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Why Yale Should Consider Singapore
November/December 2010
by Otto H. Chu ’76
Attorney Otto H. Chu ’76 is chair and chief executive officer of Chu Financial Management Corporation, an investment management company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He has spent, in the aggregate, some three years in Singapore. The views expressed in this article should not be considered the views of any of the organizations with which he is affiliated.
Yale University has announced that Yale and the National University of Singapore are continuing a study about the possibility of establishing a new liberal arts college in Singapore that might serve as a model for all of Asia. While some find this proposal controversial, let me discuss some of the reasons why Yale should consider moving forward with such a proposal.
Those who question this proposal do so primarily because they wonder about the level of freedom in Singapore. They may feel that Singaporeans do not enjoy the same freedoms that we Americans do, especially with respect to the rights Americans enjoy under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. They then question whether a college that Yale might help establish would have the same level of academic freedom and freedom of inquiry and expression that Yale and other American universities enjoy in the United States.
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Singapore has the highest concentration of millionaire households of any nation in the world. |
Those who have lived or worked in Singapore understand that Singaporeans enjoy a combination of prosperity, freedom, opportunity, mutual friendship and respect, diversity, and tolerance among citizens that place it among the great nations of the world. There are reasons why so many people from around the world prefer to live in Singapore, just as there are reasons why so many people prefer to live in the United States. For example, in 2007, Jimmy Rogers ’64, the well-known hedge fund manager, famously sold his house in Manhattan and moved to Singapore because of the tremendous opportunities in Asia.
Singapore is an extraordinary nation. In just the last 50 years, it has transformed itself from a poor third-world country into a thriving country with an economy and infrastructure that are, on a per capita basis, among the finest in the world. The Boston Consulting Group recently reported in its Global Wealth 2010 Report that 11.4 percent of the households in Singapore held assets that exceeded $1 million. Singapore has the highest concentration of millionaire households of any nation in the world. It has succeeded in raising the standards of living of its middle-class and working people tremendously at a time when middle-class and working (or unemployed) people in many other nations have been suffering. The Singapore Government’s Ministry of Manpower recently reported that Singapore’s unemployment rate was 2.1 percent in September of 2010; during the same period, the U.S. Department of Labor reports, the unemployment rate in the United States was 9.6 percent.
In a different survey, Transparency International ranks Singapore in a three-way tie with Denmark and New Zealand as the least corrupt nation in the world. As anyone who has done business internationally—whether it is to export or import goods or services or to set up a university program in a different country—can appreciate, the level of honesty and absence of corruption in a nation, its people, and its government are crucial ingredients to the probability of success in any international venture.
Similarly, the quality of a nation’s infrastructure also is crucial. In my capacity as a board member of a hospital in Haiti, I have seen the challenges presented when an institution has to provide its own electricity, drinking water, and sewage systems from scratch. By contrast, Singapore provides world-class telecommunications, Internet, utility, and infrastructure services. One only needs to compare the experience of a traveler to Singapore’s gleaming, friendly, innovative, exciting, and efficient Changi Airport with that of a traveler to any of the three principal airports in the New York metropolitan area to appreciate the value of superior infrastructure.
Singapore is a nation that is very international in its outlook. Over 20 percent of its residents were born in other nations. Even though Singapore has four official languages, its government made a policy decision years ago to emphasize English as the primary language for daily use, so that Singapore could succeed internationally. For this and many other reasons, there is no nation in Asia where Americans will feel more at home.
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The government has an excellent record of convicting criminals. |
Singapore is among the world’s leading nations in promoting friendliness, mutual respect, diversity, and tolerance among its citizens and residents. Singapore has made great strides over the past 50 years in promoting these social and civic qualities. While no racially diverse society is perfectly tolerant, people of many races, religions, and backgrounds get along well in Singapore. It is difficult to measure these qualities in a society, but people who have lived in Singapore and other racially diverse nations for any length of time will appreciate the difference. One example of Singapore’s interest in national unity is its national anthem since independence, “Majulah Singapura,” the official lyrics of which are in Malay—even though people of Malay heritage constitute only about 14 percent of the overall population in Singapore, while people of Chinese heritage constitute about 75 percent. This would be comparable to the United States adopting a national anthem with a Spanish name that only has Spanish lyrics.
Another factor that contributes to the personal freedom of Singaporeans is the extremely low crime rate in Singapore. For a major metropolitan area, the incidence of violent crime is strikingly low, and the incidence of petty crimes also is very low. People are raised and educated to be honest, law-abiding, and respectful of other people. In addition, the government has an excellent record of finding, arresting, and convicting criminals, and punishment for crimes is swift and sure. As a result, there is little crime. In Singapore, people have the freedom to walk on city streets late at night without the racial tensions or fear of crime that many people in other nations face.
With respect to academic freedom, one might note the differing approaches to stem cell research in the United States and Singapore during the past decade. In 2001, U.S. federal funding of research involving certain types of stem cells was restricted following an order by President George W. Bush ’68. At the same time, Singapore was promoting and funding a major movement into the biotechnology industry, including all types of stem cell research. Singapore invested billions of dollars in biotechnology research. It successfully recruited leading scientific researchers in stem cell research from the United States and other nations by offering greater freedom, higher salaries, substantially greater research funding, and better scientific facilities. While there are areas where the United States offers more freedom or funding to researchers, this is one significant example of an academic area where the reverse was true.
In practice, the traditions of academic freedom and scholarship are alive and well in Singapore. My father, the late John Wen-Djang Chu, was a visiting professor at Nanyang University (now called Nanyang Technological University), one of the other leading universities in Singapore, for two years. (He had previously taught Chinese language and literature at Yale; among his students was a young Englishman named Jonathan Spence, later ’65PhD and now a Sterling Professor emeritus of history.) Neither he nor his colleagues ever experienced any form of governmental interference or censorship. They were free to engage in their scholarship and teaching just as they were in their own universities in the United States or other nations.
Some American critics note the use of lawsuits based upon claims of libel, slander, or defamation that have been brought against critics of the Singaporean government, including major news organizations based in the United States and other nations. While it might have been more diplomatic for some of these lawsuits not to have been brought, and some might differ with the judicial decisions in some of these cases, one might note that American law actually is extreme by global standards in the level of protection it offers reporters, writers, or others who report false or inaccurate information or present factual errors with respect to public figures, including most government officials. In the United Kingdom, for example, it is much easier for a public official to win a lawsuit against a news organization based upon libel, slander, or defamation than it is in the United States. Finally, in some ways, it seems a bit disingenuous for those of us who are citizens and lawyers in the United States, perhaps the most litigious society in the history of the world, to be criticizing the initiation of a few lawsuits in Singapore, a society where there is far more cooperation and mediation, and far less litigation, than there is in the United States.
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It would be unrealistic to expect Singapore to have exactly the same laws and societal rules as the United States. |
While we understand the concerns expressed, many of the criticisms of the Singaporean government or society seem to amount to this: They are successful in so many ways, but they don’t have the same rules for governance or society that we do in the United States. However, for all of us who have studied comparative law, political philosophy, history, anthropology, international relations and diplomacy, or other languages and cultures, the differences are what make the world such an interesting place. No two societies will be exactly alike, and it would be unrealistic to expect the laws or rules of any two societies to be exactly the same. In resolving the ongoing tensions in every society between preserving the rights and liberties of the individual, as opposed to preserving the rights and liberties of the society as a whole, different societies are going to draw the lines differently. It would be unrealistic to expect Singapore, with its unique heritage that combines English law, a Confucian Chinese cultural heritage, the rich indigenous Malay culture, and the cultural influences of Malaysia, the United States, India, Indonesia, and many other Asian and European nations, to have exactly the same laws and societal rules as the United States.
For many of us who have lived and traveled extensively in Asia, Singapore, of all the nations of that continent, is the one most likely to be hospitable to the great educational experiment upon which Yale may be embarking. The nation of Singapore, the National University of Singapore, and the students of Singapore and Asia will learn much from Yale, but we also will learn much from them.  |
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