Chapter 10: What Chinese Media Really Thinks About Singapore
Chapter 10, by Huang Yanjie and Zhao Lingmin, is about how Singapore looks when viewed through Chinese eyes. Not the diplomatic version. The media version. Official newspapers, TV dramas, pop songs, travel blogs, internet forums. All of it.
Here’s the thing. Singapore is tiny. But in Chinese media, it punches way above its weight. The authors split the story into two tracks: what the government-controlled media says, and what ordinary people see through pop culture and personal experience. These two tracks tell very different stories.
The Official Media: Singapore as Role Model
Since Deng Xiaoping visited Singapore in 1978, Chinese state media has been fascinated with the place. Before that visit, official outlets called Singapore a lackey of the Americans. After? Suddenly it became a model worth studying.
The real turning point was Deng’s 1992 Southern Tour. He famously said Singapore has a well-regulated, well-ordered economy and society, and told Chinese officials to learn from it. After that, “the Singapore model” became a brand name in China. Government officials at every level wanted to study it.
What specifically interested them? Five things kept coming up over and over in Chinese newspapers and policy journals:
Housing. China’s property prices were (and still are) a massive source of anger, especially for young people. Singapore’s HDB system, where over 80% of people live in government-built apartments at affordable prices, looked like a dream. One Chinese newspaper article was literally titled “Singapore’s HDBs: Price Comparison Makes Me Cry.” A couple in Singapore earning S$2,500/month could buy a three-room flat. A couple in Shanghai earning less would pay similar or higher prices. Chinese media praised the HDB system constantly.
Anti-corruption. The fact that the PAP has ruled since 1959 and kept the government clean was extremely relevant for the CCP, which had been in power even longer but could not solve its corruption problem. Chinese media debated why Singapore succeeded. The conventional wisdom was “high salaries for officials.” But a Chinese legal scholar named Cai Dingjian spent three months in Singapore and argued that high pay was really about attracting talent from the private sector, not about preventing corruption. The real weapon was strict law enforcement and a culture where clean government is a core value.
One detail I found interesting: Chinese media highlighted the “55-year phenomenon,” where Chinese officials near retirement age had a high tendency toward corruption. They contrasted this with Singapore, where strict rules about forfeiting your retirement fund (CPF) if caught made pre-retirement corruption almost nonexistent.
Social management. Singapore’s ability to keep a multiethnic society stable and harmonious was a hot topic, especially after the CCP made “social construction” a policy priority. Guangdong province was particularly eager to copy Singapore’s approach to labor relations. When Guangdong’s party secretary visited Singapore in 2012, he learned that 1,600 labor disputes per year were resolved without third-party involvement. Strikes had been rare since the 1970s. Chinese officials took notes.
Democracy debates. This one is complicated. Some Chinese intellectuals saw Singapore as proof that a one-party state can work. Others called it authoritarian with a democratic facade. After Singapore’s watershed 2011 general election, views shifted. A leading Chinese political magazine ran an article called “The Singapore We Misread,” arguing that China’s intellectuals had a false picture. Singapore actually had effective democracy with real grassroots organizations. The article said China should learn from Singapore’s democratic values, not just copy its institutions.
Bilateral relations. Coverage of Singapore-China relations was usually calm and boring (because relations were smooth). The exceptions: when PM Lee Hsien Loong visited Taiwan in 2004, Chinese netizens were furious, though official media kept its criticism mild. And when Lee Kuan Yew suggested the US should maintain its presence in Asia to balance China’s rise, online commenters labeled him anti-China. In both cases, the government media stayed restrained while the internet exploded.
Pop Culture: TV Dramas, Singers, and Stephanie Sun
The popular media tells a completely different story. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Chinese audiences discovered Singapore through TV dramas. China imported around 50 Singaporean dramas between 1984 and 1999. Several became hits.
On the Journey (Renzai lutu), broadcast in China in the late 1980s, was a coming-of-age story about young hotel workers choosing between love and career. It resonated with Chinese youth facing similar pressures. The director, Liang Liren, had been a Red Guard in the 1960s, then an illegal immigrant to Hong Kong, then a top TV scriptwriter. His personal story was a perfect example of how cultural talent circulated across the Chinese-speaking world.
The Awakening (Wusuo Nanyang) depicted early Chinese migrants struggling in British rubber plantations. It appealed to both lingering Maoist ideology and rising nationalist sentiment in mainland China.
But by the mid-1990s, Singapore’s TV dramas started losing ground. Mainland China’s own entertainment industry was growing fast. Chinese audiences no longer needed to look outward for relatable stories.
What replaced the dramas? Pop music. A wave of Singaporean singers broke through in China, including Kit Chan, Mavis Hee, Tanya Chua, JJ Lin, and the biggest of them all, Stephanie Sun (Sun Yanzi). At her peak, she was chosen to sing four songs for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. That is a huge deal. Bigger than most mainland Chinese singers got.
But here’s the irony. These singers were popular as individuals. Most Chinese fans had no idea they were Singaporean. Unlike TV dramas that showed Singapore’s streets and society, songs don’t carry a sense of place. Stephanie Sun was famous. Singapore? Not so much because of her.
The Internet Age: Migrants, Tourists, and Real Talk
The biggest shift came with the internet and mass tourism. Starting in the late 1990s, more and more mainland Chinese went to Singapore as students, workers, and tourists. They came back with firsthand impressions and posted them online.
Chinese migrants in Singapore became the most active source of information about the country. They ran web portals sharing news, personal stories, and observations. In 2014, an anonymous Chinese migrant published Everything about Singapore, a book compiled from blog posts. Unlike the policy-focused official media, this book covered everyday stuff: social customs, manners, school systems.
Some highlights from the book: Singaporeans speak more softly than mainland Chinese. Talking loudly on the phone in the MRT is considered rude. Looking at someone’s computer screen over their shoulder is bad manners. Relationships are lighter. There’s less gift-giving and less complicated office politics. People used to the Chinese way might find Singapore “too cold.”
Not everyone loved it. Some Chinese visitors found Singapore boring and lacking in cultural depth. But the dominant view remained positive. Most saw it as more orderly and civilized than what they were used to.
The key difference between official and popular views: the government media saw Singapore as a model China should copy. Ordinary Chinese who actually lived there saw Singapore as fundamentally different, not necessarily something you could replicate in China.
Lee Kuan Yew: The Man Who Was Singapore
The chapter ends with Lee Kuan Yew, and for good reason. For many Chinese, Lee Kuan Yew was basically synonymous with Singapore itself. He was seen as visionary, pragmatic, and incorruptible. When he passed away, almost every Chinese news outlet headlined it. The typical description: “the last great statesman of Asia.”
His image reinforced everything the official media had been saying for decades. Singapore is what happens when a strong, clean leader builds institutions that work. Whether that image is fully accurate is another question. But in Chinese media, it stuck.
The Big Picture
Singapore’s image in China evolved through three phases. In the 1980s and early 1990s, it was a distant cultural cousin known through TV dramas and books. In the late 1990s and 2000s, it became a policy model that Chinese officials studied obsessively. In the internet age, it became a real place that millions of Chinese had visited or lived in, with all the messy, honest impressions that come from actual experience.
The official and popular views never fully merged. Government media kept pushing Singapore as a development model. Regular people formed their own opinions through travel, migration, and online discussions. Both views were mostly positive, but for different reasons. Officials admired Singapore’s institutions. Ordinary Chinese admired (or sometimes criticized) its culture and daily life.
For a country smaller than most Chinese cities, that is a remarkable amount of attention.
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