Why Singapore is So Rich

新加坡为何如此富裕？

Singapore is a tiny country, so tiny you can drive across the island in just an hour. Despite its size and lack of natural resources, Singapore’s 5.6 million people enjoy one of the highest average incomes in the world, ahead of countries like Germany, France and Japan. So, how did this little island get so rich?

新加坡是个小国，驱车一小时便能穿越全境。其领土虽小、自然资源匮乏，却拥有五百六十万人口，人均收入为世界最高的国家之一，超过德国、法国和日本。人们不禁要问，这个小岛何以如此富裕？

Singapore doesn’t’t have resources like coal or oil, but it does have something countries can’t buy – location. The island sits in the middle of an important trade route connecting Asia to Europe. That’s a key reason why the British decided, back in 1819, to set up a colony in Singapore.

新加坡并没有诸如煤炭、石油这类的资源，却有其他国家买不来的优势：地理位置。新加坡地处亚欧重要贸易航线的中心。早在1819年，英国便看重了这一点，在该岛设立殖民地。

Location isn’t everything, though. There are several countries nearby that could have made use of their whereabouts, but they weren’t quite as successful.

地理位置并不能完全解释新加坡如今的富裕。附近的邻国也利用区位优势，却远不及新加坡成功。

That’s because there are other ingredients that go into this crazy rich Singapore recipe. I’m at the Raffles Hotel, which is one of the most prominent icons of Singapore’s colonial history. Unlike some of its neighbors, which wanted to separate themselves from their colonial histories, Singapore kept close ties with Britain, even after independence in 1965.

实际上，新加坡的富庶是多种合力的结果。我现在站在莱佛士酒店前，这是新加坡殖民时期最经典的地标。与邻国不同，新加坡并不急于撇开自己殖民历史，相反，它与英国保持着紧密的联系，甚至在1965年独立后，仍然关系紧密。

That decision announced to the rest of the world that Singapore was open for business. That’s important because we know now that exports help to grow and expand an economy. But back then, it wasn’t conventional wisdom.

新加坡向世界各地宣布开放贸易。这十分重要，因为出口能够促进经济增长，增加经济体量，我们已经明白了这一点。但在过去，这并不是常识。

Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea became known as the four Asian tigers, which have grown rapidly since the 1960s. Their rise was fueled by exports, industrialization and more crucially, big doses of government intervention. This was especially true for Singapore.

新加坡、香港、台湾和韩国自1960年以来经济迅猛发展，被誉为“亚洲四小龙”。这些国家的经济增长主得益于出口、工业化以及政府大量的干预。后者更为重要。新加坡的成长也得力于这些因素。

Labor strikes were common on the island in the 1960s, even with high unemployment. On top of that, there was a housing crisis, with Singapore being home to one of the largest slum settlements in the world. So how do you build a more disciplined labor force to attract investment?

1960年代，岛上出现了大量的罢工，失业率也居高不下。而最严重的却是住房危机，当时新加坡是全球最大的贫民区聚居地。因此，新加坡究竟用什么手段来建立起一支训练有素的劳动力队伍，从而吸引外资呢？

Well, you give them something to work for, like a house of their own, which is why one of the first Singapore government agencies set up was focused on building affordable public housing.

当然是拿出甜头，使其为之奋斗了，例如可以拥有一间自己的屋子。这正是当初新加坡设立政府机构、着力建造廉价的公房的原因。

While just nine percent of the population lived in public housing in the 1960s, that figure stands at more than 80 percent today, add in greater employer rights and strikes became extremely rare.

在1960年代，仅有9%的人口住在公房中，现在这一比例已经达到了80%。雇主的权利加大了，罢工变得十分罕见。

At the same time, the government attracted foreign investment through tax incentives, growing the economy and easing unemployment, which fell from an estimated 14 percent in 1959 to 4.5 percent in the 1970s.

与此同时，政府通过税收优惠政策来吸引外资，促进经济增长，缓解失业现象。失业率从1959年的14%（估算）掉到1970年代的4.5%。

By the 1980s, Singapore was a regional manufacturing hub, and it was the world’s biggest producer of hard disk drives. But today, manufacturing makes up only about 20 percent of Singapore’s GDP.

到1980年代，新加坡成为区域的制造业中心，跻身为世界上最大的硬盘驱动制造商。如今，制造业只占新加坡国民生产总值的20%。

Take a look at Singapore’s growth in GDP. You can see two big surges, one beginning in the late 80s and another at the start of the new millennium. Ironically, Singapore has a downturn to thank for that. You see, in 1985, Singapore went into its first post-independence recession, prompting the government to introduce new measures. State-owned companies like telecommunications were privatized to make them more competitive. Then at the turn of the century, service industries like finance and insurance were further liberalized. That openness helped to grow the share of services from just 24 percent of GDP in 1985 to more than 70 percent in 2017. Multinational companies began to set up regional headquarters in Singapore. That attracted even bigger players, boosting Singapore’s attractiveness to corporates and in turn its GDP. Now, Singapore is ranked as one of the world’s easiest places to do business.

新加坡的GDP增长出现了两次高潮。一次在八十年代末期，另一次则是千禧年之交。不过，好景不长，新加坡经济迅速增长后便落入低迷期。可以看到，在1985年，新加坡在独立后首次遭遇经济衰退，这迫使政府采取新的举措来振兴经济。国有企业，比如电信业，开始私有化以加强竞争力。而在世纪之交，包括金融和保险的服务业进一步自由化。新加坡的开放使得服务业占国民经济比重由1985年的24%提升到2017年的70%以上。跨国公司开始在新加坡设立地区总部，这又进一步吸引了更大的商家，新加坡对企业的吸引力逐步提高，GDP水平也迈上了新的台阶。新加坡现在已经成为世界上最宜商的地区之一。

Singapore has been praised for transforming itself from a developing to a developed economy. But do most Singaporeans feel rich? Well, not exactly.

世界称赞新加坡由发展中国家跃居发达经济体之列的奇迹。然而，大部分的新加坡民众真的觉得自己富裕吗？现实未必如此。

Two of the most important reasons? The high cost of living and inequality. For five years in a row, Singapore has been named the world’s most expensive city, ahead of New York and London. That’s largely because of taxes on cars, making Singapore the most expensive place in the world to buy and run an automobile. It’s also the third most expensive place on Earth to buy clothes. But personal care, household goods and domestic help in Singapore tend to be less expensive than in other major cities.

有两个重要原因：高昂的生活成本和贫富差距。新加坡已经连续五年被评为世界上最贵的城市，比纽约、伦敦还贵。这主要是因为车辆高额的税收，新加坡因而成为世界上买车和养车最贵的地方。而新加坡的服装价格也是世界第三贵。不过，与其他大城市相比，新加坡的个人护理、家庭用品和家政服务的价格要更低一些。

While Singapore is rich in terms of GDP per capita, the median monthly salary is $3,270. That doesn’t sound too bad, but about 20 percent of that goes into a mandatory savings account. You can use that account to pay for medical bills, housing and education, but it does restrict the purchasing power of the population.

虽然从人均GDP的角度看，新加坡是个富裕的国家，其人均月收入高达3270新币，看上去不错，但约有20%要强制存入储蓄账户中。这一账户用于支付医疗、住房和教育的费用，因此，也的确限制了国民的购买力。

You’ve probably heard of the movie Crazy Rich Asians, which was set here in Singapore. And it’s no wonder. Because Singapore has about 184,000 millionaires, making it truly the land of the crazy rich.

你或许听过《疯狂的亚洲富人》这部电影，故事就发生在新加坡。这不是巧合，因为新加坡拥有184000名百万富翁，使其成为名副其实的疯狂富土。

That’s great news. But Singapore also has a fairly high rate of inequality, compared with other developed countries. Let’s look at the Gini coefficient, which is a scale used to calculate inequality, with zero being the most equal and one being the least. Singapore’s Gini coefficient, after accounting for taxes and transfers, was 0.356 in 2017. That was worse than countries like the United Kingdom, Japan, Korea and Germany, although it fared better than some, like the United States.

这的确振奋人心，但别忘了，与其他发达国家相比，新加坡也有着较大的贫富差距。参考一下基尼系数，这是用于衡量贫富差距的指标，0代表最平均，1代表差距最大。新加坡的基尼系数在算入税收和转账之后，2017年为0.356。这一数字虽然低于美国等一些国家，却比英国、日本、韩国和德国还要高。

Is that number really that bad? That question had books like this flying off the shelves.

这一数字真的如此难看吗？关于这一问题的研究，已经汗牛充栋了。

A think tank ignited public debate on the divide in social classes, after it found that on average, Singaporeans who live in public housing have fewer than one friend who lives in private housing. The government has called the issue of inequality a national priority, but it remains to be seen if it is a problem that can be tackled effectively.

一个智库曾指出居住在公房中的新加坡人要比住在私人屋宇中的平均少一个朋友，这一研究结果引起了公众对于社会阶层分化的巨大争论。虽然政府已经将贫富差距列为国家优先解决的问题，但这一问题是否能有效解决，仍有待时间检验。

原创译文，初稿，难免有粗疏错漏之处，恳请指正。

本文英文来源：

【商务听力】Why Is Singapore So Rich?

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