Singapore’s main competitor?

Whenever I think about Singapore’s future and its competitiveness, the name of a potential challenger keeps coming up: Dubai. I’ve mentioned this on a number of occasions, so I’ll add in a link to a long and insightful article from the New Left Review: Fear and Money in Dubai. It gives a detailed account of Dubai’s strategic direction, and looks at some of the methods used to achieve it – and some of the consequences. Singapore gets mentioned a few times. Hmm, I wonder what an article with the title Fear and Money in Singapore would say?

The invisible red dot in the room

The saying goes “the elephant in the room…” when there’s something that needs to be discussed, but it’s so large and obvious and obviously incongruent that no-one can bring themselves to mention it.

Singapore isn’t an elephant, it’s a “red dot” – but nevertheless, I’ve read a couple of articles recently that were obviously relevant to Singapore, and yet this island wasn’t mentioned.

The most recent is this article in the Times about Dubai, and its rise as a financial capital. I’ve mentioned Dubai as a rival to Singapore before, if you’ll pardon the rhyme. Obviously, it sees the need to diversify away from dependence on oil, and is choosing to go down the road of developing as a financial centre. Key quote:

Dubai has another incentive to succeed in what may be a winner-takes-all game to become the Gulf’s financial capital. Unlike Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, it has scant reserves of oil and gas. To be assured of success, it must be financially clean, and accept principles of accountability, transparency and regulatory rigour. Its development in the past decade has been extraordinary and proves that the Middle East is not, by definition, a basket case. To continue to be a model for the region and the world, it must continue to invest in integrity.

No natural resources, just people; a reputation for integrity, incorruptibility, and the rule of law. Where have we heard that before..?

So if Singapore now has a rival competing on its own turf, it needs to be making the most of its only resource, namely people. Another article that made me think of this regards China, in The China Vortex: Where’s the Fantasy, Creativity and Imagination In China?I know, it’s just about gaming. Yes, I know it’s about China, not Singapore. I know, Singapore is throwing lots of money at developing its creative industries. And yes, I know, Singapore is also trying to attract world-class industry leaders to set up shop here. And yet, and yet… I’m not convinced yet. I hope it will work, I really do. I know for sure that there are lots of bright and talented young people here… but there are so many obstacles in their way, in the shape of ‘B-Arkers‘, the middle managers who don’t contribute much and can’t see beyond “the way things are done”, who fear change and resist it, who try to stifle anything that changes or challenges the rules… These people exist worldwide, of course, but the type seems firmly entrenched here….

News from Singapore

It’s not so easy to get news from Singapore when you’re overseas. The Straits Times online is subscription-only, at a price that I think is much too high. In Beijing, I can get a print copy from the Friendship Store, but that means a long trip across town. The New Paper and Today are free-to-read on the web, but neither has an RSS feed, so I usually forget about them. Anyway, I hate the design of both sites, and Today in particular is so heavy with Java, tickers, and animated gifs that my computer slows down horribly whenever I load the page! As a result of all this, I get most of my news from Singaporean bloggers.

Anyway, some interesting Singapore related news has come up over the last few days. The Guardian has a piece on Singapore’s diplomatic troubles, caused by the government’s overseas investment policy. This policy stems from Singapore’s small size: the government has accumulated huge reserves, but has nowhere domestic to invest them. As a “city without a hinterland”, they’ve developed the “global city” policy, to treat the whole world as their hinterland, and invest globally. Not a bad idea, but it’s turning out to be more complicated in the doing than in the planning, I guess. They lost the bidding war for P&O to Dubai – though given the way things went with that in the States, they may have been lucky! Still, I wonder how the US Congressmen would have reacted if it had been Singapore handling the docks rather than Dubai?

On the Singapore Entrepreneurs site, there’s a really good discussion on how to encourage creativity, innovation, and an entrepreneurial outlook in Singapore. I wrote a couple of reports on this topic in my MBA Strategy class, but it’s a very difficult – even dangerous, perhaps – topic for a foreigner to get involved with, so I’m not going to say much more here! Suffice to say, I think it’s a really good article.

And speaking of things not for foreigners: I’ve been really surprised to see one aspect of the anticipated elections in Singapore. It seems that Senior Minister Goh suggested to residents of one ward that voting for an opposition MP would mean that the government wouldn’t put investment into the ward while that MP was in office (I summarise). This has sparked off quite a response in the Singaporean blogosphere. Maybe the government has given its side of the story but, if so, I haven’t seen it. It doesn’t seem to fit with the image of itself that Singapore presents to itself to attract foreign capital, though.

Challenges for Singapore

Following up on my post the other day, I mentioned that I saw the Indian MBA market developing as a threat for Singapore, as well as China. Via Gautam Ghosh, I see this article about how it’s happening.

Challenging Singapore as a whole, there’s also this Guardian article about the rise of Dubai – which is competing hard with Singapore for the port and shipping business. The UAE together, particularly Qatar (I think) are also developing themselves as an economic destination. It seems that Dubai is closely following the Singaporean model of tight political control and rapid economic development. Singapore’s influence is obviously huge, in the sense that its model for development has been studied, and is being imitated, by developing countries small and large. The question is, can it compete successfully against hungrier, and more agile, competitors?