The Intelligence: Singapore's "4G" era

This episode explores the political and economic transition in Singapore as it enters the "4G" era under new leadership.

1. Lawrence Wong will be Singapore's fourth prime minister, symbolizing a new generation of leadership.
2. Wong's leadership will focus on maintaining economic progress while navigating complex international relations.
3. Despite being a stable and successful society, Singapore is classified as a "flawed democracy."
4. Wong faces challenges such as demographic shifts and a need for political reform.
5. The episode discusses the potential for more democratic engagement in Singapore under Wong's leadership.

1: Introduction

Hosts introduce the topic and background on Singapore's leadership transition. Jason Palmer: "Welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist."

2: Lawrence Wong's Profile

Discussion of Lawrence Wong's personal background and political career. Patrick Fowles: "He grew up on one of the city's public housing estates."

3: Economic and Political Challenges

Exploration of the economic and political challenges Wong will face as PM. Lawrence Wong: "Every ounce of my energy shall be devoted to the service of our country."

4: Democratic Expectations

Analysis of the democratic expectations and political landscape in Singapore. Patrick Fowles: "Singapore is still an exemplar in the economy but remains a flawed democracy."

5: Future Outlook

Speculation on how Wong's leadership could shape Singapore's future. Lawrence Wong: "If we are unable to meet up to those high expectations, Singaporeans will choose accordingly."

• Engage with local and global political issues to understand their impact on everyday life.
• Consider the implications of leadership changes in your own community or country.
• Reflect on the balance between economic progress and democratic values.
• Stay informed about global economic trends and their local effects.
• Participate in community discussions to shape the future of local governance.

Lawrence Wong will only be the city-state’s fourth leader since its independence. Our foreign editor asks him how he hopes to balance diplomatic relationships with America and China, maintain economic success, and strengthen the country’s democracy. The impact of climate change on archaeology (11:31). And, a new biopic takes on one of the most lucrative, distinctive pieces of classical music (17:26).

People

Lawrence Wong, Patrick Fowles, Jason Palmer, Ore Ogunbi

Companies

None

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Jason Palmer
The Economist hello and welcome to the intelligence from the Economist. I'm Jason Palmer. And I'm ore Ogunbi. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

A trip to windswept scottish islands reveals a troubling trend for archaeology. Climate change is unearthing national treasures all over the place, but the land developers who typically fund archaeological digs are nowhere to be seen. And a new french biopic tells the story of classical composer Maurice Ravel's struggle to create his distinctive 1928 piece Bolero. Could its repetitiveness have had something to do with the composers brain disease?

Ore Ogunbi
First up though Singapore is often admired as one of the world's most successful societies, well, at least in financial terms. Its stability as well as its tax and governance regimes have long been attractive to international investors. But it still maintains strong links with China and is criticized for its illiberal domestic politics. Now changes are foot at the top, and Singapore is about to come under new management. I accept this responsibility with humility and a deep sense of duty.

Lawrence Wong, Singapore's finance minister and deputy prime minister, will take over from Li Xian Long later this month. Every ounce of my energy shall be devoted to the service of our country and our people. Mister Wong will be just the fourth prime minister since 1965, the year that Singapore gained independence from Malaysia. And among the challenges he faces is protecting the islands economic progress amid increasingly tricky relations between China and the west. The Economist's foreign editor, Patrick Fowles, spoke to Mister Wong earlier this week to discuss the future of Singapore, its model for government, and the risks that lie ahead.

Patrick Fowles
I met Mister Wong in a beautiful room overlooking the skyline in Singapore, which is a mixture of really old colonial buildings and hyper modern architecture in the financial centre, and I wanted to find out what his prime ministership would mean for the country and how he was going to change Singapore compared to what his predecessors did. I will be the first prime minister to be born after Singapore's independence. All my predecessors sang two, if not three other national anthems. I've only sung one national anthem, Majula Singapore, our national anthem. At 51 years old, Mister Wong was born seven years into Singapore's existence as a nation, and he'll be the fourth prime minister since independence for Singapore.

Ore Ogunbi
Patrick, tell me a bit about Mister Wong. What was he like? Well, I think he's much more of a humble figure compared to some of the prime ministers Singapore's had in the past. He's much more accessible and also has a more typical background, so he went to his local school in Singapore rather than one of the elite schools. My background is what it is.

Lawrence Wong
I mean, if it's helpful, if it makes it more relatable to Singaporeans, so much the better. He grew up on one of the city's public housing estates, which are where most Singaporeans live. After studying in Singapore, he went to university in the States, and he's spoken fondly about his time busking on american streets during his university years, and in fact has also become known for doing guitar solos on social media.

Patrick Fowles
So an everyman. In many ways, Mister Wong's ascendancy means that for the first time in the country's modern history, there is no member of the Lee family either in charge or waiting in the wings. Mister Wang believes he can live up to his predecessors. I believe when push comes to shove and the time comes to take hard decisions, I will do so, so long as the decision is in the interest of Singapore and Singaporeans. In one dimension, Singapore is still an exemplar, and that's the economy.

It's a combination of being open, embracing change and technology, and trying to be as smart as possible with government decision making. The more contentious bit of Singapore is its political system, which remains something rather different from a full fat, western style democracy. The latest democracy index from our sister company, the Economist intelligence unit, classifies Singapore as a flawed democracy. Patrick, do you see Mister Wong strengthening Singapores democratic principles? Mister Wang's People's Action Party has been the dominant force in Singaporean politics for six decades and ruled continuously, but its level of control has relaxed a bit.

So the centre left Workers Party won two of the country's multi member constituencies in 2020, a first for any opposition group in the country's history. And it has roughly a 10th of seats in parliament, and the opposition in total has around 40% of votes, so it's got some weight. So there is a sense in which politics, while not a multi party system, are more contestable than in the past. While the majority today would like the PAP to be in power to be in government, they would also like to see more opposition voices in parliament. So the opposition presence in parliament is here to stay.

Lawrence Wong
It's quite clear, but at the same. Time, the current outgoing prime minister Lee is likely to play some role in decision making. Well, this is a Singapore tradition. I mean, you don't find this commonly in other countries, but it's a longstanding Singapore tradition, and we found it very valuable. Mister Wong launched a policy called Forward Singapore in the last couple of years, which is a really large scale engagement of citizens.

Patrick Fowles
About 200,000 people participated. That conversation still has limits, and perhaps Mister Wong will go further during his time in office. We will have to do our best to engage Singaporeans. We will have to do our best to involve them in decisions that they care deeply about and in shaping our future. Mister Wong told me the next generation holds high democratic expectations.

Lawrence Wong
If myself, my team, we are unable to meet up to those high expectations. If we are unable to deliver those standards and a better team arises, then Singaporeans will choose accordingly. I have no doubt about that. So I think what's happening in Singapore is you've got a dynamic, hyper rich, hyper modern society that's undergoing more change. And that means, I think, the government has to be more accountable to how public opinion is shifting.

Ore Ogunbi
What other challenges is Mister Wong facing? Well, Singapore had a kind of golden era where as a trading center with a growing population, it was able to grow really fast in the era of globalization. And what's happening now is some of those underlying factors are heading in the opposite direction. So the world economy is now less trade centric than it was. And at the same time, the number of working age citizens is forecast to decline by several hundred thousand, to about 1.9 million by 2030.

Patrick Fowles
And what that means is higher healthcare costs. And at the same time, it means it needs growth in the workforce to keep expanding the economy. And that's where migration comes in. We welcome foreign professionals to work in Singapore, but it's controlled, because if it's not controlled, I think we will be. Easily swarmed, and rising numbers of people create more competition.

Some native Singaporeans feel that the odds are stacked against them, with loads of highly qualified outsiders getting a better chance at the top jobs. And Singapore sits in a precarious position between China and America. It's open to both. Tell me a bit more about that. Well, in terms of Singapore's economy, it's split between trading and doing business with the west and with Asia, including China.

Meanwhile, the population majority Chinese has strong cultural and often ancestral links with China. And that does create some tensions. The global order is shifting. The unipolar moment for America has ended. Yet it remains a preeminent power in a world that's transiting to a multipolar world.

Balancing this line between the two superpowers is tricky for a small country. When a big country deals with a small country, the big country often doesn't realize how imposing they are, and it's very hard to find a happy balance between the two, the big and the small country at the same time. To hear more about this and an extended version of the interview with Lawrence Wong, listen to Money talks, which will be out this evening on the Economist podcast feed. Ok, so it sounds like the new prime minister has lots of challenges ahead of him. Do you think he's got what it takes to deal with them?

I think in the economic sphere, Mister Wongs agenda is exactly the right one. The focus is on keeping Singapore as open as possible to the world economy, even though it's got more turbulent. The reality is we are still a very tiny little island in a vast and dangerous world, which is going to get more dangerous in the coming years. The area where I think Mister Wong should probably do more is on politics. It's better to have a political system that's more resilient, more flexible, more open to new ideas.

But it's still a bit of an open question how far Lawrence Wong and the fourth generation of singaporean leaders he represents are prepared to go in that direction. What has happened in the last 60 years has been nothing short of a miracle, and my mission is to keep this miracle going for as long as I can and to make sure our little red dot shines brightly for as long as possible. Whether Singapore succeeds is important because it's an example of how to get wealthy, how to succeed to lots of other countries around. So it's worth watching closely, and watch closely we will. Patrick, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Thanks. Sorry.

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Kaz Manuel
It would probably have been better for your piece if you could have seen it in a force eleven gale, although not quite as good for us. I'm speaking with Kaz Manuel, the treasurer of the know of Swan Joe, which is an archaeological site that contains the remains of Iron Age and norse settlements. I get blown over if it's. Yeah, it's a bad day, I'll get blown away. Madeline Wright writes about foreign affairs for the Economist.

Madeline Wright
We're on the island of Rousey, which is one of the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland. There's still archaeology underneath us here and. There'S history all around us. Yeah. And that ditch surrounding the roundhouse runs all the way back in round.

Kaz Manuel
And then this bit here is the norse longhouse. We're just next to the coast and a big bay in front of me is what looks like a load of rubble, but in it is an archaeological jewel. You see there's an ortho sticking through there. You see that upright star? So all the way along here there's little Iron Age buildings.

Madeline Wright
The no or Swan Doe has been here for thousands of years, but it's disappearing fast. Why is that? What's happening? Well, coastal erosion has destroyed most of the know of swandro. Orkney has a lot of coastline and things are eroding all the time.

Doctor Julie Bond and husband doctor Stephen Dockrell lead ongoing excavations at the know of Squandro. I spoke with both of them. I think we're looking at a couple of years from the roundabout, but what's left of the round has been. I think the final third will go within the next couple of years. And it won't be that it's just retreating back from the sea, it'll be that these deposits will have gone from underneath and the whole thing will then start to sink and to disappear that way, I think.

Matt Steinglass
And then a big storm, big storm event. There have been some very big storms this year. Scotland now experiences more winter rainfall than had been predicted for 2050. Rising sea levels and more frequent storms are washing away the sediment where the site sits. Rising sea levels, more frequent storms.

Jason Palmer
This sounds like it's going to be a climate change story. It is. Jason, Stephen, Julie. Think so too. With climate change, the storminess is increasing, the sea level is definitely increasing and so erosion is getting faster and so it's important that we look at these sites before they go.

Madeline Wright
Scotland is not the only place where changing weather patterns are causing a problem. UNESCO reckons that one in six cultural heritage sites is threatened by climate change. In England, there's a roman fort called Vindolandel. And the water logged conditions that have preserved its famous writing tablets for millennia are now drying up in the Arctic Pumas. Frostfall is eating away at indigenous artifacts.

And sites across the Middle east are being buried under tons of sand. But when it comes to climate change, archaeological preservation is hardly a top priority. So is anything at all being done? Can anything be done? A climate emergency was declared in 2020 by the International Council on Monuments and Sites, which deals with this kind of thing.

But many archaeologists say policymakers have been slow off the mark. Funding is the main problem. Archaeology tends to be bankrolled by land developers, but when it comes to climate related damage, theres no one to pay for it. Its costly to build protective measures and so it doesnt happen too often these days. But there are some benefits that come with climate change.

Jason Palmer
Go on. Whats the good side of this story? Well, archaeologists are coming across new sites. Several of the most exciting discoveries of recent years, from nazi warships in the Danube to ancient rock carvings in the Amazon, were revealed only after severe drought. Storms can expose hidden gems, too.

Madeline Wright
Skara Brae, which is a neolithic site in Orkney, was concealed by sand dunes until it was disturbed by a storm. In the 19th century, a centuries old shipwreck reappeared under similar circumstances this year. So the way to think about this then, is that we are losing some sites, but along the way were going to gain some more. Yeah. But even for those newly discovered sites, climate change poses a problem.

And so archaeologists and heritage institutions are faced with a really important question. Which sites will they save and which sites will they allow to disappear or decay? Given the sheer number of sites under threat and the limited resources available, many sites will be lost. And as those sites are damaged or disappear, historical knowledge and tourism may go with them. I spoke with someone from historic environment Scotland who works on preservation, and she says communities need to come to terms with changing landscapes and adapt accordingly.

Back in Orkney, there is hope. Sites like Swan Dro are turning to laser scanning and other technologies to capture a digital record for future generations. And Kaz told me about that. On the coastline of Rousey, the site. Is being laser scanned.

Kaz Manuel
There's a Lassie called Nicole Burton who's doing a PhD. So she's laser scanned this and she's come back every year and laser scanned the whole thing. So we've got 3d models of it, we're recording with all the modern technology, drones and overhead photography, photogrammetry. So we're preserving, we're recording everything we can. And this is all going to be publicly available when we've actually finished and well got as far as we can.

Madeline Wright
New technology like this means we can save at least some of this wonderful history. Madeline, thanks very much for your time. Thank you, Jason.

Matt Steinglass
Maurice Revelle's Bolero is a pretty weird piece. Matt Steinglass is the economist deputy Europe editor. It starts off with this distinctive rhythm.

That rhythm repeats on the snare drum for the entire duration of the piece, 169 times. There are just two melodies in the piece. They're repeated over and over again, eight times each over that rhythm. It starts with a solo flute.

Those tunes are repeated over and over again, being passed around to different instruments in the orchestra. The piece is basically a tease. It uses that repetition to build up the expectation of something big happening, and then in the end it just explodes all those expectations. It was originally the score to a short bet ballet. Its danceable and very catchy, and it has a tendency to keep running in the listeners head long after the piece ends.

A new french biopic called Bolero tells the story of ravels struggle to compose the piece in 1928, and it employs a similar kind of repetition.

The director, Anne Fontaine keeps coming back over and over to Ravels fascination with mechanical noise, his tortured sexuality, his habit of procrastination, and his long mental deterioration. He died in 1937 of a brain disease, and some neurologists think that brain disease may have been a condition called frontotemporal dementia, which is associated with obsessive repetition.

Whether the piece is a symptom of neurological dysfunction or not, it's one of the most performed pieces around in the classical repertoire. Royalties from performances and recordings and film scores have built up to something like $100 billion. But the issue of who gets all that money is complicated. Ravel had no descendants. On his death, his copyright passed to his brother, who got into a car accident, married his caretaker, she then left the rights to her first husband.

He married his manicurist, who had a daughter from a previous marriage, and the copyright to Oliverls works wound up belonging to that daughter, Evelyn Pen de Castell. Under french law, the peace entered the public domain in 2016. But like the music of Bolero, the copyright story never seems to end. In 2018, Miss Penn de Castell sued Sassem, which is Frances musical copyright agency, arguing that Bolero was actually a collaborative work along with the set designer Alexandre Benoit and the choreographer Bronislawa Nijinska. That would mean that the copyright should end on the basis of the death of the last collaborator, the choreographer who didnt die until 1972, and that they should continue to receive royalties until 2051.

That case is currently before a french court, which will decide it on June 24.

Miss Fontaines movie starts off with Ravel in the middle of a severe case of writers block. Ida Rubinstein, who was a flamboyant russian dancer in Paris in the 1920s, commissioned him to write a ballet. In 1928 he agreed to compose something that evoked his basque spanish roots, but then he began procrastinating and became obsessed by an emotional affair with the wife of one of his patrons. In another scene, he takes Eda Rubinstein, who commissioned the piece, to a factory and says they should do a ballet thats an ode to mechanical modernity based on machines and so forth.

She says she loves his vision, but then she goes ahead and ignores it and creates this kind of seamy spanish fantasia.

Bolero was immediately a huge hit. Arturo Toscanini conducted a rendition with a New York Philharmonic in 1930 that was massively popular, Ravel said. He played it much too fast, and to a modern year it sounds that way in the seventies. The movie ten came out in 1979, which was a massive comedy hit. Bo Derek plays a young ingenue who insists on playing the piece during sex with Dudley Moore.

Madeline Wright
Did you ever do it to revise Bolero? The credits at the end of Miss Fontaines movie claim that bolero is played by an orchestra somewhere in the world several times an hour. Its also been reimagined by modern artists, for example, the legendary Detroit DJ Karl Craig and Berlins dubbed techno originator Moritz von Oswald.

Matt Steinglass
It is hardly surprising that Miss Penn de Castell wishes that all of these performances were still earning her money, but the copyright agency Sasem says her suit is nonsense. The set designer and the choreographer had nothing to do with composing the piece, and she never claimed that it was a collaborative work until after the copyright expired. But there is something about that repetitive, permanent quality of boleros melody. Ravel himself supposedly asked a friend while he was composing it, dont you think there is something terribly insistent about the melody? And he might have found something fitting about the idea that its story just seems to keep on going on forever.

Ore Ogunbi
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