As the articles in this special section show, scholars and policymakers from China have flocked to the city-state to study practical governance lessons and to learn more about an exemplary form of state capitalism. Furthermore, interest in the “Singapore model” (Xinjiapo moshi 新加坡模式) has also involved pragmatic cooperation between Singaporean and Chinese officials. But other authors in this special section argue that the study of Singapore has also been motivated by the search for ideological confirmation that successful economic modernization can be conjoined with one-party rule without the need to make politics more democratic. The notion of authoritarian modernism has replaced the old Communist utopia of the egalitarian society to become the new model of the good society for which Chinese leaders strive.
Chinese observers’ fascination with Singapore as a model of authoritarian modernity runs counter to the views of many Western analysts who have argued that economic modernization will inevitably lead to political change and democracy in China.Footnote 1 Henry Rowen even predicted exactly when it will occur – in 2015 (which he later postponed to 2025).Footnote 2 Attacked on the basis of weak statistical evidence, modernization theories have often turned to East Asia as the theory's “last redoubt,” because the democratization of South Korea and Taiwan after substantial economic growth provided two seemingly persuasive examples of this phenomenon.Footnote 3 The case of Singapore, by contrast, appears to challenge the “endogenous modernization” theory that democracy emerges after development,Footnote 4 providing good news for Asian authoritarian rulers who fear that continued growth could lead to increasing pressures for democratization, a kind of “modernization trap.” As Cherian George points out, the city-state has “attracted the attention of officials from China and other states” who, unwilling to believe that liberal markets and political competition go together, “find in Singapore a model for having one's cake and eating it too.”Footnote 5 China's growing interest in the “Singapore model” thus suggests a very different story than the standard modernization tale: that there is an alternative authoritarian “route to the modern world.”Footnote 6 Analysing the character, transmission and influence of the authoritarian model from this Southeast Asian city-state provides important insights into the official plans for the political future of China.
Singapore represents but the latest wave of “modelling,” with earlier Chinese modernizers having looked to the West, beginning in the mid-19th century, and to Japan, starting in the late 19th century, but then turning to the Soviet Union in the early 20th century until Mao's break with the post-Stalin Soviet leadership.Footnote 7 By analysing how Chinese scholars and officials in the post-Mao era have learned from the “Singapore model,” we can get a better understanding of what constitutes the latest version of the “Chinese dream” in terms of social and political development.
Following Deng Xiaoping's 邓小平 lead, tens of thousands of Chinese academics and administrators have visited the Southeast Asian city-state on study missions since diplomatic relations were re-established in 1990.Footnote 8 The frequent visits have been accompanied by a lively academic debate in China about the merits of the Singapore model and how its lessons may be relevant for Chinese reforms. A search of the China Academic Journals Full-text Database finds only 230 articles with the term Xinjiapo 新加坡 (Singapore) published before 1992. Since 2006, more than 1,800 articles have been published each year. Prominent scholars in Singapore and China have discussed the relevance of the “Singapore model.” For instance, Zheng Yongnian, the director of the East Asian Institute of the National University of Singapore, has argued that Singapore offers valuable lessons for reforming the Communist Party in terms of attracting talent and better serving the people.Footnote 9 Similarly, Daniel A. Bell, a critic of liberal democracy and chair professor of philosophy at Tsinghua University, has argued that if China follows Singapore's example of the meritocratic selection of political leaders it will help Chinese officials avoid policymaking mistakes in countries such as the US.Footnote 10 The extent of Chinese infatuation with Singapore was evident during the transfer of power within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2012, in which references to the city-state played an unusually prominent role. It was reported that Xi Jinping习近平, the new top leader, wanted to implement reforms modelled on Singapore.Footnote 11 Since then, however, there have been fewer Chinese students sponsored by the government to take part in courses in Singapore as a consequence of policies that restrict access to public money for overseas study. Moreover, recent conflicts between China and Singapore, as well as the Lee family saga, may have dampened Chinese interest somewhat, but the underlying rationale for learning from Singapore remains unchanged.Footnote 12
China's Ideological Lessons from Singapore
Following the turmoil and destruction of the Maoist years, Chinese reformers desperately sought new directions for reform. At first, political liberals in China looked admiringly to the US, while left-leaning scholars showed greater interest in social democratic states such as Sweden.Footnote 13 However, this changed in the aftermath of the crackdown on the democracy movement in 1989, when politically conservative intellectuals turned to Singapore to fill the ideological void that had emerged due to the dangers of political liberalization and the declining significance of Communist ideology. The “Singapore model” has become a useful reference point for conservative reformers in their efforts to bolster the CCP's ideological legitimacy and strengthen the governance capacity of one-party rule, thereby reducing pressures for democratization. China's disproportionate interest in Singapore is driven by the strength of its desire to learn “big lessons” from this tiny city-state.Footnote 14 In the process of ideological formation, the Chinese leadership seeks to revitalize a regime-supportive interpretation of “Confucianism.”Footnote 15 A similar process had occurred earlier in Singapore when, with Lee Kuan Yew 李光耀, the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) appropriated Confucian tenets underlying the “Asian values” discourse in an attempt to strengthen its rule.Footnote 16
Singapore became a crucial example for China's post-socialist, “market Leninist”Footnote 17 reformers because its model of Asian authoritarianism appears to demonstrate the compatibility of sound economic management with one-party rule. In this regime form, “market economic institutions and market-based strategies of economic accumulation exist and develop in subordination to Leninist political institutions and ideology. This specific combination of institutional attributes and its attendant effects on welfare, stratification, and political consciousness is what distinguishes market-Leninist regimes from other forms of political economy.”Footnote 18 Among defenders of this kind of political system, Singapore is regarded as a model of authoritarian success. It is widely understood that Chinese communist leaders seek to emulate Singapore because it appears to prove effective, and corruption-free governance is not tied to liberal democracy but can be achieved through pragmatic decision making by a determined ruling elite under one-party rule.
Singapore's main ideological lesson for Chinese officials and scholars sympathetic to the Singapore model has been the perceived confirmation of the claim that Asian cultures are fundamentally incompatible with liberal democracy, which in the 1990s was officially promoted by the “Singapore school” led by its first prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew. They launched a controversial international debate about “Asian values” in the early to mid-1990s that rejected “Western democracy” as culturally inappropriate to Asia and which critics claimed was little more than an “ideological refuge for authoritarian rule.”Footnote 19 The “Asian values” debate made a brief appearance on the international stage in this period because the assertion that Asian cultural particularity justified the rejection of liberal democracy was matched by impressive economic results.Footnote 20 This discourse was widely discredited in the West in the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, which was seen to be the result of a “culture of cronyism,” the seeming dark side of the “Asian values” thesis.Footnote 21 Yet in China, observers continued to believe in the value of culturalist justifications of authoritarian rule, with the semi-official revival of Confucianism being the clearest indication of this trend.Footnote 22
The reflections about the “Singapore model” by its Chinese students provide lessons in how ideology and governance strengthen one-party rule, and are part of an ongoing process of illiberal adaptation in China. The New Confucianism that Chinese reformers claim underpins the city-state's success proves to these sympathetic mainland observers that authoritarianism does not necessarily result in corruption, and can even be a significant advantage to a developing country. As such, Singapore constitutes an Asian example of development in which “change is not directionless but ‘modelled’ on global best practices.”Footnote 23 David Shambaugh's study of the learning capacity of the CCP demonstrated the Chinese leadership's determination to avoid mistakes made in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and other areas.Footnote 24 Shambaugh only briefly discusses China's interest in successful models elsewhere. However, China has not only studied what it must avoid, but has also looked for guidance about what it should do. This is especially true for Xi Jinping's leadership, which has pushed for major reforms to increase economic and administrative efficiency and launched a major anti-corruption drive. A secret CCP internal document leaked to the international press in 2013 argued strongly against Western notions such as “the separation of three powers, a multiparty system, a system of universal suffrage, independent judiciary, a military belonging to the nation, etc.”Footnote 25 This was officially reiterated by Chief Justice Zhou Qiang 周強 in a speech to legal officials in January 2017 when he asserted: “We should resolutely resist erroneous influence from the West: ‘constitutional democracy,’ ‘separation of powers’ and ‘independence of the judiciary.”;Footnote 26
In Singapore, the CCP has found a model of successful one-party dominant rule, which it considers suitable for adaptation to a “unique Chinese approach” intended to maintain legitimation for its ruleFootnote 27 and to guide China towards its newly proclaimed “China dream.” The latter has become a prominent ideological slogan under President Xi Jinping, who has asserted the need for the country to return to national greatness. It comes amid a slowing economy, when the ruling Communist Party has sought new forms of legitimacy. The Chinese people are being asked to sacrifice individual demands to the greater good, an idea which has long been espoused by the PAP leadership in Singapore. This notion was reiterated in an article by Sam Tan, a PAP minister, urging “fellow Singaporeans continue to exemplify the grit and resilience of our forefathers, temper their discontentment with domestic issues, and re-think our position with an international perspective. This is essential for our continual survival and prosperity in the global arena.”Footnote 28
China's Practical Lessons from Singapore
Although ideological concerns underlie Chinese interest in Singapore, Liu and Wang in this special issue point out that the most Chinese observers’ ostensible interest in Singapore is driven primarily by practical concerns. There are basically two different sets of these kinds of lessons that Chinese observers believe can be learned from Singapore: an efficient state-managed economy and good governance. Singapore is seen as one of the great success stories of economic development in Asia, which has become a new basis for regional identityFootnote 29 and forms the basis of the Singapore brand.Footnote 30 The city-state is characterized by Chinese observers as a capitalist economy with a dominant state role while at the same time being open to foreign direct investment.Footnote 31 The Singaporean government directly or indirectly controls the economy through government-linked corporations, which are owned by the government's investment corporation Temasek, or companies in which the government is an important shareholder.Footnote 32 This combination has sometimes been referred to as “Singapore Inc.” It is particularly relevant at the moment as the Chinese have set a goal of making state-owned enterprises more competitive on the domestic and global market without fully privatizing them.Footnote 33 Moreover, Singapore is praised for its ability to attract large foreign direct investments, something in which China has also proved to be very successful.Footnote 34 It is thus perhaps not surprising that Chinese leaders such as Xi Jinping have publicly praised economic globalization, although within neo-mercantilist limits. For instance, at the Davos Forum in January 2017, Xi asserted: “some people blame globalization for chaos of our world, but our problems are not caused by globalization. They are caused by war and conflict.”Footnote 35 Singapore is also admired for its high ranking in Heritage's Index of Economic Freedom (it ranked second in 2016) as well as in the World Bank's index of the ease of opening and running a small- or medium-sized business (it ranked second in that 2017 index also) despite the important role the state plays in the economy.Footnote 36 The economic interrelationship between China and Singapore has also intensified as the two countries have become important trading partners. Since 1997, the majority of Singapore's foreign investments have flowed to China.Footnote 37 Moreover, in October 2011 the China–Singapore Free Trade Agreement came into effect, which eliminated tariffs on 95 per cent of the country's exports to China.Footnote 38
In addition to the economy, there is also an attempt to transfer knowledge about how to improve governance in a one-party state, thus avoiding the need for greater political transparency. The emphasis here is on concrete lessons that strengthen the leadership of the regime and improve the effectiveness of the state, particularly in fighting corruption, increasing professionalization, and improving party discipline within the party-state.Footnote 39 This has meant first and foremost an attempt to strengthen the top-down processes of governance, which in the Southeast Asian city-state appears to have been extremely effective.Footnote 40 As such, political learning from the Singapore model must be seen as part of the ongoing process of the transformation of the CCP.
Many of the other Chinese scholars and officials who have visited the island nation have addressed the issue of how Singapore has successfully adapted to the processes of modernization.Footnote 41 Singapore's Straits Times reported on 18 November 2008 that there are “a growing number of Chinese academics who have developed an interest in studying Singapore's rapid economic growth, political stability and harmonious social order in recent years.” For instance, Nanjing University history professor Lu Zhengtao 卢正涛 argues in his book Singapore: Modernization under Authoritarianism (Xinjiapo weiquan zhengzhi yanjiu 新加坡威权政治研究) that the Singapore case shows that countries can successfully modernize under authoritarian rule.Footnote 42 He argues that the PAP remained in power because of the establishment and improvement of grassroots organizations, the creation of the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau to investigate and severely punish corruption, the establishment of Nominated Members of Parliament as well as Non-Constituency Members of Parliament to make parliament more representative, the establishment of an elected presidency to provide certain checks on the prime minister, and the institutionalization of the leadership transfer. Miao Chengbin, furthermore, emphasizes the importance of meritocracy in Singapore, which insures the selection of highly qualified and honest leaders.Footnote 43 The key to the longevity of one-party rule is effective monitoring of the integrity of party members. Xia Guoxing, the Branch Secretary of the Training Institute of Guangdong Agricultural Management Cadre School (Guangdong nonggongshang guanli ganbu xueyuan peixun bu 广东农工商管理干部学院培训部) has argued that social and political stability, the lack of corruption, a high degree of administrative efficiency, and excellent government services have been key to the PAP's success.Footnote 44
At the core of the “Singapore model” is the ability of a small political elite to maintain hierarchical power while using a calibrated approach to coercion and cooptation.Footnote 45 The PAP has established a communitarian nationalist form of governance that can be termed a form of “Asian democracy,” but cannot be considered liberal democratic.Footnote 46 In addition to political mechanisms, the PAP has also been successful in providing many social services. In particular, the availability of public housing to all citizens contributes significantly to the legitimacy of one-party regime.Footnote 47 It is thus not surprising that many Chinese scholars and officials have characterized Singapore as a highly effective and modern political system which is governed by a single dominant party.Footnote 48
Singapore as Teacher
Singapore has also encouraged the study of its model by foreign academics interested in its authoritarian success. A notable example of this is the Chinese academic Lü Yuanli's Why Singapore Can Do It (Xinjiapo weishenme neng 新加坡为什么能), which included a foreword written by Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong 李显龙.Footnote 49 Singapore's Straits Times newspaper reported that Li's book was “widely read by political leaders, government officials, students and academics all over China.”Footnote 50 The book had already gone through eight printings by 2009.Footnote 51 Moreover, Lü founded a Singapore research centre at Shenzhen University (Shenzhen daxue Xinjiapo yanjiu zhongxin 深圳大学新加坡研究中心). The central government in Beijing is actively encouraging research on Singapore, which is reflected in the fact that receiving funding for Singapore-related projects is easier than for any other country.Footnote 52 Despite continued geo-political differences between the two countries – most recently involving Chinese criticism of Singapore's military cooperation with Taiwan in late 2016–early 2017 – the important Joint Council for Bilateral Cooperation (JCBC) meeting in Beijing, which sought to deepen and broaden the cooperation between the two countries, went ahead on 27 February 2017.Footnote 53
China's obsession with the city-state has been warmly welcomed by the Singaporean government, which has invested heavily (and lucratively) in providing many different kinds of educational programmes for Chinese visitors. In addition to establishing study programmes for visiting officials, it has published or supported the publication of books, articles and op-eds that have sought to explain the various aspects of the “Singapore model.” In short, due to the growing interest among developing countries, particularly in Asia, Singapore has sought to establish its own brand of “soft” authoritarianism, which it sedulously promotes.
One way in which Singapore has tried to impart lessons from its own model is through bilateral cooperation such as the China–Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park (Zhong Xin Suzhou gongye yuan 中新苏州工业园区), the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city (Zhong Xin Tianjin shengtai cheng 中新天津生态城), and most recently the Sino-Singapore Guangzhou Knowledge City (Zhong Xin Guangzhou zhizhi cheng 中新广州知识城). In addition, there are also many smaller collaborative projects such as the Wuxi-Singapore Industrial Park (Wuxi Xingzhou gongyeyuan 无锡星洲工业园), the Sino-Singapore Nanjing Eco Hi-tech Island (Xinjiapo Nanjing shengtai keji dao 新加坡·南京生态科技岛), and the Singapore-Sichuan Hi-tech Innovation Park (HTIP) (Xin Chuan chuangxin keji yuan 新川创新科技园).Footnote 54 These industrial parks and integrated townships are meant to involve more than just economic cooperation because they are seen as a way to export the “Singaporean experience” and to teach China its “model.” For instance, the eco-city in Tianjin has been designed to be an experiment in constructing an environmentally friendly city that is also “a testbed for social management issues.”Footnote 55 It includes an attempt to emulate Singapore's approach to public housing, which has been seen as a key legitimating factor for the ruling party.Footnote 56 Despite initial difficulties, these projects are now managed under a Joint Council for Bilateral Cooperation (JCBC) at the level of deputy prime minister, which was established in 2003. These Singaporean projects have introduced the Chinese to the importance of long-term planning as well as the need to be responsive to investors, to provide greater transparency and accountability, to build better communities, and to increase environmental awareness.Footnote 57
While teaching can provide important insights into what and how something is taught and even how it is received,Footnote 58 the lessons about the model may not correspond to reality, which only a more nuanced and critical analysis reveals.Footnote 59 Parallels are sometimes intentionally exaggerated by Chinese scholars and government officials to make an argument for reform. Singapore's development is largely seen as a success story even though the city-state is facing many problems, including serious income disparity, weakening economic growth, relatively low productivity, and reliance on foreign labour, to name only a few. Some have even suggested that this demonstrates that the “Singapore model” may eventually prove unsustainable.Footnote 60 Another example is that many Chinese observers are convinced that Singapore's perceived good governance is in part due to the assumption that it is “a country that is deeply influenced by Confucian culture,”Footnote 61 despite the fact that Lee Kuan Yew and the PAP appropriated Confucian principles primarily from an instrumentalist perspective to strengthen the ideological justification of its dominant role in politics.Footnote 62 As such, studying the way a model is codified is of great importance for understanding its potential for proliferation. Exploring this aspect is one of the goals of the following articles.
The Articles in this Special Section
The discussion begins with Yang Kai and Stephan Ortmann's article, which draws attention to China's interest in various models for its developmental project. While many post-Mao reformers considered the US as the most relevant case during the initial economic liberalization period, the Swedish and Singaporean case soon became two important alternative models in the 1980s that began to attract the interest of different intellectual schools of thought looking for a “third way” between liberalism and traditional Communism. The Swedish case caught the attention of left-leaning scholars concerned with social democracy in order to achieve greater equity and harmony. By contrast, the Singapore model has been supported mainly by neo-conservative writers who are opposed to putting too much emphasis on social welfare, instead stressing a neo-liberal approach to state-capitalism. The perception of Singapore's economic success has been an important factor in the Southeast Asian city-state becoming a more influential model than Sweden. But another crucial reason for this change was that one-party rule came to be seen as a prerequisite in the selection of potential role models, which in Singapore has never been seriously challenged, unlike in recent decades where the once-dominant Social Democratic Party in Sweden has lost its political hegemony. After Deng spoke out in favour of the Singapore model during his famous “Southern Tour” in 1992, its dominance as a “lesson giver” has never again been challenged among most Chinese observers.
Benjamin Ho's article analyses the intersection of the Singapore model and the Chinese dream. The concept can be traced to a senior colonel in the Chinese military, Liu Mingfu 刘明福, who asserted in a book on the “China Dream” (Zhongguomeng 中国梦)Footnote 63 that the primary lesson that can be drawn from Singapore is the ability to mix socialism with capitalism, an ideal reference point for the concept of “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” Ho seeks to explore whether this is the case by determining why Chinese leaders are so interested in the Singapore model. Ho argues that the Chinese dream only has limited similarities to the Singapore experience and does not lend itself to effective learning. For example, he sees it as unlikely that China can adopt Singapore's standards of public service whereas the Chinese government will remain much more willing to intervene in the economy. Moreover, unlike Singapore, China acts from a position of strength in international relations, despite its long-held rhetoric of national humiliation, as it has the mentality of a great power. Finally, efforts to deal with corruption in China have not resulted in any of the structural reforms necessary for them to be effective in the long term.
Hong Liu and Ting-Yan Wang's article concerns Chinese officials who have participated in learning activities in Singapore. The empirical study is based on a survey of 1,300 graduates of the so-called Mayors’ Class at Nanyang Technological University, a one-year master programme established in 2005 taught in Mandarin that has attracted mainly mid-level cadres from China. The survey seeks to determine why the officials decided to participate in the programme and what they have learned from it. They find that practical governance lessons such as meritocracy or the rule of law are viewed as more important than ideological ones, including one-party rule and authoritarianism. Although the majority of officials are aware of the significant differences between the two places, they overwhelmingly believe that it is possible to draw certain lessons from Singapore and implement them gradually in China.
Finally, the article by Mark Thompson and Stephan Ortmann examines why the key lessons China has attempted to draw from Singapore are based on a “mis-modelling” of the city-state and have thus led to significant distortions in the learning process. They argue that this has occurred in the attempt to follow Singapore's example in adopting a discourse of Confucian values to justify the regime's hold on power, utilizing elections to enhance legitimacy, and launching an anti-corruption campaign. In each of these three areas Chinese observers misunderstand the “Singapore model” because they view Singapore as an overtly authoritarian regime heavily influenced by Chinese culture, thus missing the “soft” character of the city-state's non-democratic rule and the limited impact of an elite-constructed conservative culturalist discourse on it. In Singapore the legacy of British-style constitutional rule is still strong, while in China an illiberal Communist one-party state has evolved from Maoist totalitarianism with no history of separation of powers or the rule of law.
While all the articles in this special section agree that Chinese observers are determined to “learn” from Singapore, they differ about what aspects of this “education” have been most important. Some authors emphasize practical lessons, particularly those related to governance and state economic policies. This includes Chinese officials who attended “mayoral courses” in Singapore as well as those who have attempted to implement these “lessons” in China with regard to combining state management with market forces while maintaining political control, combating corruption and generally promoting efficient rule by a one-party state. An alternative view is that “given the unclear effects of policy transfers to date … Chinese policymakers – from local officials to Xi Jinping – continue to proclaim the importance of learning from Singapore” largely due to political considerations.Footnote 64 This is an attempt to follow Singapore's example in continuing to successfully legitimate authoritarian rule despite its advanced level of economic development. The ideology of “authoritarian modernity” is, in this view, key to Chinese policymakers and scholars in developing an ideology capable of justifying continued one-party rule in an increasingly modernized society.
But several of the articles in the special section also draw attention to an inherent paradox in China's attempt to learn from Singapore, which, despite some similarities, is fundamentally different institutionally. In fact, in this regard Singapore has much more in common with Hong Kong, also a former British colony and also a global financial and trading hub, which in 1997 became a part of China under the principle of “one country, two systems.” The integration of the former British colony so far has focused largely on increasing the economic linkages with the mainland and very little on attempting to draw any meaningful political or economic lessons from the former British colony. Recent political developments – including the failed attempt to introduce universal suffrage and growing doubts about how long civil liberties will be protected – reinforce the impression that China is not serious about adopting any fundamental institutional lessons and instead is merely driven by a desire to preserve its current one-party regime.Footnote 65 This paradox raises serious questions about China's commitment to undertake meaningful reforms to deal with the many challenges that the country faces in the immediate future.
Acknowledgements
Funding for the editors’ research on this topic was provided by two City University of Hong Kong Strategic Research Grants, “Teaching Authoritarian Developmentalism: The “Singapore Model” (Grant No. 7004349) and “The Singapore Model and Its Influence on China” (Grant No. 7004477). The authors wish to thank the university for this support. The first drafts of several of these articles in this special issue were presented at a conference on China's “Singapore Model” held at the City University of Hong Kong on May 9, 2016, and sponsored by the university's Southeast Asia Research Centre (SEARC). We would like to extend our special thanks to all the participants of the workshop for their active participation in the discussions, including the discussants Donald Low, H. Christoph Steinhardt, Darryl S.L. Jarvis and Toby Carroll. Finally, we also wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
Biographical notes
Stephan Ortmann is assistant professor of comparative politics in the department of Asian and international studies at City University of Hong Kong. His research interests lie in Southeast and East Asian politics, especially Singapore, Hong Kong, China and Vietnam.
Mark R. Thompson is professor and head, department of Asian and international studies at the City University of Hong Kong, where he is also the director of the Southeast Asia Research Centre. He has published extensively on Southeast Asian politics, the research for which has been funded by two recent grants received from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council.
