Shortly before the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, Lee Hsien Loong said that the title of a book by Andy Grove, the computer scientist who became the boss of Intel, could be Singapore’s national motto. The book was Only the Paranoid Survive.
Two decades later, Mr Lee is prime minister and the thriving south-east Asian city state is confronting a new round of challenges that his ruling People’s Action party (PAP) is struggling to overcome. They include the fraught domestic politics of choosing Mr Lee’s successor, the fallout from the superpower rivalry between the US and China and the need to modernise an economy that is already as advanced as they come.
“It’s a nervous time,” said Eugene Tan, a political analyst and law professor at Singapore Management University.