Late last year, Singapore was ranked the world's best city (not country) to visit for being safe and clean. In case you want to know, the world's best country to visit was Australia for her beautiful scenery.
Singapore tends to appear clean, at least in many public places, but our public toilets and garbage collection centres in estates and wet markets, are downright disgusting. I have overheard tourists complaining about the state of our public toilets. We even have campaigns to keep our toilets clean. I don't see that many "Please flush" signs in the toilets of Australia but they don't smell like a massive pee-hole. It is also a fact that S'pore hires a very impressive army of sweepers cleaners. Without them, is S'pore really that clean?
Well-educated is also true but to a certain extent. I know young teens in Australia who study business, psychology, photography and popular languages (French, German, Italian, Japanese) as a second language in their secondary schools. Their education appears more broad-based. Interestingly, I see/hear of more younger entrepreneurial and inventive persons in Australia than in S'pore. Like most of Asia, S'poreans learn by rote-learning which really isn't the right way to learn. I suspect this is the reason why westerners invent much more, and Asians imitate and pirate.
I can only believe that Singapore is safe due to 2 reasons: geographically small and strict laws. Being small means criminals have difficulty hiding. Strict laws means people think thrice about committing crime. Bear in mind, S'pore was recently in the limelight for having 1 of the highest death penalty rates in the world (even higher than China). Australia does not believe in the death penalty.
I don't know why you consider Singapore as dynamic. Much of the international world labels S'pore as, in exact words, the nanny state. You know what nannys do? They hold the cane, and say "you can't do this, you can't do that, and no arguing". I suspect this label appearing in any foreign news is censored by the government. The government has been ruling S'pore with a very cautious and conservative mind, perhaps too cautious and conservative.
In comparison, I have been reading news about the happenings in China, and as the motherland of all Chinese, they are really quite open in mind, even more than S'pore. Nude models are used to promote businesses, products and services in public. Guess where you secret stash of sex toys were made in? Not US or UK! It's made in China! Not many years ago, nudity for art/photography in China was a no-no but not these days. In fact, it appears that S'pore rang more alarm bells worldwide for the recent news of a S'porean blogger showing her nude photos. China is like a western society now.
Every now and then when our PM or SM talks about the economy, say during National Day rally speech, they may mention or hint that China is booming. India too. I believe not many realise the real extent of the issue. Being cheaper, these countries are taking away a lot from S'pore, and is the reason why S'poreans are working longer and harder for less wages to compete with them. Unfortunately, it seems that we are fighting a losing battle.
On 26 June 2005, The Sunday Age (Australian newspaper) published a full page report about the booming economy of China, and how much it is worth in figures. China sucks up raw materials like a dry sponge and produces so much export products at cheaper prices that even a large nation like Australia (the world's 6th biggest) and Aussie manufacturers are threatened.
