Singapore

Singapore looks to have resumed intervention in the foreign exchange market

After the attacks in Jakarta in January, in which a group of gunmen, apparently overseen by a man affiliated with the self-declared Islamic State, shot and bombed their way through a downtown neighborhood, Southeast Asian governments began to openly address the threat of Islamic State-linked radicals. The region’s intelligence agencies, and especially Singapore intelligence, had been warning for at least two years that Southeast Asian men and women were traveling to Islamic State-controlled territory for training and inspiration, and that the region’s governments had no effective way to track these militants’ return. According to estimates by several regional intelligence agencies, between 1,200 and 1,600 Southeast Asians had traveled to Islamic State-controlled areas and possibly returned to their homelands. Other estimates put the figure even higher. The Islamic State clearly recognizes the potential for radicalizing Southeast Asians, one of the largest pools of Muslims in the world. The Islamic State has released a series of videos, posted on the Internet and social media, appealing directly to people speaking Bahasa (Malay or Indonesian.) The group has created a brigade of fighters in Syria for incoming Malaysians and Indonesians, a brigade known as Katibah Nusantara, or “Malay archipelago.” The brigade reportedly has been involved in battles with Kurdish forces, capturing territory from the Kurds last year. Returning to the region, Islamic State-trained militants may plan attacks to demonstrate their devotion and establish themselves as leaders to be feared. The Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC) wrote in early February that in the coming months, “more terrorist attacks in Indonesia are likely as local ISIS leaders compete at home and abroad to establish their supremacy.” Following the Jakarta blasts, Indonesian authorities arrested at least two dozen people (the exact number remains unclear) suspected of possibly planning future attacks. Sensing that the number of Islamic State-inspired radicals was higher than original estimates, in March the Indonesian National Intelligence Agency drew up plans to hire roughly 2,000 more intelligence agents focused on counterterrorism. The Jokowi administration, and the Indonesian parliament, also is considering passing “preventive detention” laws that would allow the authorities to hold terror suspects for up to six months without charging them. Yet the Jakarta attacks did not send Southeast Asian governments most vulnerable to the Islamic State threat---Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand---into a total panic. After all, the Islamic State, though a danger, is not as much of a threat to Southeast Asia as the group is to countries in the Middle East, Africa, or Europe. For one, many regional leaders and intelligence analysts understand that, compared to regions like Europe and the Middle East, the number of Southeast Asians who have traveled to Syria or Iraq to receive training and funding is relatively small. This number remains small in part because of the openness and democracy of countries like Indonesia, which allows Islamists to air their grievances heard through the political system. Even if 2,000 or 2,500 Southeast Asians have made the journey, as some Malaysian intelligence officers believe, this figure pales in comparison to the number of Tunisians or French and Belgian citizens who have traveled to join the Islamic State. For more on my analysis of why the Islamic State does not pose a great threat to Southeast Asia, see my new piece on Southeast Asia and the Islamic State in The Diplomat.

When Singapore split from Malaysia in 1965, becoming an independent city-state, its first elections were won by the People’s Action Party (PAP), then headed by Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who had overseen the country’s separation from Britain and its divorce from Malaysia. This victory was hardly a surprise: The PAP had won elections going back to 1959, when Singapore was still technically part of Britain, though it was getting self-rule. In 1965, the PAP had many peers as independence campaigners-turned parties in former colonies. But today, few of those peers still exist. If they do, none have matched the PAP’s record of electoral dominance and economic policy, since Singapore’s GDP per capita has expanded from around $500 in 1965 to over US $55,000 today. Still, in the 2011 Singapore national elections, even the PAP seemed vulnerable. After years of facing virtually no opposition at all, the PAP was suddenly challenged. Opposition parties seized on Singapore’s high income inequality and openness to immigration, blaming the PAP for allowing in too many foreigners and for doing little to address inequality. The ruling party’s share of the popular vote in the election dropped to around 60 percent for the first time ever, and it lost a group member constituency---a constituency where four to six MPs together represent a region on the island---to the opposition Workers Party for the first time as well. Two weeks ago, in the most recent Singaporean national elections, the Workers Party and other opposition parties hoped to make massive gains over their achievements in 2015. The 2015 election would be decisive, vowed Workers Party leader Sylvia Lim. Several Workers Party officials privately said they hoped to gain at least a quarter of the seats in parliament, if not more; the opposition was contesting all the seats in parliament for the first time. “Perhaps more than any election in recent decades, present conditions in Singapore are not as favorable [for a PAP win] as they were in the past,” wrote Bridget Welsh, a specialist on Southeast Asia at National Taiwan University. Instead, on September 11, 2015, the PAP won nearly seventy percent of the vote, its highest total in two decades. PAP supporters jubilantly carried the prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, around a stadium on their shoulders. The result, announced Lee, who even himself seemed a bit shocked by the total, “humbled” him and his colleagues. For more of my analysis of how the PAP rebounded, see my new piece for The National. 

In the run-up to Friday’s general elections in Singapore, the first since 2011, many foreign analysts, and some Singaporean experts, predicted that the long-ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) would suffer a significant defeat. After losing its first group member constituency in 2011, the PAP could have lost even more group constituencies to the opposition, led by the Workers Party. Some analysts predicted that the PAP’s share of the popular vote would fall to its lowest point in history, even if the PAP remained in power in Singapore’s parliament. High turnout at some of the pre-election rallies held by the Workers Party and other opposition parties, as well as the apparently strong pro-opposition sentiment on Singaporean social media, appeared to suggest a swing election. It also made it appear that younger Singaporeans would not support the PAP as their parents and grandparents had. Some reports suggested that Workers Party rallies were attracting fifty thousand people, a significant number in a city-state with a population of about 5.5 million people. The Singapore Democratic Party, led by longtime opposition leader Chee Soon Juan, even hoped to take a district that has one of the highest average incomes on the island, and where residents had previously been staunch PAP supporters. Compared to previous elections, this time, the opposition was contesting all the seats on the island, and also had recruited many candidates with the experience and skills to match those of PAP politicians. The pre-election campaign period, though, was very short by the standard of most democracies.  A short election period normally would benefit the ruling party, since it is harder for the opposition to formulate a nationwide, well-coordinated campaign in just a matter of days. In fact, the campaign period was impressively focused on issues, a credit to Singapore and its voters. Yet the opposition does not appear to have made a breakthrough in Friday’s vote; initial polling results reported by the BBC and other media outlets suggest the PAP has won a much larger victory than it did in the last election in 2011. Why might this have happened? For one, the PAP may indeed have benefitted from nostalgia for the era of Lee Kuan Yew, after Singapore’s founding father died earlier this year. Certainly, the outpouring of emotion following Lee’s death was a factor the PAP hoped to use to its advantage in the election. In addition, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and other PAP leaders used the campaign period to effectively shift the political debate from the opposition’s favored themes – fighting inequality and managing immigration – to some of the problems within the opposition ranks. PAP politicians drove home the message to voters that the Workers Party had mismanaged a town council it had run, that the opposition was fragmented and fighting amongst itself, and that the opposition had no experience managing a national economy, foreign policy, and other matters of state. (Of course, no opposition in a country that has been run by one party could have experience in these matters, but this charge seemed to resonate with voters.) Opposition leaders in Singapore also remained unsure, as they have in the past, of whether they should be offering a message that a vote for them will mean getting rid of the PAP or that a vote for the opposition would help create a viable parliamentary opposition without removing the PAP from government. As in the past, in this year’s campaign season many opposition leaders argued that they were not actually trying to remove the PAP from power, but simply attempting to check its power. Indeed, they allowed that the PAP, which has amassed an enviable track record in government – would still run Singapore even if the opposition gained broad popular support. These mixed messages seemed to please no one among the opposition’s core supporters. Perhaps social media and other newer forms of communication also have not become as powerful in Singapore as they might have appeared. Although opposition supporters clearly utilize social media extensively, the major, mainstream media outlets remain owned by a government-linked company. Although the major Singaporean media outlets covered all the parties contesting this election, many Singaporean analysts note that the mainstream outlets tend to give more extensive coverage to the PAP.

Singapore’s long-ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) has called a snap election for September 11, well in advance of the five year term it is allotted. As I noted in a piece this week for World Politics Review, the PAP is probably gambling that the outpouring of emotion in Singapore after the death of founding father Lee Kuan Yew in March will reflect well on the PAP and its record of governance, and will help it in the election. The year of 50th anniversary celebrations of the city-state’s independence also may well add a shine to the PAP’s credentials. The fact that the opposition, despite its strong showing in the 2011 election (at least, strong for Singapore), is fragmented and had some financial difficulties running a town council the past four years, also might work in the PAP’s favor. However, Singaporean politics have been changed by the 2011 vote, and no combination of nostalgia for the Lee Kuan Yew era, shifts in PAP policies such as restricting immigration, and PAP outreach to social media and younger voters will change the fact that the city-state is likely headed for a more competitive political system over the long run. But for now, the PAP has virtually no chance of losing power in this election. The Workers Party, the largest opposition party, is not even contesting a majority of seats in Singapore’s parliament, and the opposition generally has presented itself as offering a check on the PAP’s power, not as vying to replace the PAP as the party of government in this election. But another election in which the PAP’s share of the popular vote declined would certainly be taken by the ruling party as a worrying sign, as would losing two or more group member constituencies. The loss of a constituency containing one of the most prominent cabinet members, like Foreign Minister K Shanmugam, also would be a symbolic blow to the PAP. Still, given that the PAP is almost sure to win the election, what policies might it enact in a new term? Immigration will remain a major flash point within Singaporean society. Many Singaporeans believe that the city-state has become too reliant on immigration, but Singapore’s business community has chafed at the restrictions put in place since the last election, worrying that they have created a too-tight labor market. Singapore’s defense establishment also worries that without a continued high immigration rate, the city-state will ultimately be unable to mount an effective defense, since its birthrate remains so low. If the PAP wins a strong mandate, it might loosen some of the restrictions on immigration in order to boost the economy, even though this decision would probably be unpopular with many Singaporeans. In the run-up to the election, the PAP has been vague about the future of immigration policy, giving itself some room to adapt its strategy on immigration after the election. With a strong mandate, a new government also would potentially continue its combination of loosening some of Singapore’s older restrictions on social freedoms while maintaining Singapore-style rules about freedom of expression. Although religious leaders in the city-state protested changes like the inauguration of a gay pride parade on the island, a new PAP government would likely to continue to relax constraints on social freedoms. Relaxing the social environment also helps attract international talent to the island. But do not expect a new term of government to include an end to PAP ministers suing journalists and others for libel/defamation, a strategy that has been utilized effectively by the PAP for decades. If the opposition does not make significant gains in this election, the PAP may conclude that its carrot/stick approach remains effective in handling opposition politicians and civil society. Lee Hsien Loong has sued blogger Roy Ngerng for defamation and won; the blogger and activist is likely to be forced to pay damages of at least $150,000. In addition, a new term of government might include Singapore moving even closer to the United States and slowly shifting away from its policy of publicly maintaining warm ties to both Beijing and Washington. Singapore is already the United States’ closest partner in Southeast Asia, but in the future a treaty alliance is not out of the question. Although Singapore certainly prides itself on its long relationship with Beijing, and on how Chinese leaders view the city-state as a model, many Singaporean officials say that Singaporean ministers were shocked, three years ago, by how little information they (or anyone else) could get about China’s political transition when Xi Jinping, then their heir apparent, suddenly vanished from public view for nearly two weeks. Growing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea, as well as the fact that other Southeast Asian nations are taking a harder line towards Beijing, also may prompt the Singapore government to shift even closer to the United States.

In advance of Singapore’s general elections on September 11, both of the major parties contesting the poll argue that this election will be definitive, even historic. At a press conference on September 1, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of the People’s Action Party (PAP), which has ruled Singapore since the country was formed five decades ago, told reporters, "The country is at a turning point. Question is, in what direction do we now go?" Sylvia Lim, one of the leaders of the Workers Party that comprises the main opposition party (there are also other small opposition parties such as the Singapore Democratic Party), also says the election will be a turning point. In some ways, Election Day will indeed be historic. For one, it is the first election in Singapore’s independent history in which founding father Lee Kuan Yew will not be up for a seat in Parliament. Lee, father of Lee Hsien Loong, died in March, prompting an outpouring of Singaporean emotion. Thousands of Singaporeans waited in long lines in the brutally hot sun to pay respects to the late Singaporean founding father. The swell of emotion over Lee’s death probably is one reason why the PAP, which as the ruling party can call elections anytime within a five year period, called this snap general election for September. The PAP likely hopes that some of the admiration for Lee Kuan Yew will translate into backing for the PAP at the polls. In addition, Singaporeans will go to the polls to vote in a truly contested election, which was not always the case in the city-state’s history. For decades the PAP ran essentially unopposed. But in the last election, held in 2011, the PAP took its lowest share of the popular vote in Singapore’s history. The opposition also for the first time won a Group Member Constituency---an area in which four to six people represent the constituency, rather than a single member---for the first time in Singapore’s history. The groundswell of opposition support clearly worried the PAP, and after the 2011 elections Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong launched what the government called a “national conversation” to better understand to Singaporeans’ concerns---concern about Singapore’s high rate of immigration, the perceived lack of a social welfare net for older Singaporeans, and high inequality in the city-state. Yet in reality the September election will bring mostly consistency in economic, social, and foreign policy, no matter which party triumphs. Over the past four years, the PAP has indeed co-opted many opposition issues, blurring the lines between it and the Workers Party by adopting new restrictions on immigration, and by increasing state support for elderly Singaporeans. This month, the government announced it would increase the number of citizens who could receive state housing. At the same time, the Workers Party has filled its ranks of candidates and advisors with many former PAP supporters and politicians. As a result, many policy positions held by the Workers Party are not radically different from those of the PAP. For more on my analysis of the upcoming Singapore election, see my new piece in World Politics Review.

With Tuesday’s vote in the U.S. Senate to give President Obama fast track negotiating authority on trade deals, the president is likely to be able to help complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), with the United States in the deal, by the end of the year. With fast track authority completed, the United States will be positioned to resolve remaining bilateral hurdles with Japan, the key to moving forward with the TPP. Four Southeast Asian nations—Brunei, Singapore, Vietnam, and Malaysia—currently are negotiating to be part of the TPP. (The Philippines has expressed interest in joining the negotiations.) Singapore and Brunei were two of the founders of the predecessor to the TPP, long before the agreement was enlarged and the United States decided to join negotiations, and Vietnam decided to participate in TPP negotiations very early on. These four countries’ economies are extremely varied. Unlike a potential free trade deal involving the United States and countries in Europe, the TPP contains both developed and developing nations, including Vietnam, which has a GDP per capita of less than US$2,000. For Singapore and Brunei, joining the TPP negotiations was a no-brainer. These are countries with miniscule domestic markets, no significant agricultural sectors, and highly open economies. Singapore in particular is one of the most trade-dependent economies in the world; when the 2008-9 global financial crisis hit, Singapore’s economy suffered one of the worst contractions of any developed nation, though it eventually bounced back. And although the Singaporean population has in recent years become more skeptical of high immigration into the city-state, most Singaporeans understand that the city is dependent on trade, and there is little antitrade rhetoric in Singapore. Yet because Singapore is already so open, having been at the forefront of regional and bilateral Asian trade deals, it has less to gain from the TPP than a more closed economy like Vietnam. In fact, according to some analyses, Vietnam would benefit the most from the deal of any of the countries currently involved in negotiations. Vietnam would gain tariff-free access to U.S. and Japanese markets for its rice, seafood, textiles, and low-end manufactured goods. Vietnamese officials and academics also are convinced that more liberal members of the leadership in Hanoi see the TPP as a way to force the reduction of loss-making state enterprises and to open sectors of the Vietnamese economy. Hanoi used WTO accession in a similar fashion, to help push forward economic reforms. Although Vietnam has recovered from the slowdown in growth that began in the late 2000s, it has not returned to the same turbocharged growth rates it posted in the early 2000s, and bloated state enterprises remain a major drag on the economy. Because Vietnam is run by a highly repressive regime, it is very difficult to gauge public sentiment on any important issue. However, from anecdotal conversations with Vietnamese opinion leaders, there seems to be less of the sentiment that state enterprises must be preserved as national champions than exists among Chinese opinion leaders; Vietnam’s state companies, with a few exceptions, are not global giants like China’s biggest state firms. In addition, a recent Pew poll of Vietnamese suggests that the Vietnamese population views the TPP more favorably than people in any other country negotiating the deal—far more favorably than Americans view the TPP. Malaysian leaders, of all the four Southeast Asian nations, face the toughest test in negotiating the TPP and then convincing the Malaysian public to accept it. Vietnam is an authoritarian regime, as is tiny Brunei; in Singapore there is significant public support for trade. But Malaysia is a hybrid regime, and the Malaysian government has sold TPP to members of the ruling coalition—and conservative Malay supporters—in part by repeatedly assuring them that the government will essentially protect certain state enterprises and programs to support ethnic Malays, even if these protections violate the norms and rules of a free trade deal. With the ruling coalition having gained a relatively narrow victory in the 2013 elections, and now splintering amidst a public fight between Prime Minister Najib tun Razak and former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, it will be very difficult for Malaysian negotiators to return from TPP talks without securing these protections—which they are unlikely to obtain. Fortunately for Najib, the opposition also is in disarray, its unwieldy coalition split apart at the federal level over differences around religious and social issues. However, the opposition, and Malaysia’s vibrant online media, has raised questions about whether Malaysia has done a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of the deal before joining TPP negotiations. So, in addition to a group of conservative Malays skeptical of the TPP because of fears it will endanger pro-Malay affirmative action policies, the agreement may not have strong support among urban, liberal Malaysians—the bastion of the opposition. In the Pew poll, a large percentage of Malaysians simply said they did not know enough about the TPP to have an opinion, but the percentage of Malaysians who viewed the TPP favorably also was lower than in most other TPP nations. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Prime Minister Najib, fighting for his political life, has gone from voicing staunch support for the TPP to announcing that the government’s trade negotiators will only accept a deal “on our terms.”

Ashlyn Anderson, Lauren Dickey, Darcie Draudt, William Piekos, and Ariella Rotenberg look at the top stories in Asia today. 1. Lee Kuan Yew, founding father of Singapore, dies. Lee Kuan Yew, who transformed Singapore into one of Asia’s wealthiest and least corrupt countries during his time as founding father and first prime minister, died on Monday. Lee was prime minister beginning in 1959, after Singapore gained full self-government from the British, until 1990. While his leadership was often criticized for suppressing freedom, his advocacy of “Asian values” and development models succeeded in making Singapore an international hub of business, culture, and finance. The funeral for Lee, to be held on Sunday, will be attended by many current and former world leaders, including India’s Narendra Modi, Australia’s Tony Abbott, Indonesia’s Joko Widodo, and a U.S. delegation that includes Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Thomas Donilon, and Kirk Wagar, the current U.S. ambassador to Singapore. 2. Indonesian president completes first bilateral foreign visits. This week, President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo traveled to Japan and China, marking his first bilateral foreign visits since taking office last October. He started his tour with a four-day official visit to Japan, a fellow democracy and maritime neighbor, where Jokowi and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed to boost security and economic ties and launched an initiative to increase Japanese investment in Indonesia. Jokowi was also wooed by Japan’s bullet train system and is considering introducing a Japanese system in Indonesia. On Thursday, Jokowi traveled to China, where he signed a number of memorandums of understanding. Courting controversy after some media outlets reported that he said China had no legal claim to the South China Sea, Jokowi clarified that Indonesia would remain neutral in the dispute. 3. South Korea announces intention to join China’s proposed development bank. South Korea’s Ministry of Finance released a statement on Thursday it would seek to be a founding member of the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), through which Beijing hopes to fund infrastructure development throughout the region. While the United States has voiced concerns about the AIIB’s governance, South Korea’s statement makes reference to the importance of ensuring high levels of transparency and governing structure, tied into existing multilateral development banks. Seoul joins the UK, France, Germany, and Italy as U.S. allies that have announced their intention to be founding members of the AIIB. The move represents Seoul’s latest attempt to navigate increasing rivalry between China, its largest trading partner, and the United States, its security guarantor. Currently the U.S. ally is actively debating the U.S. military’s introduction of Theater High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense systems, which Washington promotes as a deterrent to the North Korean threat but Beijing claims is a thinly veiled U.S. attempt to constrict China. 4. Chinese police raid NGO offices. This week, Chinese police forces seized financial documents and computers from a high-profile nongovernmental organization (NGO). Members of the anti-discrimination group, Beijing Yirenping Center, said that twenty men in police uniforms burst into their offices before dawn on Tuesday morning. On Friday, Lu Jun, head of Yirenping, announced an ongoing investigation into the seizures, which he claims were illegal. Lu told reporters that the raid was likely in response to his organization’s campaign to pressure the Chinese government into releasing five detained women’s rights activists. Police administrators have not commented on or confirmed the raid. Since President Xi Jinping came to power, dozens of human rights activists have been apprehended as part of a broad crackdown on social activism and political dissent. The detention of the five activists on International Women’s Day captured the world’s attention, prompting calls from U.S. ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, demanding their release. 5. Okinawa’s governor orders halt to base construction. Early this week, Takeshi Onaga, the governor of Okinawa, ordered the suspension of work on a new American military airfield at Camp Schwab. The relocation of U.S. forces to a base near the village of Henoko has been delayed for years by local opposition, who fear the environmental impact of construction and the long-term implications of a new base for Okinawa’s future. Onaga, who was elected governor last December in part because of his promise to halt construction of the base, instructed Japan’s defense ministry to stop work after local officials found builders had damaged coral reefs. Tokyo has said it will ignore the order and continue with the project; Onaga has threatened to revoke a maritime drilling permit should survey work and construction continue. About half of U.S. military personnel—which total nearly fifty thousand—are stationed on Okinawa. Bonus: Burger King perfume soon to be on sale in Japan. For one day only, on April 1, Burger King will release a Whopper-scented perfume to the Japanese public. The fragrance, incidentally named “Flame-Grilled,” will not be the first Burger King scent to hit the market. Back in 2008, the fast food joint released “Flame by BK,” a body spray for men described as “the scent of seduction with a hint of flame-broiled meat.” This year’s scent will be available for the budget-friendly price of 5,000 yen, or roughly four U.S. dollars.

In the wake of the death of Singapore’s founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, many obituaries lauding Lee’s role in transforming the city-state also have argued that Singapore faces high hurdles to continuing Lee’s revolution. As Forbes’ Joel Kotkin writes, Lee’s achievements during his three decades as prime minister were extraordinary, but in Singapore today the “durability of his legacy is in question.” Like many other commentators, Kotkin notes that Lee helped make Singapore one of the most attractive places in the world for foreign investment, but that investment started pouring in during the late 1960s, a time when China was closed to foreign investment and many other Asian nations also were unwelcoming to investors. “Once Asia had few places where advanced technology and services could be developed; now it has many. China alone has 13 cities larger than Singapore, many of them with breathtakingly modern infrastructure and far less expensive workforces,” Kotkin writes. He also notes that Lee Kuan Yew’s embrace of essentially technocratic government has left Singapore, in his view, a kind of soulless place in which earning an income is people’s highest goal, creating some kind of void. Indeed, Kotkin mentions a global Gallup survey which found that Singaporeans are pessimistic about whether their future will be better than Singapore’s past. Other commentators, such as the Washington Post’s editorial board, have noted that decades of restrictions on social and political freedoms in Singapore’s past will have to be abandoned as countries around Singapore democratize; some Singaporeans worry that Singapore’s restrictions have made the country too cautious and hindered innovation. But these worries are overblown. For one, Singapore’s political environment has opened significantly in the past decade; the country’s politics are no longer comparable to the situation in the Lee Kuan Yew era. In the most recent national elections, the opposition won a group-member constituency, and garnered about forty percent of the popular vote, its highest total in four decades. The growth of social media and the Internet in Singapore has fostered much more vibrant political debate, and reduced the influence of state-owned media outlets, which dominated discourse in the past. Even Lee Kuan Yew’s own son, current Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, has accepted that the country’s politics are changing and becoming more competitive. “It’s a different generation, a different society, and politics will be different,” Lee Hsien Loong told the Washington Post in an interview two years ago. “We have to work in a more open way.” Singaporeans’ pessimism also is not a high obstacle to growth and innovation. Many of the countries in the Gallup poll whose citizens have similar levels of pessimism---Germany, Finland---actually have done quite well economically, and continue to prosper. In these countries, sustained economic success has created high expectations---expectations that can be tough to fulfill. By contrast, some of the countries where people are most optimistic about the future---the Central African Republic, Sierra Leone---are places where the past was so desperate that citizens may assume the future simply couldn’t be worse. In other words, pessimism doesn’t really seem to have much to do with actual or future economic conditions. In addition, the rule of law that Lee helped create in Singapore---the country regularly is ranked by Transparency International as the least corrupt in Asia---continues to give it an advantage in attracting investment. It offers this advantage even in an era in which China, India, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and even Myanmar have arisen as destinations for foreign investors. Thailand and Malaysia, regional competitors to Singapore, actually appear to be heading backward in terms of the rule of law, a major reason why investors are, for instance, fleeing Thailand. (According to a recent report by Reuters, Thailand’s manufacturing sector has shrunk for twenty-two consecutive months.) China, meanwhile, has in recent years become increasingly unpredictable for foreign investors. Nationalist sentiment, the increasing personalization of power around President Xi Jinping, and a host of proposed new restrictions on foreign investment have caused foreign investors to become more cautious about pouring into the country. Vietnam and India, for all their advantages, remain places where investment is hindered by regulation, opaque administration, and non-tariff barriers. What’s more, Singapore is becoming more innovative as the country moves up the value-added chain, the social and political environment loosens up, and some of Singapore’s best talent stays home. Bloomberg’s annual index of the world’s most innovative countries ranks Singapore in the top five in the world in terms of manufacturing innovation, and as the eighth most innovative country in the world overall. In the Bloomberg index, Singapore places ahead of other rich economies including the United Kingdom, France, and Canada, and only two spots behind the United States. The country certainly faces challenges---income inequality, population density on such a small island, immigration---but it is more prepared for the future than many of the naysayers admit.

Ashlyn Anderson, Lauren Dickey, Darcie Draudt, Andrew Hill, Will Piekos, and Sharone Tobias look at the top stories in Asia today. 1. Vietnam and India strengthen defense and energy ties amid territorial disputes with China. The two nations signed a number of agreements following a meeting this week between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung. Most notably, Vietnam agreed to further open its oil and gas sector to India, while India agreed to provide Vietnam with four off-shore patrol vessels. Prior to his two-day state visit, Dung called for a larger Indian role in the South China Sea, in spite of criticism from China. Both Hanoi and New Delhi are embroiled in territorial disputes with Beijing: Vietnam in the South China Sea and India along the Himalayas. 2. Mudslide devastates Sri Lanka. After an onslaught of rain, a deadly mudslide wrecked a tea plantation a little over one hundred miles east of Colombo. Search operations for missing victims have been complicated by daunting weather and the absence of village records, which were buried in the avalanche. Around 120 homes were swept away and nearly two hundred people are feared to be dead, and hundreds of people have been evacuated from the area to overcrowded camps. Although the chances of finding survivors are slim, Sri Lanka has dispatched army soldiers, air force troops, policemen, and health and civic teams to aid rescue and relief efforts. 3. Retired Chinese general confesses to taking enormous bribes. After a seven-month investigation, Xu Caihou, former vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and a former member of the Politburo, will be charged with bribery  after admitting to “extremely large” amounts of bribes through family members to help others gain promotion. Court martialed in June, Xu was was stripped of his military titles and expelled from the Communist Party. Beijing has touted the move as evidence of its commitment to President Xi Jinping’s anticorruption campaign; former security chief Zhou Yongkang is expected to be the next high-level official to face corruption charges. 4. Singapore upholds law criminalizing gay sex. Singapore’s highest court ruled that a seventy-six-year old law criminalizing sex between men is in line with the city-state’s constitution, rejecting multiple appeals that the measure infringes upon human rights. The law prescribes a jail term of up to two years for men who publicly or privately engage in any act of “gross indecency.” At a time when support for same-sex marriage is increasing in the West, gay rights advocates across Asia are still struggling to secure protections. Brunei, for instance, has instituted strict laws that criminalize gay relationships; a British colonial-era law in India that criminalizes gay sex was reinstated by the supreme court last year; in Indonesia’s Aceh province, gay sex is punished with one hundred lashes. Progress for greater LGBT rights can be seen in New Zealand—the only Asia-Pacific country to legalize gay marriage—and Taiwan, where the annual pride march recently took over the streets of Taipei. 5. China, South Korea urge North Korea on denuclearization. Following a Sino-South Korean meeting in Beijing on Wednesday, chief nuclear envoys Hwang Joon-kook (South Korea) and Wu Dawei (China) expressed concern over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and discussed how to reopen the stalled Six Party Talks aimed at denuclearizing North Korea. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping, Beijing has been more vocal in its censure of North Korea’s nuclear weapons development. Earlier this week in Seoul, Sydney Seiler, U.S. special envoy for Six Party talks, reiterated the U.S. position that North Korea must demonstrate its commitment to halting the development of its nuclear program before the United States would be willing to resume the Six Party Talks. Bonus: Halloween causes controversy around Asia. Malaysia’s highest Islamic body, the National Fatwa Council, announced that Muslims should not celebrate Halloween, calling it a Christian celebration of the dead and “against Islamic teachings.” The council instead advised Muslims to remember the dead by reciting prayers and reading the Quran. The council also ruled that touching dogs is un-Islamic and condemned a dog-petting festival earlier this month. In unrelated news, Beijing banned Halloween costumes from its subways, afraid that they might cause “panic” or “stampedes.”