Singapore Wrestles With the Constraints of Success
The world looks like a very different, more threatening place than in Lee Kuan Yew’s era.
First-world challenges.
Photographer: Roslan Rahman/AFP/Getty Images
How much talk about reinvention does one of the world’s most successful, if tiny, economies have to listen to? Quite a bit, judging by a high-powered conference in Singapore this week.
Convened to mark the centenary of founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew’s birth and canvas ideas for at least part of the next 100 years, the Reinventing Destiny gathering was a mix of back-patting and must-do-better. Amid generous helpings of quotes from, and anecdotes about, the city-state’s towering historical figure was a sobering message: As arduous as Singapore’s first six decades as a republic have been, the next 60 years are replete with huge challenges. Some of them are very different, but no less existential, than those faced by Lee.