:: Cities of unusual autonomy ::

Friday, January 16, 2009

This was my third time visiting Hong Kong, but seeing as I had three scheduled layovers there and some classmates from LBS on exchange it seemed a waste not to drop in and spend a day or two. The weather turned out to be perfect for a little back-island touring and a walk up to Victoria Peak. The city still gives me the same small-but-huge sense I had when I first visited, something hard to convey in pictures.

Hong Kong book-ended a three-day trip to Singapore, which I expected to be completely sterile and engineered. Parts were - zoning laws seemingly keep all residences separated from noise-generating commerce and nightlife, and I did notice a lack of chewing gum on sale at convenience stores - but others I found to be surprisingly organic and raw (Little India and the food hawker stands are prime examples). Plus being a visitor one gets to enjoy all the convenience and modernity of the city-state without suffering the lack of press and speech freedoms, or worrying that it's a democracy only as much as the Lee family defines it. On that note, I once wrote the following in response to the mention of how Singapore represented Rovian political theory at its most extreme.

If Karl Rove is a student of political manipulation and will to power, Harry Lee is a tenured dual-degree Ph.D professor emeritus with a lifetime campus parking spot. I'm still dumbstruck that a privileged Cambridge-educated lawyer initially aligned with a conservative, almost reactionary, British-sympathizing political group could so cleanly and quickly defect to a communist-populist ideology (though ostensibly socialist, since communism was outlawed - staying within the letter of the law while blithely ignoring the spirit is a Lee hallmark). And how expedient it was that he did so, and founded the PAP, the same year the British started letting poor people vote.

His eldest son is the current Prime Minister, the other is CEO of Singapore's largest company, the majority of which is owned by a holding company ($55 billion in assets and growing) with his daughter-in-law at the head. He drove almost every erstwhile ally into exile and/or disrepute (and why stop at a smear campaign: Devan Nair even claimed to have been drugged). He restructured the judicial appeals process after a ruling didn't go his way. In 1969, perhaps overtaken by the free-loving flower power zeitgeist, he abolished trial by jury completely. He effectively outlawed every Chinese dialect save Mandarin.

He's Bush's breeding (i.e. flair for nepotism) and Rove's brain rolled into one. And he couldn't be more popular, for exactly the reasons you mentioned: the people are safe, healthy, and rich. It seems the demand elasticity for freedom and self governance is greater than some of us would like to believe (and that affluence can be a partial substitute thereof).

Any democracy that permits a head of state to maintain power for 30 years (and promote his/her son to the post a decade later) is a nominal one, blind at best, and temerarious at worst, to Acton's maxim. Benevolent dictatorships are groovy until you take away the benevolence. Wait and see if Lee Hsien Loong abdicates if he can't keep pace with pops.

Having now been there I would still agree with most of this (albeit a less self-important version - invoking "Acton's maxim"? wow.) and add, in addition, that the food is ridiculously delicious. Photos.

Posted by morland @ 08:43 PM

:: Comments ::

Did you see any Flying Dog beer in Singapore? I should have had you look for me!

it's fun following you around, especially when i can't be going around the world right now.

keep the photos coming.

Posted by: josh on January 16, 2009 09:32 PM

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