China playing catch up with Singapore

China has been playing catching up with Singapore but is losing. When Singapore started industrialisation in the 60s, China was still a backward agricultural economy. It then sent many delegations of civil servants here to learn the trick of the trade using Singapore as a role model. Over the last 40 years China made progress, opened up to the world and industrialised. The millions of bicycles on the road instead of cars also gave way, just like Singapore in the last 40 years, and cars started to appear on the road to replace the bicycles.

Singapore has done that and moved on. The roads that are filled with cars in Singapore is starting to give way as Singapore progresses. This time Singapore is moving ahead again. Singaporeans are encouraged to ride bicycles instead of buying cars. Soon the roads of Singapore will be filled with bicycles again, just like China before opening up to the world. China would have a tough act to follow Singapore this time, to abandon the use of cars and to go back to riding bicycles.  It is unlikely that China could catch up with Singapore in making its people to ride bicycles again, and very likely also a choice to abandon backward third world mode of transportation when people cannot afford to buy cars.

China is also losing out in housing after copying our housing models. Singaporeans have gone through the phase of buying bigger and bigger homes and asset enhancement. China is starting to do just that, with its nouve riche population rushing in to buy bigger and bigger homes. China did not know that the new trend of development, of progress, is to buy smaller homes, even to make babies, the smaller the cosier. Singaporeans are getting so rich that they know cars are wasteful, and so are bigger homes. So Singaporeans have embarked on a new trend, to buy smaller homes as a new lifestyle choice. When would China tell its people that small homes/flats are good and would not affect their quality of life?

Singaporeans are on the next phase of progress, not only buying smaller homes but trading them for retirement, come empty handed, go empty handed. China would take time to catch up with Singapore, for its people to start to buy smaller homes, and to tell its people to come empty handed and go empty handed, trading their homes for retirement, no more life long state pensions.

There are several areas that China has yet to embark on to be like Singapore, like paying their politicians millions to make them instant millionaires. This is something that China is still very backward and would never catch up with Singapore. Would China also learn from Singapore to bring in foreign talents to help create jobs for its locals? Would China dilute its core population with foreigners? Would China start to sell its strategic assets to foreigners as the next phase of their development?

Singapore is streaking ahead in many fields and enterprises. Would China also learn from Singapore to get its universities ranked among the best in the world? Never mind if our best graduates cannot built spacecraft, cannot build aircraft carriers, cannot build high speed trains after graduating from our world best universities. The progress is in getting the universities ranked as world best and get a degree from world best universities is the goal.

By the look of things, China will never catch up with Singapore and its people will be stuck with bigger homes and cars and not wanting to ride bicycles again. And its political leaders would never smell what it is like to be paid millions of dollars in salary and what it would be like to be millionaire politicians, and what dignity is all about boosted by a big pay cheque.

Singaporeans are now happily switching their cars to bicycles as a healthy way of life while the Chinese are pursuing their unhealthy and wasteful dreams of car ownership.