang and Song dynasties. What was left was pure reaction, giving the Manchus a chance at the throne (which I must say they did pretty well, at least in the initial years). Confucianism as we know it today is merely an interpretation by Ming dynasty scholars, much like neo-Classicism, except much more reactionary and fundamentalist.

Even for the successor to the Han people, the current People's Republic of China, its achievements are benchmarked against those of Europe and the United States of America, the so-called modern West.

It is high time for the Han people, and the Chinese as a whole, to re-invent themselves and carve out a path to call their own.