Millionaire Country Singapore. China?
My reader Soon sent me an email about this topic:
Singapore is a country rises from rags to riches and become the 3rd richest country in the world. A fervent autocratic and capitalist country. Can China repeats the same feat? Can you put this in your blog and let your readers debate? (more)
What is your thought? Here is mine.
Don’t Compare China and Singapore
With all the due respect to Singapore, I just don’t want to compare China and Singapore. You can compare Singapore and Shanghai, or Hong Kong, or we can compare a system, but on the macro level, Singapore and China may not be the good subject to compare.
Why?
Simply because of the scale of the two countries.
Singapore is a country (or a city) with 4 million population. Hong Kong is much bigger, 7 million, and Shanghai has 16 million local residents, and 19 million population in total. Besides there, there are many difference.
Free Trade Zone
Hong Kong and Singapore are very like each other, since they are free trade zones. Correct me if I am wrong since I know little about macro economy here. A free trade cannot be too large since it must has a relative small domestic economy. I have never seen a free trade zone as big as China. There are some free trade zones in China, like the one in Dalian, and Shanghai, but to include any city in China except Hong Kong, and Macau may not be feasible. Not only China, all other trade partners may not want it. A WTO is an attempt to archive some type of free trade, but it is still very far from free trade zones.
Politics
To rule a city of several million is of cause very different than ruling a bigger country. Having said that, I never want to use the population as an excuse to debate against democracy, or other political system. On the contrary, a big country actually needs more wisdom in political system, like the democracy system can be a good option (please note: I am not 100% sure, because it has never been tested in China in the last few thousands years). If we are still OK to have a centralized government to rule a city (which is fine, and maybe the only cost-effective way to do it), it is too hard for a bigger country, if you want to run it well. For example, I don’t want someone in Beijing to make decisions for me about what my children should believe. So, there is huge difference here between Singapore and China.
Millionaire?
I don’t think China can be a millionaire country. I just want China to be a country without poverty or injustice. If money represents ownership of resources, it is not a big deal to the earth when everyone in Singapore is millionaire, but in China, that is impossible. I don’t know what it means for 1/4 of the worlds population to be millionaires. At that time, USD, or RM, or RMB, or EURO must have been hugely deflated. What I am saying is, I don’t envision everyone to be super rich in near future. To have everyone have a reasonable life (no starving), and receive education, and have clean water to drink are the most important mission for the people on this land.
Singapore’s Inspiration
Although I don’t think we can compare these two countries, Singapore’s success did give people inspiration. It is one of the few Asian countries to reach a very high level of economy success and social improvement. I visited Singapore in 2000, and many things I saw became real in Shanghai. For example, I took the subway to take the ring ride in Singapore, and reached the far north (near the Malaysia entrance), and impressed by people living far away from downtown but can still conveniently go to work. Now the same place appeared in Shanghai. It is called Xinzhuang.
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Comments
To me it is not comparable. Why…
- Singapore is also well known as a “incorporated” island. Basically, the nation just operates like a conglomerate
- China is a country. There are lots more factors to be taken care of. The wide geographical area of a country makes thing more complicated.
Policy making is not even when you compare Shanghai to Singapore. For example, can Shanghai determine the rate for the personal income tax? Answer is NO but Singapore can. This clearly reflect the differences between two.
If really want to compare, it make more sense to compare the business GDP between these 2 cities. What is the growth % between the 2 cities? Annual trade figures.
Posted by:
DC
on September 20, 2009 12:18 AM
@DC, you gave a very interesting topic: Shanghai cannot set their own personal income tax rate. That is true, but why we should do it that way? Shanghai has different personal income tax structure than many other provinces/cities, and why to follow the standard? The better way is to set different personal income tax rate for different regions (the starting point is a very important parameter), but it is not realistic to have someone in Beijing set that. The only way I can think of is to let the Shanghai Local People’s Congress set it, just as it is best to let each household to be able to decide which TV set they want / afford to buy. Unification is not the key symbol of a unified country.
Posted by:
Jian Shuo Wang
on September 20, 2009 12:30 AM
It’s really not possible to compare China with Singapore. Shanghai with Singapore perhaps - as they were both colonial cities created by the British. Singapore has thrived because it it retained the British-style legal and trading system and remained a secular island in a sea of Islam. Singapore also became a one -party family dynasty, with most of the city state’s power and finances still controlled by the Lee family.
The company I worked for chose Singapore as its base in Asia because of its pro-business. pro-efficiency and anti corruption environment. China was seen to be lacking in rule of law and with too much uncertainty about business rules at both local and national level.
Singapore is an easy place for larger western companies to do business in because English is the first language for many if not most people. Despite the intensive study of English in China, the English skills (especially spoken English) of the workforce are still poor.
My colleagues say Singapore is friendly to big business but Hong Kong is the best place if you want to become a millionaire quickly as it is more friendly to small business.
Posted by:
Michael
on September 20, 2009 5:57 PM
@Michael, that is right. In a bigger scope, the money (what they call it hot money) really have the option to go either Singapore, Hong Kong or mainland China (the most troublesome place for money to get in and out). But the bottom line is, people ARE comparing the different places to settle their investment.
Posted by:
Jian Shuo Wang
on September 20, 2009 8:07 PM
I worked in Singapore for 6 months. The economic achievements are impressive, but most singaporeans are not independent thinkers. Life there has much less freedom than in China.
Posted by:
Shelly Wolfsdorf
on September 21, 2009 6:16 AM