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The Chinese are fascinated by it. “There is good social order in Singapore,” Deng Xiaoping observed in 1992. “We should draw from their experience, and do even better than them.” It sends streams of bureaucrats to visit Singapore. One of the first things that Xi Jinping did after being anointed in 2010 as China’s next leader was to drop in (again) on Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s minister-mentor, who ran the island from 1959 to 1990, and his son, Lee Hsien Loong, who has been prime minister since 2004. The Chinese are looking at other places, too—most obviously Hong Kong, another small-government haven. But it is hard to think of any rich-country leader whom China treats with as much respect as the older Mr Lee.
So what lessons are the Chinese learning? There is an odd imbalance between the things that Singapore and others make so much noise about and the reasons why the place works. In particular, the “Asian values” bits of Singapore—its authoritarianism and its industrial policy—that the Chinese seem to find especially congenial are less vital to its success than two more humdrum virtues: a good civil service and a competitively small state.

The island that Lee built
Singapore is certainly a fairly stern place. It has been run by the People’s Action Party for half a century. The older Mr Lee, a Cambridge-educated lawyer who was originally seen as a bit of a left-winger, set up a parliamentary system in which it has proved curiously difficult for the opposition to do well. From 1966 to 1981 Mr Lee’s PAP won all the seats. It has opened up a bit, and in the most recent election in 2006 it won only 66% of the votes and 82 of the 84 seats. The media, and particularly the internet, have also got a little freer.

A. 어휘
streams of 연속해서 많은. anoint 塗油(도유)하다, 임명하다.
obviously 분명히. haven 항구, 안식처. authoritarianism 권위주의.
congenial 성미가 맞는, 쾌적한. humdrum 평범한, 단조로운.
civil service 행정. fairly 매우. stern 엄격한, 가혹한, 船尾(선미).
left-winger 좌익. parliamentary system 의회제도.
the opposition 야당, 반대파.