"Singapore is not a good development model and not one a developing country should follow. Singapore has basically conned the world about its nation-building achievement," said King. "It is frightening that they should regard Singapore as a good model to follow."
Years of robust growth in Singapore were driven initially by waves of foreign capital into the city-state and more recently by the import of foreign workers, who now make up one-third of the population. The government's jealous husbanding of much of the economy, meanwhile, has rendered impotent much of the nation's faculty for creative business.
"Its entrepreneurial, innovative capacity is quite small. It's got a very small local private sector, unlike say South Korea and Taiwan, where there are vigorous entrepreneurial cultures. In Singapore, they don't really have that," said King, who spent many years working in the island-state. Full story
