Singapore and China

by David
(Chofu)

As a Chinese, I have to admit that I have a complex feeling about Singapore. In its history, most people in Singapore have a Chinese ancestor. They arrived in a new place and started from scratch. But now they do a much better job than Chinese with other foreigners.

I think this difference comes from the different attitude towards internationalization. Singapore is a very small country that relies on international commerce, and is not able to close the gate of the country. So they caught the opportunity of internationalization and took advantage of it. We can get this ideal from the average TOEFL scores (99 out of 120) of Singapore.

In the end, there is an interesting thing about Singapore. Today, Singapore surely is a developed country. But itself just refused to admit it, and claiming itself as a developing country. Most people who know this thing believe the reason is that Singapore doesn't want to take much responsibility in the world.