[dmix]

Counter to most western thought, you can in fact have heavy social control but small-government in terms of economics ala Singapore and have a country make rapid economic process.

China's CRC can loosen their grip on business, or selectively ignore it often enough, while still maintaining heavy control of culture and social issues, while still maintaining high growth rates. As we've seen in the last few decades.

It didn't seem to stop them previously, why would they try now? Other than civilian revolt which is non-existent in China.

[w1ntermute]

> you can in fact have heavy social control but small-government in terms of economics ala Singapore and have a country make rapid economic process.

Singapore's rapid economic progress is due to anything but small government. If you read Lee Kuan-yew's memoirs, you'll see the lengths to which the Singaporean government went to kowtow to Western (and later, Japanese) multinationals. They rolled out the red carpet over and over, for years, before any of those companies made significant investments in Singapore.

Also, there are several reasons why generalizing the Singaporean experience to Sinosphere countries doesn't work:

1. Although Singapore has a lot of ethnic Chinese, the country is inherently multicultural and has adopted many British cultural traditions and practices.

2. The country is very small, making social control much easier than in a country the size of China.

3. Lee Kuan-yew himself has said that the Chinese government won't be able to maintain social control as the Chinese population migrates to the cities[0]. The system will have to change, and that will be very difficult.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlkPuamwrlg#t=2m52s

[dmix]

Regarding #3, he said that the reason they can't control people as they move to cities is to:

a) the use of cellphones/internet spreads information

b) their ability to collectivize and locally share information in high-density cities

But have you read any recent books on China post-internet? They have largely succeeded in maintaining control of the peoples perceptions of vast amounts of issues. They might not be able to stop CNN/Tweets from getting out but they have an incredibly powerful propoganda machine that makes sure all the citizens distrust Western dissent.

So even with access people question it and

Second, the government employees a massive '50-cent army' to sway opinion all over the internet. Thousands of people who endless comment on websites in highly deceptive ways.

Third, the party co-opts popular influencial youth such as Han-han [0] and Zhou Xiaoping [1], and makes sure their message is anti-western and pro-state (with degrees of restraint to make it non-obvious).

Fourth, those cell phones have nothing but helped the Chinese party pick up and 'disappear' any dissidents.

So I disagree with Lee Kuan-yew that China can not maintain control. They have and are.

1 out of 3 people in China work for the party, how can they not maintain control?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Han

[1] http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/10/21/is_this_the...

[seanmcdirmid]

The government's ability to guide public opinion is quite limited, especially in the cities with the urban aspiring young who are already quite cynical. They get their best influence by pushing nationalism buttons, but this doesn't work very well for domestic issues.

I would say rather that the CPC manages to hang on to public opinion because they are quite stable and the economy does well enough under their leadership. But all the stuff that they do to control the minds of the public (censorship, wumao's, controlling the bloggers) is pretty much a failure, they hang on despite this.

[dageshi]

Can you point to any other examples other than Singapore or Hong Kong?

Both of these to me take advantage of inefficient neighbouring countries (in a doing business sense) to offer a safe place for those with the resources to do business. I don't know if you can apply that example to somewhere like China.

I also cannot see them lessening their grip on business. Ultimately money is power and in the past the Communist party has always seemed to favour maintaining political control over economic consequences. I cannot see them allowing potentially competing power structures to develop outside of the Communist party structure.

[dmix]

I agree that it is a bad idea to apply Singapore as an example for China. Just as people can't apply Finland to America. But there may be something about small-isolated economic-centric city-states. They might have way less overhead for political progress and action and the highest-levels are in sync with local issues, since local issues is targetted.

For example, Silicon Valley might have different issues with immigration than say Texas. But SV has to deal with Texas congressmen regarding policy.

[nl]

Singapore is a pro-business, large government benevolent dictatorship with a small population and almost limitless supplies of cheap, non-citizen labour.

Their society is a miraculous achievement, but it isn't clear that model generalizes to larger countries.

It's also not really in the 'Sinosphere', unless you consider all ASEAN countries to be (which they would strongly disagree with!)

I agree with your points about China though.

[seanmcdirmid]

Scary that the Chinese leadership does see Singapore as its best role model. Not sure if it will work out though, for the reasons you stated.

Taiwan, South Korea, and even Japan had or have governing structures that would be dubious by western standards, but still have succeeded well enough in reaching developed status (the former being dictatorships until recently, the latter being a reluctant democracy).

[nl]

I think Chinese leadership sees Singapore as an aspirational goal, rather than a development model.

For all their faults, the Chinese leadership is rarely dumb.