I hate it whenever people (I’m looking at your, various ministers) cite Singapore’s nature of being devoid of natural resources and being small as a reason for the lack of democracy, or detailed planning, or something along those lines. Yeah. Small. No natural resources. Because if an island the size of Singapore with the same population size with the same calibre of leaders ended up in the middle of the Pacific – the very same outcome would occur.

In so many ways, being on the international trading route, and therefore having a shot in being a major commercial centre, is far, far much better than having oil wells (for one, no natural resource curse). And while Singapore doesn’t have a sprawling hinterland, Malaysia and Indonesia pretty much acts like one: it’s not as if Singaporean firms don’t have interests in neighbouring Johore or the Riau archipelago.

And while Singapore bears the risk of invasion, consider this for a moment: Malaysia kicked Singapore out for demographic reasons. Indonesia aren’t too fond of their own local Chinese and have been facing from the very beginning violent secessionist movements, not to add another to the list. It was risky; Singapore was and still is the only modern city-state functioning completely autonomous from a much larger power – but it doesn’t mean that Singapore had to turn into some conscripted authoritarian police state to achieve development.