The Economist:
It’s easy to see why developing countries might be seduced by Singapore’s recent success—but it’s also perfectly delusional of them. What many poorer countries seem to like about Singapore is that it seems to sell the quickest path—a short-cut, almost—to development. After all, wasn’t Singapore, now probably the world’s richest nation measured by wealth per capita, just a malarial swamp only a generation or two back? That’s what many people seem to believe.
Singapore’s ruling party of course does nothing to discourage the myth. The People’s Action Party (PAP) is anxious to take as much credit as it can for Singapore’s undoubted success. The title of one volume of founding-father Harry Lee Kuan Yew’s autobiography says it all—“From Third World to First: The Singapore Story”.
Yet this is far from the whole story.