Singapore, like other ex-Colonies in SEAsia prove that having been a colony is not an excuse for not doing well. HK, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea were heavily colonized yet after emerging as independent states were able to overcome difficulties, educate their people, take what they learned from their colonizers and have become leading economies of the world.

Governance is more important than one’s history when it come to success of a country.

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boelboel 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Most these countries had decent literacy and industry/proto-industrial base before WW2 or before becoming independent states. Singapore itself was richer than Spain in 1960 and one of the richest cities in its region despite the slums. This is why it makes no sense for example to compare China or India, they were just in a fundamentally different spot.

Regardless many of the strategies these countries used are increasingly difficult for low income countries to do as these countries (China is the biggest example) themselves are protective of these industries, there's no push for globalizing and as factories got increasingly automated.

That's not to say that I believe governance isn't important but the one's history is important for governance itself.

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ggm 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Absolutely agree. There's a lot of "yes, but.." in this for me, but the simple economics are pretty clear: post colonial asian states like this do fantastically well.

Cost of housing in HK is going to be an embuggerance if they don't fix that, it may bifurcate into a more strong over/underclass imbalance. Taiwan is amazing but has thinner underpinnings now the US has demanded chip manufacturing moves to continental USA and the water supply issue is huge.

But your central point I agree with strongly: fix education, health, housing and provide at least some representation and you can do so much better than being a colonial outpost of somewhere else sucking value out.

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itsthecourier 7 hours ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

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ggm 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I think this is a bitter pill to swallow for many because a more liberal sense of multiculturalism in AU and UK allowed enclaves to emerge which have now become intensely divisive where a less open "multiculturalism but conform to our norms" might have avoided.

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mytailorisrich 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Singapore is an enclave that emerged because of multiculturalism in Malaya caused by mass immigration from China, actually.

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mc32 2 hours ago | parent [-]

In the 60s the Chinese diaspora in SEAsia experienced violence by locals who didn’t like the success of the Chinese. This happened mostly in Indonesia Burma and Malaysia and not so much in the Philippine islands.

Malaysia in particular instituted pretty harsh laws to make Chinese suppress their Chinese identity and also curtailed their economic potential by implementing in practice expropriation and barring the Chinese from certain sectors of the economy.

So it emerged not because of multiculturalism but because they were being virtually locked out of the Malaysian economy.

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quickthrowman 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> In the 60s the Chinese diaspora in SEAsia experienced violence by locals who didn’t like the success of the Chinese.

I’m not super familiar with Chinese history, but this jumped out at me. How were other countries jealous of Chinese people during the decade of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution? Famine, death, destruction, etc. Am I misunderstanding something?

	▲	mc32 24 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I was referring to the Chinese diaspora who had left China over decades and even centuries -they had become successful in SEAsia and were often responsible for commercial progress in those places. The sixties were times of conflict all over the world and in SEAsia the Chinese diaspora in those countries found themselves the targets of the frustration of “natives”. I say natives though the Chinese diaspora was born and raised in those countries but were easily identified as being “foreign” in those places.
	▲	mytailorisrich 27 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It means success of ethnic Chinese in South East Asia. In Malaysia, Thailand, etc or even Indonesia, ethnic Chinese tend to be more successful in business circles compared to 'locals'.

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mytailorisrich 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The issue has never been previous status as colony but society and culture (East Asian countries and Sinpgapore are all part of the sinosphere culturally).

	▲	ggm 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don't think that's entirely true. Britain forced colonies to export only when beneficial to the domestic British market and forced them to import to benefit the domestic British market: India may have produced cotton, but under colonialism it had to import cotton goods from the UK. Japan did not view Korea as a place to enrich for anyone's benefit but Japan. The same with their occupation of Taiwan.

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forthworld 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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