The Development of Mainland China Based on Singapore Model

• The Development of Mainland China Based on Singapore Model
  by Chen Nahui, translated by Grace Chong, http://www.thinkchina.sg/
  What did the Middle Kingdom with 5000 years of civilisation learn from a country that is 13,344 times smaller and celebrated its 54th National Day in 2019?
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  To date, Singapore is the only country that China’s top leaders have publicly claimed as a learning model.
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  In 1978, when China was at a crossroads, Deng Xiaoping made his political comeback and was giving serious thought to the nation’s future. That November, Deng Xiaoping visited Singapore. En route to France for work and studies in 1920, Deng had seen a Singapore in shambles. Fifty-eight years later, Singapore had undergone a facelift and was now virtually unrecognisable as the Singapore Deng recalled. He was astounded by the level of development the small island-nation had achieved in just two generations. Deng remained silent when Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew confidently remarked that China would soon be on par with, or even surpass Singapore. Lee said: “We are only the descendants of illiterate, landless farmers in Fujian, Guangdong and other places, but many of you are the descendants of officials and scholars.” Deng considered how China could become as modern as Singapore, or even exceed it. Lee’s Singapore aligned with Deng’s vision for China as a prosperous country where the Communist Party of China (CPC) would continue to hold a firm rule. He decided to learn from the Singapore experience. In Lee’s words, the Singapore that Deng saw in 1978 became the model for China’s future. 
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  He (Deng) upheld Singapore’s authoritarian rule, using its social order and stability to justify his own crackdown in Tiananmen Square, which served to strengthen the Chinese state’s single-party rule.
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  In 1992, two years after China and Singapore established formal diplomatic relations, the “Singapore Model” as a path to Chinese modernisation began to take shape in China’s official propaganda. Learning from Singapore became an organized and systematic official practice. This “Singapore fever” in China was, to some extent, a continuation of the reformist blueprint laid down in 1978. However, from 1978 to 1992, China’s political situation underwent huge changes. After Deng Xiaoping became China’s most powerful man in the late 70s, in 1978, he launched the economic reform that propelled China from a planned economy to a market economy. He was seen as a reformer who challenged conservatives, but when he later commanded the crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, he was viewed as a conservative with zero tolerance for liberal democracy.
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