Comment by alephnerd

At a macro level they look similar, but when you dig closer it starts to fall to the wayside.

A major driver for Singapore's initial growth was the fact that it is the de facto Oil Refinery hub in ASEAN - much of the oil that is extracted in Malaysia or Indonesia has had to be routed to Singapore at some point.

It has the benefit of having a strong financial service sector thanks to a business law system that strives to maintain parity with that in the UK and the US, but it's a very narrow industry that most Singaporeans don't partake in.

Also, Singapore has always had strong economic relations with it's neighbors Malaysia and Indonesia (even at it's worst points). Most of the business leadership in both countries are ethnic Chinese with blood relations in Singapore, which made it easier for Singapore to leverage it's position.

A major downside I've noticed in SG when I've travelled there a bunch is the lack of a truly strong innovation ecosystem. Sure there are plenty of startups, but most of them are just Chinese or Indian startups that are leveraging a Singapore CoLo to simplify investment. Much of the actual R&D and even leadership capacity remains in China or India.

SG is a very hierarchical country and that really limits their innovation capacity. Back in my undergrad, I knew 5 A*STAR candidates and a couple other bonded service candidates - of them maybe 50% returned to Singapore, and those that did were from households who owned a house (iykyk). The rest got offers with tech companies here in the US and broke bond. Even in the SAF, races segregate into their own units (eg. Ethnic Malays are de facto banned from airforce and high clearance positions).