First stop on our tour of East Asia was Singapore. The city state would be many an urban planner’s dream. Clusters of luxury hotels and business headquarters have appeared in mycological bunches on reclaimed land. There is a clean and efficient metro system, high quality public housing and a complete absence of the graffiti and litter that plague the great cities of the world. My local council is spending hundreds of thousands of pounds paying contractors to remove gum from our streets. No such problem in Singapore. They have a more radical solution: ban chewing gum.This has led to a whole new kind of criminal: the chewing gum smuggler. Singaporean authorities are clear about what has allowed them to make such great strides in so little time. The Minister Mentor (who addressed the opening session of the International Bar Association that I was in Singapore to attend) is of the view that key to success has been the absence of any sort of political opposition. Not having democracy has meant that the government has been free to concentrate on the business of improving lives and repressing dissent rather than having to waste time focussing on elections and answering criticism from pesky opposition politicians.
The Singaporean legal system is equally streamlined. No need for laws forbidding discrimination on grounds of sex, one female Singaporean lawyer told us, because there is no discrimination in Singapore. Of course that does not mean that women are represented equally at the top end of Singaporean businesses. However, that isn’t true of UK or US businesses either, the Singaporeans point out a little smugly. As of Tuesday this week Singapore has taken the daring step of legitimising oral and anal sex – except between homosexual couples. It was not, the minister pointed out, because the government wished to discriminate against gay Singaporeans. It was instead because it did not want to find itself on a slippery slope to gay marriage and other rights. They did not want, he suggested, to allow gay people to set the social tone.
For a democratic fundamentalist like me, things become a notch scarier still when discussing politics with lawyers from the People’s Republic of China. I had a long talk with one lawyer over dinner at the Sentosa Golf Club. My dinner companion was the epitome of the stylish new chinese man of affairs in his bespoke suit. He wore a Hermes tie and carried a Montblanc pen in his pocket (I, meanwhile, was sweltering inelegantly in the 100% humidity). He had spent some time in England and was a keen follower of the fortunes of Exeter City Football Club – a team whose obscurity is matched only by the consistency of its failures. For all his expensive western elan, on political matters he was an apologist for the PRC government. He said that China has studied other civilisations carefully and learned what made them great. The United Kingdom built an empire on trade and command of the seas – China must do the same. The thought of having China command the seas did not have for him the chilling resonance it had for me. Similarly he was a fan of Stalin’s command economy. It had, he said, allowed Russia to expand its economy in record time. It had, I pointed out, led to the deaths of millions of Russians and the displacement of millions more. He gave a measured response to this point which boiled down to “so what?”. He moved on to eulogise the rise of the Third Reich, expressing a belief that Germany’s greatness could be ascribed to the “discipline” of its people – a point, he suggested, the people of the PRC would do well to take on board. Again, the millions ground in the gears of progress did not seem to trouble him unduly. Partly this seemed to be a question of scale. China could comfortably lose 10 million people without noticing. It would be about 1 in 6 people in the UK. He illustrated some of his points by reference to a “small” coastal city with a “mere” 7 million inhabitants. Whether we touched on environmental, economic or military matters the subtext of his conversation was that China expected to be allowed a bigger and bigger impact as each year passed. It left me feeling that we are in for a scary time.
The small coastal city with 7 million inhabitants wouldn’t be Hong Kong would it? Not sure whether HK would fit your friend’s “model” country/economy – may be in terms of its comparative wealth with the rest of China but this has been achieved very much on the back of a laissez-faire economic approach by the government (at least until recently) rather than a Stalinesque command economy.
I’m genuinely shocked. If Stalin’s economy was so good, why did so many wish to leave the USSR in the post war years? It is stunning that after history has proven such things to be wrong, people will still trust in them. I’m genuinely shocked, I was aware that Stalin had his admirers, but I didn’t think that Economic Policy was something even those misguided people would have congratulated him on. If he had managed the economy well over the period he was in power, Russia would not be the mess it is now, it makes you wonder what the PRC Govt. teaches these people about history that can leave them so blind?
What annoys me also, however, is how poorly the west has gone about proving that our systems are good. We won the cold war, but those in power seem to have seen this as meaning our free market economic driven democracies are perfect and can do what they like. I think we’d have benefited from spending the 90’s not milking the opening up of new markets, but using it as an opportunity to show where their systems had let them down and how they could benefit. It’s like in this glut for profit, we kinda forgot ethics, and instead of teaching them how we can all get wealthier and develop better, a lot of our corporations just exploited the new markets. The thing is, I believe that when we all progress together it’s better for everyone in the long term, rebuilding Japan worked – we should have shown similar efforts in seeing that the Eastern Bloc countries were redeveloped. Plus, it sends out a message other than an economic one, without needing to send a military one, it says that people who embrace freedom and principal will benefit. I’m not sure if that makes sense or is even vaguely relevant tho, sorry!
So glad you’re back in the blogosphere at least. And I agree, I find it truly frightening. When I was a child I worried about what was going to happen to the world during the cold war. I’m even more worried now.
i think most people would agree that life really *would* be so much simpler without the dirty business of civil rights, democracy, and protection against discrimination… democracy (and really just about any true exchange of ideas) is messy, time-consuming, troubling…
I’ve never been a fan of democracy myself. Which democratically elected would one point to in support of it? It’s the civil rights and rule of law that are important.
I could list several books explaining the problems of the Soviet Command Economy. To get the scale of economy the nuances of a modern economy are sacrificed. This is fine to win a world war, but not so good if left in place for 40 years afterwards.
I think Pete said everything else.
I remember learning of the chewing gum ban from a brit I met in Cambodia. Odd — and yet it works!
As usual, your patience amazes me. I think I would just throw something at the guy and move on with my day. I mean, justifying the largest genocide in the history of humankind?? Unbelievable.
Very scary…
I have tried to convey how upset your dinner companion has made me across the globe…
But each time I write a response or comment it seems so trite…
So scared,sad,disgusted appalled flabbergasted, are all mild to the true thoughts swirling around in my head..
I’m sure you were sweltering swelegantly.
oh goodness. thanks for sharing this slice of life from around the world. here’s hoping that the majority of people don’t want to be oppressed and will choose democracy and freedom at the first opportunity.
I shudder at having to explain that sort of “logic” to PunditGirl about her country of birth. It’s so easy to dismiss certain parts of a population when people are your expendable resource. We saw that in Beijing in the winter — no need for expensive equipment to clear the streets of snow — just use people with brooms.