Singapore
The Southeast Asian island state off the southern tip of the Malacca Peninsula consists of the island of Singapore (573 km²) and about fifty smaller islands with a total area of 45 km². However, these areas increase from year to year, as new land is gained by filling the sea.
The main island, which is up to 177 m high in Timah Hill, is connected to the Malay Peninsula by a 1200 m long dam over the Strait of Johor, which provides road and rail connections to the mainland and also contains water pipes. The surface of the main island is flat undulating and crisscrossed by a branched network of small bodies of water. The city of Singapore occupies an area of about 100 km² on the southern part of the island.
The tropical rainforest, which originally covered a large part of the island, has been largely destroyed by heavy settlement. Foreign visitors often encounter Singapore with clichés: Some praise the island for its cleanliness as the Switzerland of Southeast Asia. Others disparagingly refer to the totally organized and strictly controlled dwarf state as “Nation 1984” in allusion to George Orwell’s novel. Still others see Singapore as a totally Westernized entity, a kind of Asian Houston or Vancouver, because of its wide streets and bold highway viaducts, its skyscrapers and its countless American-style fast food chains.
Historians date the founding of modern Singapore to the year 1819, when the envoy of the British East India Company, Stamford Raffles (1781-1826), landed on the island, which was then only inhabited by a few fishing families. Raffles acquired the island in order to build a British port there to protect the British possessions in Southeast Asia and as a counterpoint to the Dutch presence in Malacca. With this decision, he laid the foundation for Singapore’s development.
The British naval base, built for strategic reasons, has become an internationally important trading port over the years. In 1867, Singapore, which had included the entire island since 1824, was declared a British Crown Colony. After gaining independence in 1963, the island state, whose port is now one of the largest in the world, had to pass several tests. For a few years, more precisely 1963-1965, the island formed a part of the Federation of Malaysia.
The merger with the resource-rich neighbor was based on the conviction that Singapore had no chance of survival on its own, that a port without a hinterland was completely useless. But the integration of the resourceless port city – Singapore even has to import its drinking water from Malaysia – failed due to political differences. In 1965, Singapore left the federation to make a new start as a sovereign state. No sooner had the young nation organized itself to some extent than London ordered the closure of its naval base in Singapore.
The port city thus lost one of its most important employers. Thousands were threatened with a future without employment, and for many observers, the British naval withdrawal from Singapore sealed the demise of the young island state. But Singapore’s government was not impressed by these gloomy prophecies. Trusting in the will to survive and the strength of the population, the government launched an ambitious industrialization program that brought foreign capital and technical “know-how” to Singapore. This made it possible to create the urgently needed new jobs.
In return, the government made generous tax concessions to foreign corporations. With comprehensive new laws, it ensured political stability, a relaxed labor market and harmony among the different ethnic groups of the island nation. Modern Singapore is proof that the founding fathers’ calculations worked. The People’s Action Party (PAP), which has ruled Singapore since 1959, transformed the formerly run-down port city, where gangs, corruption,
Drug trafficking and prostitution have been at home in an internationally recognized Asian center of modern technology and finance, where the vices of the past have been reduced to a minimum. Officially, the government has set itself the goal of achieving a standard of living in Singapore comparable to that of Switzerland.
One of the government’s favorite words is “excellence.” Singapore is to become an excellent state, a nation that, out of a collective urge for survival, does everything it can to always be one step ahead of its resource-rich and populous neighbors economically and technically.
