We are a nation of immigrants who have pulled up our roots from our respective homelands and were therefore ready to drop our old habits and adjust ourselves to build a new life in a new land.

He could gradually edge out senior civil servants, replace them with younger men who were not tainted by corruption, and demand high standards of honesty and integrity. They must be well paid. But I stressed that it was vital that the top echelons were amenable to the law. The top leaders should be cleared first; otherwise it was a waste of time.

A Hong Kong entrepreneur settled in Singapore summarized the difference between them. When he set up textile and garment factories in Singapore in the early 1970s, he brought some managers from Hong Kong and hired some Singaporeans. By 1994, all the Singaporeans were still with him, but all the Hong Kongers had left to start their own businesses and were competing with him. They saw no point in being employees if they were as good as their boss. They only needed a little capital to start, and as soon as they had it, they left. Singaporeans lacked this entrepreneurship, the desire to take risks, to succeed and become a tycoon.

My daughter’s impressions were an eye-opener. She had studied pre-communist Chinese history and literature in a Chinese school and expected to see historical monuments, cultural works, and wonderful landscapes, especially those mentioned in the passages she had memorized. But she saw the poverty alongside the romantic-sounding mountains and temples. She was convinced that the pride the Chinese feel in having the oldest continuous civilization on earth was an obstacle to catching up with the advanced countries. Singapore was better off without this baggage.

Lee Kuan Yew, “From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965–2000”