Weekend, June 2, 2007
Time feels the Singapore buzz
Efforts to re-energise Republic draw the attention of world media
Jasmine Yin
[email protected]
ITS multi-billion-dollar surgery for a new face is not even half-done, but what has been promised — casinos, luxurious waterfront living and, more recently, F1 speed machines — have landed Singapore on the latest cover of Time magazine.
The six-page article documents the slew of transformations, such as the Marina Bay Sands casino resort and the French Rivieria-inspired Sentosa Cove residences, that are taking place to woo foreigners — especially those with deep pockets — to visit, live, work and play in the Republic.
It cited Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's outline of Singapore to be a "tropical version" of New York, Paris and London rolled into one, as well as comments by the Singapore Tourism Board's chief executive Lim Neo Chian that Singapore, which "is changing its image in the eyes of the world", has set its eye on "self-transformation".
Also featured in the article was a Singaporean banker who, after five years in New York, decided to return because she felt that life in Singapore would surely become "less boring" and "more cosmopolitan and sophisticated".
While political and media watchers welcomed the positive spin, they also cautioned the possible social downside of branding Singapore to the international crowd.
Dr Ho Khai Leong, a political observer from the Nanyang Technological University, noted that positive international coverage — with Time as the latest foreign media to report on Singapore's expensive facelift — suggests, "to a certain extent, that our efforts have been given serious attention".
The signs in recent years have been nothing short of promising: Foreign students and talent coming to study and work, as well as multi-national corporations that still consider Singapore as an attractive investment location, in the face of other emerging regional economies.
Yet at the same time, Dr Ho told Today that the "global-city efforts have widened the gap between the haves and have-nots" — a point that was also raised in the magazine feature.
"Despite this economic revitalisation, many Singaporeans find the changes their city is undergoing to be bewildering and even threatening," according to Time.
National University of Singapore sociologist Chua Beng Huat was also quoted as saying: "The backlash comes from so-called foreign talents taking the best jobs without any obligations to maintaining the national good."
Media watcher Viswa Sadasivan told this newspaper that, as a Singaporean, he was "exceedingly proud" of some of the recent developments to re-position the country.
But he cautioned that "it should not allow us the licence to lose perspective of the interests of the majority of the heartlanders for whom Singapore getting on the cover of Time or another international publication is not going to have a material impact on their lives, vis-a-vis bread-and-butter issues like next month's Goods and Services Tax increase".
The Singaporean banker who was featured in the magazine is coming back as a foreign talent, even though she may have been born and bred here, Mr Sadasivan argued. He added that "a lot of changes in Singapore will be skewed in favour of the cosmopolitan, those who are more secure in their lives and are ready for the higher levels of benefit in Maslow's hierarchy of needs".
"At the end of the day, we need to be Singapore and the day when we have arrived is the day when we don't feel the need to compare ourselves or make ourselves the East's version of something in the West," he said.