Lion City: Singapore and the Invention of Modern Asia

Lion City tells the extraordinary story of Singapore – the world\’s most successful city state. In 1965, Singapore\’s GDP per capita was on a par with Jordan. Now it has outstripped Japan. After the Second World War and a sudden rupture with newly formed Malaysia, Singapore found itself independent – and facing a crisis. It took the bloody-minded determination and vision of Lee Kuan Yew, its founding premier, to take a small island of diverse ethnic groups with a fragile economy and hostile neighbours and meld it into Asia\’s first globalised city. Lion City examines the different faces of Singaporean life – from education and health to art, politics and demographic challenges – and reveals how in just half a century, Lee forged a country with a buoyant economy and distinctive identity. It explores the darker side of how this was achieved too; through authoritarian control that led to it being dubbed \’Disneyland with the death penalty\’.