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  • Singapore, the very model of a modern-day nation-state

    Since the "Singapore Model" is being emulated by PRC, might just as well open this thread here. Bigfella's undying love for that "New Neo-Confucianism Dreamland" (tm) has nothing to do with it, I swear.




    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/19/wo...gewanted=print

    September 19, 2009
    Saturday Profile
    A Romance Writer Jabs at Singapore’s Patriarchs
    By SETH MYDANS

    SINGAPORE — IT is the dress, she said, that catches the eye, the long silk sheath with the slits in the sides that offers what she calls “a startling panorama of the entire landscape of the female form.”

    The dress is called a cheongsam, and the woman wearing it is Catherine Lim, 67, arguably the most vivid personality in strait-laced Singapore and, when she is not writing witty romantic novels or telling ghost stories, one of the government’s most acute critics.

    In a light, self-mocking, first-person novel called “Meet Me on the Queen Elizabeth 2!,” she describes what she calls the strategic power of the dress, bright and playful to the eye but not as benign as it seems.

    “No other costume has quite managed this unique come hither-get lost blend,” she writes in the 1993 book, which recounts her flirtations on a cruise ship with men who, in their masculine determination, look faintly silly.

    The subject of her humor, she said, was not only the shipboard story, but also the government of Singapore.

    Sometimes called a nanny state for its heavyhanded top-down control, Singapore might also be called a macho state, in which government warriors of social engineering and economic development command the citizenry. In Ms. Lim’s political analysis, these efficient, no-nonsense leaders are respected but not loved by their people, whose allegiance is to the good life the leaders provide, rather than to the leaders themselves.

    This “great affective divide,” as she calls it, could deepen as a younger generation demands what some might term the more feminine qualities of the heart, soul and spirit. That view, which she first put forward 15 years ago in a pair of newspaper columns, still rankles among Singapore’s leaders, and its concept and vocabulary remain a framework for political discourse here today.

    MS. LIM has established herself as a leading voice for liberalism, and when newspapers shy away from printing her more pointed views in this heavily censored and self-censoring society, she posts them on her Web site, Catherinelim.sg.

    She continues to say things few others dare to.

    On her Web site a year ago, she belittled new, looser regulations over Internet speech as “a shrewd balancing act, both to reassure the people and to warn off the critics.”

    “For the first time in its experience,” she wrote of the governing People’s Action Party, “it would seem that the powerful P.A.P. government stands nonplused by an adversary.”

    At a forum this month with Singapore’s most powerful man, the former prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, she asked provocatively whether he would send in the army in the very unlikely event that the P.A.P. lost an election. (His long and intricate answer was that there are other ways to control an opposition government.)

    “They leave me alone,” she said in an interview. “They probably say, ‘Oh, this woman is no threat.’ Everyone knows that I am on my own, that ‘this is a very difficult person who needs to be on her own.’ ”

    She certainly does not behave like a threat.

    She arrived for afternoon tea not long ago dressed not in a cheongsam but in her workout clothes, elegant in black tights, a scoop-necked white T-shirt, a polka-dot scarf and a pert round cap.

    “So, what a world, what a world,” she said looking around, bright and wide-eyed. “But on balance, it’s a wonderful world. I’m so pleased to be alive at this stage.”

    And then, in an animated monologue, the variegated ensemble that is Catherine Lim came tumbling out.

    She talked of politics and science and mah-jongg and her adventures with men, of her atheism and her ruminations on death, which she said would bring perfect happiness though equilibrium and oblivion.

    She talked of her childhood in Malaysia in a superstitious Hokkien Chinese family — the source of the ghost stories she has turned into literature — and her Anglicization by nuns in a Catholic school who taught her to love the English language as well as the strawberries and daffodils she had never seen.

    She talked of her grown daughter and son, a doctor and a journalist, and of her divorce in 1984 from a man who found her insufficiently submissive. “It’s the best thing that ever happened to me,” she said.

    She was reading up on science, she said — “I must be the only woman in Singapore who can discuss quantum physics a little bit convincingly” — when the idea for her next book came to her not long ago, a novel with existential undertones. “This is just to give you an idea of how volatile writers like myself are and how our minds go tuk-tuk-tuk-tuk like fireworks all the time,” she said.

    It was just before her divorce that Ms. Lim began writing fiction, and when it was a hit, she quit her job as a university lecturer in linguistics. The 18 books she has produced have been published in a dozen countries, including the United States.

    And then in 1994, a year after writing about her adventures on the Queen Elizabeth 2, she took Singapore by surprise with her hard-edged essays about the loveless relationship between the government and its people. The fuss that followed became known as the “Catherine Lim affair” and offered an object lesson in the brittleness and insecurity of the men, and just a few women, who hold power here.

    IN a study published last March titled “Who’s Afraid of Catherine Lim?” a political scientist at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Kenneth Paul Tan, cast Ms. Lim’s duel with the government in Freudian terms.

    An overbearing patriarchal leadership, he said, finds itself at odds with an outwardly benign, deferential woman whose feminine demeanor befuddles and unmans them. The government’s aggressive response to her essays about the “affective divide” seemed to confirm Ms. Lim’s assertion that it did not much care whether it was loved but was intent on being feared.

    Goh Chok Tong, who was prime minister at the time, rose in Parliament to defend his government’s honor, declaring, “If you land a blow on our jaw, you must expect a counterblow on your solar plexus.”

    In a speech a few months later, also quoted in the pro-government newspaper The Straits Times, he was even more expressive, saying: “If you hit us in the jaw, we hit you in the pelvis.”

    Really, Ms. Lim said in the interview, she likes men. But she seems to enjoy them in limited doses, as amusing playthings who must not be allowed to get out of line. “I would never remarry,” she said. “I will not even be in a commitment because I value my freedom so much.”

    She added, in a conspiratorial whisper: “So I have dates. Some of them are more special than others. But that’s it.”

    The flirtations and intrigues she described on the Queen Elizabeth 2 were mostly true, she said, “with a little bit of disguising.”

    Since then she has become a professional lecturer on cruise ships, dressing up in her cheongsam and telling her stories about men and women and ghosts. “In one of my last cruises — this is so funny, and I love to regale my friends,” she said. “I was wearing the cheongsam and I saw a row of four old men sitting in front.

    “And later one of them came up to me and said, ‘You know, I wasn’t even following your lecture. I was only looking at your cheongsam legs.’”

    Many Western women might find that offensive, but Ms. Lim just laughed at the memory. “Don’t you think that was cute?” she said. “I thought that was cute.”
    Attached Files
    Last edited by xinhui; 18 Sep 09,, 22:11.
    “the misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all” -- Joan Robinson

  • #2
    Now now. I really do like Singapore, I just don't like some of the BS that its government & some of its citizens spin. I already like the lady below. :)


    Originally posted by xinhui View Post
    Since the "Singapore Model" is being emulated by PRC, might just as well open this thread here. Bigfella's undying love for that "New Neo-Confucianism Dreamland" (tm) has nothing to do with it, I swear.




    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/19/wo...gewanted=print

    September 19, 2009
    Saturday Profile
    A Romance Writer Jabs at Singapore’s Patriarchs
    By SETH MYDANS

    SINGAPORE — IT is the dress, she said, that catches the eye, the long silk sheath with the slits in the sides that offers what she calls “a startling panorama of the entire landscape of the female form.”

    The dress is called a cheongsam, and the woman wearing it is Catherine Lim, 67, arguably the most vivid personality in strait-laced Singapore and, when she is not writing witty romantic novels or telling ghost stories, one of the government’s most acute critics.

    In a light, self-mocking, first-person novel called “Meet Me on the Queen Elizabeth 2!,” she describes what she calls the strategic power of the dress, bright and playful to the eye but not as benign as it seems.

    “No other costume has quite managed this unique come hither-get lost blend,” she writes in the 1993 book, which recounts her flirtations on a cruise ship with men who, in their masculine determination, look faintly silly.

    The subject of her humor, she said, was not only the shipboard story, but also the government of Singapore.

    Sometimes called a nanny state for its heavyhanded top-down control, Singapore might also be called a macho state, in which government warriors of social engineering and economic development command the citizenry. In Ms. Lim’s political analysis, these efficient, no-nonsense leaders are respected but not loved by their people, whose allegiance is to the good life the leaders provide, rather than to the leaders themselves.

    This “great affective divide,” as she calls it, could deepen as a younger generation demands what some might term the more feminine qualities of the heart, soul and spirit. That view, which she first put forward 15 years ago in a pair of newspaper columns, still rankles among Singapore’s leaders, and its concept and vocabulary remain a framework for political discourse here today.

    MS. LIM has established herself as a leading voice for liberalism, and when newspapers shy away from printing her more pointed views in this heavily censored and self-censoring society, she posts them on her Web site, Catherinelim.sg.

    She continues to say things few others dare to.

    On her Web site a year ago, she belittled new, looser regulations over Internet speech as “a shrewd balancing act, both to reassure the people and to warn off the critics.”

    “For the first time in its experience,” she wrote of the governing People’s Action Party, “it would seem that the powerful P.A.P. government stands nonplused by an adversary.”

    At a forum this month with Singapore’s most powerful man, the former prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, she asked provocatively whether he would send in the army in the very unlikely event that the P.A.P. lost an election. (His long and intricate answer was that there are other ways to control an opposition government.)

    “They leave me alone,” she said in an interview. “They probably say, ‘Oh, this woman is no threat.’ Everyone knows that I am on my own, that ‘this is a very difficult person who needs to be on her own.’ ”

    She certainly does not behave like a threat.

    She arrived for afternoon tea not long ago dressed not in a cheongsam but in her workout clothes, elegant in black tights, a scoop-necked white T-shirt, a polka-dot scarf and a pert round cap.

    “So, what a world, what a world,” she said looking around, bright and wide-eyed. “But on balance, it’s a wonderful world. I’m so pleased to be alive at this stage.”

    And then, in an animated monologue, the variegated ensemble that is Catherine Lim came tumbling out.

    She talked of politics and science and mah-jongg and her adventures with men, of her atheism and her ruminations on death, which she said would bring perfect happiness though equilibrium and oblivion.

    She talked of her childhood in Malaysia in a superstitious Hokkien Chinese family — the source of the ghost stories she has turned into literature — and her Anglicization by nuns in a Catholic school who taught her to love the English language as well as the strawberries and daffodils she had never seen.

    She talked of her grown daughter and son, a doctor and a journalist, and of her divorce in 1984 from a man who found her insufficiently submissive. “It’s the best thing that ever happened to me,” she said.

    She was reading up on science, she said — “I must be the only woman in Singapore who can discuss quantum physics a little bit convincingly” — when the idea for her next book came to her not long ago, a novel with existential undertones. “This is just to give you an idea of how volatile writers like myself are and how our minds go tuk-tuk-tuk-tuk like fireworks all the time,” she said.

    It was just before her divorce that Ms. Lim began writing fiction, and when it was a hit, she quit her job as a university lecturer in linguistics. The 18 books she has produced have been published in a dozen countries, including the United States.

    And then in 1994, a year after writing about her adventures on the Queen Elizabeth 2, she took Singapore by surprise with her hard-edged essays about the loveless relationship between the government and its people. The fuss that followed became known as the “Catherine Lim affair” and offered an object lesson in the brittleness and insecurity of the men, and just a few women, who hold power here.

    IN a study published last March titled “Who’s Afraid of Catherine Lim?” a political scientist at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Kenneth Paul Tan, cast Ms. Lim’s duel with the government in Freudian terms.

    An overbearing patriarchal leadership, he said, finds itself at odds with an outwardly benign, deferential woman whose feminine demeanor befuddles and unmans them. The government’s aggressive response to her essays about the “affective divide” seemed to confirm Ms. Lim’s assertion that it did not much care whether it was loved but was intent on being feared.

    Goh Chok Tong, who was prime minister at the time, rose in Parliament to defend his government’s honor, declaring, “If you land a blow on our jaw, you must expect a counterblow on your solar plexus.”

    In a speech a few months later, also quoted in the pro-government newspaper The Straits Times, he was even more expressive, saying: “If you hit us in the jaw, we hit you in the pelvis.”

    Really, Ms. Lim said in the interview, she likes men. But she seems to enjoy them in limited doses, as amusing playthings who must not be allowed to get out of line. “I would never remarry,” she said. “I will not even be in a commitment because I value my freedom so much.”

    She added, in a conspiratorial whisper: “So I have dates. Some of them are more special than others. But that’s it.”

    The flirtations and intrigues she described on the Queen Elizabeth 2 were mostly true, she said, “with a little bit of disguising.”

    Since then she has become a professional lecturer on cruise ships, dressing up in her cheongsam and telling her stories about men and women and ghosts. “In one of my last cruises — this is so funny, and I love to regale my friends,” she said. “I was wearing the cheongsam and I saw a row of four old men sitting in front.

    “And later one of them came up to me and said, ‘You know, I wasn’t even following your lecture. I was only looking at your cheongsam legs.’”

    Many Western women might find that offensive, but Ms. Lim just laughed at the memory. “Don’t you think that was cute?” she said. “I thought that was cute.”
    sigpic

    Win nervously lose tragically - Reds C C

    Comment


    • #3
      Yes, she is quite a lady with a sharp mind. It is true she with language and literature background, did read up and could talk sense about quantum physics, as well as about bio-medico-technology in the days when the topic was not yet hot.

      I had invited her once to give a talk to students. It was free of charge to her, unlike the QE2 liner talks.
      Last edited by Merlin; 19 Sep 09,, 03:54.

      Comment


      • #4
        PLA's People's Militia... From Singapore.
        Attached Files
        “the misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all” -- Joan Robinson

        Comment


        • #5
          I'm a little skeptical about how far the Singapore model can be pushed in China, given the huge differences between Singapore and the PRC.

          Comment


          • #6
            For their own reasons and benefits, China has regularly been sending some of their officers for visits, training and master degree studies in tiny Singapore. It would of course be silly if their officers apply on their return what they've seen and learnt wholesale, without selective adeptations. These are smart high calibre officers.

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by outcast View Post
              I'm a little skeptical about how far the Singapore model can be pushed in China, given the huge differences between Singapore and the PRC.
              I tend to agree.

              I think a lot of the success of the Singapore model is based on the size of Singapore demographically & geographically. I don't think it will work on something as big & messy as the PRC.
              sigpic

              Win nervously lose tragically - Reds C C

              Comment


              • #8
                of course, we are not talking about a wholesales adoption.
                “the misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all” -- Joan Robinson

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by xinhui View Post
                  of course, we are not talking about a wholesales adoption.
                  Yeah but even the overall theme isn't working very well. In Singapore centralizing power is very easy, but in a large country it creates a lot of the problems with official corruption/abuse of power. regionalism, as well as massive bereaucratic inefficiencies.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    I understand there are many books published in China about Singapore.

                    Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew has taken anti-corruption, racial/religious harmony and meritocracy very seriously since day one. Probably these are the things that impressed Deng XiaoPing when he visited Singapore in 1978.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      No matter how different between China and Singapore,I think China can get some useful experience from Singapore。In my college‘s library,I usually see a book 《Why Singapore is able to do it》when I seek books,but I didn't read it。Maybe I need to read it。I just know it's a book research why Singapore is so Prosperity under one—party’s control。

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew has taken anti-corruption, racial/religious harmony and meritocracy very seriously since day one. Probably these are the things that impressed Deng XiaoPing when he visited Singapore in 1978.

                        And those views should be taken seriously, but what result has there been in China? Corruption hasn't gotten better, there are still race related problems, and too often "guanxi" matters more than merit (as well as massive amounts of cheating on examinations). Obviously none of these are easy problems to solve, but clearly different approaches are needed.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by xinhui View Post
                          PLA's People's Militia... From Singapore.
                          This person is not a Singaporean. Notice that the IC is blue in colour, which shows that she is only a Permanent Resident, like a US Green Card holder...

                          The Citizen IC is pink in colour....
                          Seek Save Serve Medic

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by outcast View Post
                            And those views should be taken seriously, but what result has there been in China? Corruption hasn't gotten better, there are still race related problems, and too often "guanxi" matters more than merit (as well as massive amounts of cheating on examinations). Obviously none of these are easy problems to solve, but clearly different approaches are needed.
                            Most of these problems also existed before & long after Lee Kuan Yew took over in Singapore; they take time to go away.

                            But, clearly, Singapore isn't the only model of a successful one-party state. Until this year, Japan has been more or less a one-party state as well, with the LDP maintaining power for all but 11 months in the last 54 years... although with this election loss the LDP might have became less attractive to the CPC as a potential model.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              It’s not just Singapore that has a lot to offer China, but Hong Kong too. It’s HK more than any other country or city-state that has contributed to China’s development since the opening up.

                              Obviously, Singapore’s political system is much more workable for China than Hong Kong’s semi-democracy, and of course China is already developing its own version of Singapore’s state capitalism.

                              But let’s not forget that China has relied on Hong Kong’s money and expertise to build many of its various industries, and they are attempting to replicate part of our financial regulatory environment and legal system.

                              China will use both Hong Kong and Singapore systems to experiment the best way to develop their state-sanctioned market economy, and to develop a more open government.

                              Nebula82.

                              Comment

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