Essentially it's (relatively) easy to get work visas for areas where there's a genuine shortage but difficult to get permanent residency and almost impossible to get citizenship.
That's still a very different policy to what most western countries have right now.
The UAE has the most extreme version of this so the milder Singaporean version is less interesting as an example.
Im not sure if UAE really be an exciting place and thus would someone migrate to it if you care about culture and stuff.
[1]: I mean, in my book consensual trade between two grown up people is closer to consensual sex between two grown up people than it is to murder. That said, there is still some difference.
Either way, I would consider the UAE an exceptionally unsafe place to visit.
But what is worse: Law which does not matter, because the elite will ignore it anyway or threatening gay men to kill them but currently not doing tit.
anyway, not a place a emigrate.
Generally true for most of the world outside of the West
That seems like it should make Singapore _more_ cool, at least my personal theory is that this changed a lot of perception of China (at least in some parts of gen z social media, "it's a very Chinese time").
Yoghurt has an active culture.
I also think Hong Kong is going through the same thing, plus I believe China is trying to make Shanghai into its main Finance Center, letting Hong Kong's center fade away.
Singapore is pretty impressive.
During the 1990s when there were open questions about HK's status, a lot of the business community (and at least 10% of HKers) immigrated to SG to operate there.
During the 2000s, the PRC made some good faith attempts at assuaging investor sentiment in HK, and that slowed the business and financial services outflow from HK to SG as HK had added linkages to Mainland China that SG would never have.
Now that I can IPO or M&A in China and India with Singapore level valuations, I have no incentive to retain more than a minimal operational presence in Singapore in order to act as a capital funnel to the others.
By 2019, if you were a Chinese company that only intends to operate within China, you had no reason not to move legal and leadership operations to Shanghai.
On the other han, I'd you were a foreign investor, HK de facto become "yet another Chinese territory" which meant it's not a good hedge for an ExChina/China+One strategy which is executed in ASEAN or India, which made Singapore become somewhat attractive.
Basically, the only loser was HK.
That said, this is all business and financial services - no one was actually dedicating serious effort building sustained R&D capacity in either HK or SG when you can hire the people who you would have had to apply PRs (no one who is worth hiring would accept a work visa when they could work for an American company and L1/2 to America) for directly in China, India, and increasingly Vietnam.
Where's the example where you're a Chinese company with most revenue in China (for now) but do sell elsewhere and anyhow, there are lots of reasons to not 100% stick to China,
e.g. gaming companies have moved to Singapore in masses (at least some capacity) due to time and time of gaming crackdowns and censorship
For example, the whole ByteDance/TikTok imbroligo is due to Susquehanna trying to exit it's Chinese investments which are locked within China.
During the 2019-23 period, boards in startups that had Western investors increasingly demanded that either Chinese investors buy them out or that they shift domicile so an alternative path to exit could be found.
In the 90s and 2000s, Singapore's value add was that it could act as a door into China, India, and ASEAN due to expansive trade and investment treaties, but why would I want to build an R&D center in Changi staffed with PRCs and Indians when I could just hire them directly in Shenzhen or Bangalore.
After China committed to being hands-off on HK business and contract law in the 2000s, SG lost some value as it didn't have the same connections that HK had legally speaking to enter the Chinese market.
SG continues to remain the best place to incorporate a business in Asia, but just because your lawyers and holding company is in SG it doesn't mean your operations, operational headcount, and capital expenditures is there.
[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Law_(Temporary_Provis...
[^2]: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/my-views-on-...
You can keep your 1000 different Instagrammable spots, I'd rather go some place that is a little more into democracy and reasonable policing.
but that's just an assumption based on stories in the good old Soviet Union.
With the growing fascism all over the world we will see that kind of thing more often.
> This trial marks the first attempt in Britain to treat political property damage as equivalent to terrorism - an unprecedented and dangerous expansion of state power. Under the current Labour government, many defendants will have spent nearly two years behind bars before even standing trial.
https://www.cage.ngo/articles/trial-begins-for-first-six-of-...
"Detention without trial" is a thing in the UK, as well as the US, Canada, and many (most?) other countries, even those considered non-authoritarian or whatever, for lots of crimes, not just politically convenient ones. This isn't a new thing because of growing fascism, it's literally the distinction between "jail" and "prison", or what the bail system is for. Court systems don't have the capacity to try everyone immediately upon arrest, and in various ways, look to balance the right to a speedy trial, the right to a presumption of innocence, justice, and public safety.
(I'm not making any judgement on the balance Britain is striking in this particular case, which sounds bad!)
But what OP is pointing out as problematic in Singapore's case is 1) detention without even being charged with a crime, which is what the UK government website linked above says is forbidden beyond a relatively short time frame and 2) the absence of any kind of a right to a speedy trial.
(Humidity's high but peak temperatures aren't particularly extreme; it's just never cold)
But the factors that help Singapore be an Asian or often global hub in so many respects are still running strong, no? Worrying about whether a couple dozen X/Twitter legends are hyping you today feels silly.
That is what MarginalRevolution is. It's fairly heterodox by most standards, but not in the good way.
> the factors that help Singapore be an Asian or often global hub in so many respects are still running strong, no
Nope.
If I can now IPO in China or India with Singapore level valuations and attract Singapore level deal sizes, why would I as a Chinese or Indian want to dedicate significant capital in Singapore beyond what is needed to build an operating shell to interface with western capital markets?
Similarly, if I'm GS, JPMC, Citadel, etc and I'm seeing significant dealflows in China and India, I should concentrate on building an organization within their borders as much as possible - which is what they have been doing since the mid-2010s.
Singapore will remain a major financial hub, but it is losing it's relative advantage to other hubs within Asia.
Cowen is focused mostly on the US commenteriat, but the trend is similar in the UK, where "we should totally be like Singapore" peaked around Brexit, under the delusion idea that all we needed to do to emulated the success of the city state that founded ASEAN two years after declaring independence was leave the EU.
Meanwhile HN generally forms its opinion from a decades-old William Gibson article lamenting that it wasn't cool enough to write cyberpunk about :)
It seems like one of those places that is probably quite nice if you're loaded, but it seems like a pretty rough place if you're not already well off. I was also surprised that many of the stereotypes about 'one fine city' were not quite on the mark. Jaywalking, crossing against a cross-walk light, and various other little infractions were ever-present which left me feeling a bit odd as when in Rome do what the Romans do, but yeah... not gonna risk that.
Very aged population relative to the rest of the nation and so during the Great Recession a wave of retirees found themselves owning a home but otherwise impoverished and working service jobs out of desperation. Always was a sad interaction, and working alongside them was often worse. You would never hear the end of their misery, understandable bitterness, and regret.
Nowadays, thanks to the same demographic shifts, those jobs are back in the hands of the youth. Except now it’s all folks who grew up on the island that seemingly will live at home with their parents for the rest of their lives working those jobs. They otherwise would not be able to live anywhere close.
I have to ponder what the next shift in staffing there will look like.
That is a deeply weird statement to make in 2026.
Technocrats form the foundation of the so-called "deep state" that Trump rails against: unelected bureaucrats - scientists, economists, doctors, researchers, engineers, statisticians - controlling low-level government policy (ideally) on the basis of data and knowledge of their particular field.
What it doesn't mean is "a government run on the insane whims of coked-up techno-utopian billionaire tech CEOs", which is what the current right seems to be interested in.
Yeah no.
In Singapore you have a single party which has used it's constitution, laws, courts and media control to enforce a defacto one-party state for 60 years. Singapore citizens can (and do) vote but those votes have absolutely zero chance of changing anything.
Is it technically democracy? Well they vote so yes? Is there any chance at all of peaceful regime change through voting? Technically yes, in practice? Probably not. I would expect extreme suppression and HK style riot crushing. They have been doing it quietly for decades, targeting and legally destroying/bankrupting any opposition to the PAP.
So the only real difference vs say China is that while both are authoritarian regimes the Chinese didn't bother with a mechanism to pretend you can throw them out.
To be clear, I don't object to their form of government. I think it works for them and thus it's completely ok. If anything I find Singapore a really safe and efficient place and visit frequently.
I do object to people pretending it's somehow a liberal democracy though, that just ain't the truth.
The author keeps referring to "right-wing" this and that, so presumably he is buried too deep in some weird political subculture to realize that his question makes little sense to the rest of us.
yanhangyhy•2h ago
Supermancho•1h ago
While the ugliness of Taiwanese justice (or lack thereof) makes it unappealing to me, from the other issues mentioned in these threads and the recent 3 year sentence for killing a little girl - https://jakartaglobe.id/news/sixyearold-indonesian-girl-kill..., I'm not sure it rises to the most troubling qualities of NK. eg The population doesn't starve en masse, no familial dynasty, and there is no alternate-fictional history.
yanhangyhy•1h ago
many chinese people, it's kind of joke but still..also true on many levels.
> I'm not sure it rises to the most troubling qualities of NK
its run by a dictator from the begining, with many strange laws to tell the people not to do this and not to do that. the major difference is that Singapore is pro-west (and pretend to be neutral) so no trash talk from the western media and its portrayed as a 'democracy'
snowpid•1h ago
Please provide sources
yanhangyhy•58m ago
snowpid•51m ago
Now your turn
yanhangyhy•45m ago
you win! this website must make a huge diffrenece for the people all over the world or the western world so people think of singapore as non-democracy sometimes.
notahacker•53m ago
Try doing that in mainland China...
yanhangyhy•51m ago
notahacker•41m ago
yanhangyhy•19m ago
i read so many pepople complain the ICE on rednote and on reddit complain Trump and jokes about him, i just don't see the changes. Does Trump retreat any of his major polices? If not, are people just lives in the bubbles?