singapore a global city

that is our aspiration. we want the best of the world to be here. we want to transform ourselves into something like a new york, london, zurich, amsterdam, manhattan, copenhagen, paris. but then again we can't be like these cities. these are europeans cities and only europeans will flock there, with a few asians who share the same taste for lifestyles and arts and culture. we can never be like any of these cities. they are too eurocentric. then what can we be? what kind of talents would be attracted to our shores? a few westerners perhaps. but mainly asians. no matter how, we are an asian country and no matter how hard we try, we cannot change the characteristics of our society so drastically. neither can we make it so appealing for the real european/american talents to flock here to make this a home or temporary home. we would probably be attractive to some asian talents from china, india, maybe some asean countries. if we are not too ambitious and more realistic, we could have a small pool of western talents in the midst of a pool of asian talents. that maybe what we will become. we are particularly attractive to asians who are not too comfortable with their home countries but desire the comfort and efficiency of a western styled city and still a little bit asian. and yes, we will be the palee or loontoon of the east. but at the lower level we are indeed a global city with at least half a million foreign workers from south asia, myanmar, thailand and china and of course an army of filipino and indonesian maids. in between these two groups we have a big group of so called foreign talents that are no better than our local boys and girls. and in our quest for more foreigners, we inadvertently devalue the worth of our own children. are we selling our souls(citizens) to the devil in exchange for some material trappings of a global city?