Singapore Unlikely Power Chapter 8 Part 2 - Asian Values Freedom and Control
The second half of Chapter VIII gets into territory that makes Singapore genuinely fascinating and genuinely uncomfortable at the same time. Perry covers the “Asian values” debate, the tight grip the government keeps on politics and media, and then the wild card nobody planned for: the internet.
If the first half was about building the nation, this half is about controlling it. And what happens when the tools of control stop working as well as they used to.
The “Asian Values” Sales Pitch
Singapore’s government spent decades promoting something called “Asian values.” The basic argument goes like this: economic progress requires sacrificing civil liberties. The rights of the individual must take a back seat to the good of the community. And look how well it worked. Prosperity, stability, order.
Here’s the thing. Even some of Singapore’s own founding leaders didn’t buy it. Rajaratnam, one of the most respected figures in Singapore’s history, said back in 1977 that he had “very serious doubts” whether Asian values even existed as a real thing. David Marshall, another major figure, attacked the concept directly, arguing that blind obedience to authority might have made sense in Confucius’s time but was totally inappropriate for a modern society.
Marshall told a great story about a porcelain Buddha with a big belly. When he asked a Chinese client how anyone could worship something so obscene, the client replied that in a land of starvation, being fat enough to look like that “is heaven.” Marshall’s point was sharp. That’s the government’s attitude too. Be well-fed and be content. Don’t ask for more.
Perry also points out that “Asian” as a category is basically meaningless. Asia covers an enormous range of cultures and traditions. What the Singapore government actually meant was “Confucian,” and even that was cherry-picked. Real Confucianism valued poetry, painting, and philosophy as preparation for leadership. Lee Kuan Yew declared in 1968 that “poetry is a luxury we cannot afford.” The practical details of governing were what mattered. Forget the arts.
But here’s a detail Perry includes that I loved. Years later, when Lee’s wife lay paralyzed and speechless, he spent long evenings reading Shakespeare’s sonnets to her. Poetry was a luxury the nation couldn’t afford, but it was what he reached for in his most private moments.
The whole Confucian branding also ignored a quarter of Singapore’s population. Malays, Indians, and other non-Chinese citizens had no connection to this heritage. And even Chinese Singaporeans mostly descended from poor peasant families from south China, not the literati officials who actually practiced Confucian culture. Perry isn’t subtle about this. It was a marketing exercise dressed up as philosophy.
The Singapore Grip
Perry borrows the title of J.G. Farrell’s novel to describe Singapore’s political reality. The succession from Lee Kuan Yew to Goh Chok Tong to Lee Hsien Loong produced the nickname “Father, Son, and Holy Goh.” Two smooth transfers of power, with nobody seriously questioning the competence of the people in charge.
But here’s the problem. The system looked like democracy without actually functioning as one. Elections happened regularly. People voted. Candidates were selected by academic merit. The government ran free from interest groups and delivered rising living standards. In return, people traded away their rights for prosperity.
Perry frames this as a compact similar to imperial China. The government justifies its rule through performance. As long as people live well, they accept it. The government isn’t tyrannical. It genuinely cares about housing, health, education, pensions. But it also genuinely believes that ordinary people are incapable of making wise decisions. That’s a direct quote from Perry’s reading of the leadership’s mindset.
This trade worked for decades. But the shift toward a knowledge economy raised uncomfortable questions. Innovation requires free thinking. Creative industries need messy, unpredictable environments. Singapore tried to manufacture creativity the same way it manufactured everything else, through planning, infrastructure, and money. Biopolis, Fusionopolis, science parks, Yale setting up a college. The physical infrastructure was world-class. But as one Hong Kong consulting group noted, creating a “vibrant, freewheeling atmosphere” for innovation was a fundamentally different challenge from building infrastructure.
One stat that jumped out: about a thousand talented young Singaporeans give up their citizenship every year. Three in ten of the most highly educated were leaving. Polls suggested many more wanted to. And the reasons weren’t always economic or political. People talked about wanting to escape the “Nanny State” and its smothering stress. One young woman of mixed Malay, Chinese, and Indian ancestry, away for five years, said home made her “so angry and there is so little I can do about it.”
Out of Bounds
The OB markers section is where Perry gets into censorship and political control. The government operated on deliberately vague boundaries. If you knew what was forbidden, you’d push right up to the line. If the line was blurry, you’d censor yourself. Which was the whole point.
Foreign media got hit too. Time, the Economist, the International Herald Tribune, all got punished for running stories Singapore didn’t like. The editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review had the perfect quote: “We have done our best to play the game. It would be nice to know the rules.”
The Michael Fay case in 1994 is probably the most internationally famous example of Singapore’s approach. An American teenager was caught vandalizing cars. He was sentenced to four months in prison and six strokes of the cane. The New York Times called it torture. President Clinton asked for clemency. But plenty of Americans, fed up with graffiti and petty crime at home, thought Fay got what he deserved.
Perry notes something that often gets missed. Singapore’s caning tradition isn’t some exotic Asian punishment. It comes directly from British colonial and naval practice. The British caned schoolboys and flogged sailors for centuries. Singapore’s libel laws are also modeled on British ones, weighted heavily in favor of the person bringing the complaint.
The Internet Changes the Game
And then came the internet. This is where Perry’s narrative gets really interesting because it’s about control slipping away.
By the 2011 elections, Singapore was one of the world’s most wired nations. People had a new medium for political voice, and the government couldn’t control it the way it controlled newspapers and TV. Online discussions before the election were savage. People complained about housing costs, healthcare, immigration, arrogant politicians, and enormous government salaries. The prime minister was reportedly earning six times the US president’s salary.
The PAP still won with 60.1 percent. Most ruling parties anywhere would celebrate that. But it was the worst PAP result since 1963. Lee Kuan Yew’s own remarks during the campaign probably cost votes. He said Malays “have not adapted well to Singapore” and warned that those who voted for the opposition would “repent” their choice.
After the election, the prime minister tried engaging people through Facebook. He signed off his first chat with “TTFN,” which left many people confused. “Tata for now.” It was a small, awkward moment that captured a bigger truth. The old methods of control were becoming insufficient for a more educated, less docile electorate that had no memory of early hardship.
Lee Kuan Yew resigned as minister mentor a week after the election but kept his parliament seat. He had once said that even from his sickbed, “if you are going to lower me into the grave and I feel that something is going wrong, I will get up.” At his death, Singaporeans turned out by the thousands to file past his coffin. It brought the nation together with a new sense of identity, and also with the uncertainties of what comes next.
Perry leaves the chapter there. The grip is loosening, but it hasn’t let go. And nobody quite knows what Singapore looks like when it does.
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