[gyeh]

Sorry for being nit-picky, but Singapore still vigilantly holds on to certain authoritarian practices (not to say some liberalization didn't happen).

It is important to note that many people in China look to Singapore to be the ideal political economic model.

This would be a very amusing scaling problem...

[mnemonicsloth]

You're not being nit-picky. You're exactly right, and I obviously wasn't paying attention when I was editing. I don't know what Singapore was like when its economy was developing, but today it is legendarily (sometimes hilariously) authoritarian.

The wikipedia article on their universal chewing gum ban is a fun read:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_gum_ban_in_Singapore

[dasil003]

Indeed it is. Check out this quote contrasted against the typical aseptic, fragmented prose of wikipedia:

Details of the closed-door negotiations are unknown, but it became apparent that by the final phase of the negotiation in early 2003, there remained two sticky issues: the War in Iraq and chewing gum.

That is by far the funniest thing I've read on Wikipedia.