The trend must remain Singapore’s friend

The trend is your friend. That tested strategy in trading also applies to the way in which states navigate their way in the world. Small states being price-takers, they have a greater stake than their larger counterparts in going with the global trend because they can hardly change it. Singapore, a tiny island city-state, came of age in a global environment dominated by the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union even as its nascent relations with neighbours were complicated by complex issues of ethnicity and politics. Yet, Singapore not only survived, but also thrived as an independent state by going with a global trend that ultimately promised peace and plenitude based on a free market of trade and ideas. By embracing international flows of investment, talent and thinking, Singapore secured for itself a place in the workings of the early-globalising world.

As the country looks ahead, its economy needs to stay open and its society cosmopolitan.

How Singapore can continue to succeed was highlighted by speakers on Monday

at the Reinventing Destiny conference organised by the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities, the Singapore University of Technology and Design, and the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and Institute of Policy Studies. Held to mark the birth centenary of Singapore’s founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, the conference drew attention to new challenges facing Singapore.