History of Singapore | 1979 is a close-up history of the year when Singapore launched the three-year corrective wage policy, established the Skills Development Fund, began the Speak Mandarin Campaign, passed the Singapore Broadcasting Act that would lead to SBC the next year, and held seven parliamentary by-elections in February.
1979 is a year of deliberate restructuring.
Singapore had reached near-full employment.
That created a new problem.
Cheap labour was no longer a sustainable advantage.
The Government and National Wages Council therefore pushed wages upward deliberately to force industry to upgrade.
At the same time, employers began paying a levy into a Skills Development Fund designed to support training.
Language policy also became more interventionist through the Speak Mandarin Campaign.
Broadcasting was prepared for reorganisation.
And a cluster of by-elections tested voters across seven constituencies.
For the longer chronology, use History of Singapore | 700 Years of Fully Connected History, the Singapore Atlas and the Singapore Knowledge Hub.
Why 1979 Matters in Singapore History
1979 marks a major shift from labour-intensive development toward higher-value growth.
Earlier Singapore had needed jobs urgently.
By the late 1970s, unemployment was no longer the same overriding problem.
The new challenge was productivity.
How could Singapore avoid being trapped in low-wage manufacturing?
The answer was unusually direct.
Raise the cost of low-skill labour.
Fund worker training.
Encourage companies to automate and upgrade.
That strategy reshaped the economy through the early 1980s.
1979: The Three-Year Corrective Wage Policy Begins
In 1979, the National Wages Council adopted a three-year corrective wage policy.
SG101 explains that the policy recommended strong wage increases and higher CPF contribution rates in response to Singapore’s full-employment conditions.
The aim was structural.
Low wages encouraged firms to rely on labour-intensive production.
Higher wages made that model less attractive.
Companies had choices.
Automate.
Train workers.
Move into higher-value products.
Or relocate low-value production to cheaper locations.
This was economic restructuring through price signals.
The High-Wage Policy Was Intentionally Uncomfortable
Governments usually worry about wages rising too quickly.
Singapore deliberately pushed them upward.
The reason was that a low-wage equilibrium had become a trap.
If labour stayed cheap, employers could remain profitable without upgrading.
Workers would earn less.
Productivity growth would remain limited.
Higher wages forced a decision.
Become more productive or leave low-value activity behind.
The policy helped accelerate the shift toward more capital-intensive and skill-intensive industries.
It also contributed to later cost pressure, showing that even a successful restructuring tool can overshoot if kept too strong for too long.
1 October 1979: Skills Development Fund Is Established
The Skills Development Fund was established on 1 October 1979 under the Skills Development Levy Act.
Singapore Statutes Online records the fund and levy’s legal foundation.
Employers paid a levy that could be channelled into worker training.
This complemented the high-wage policy.
Raising wages creates pressure to upgrade.
Training creates the capability to upgrade.
Without the second part, the first could simply make firms less competitive.
The Skills Development Fund therefore turned economic restructuring into an education and training problem.
Skills Are Infrastructure Inside People
A machine can increase productivity.
A skilled worker knows how to use the machine.
A technician knows how to repair it.
An engineer knows how to improve the process.
A manager knows how to reorganise production around it.
Training therefore builds invisible infrastructure inside the workforce.
Singapore’s later SkillsFuture system belongs to a much longer lineage of treating worker upgrading as a national economic capability.
7 September 1979: Speak Mandarin Campaign Is Launched
The Speak Mandarin Campaign was launched in 1979 by Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.
The Prime Minister’s Office retrospective explains that the campaign aimed to encourage Chinese Singaporeans from different dialect groups to use Mandarin more widely.
The campaign was linked to bilingual education policy.
English was promoted as the common working language across ethnic communities.
Mandarin was promoted as the main Chinese “mother tongue” for Chinese Singaporeans.
This simplified an earlier language environment in which Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka, Hainanese and other Chinese varieties were widely spoken.
Language Policy Changed Family and Cultural Life
The campaign had practical benefits for communication across dialect groups.
It also carried cultural costs.
As Mandarin use increased, some Chinese dialects became less common among younger generations.
That affected communication with grandparents.
Oral traditions.
Opera and popular culture.
Community identities.
This is why the Speak Mandarin Campaign should be read as both a language-standardisation policy and a cultural transformation.
Supporters could emphasise communication and bilingual education.
Critics or later heritage advocates could emphasise dialect loss.
Both consequences belong in the historical record.
Language Campaigns Show the Power of Media
The campaign used television, radio, lessons, slogans, advertisements and public events.
That matters because language behaviour is social.
People speak the language they expect others to understand.
Mass media can change that expectation by making one language more visible and prestigious.
Broadcasting therefore became part of language policy.
1979: Singapore Broadcasting Act Prepares the SBC Era
The Singapore Broadcasting Act was passed in 1979.
Roots records the Act as the legislative step that transformed Radio Television Singapore into the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation in 1980.
The purpose was organisational flexibility.
Broadcasting needed to modernise equipment.
Develop professional talent.
Respond to audience demand.
And still fulfil public-service objectives.
1979 therefore owns the legal preparation.
1980 owns the actual SBC formation.
10 February 1979: Seven Parliamentary By-Elections
Singapore held parliamentary by-elections in seven constituencies on 10 February 1979.
The official Elections Department results record contests or uncontested returns in Anson, Geylang West, Mountbatten, Nee Soon, Potong Pasir, Sembawang and Telok Blangah.
The PAP candidates won all seven seats.
Several individuals who would later play important national or opposition roles appeared in the contests.
Devan Nair won Anson.
Tony Tan won Sembawang.
Chiam See Tong contested Potong Pasir as an independent candidate.
J B Jeyaretnam contested Telok Blangah for the Workers’ Party.
A neutral history records these results without treating later careers as inevitable in 1979.
By-Elections Are Snapshots, Not Forecasts
Later history can distort earlier elections.
Jeyaretnam would win Anson in 1981.
Chiam would win Potong Pasir in 1984.
Tony Tan would later become Deputy Prime Minister and President.
None of those later outcomes should be projected backward as certainty.
In 1979, they were candidates in specific contests with specific results.
Good chronology protects the difference between what had happened and what would happen later.
1979 Was a Year of Behavioural Policy
The wage policy tried to change company behaviour.
The Skills Development Fund tried to change training behaviour.
The Speak Mandarin Campaign tried to change language behaviour.
The Broadcasting Act tried to change institutional behaviour.
Singapore was not only building roads and housing.
It was using policy to reshape incentives, habits and capabilities.
1979 in One Simple Timeline
- 10 February: parliamentary by-elections are held in seven constituencies.
- 1979: National Wages Council begins the three-year corrective wage policy.
- 7 September: Speak Mandarin Campaign is launched.
- 1979: Singapore Broadcasting Act prepares the restructuring of RTS into SBC.
- 1 October: Skills Development Fund is established.
What Changed in 1979 — and What Continued
- Changed: wage policy deliberately pushed the economy toward higher value.
- Changed: the Skills Development Fund created a durable worker-training mechanism.
- Changed: the Speak Mandarin Campaign reshaped the Chinese-language environment.
- Changed: broadcasting gained a legal path toward a more autonomous statutory corporation.
- Continued: the PAP retained all parliamentary seats contested in the year’s by-elections.
A Student’s Way to Read 1979
Use one phrase:
change the incentive.
Higher wages change company incentives.
Training subsidies change employer incentives.
Language campaigns change social incentives.
Broadcasting reform changes institutional incentives.
1979 is full of policy designed to make different behaviour more likely.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was Singapore’s 1979 high-wage policy?
It was a three-year corrective wage policy designed to raise labour costs deliberately and push firms toward greater productivity and higher-value activity.
When was the Skills Development Fund established?
The fund was established on 1 October 1979 under the Skills Development Levy Act.
When did the Speak Mandarin Campaign begin?
It was launched in September 1979 by Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.
What happened in the 1979 by-elections?
Seven constituencies had by-elections on 10 February 1979. PAP candidates won all seven seats.
Helpful Reading
- SG101 | 1979–1984 Economic Restructuring
- Singapore Statutes Online | Skills Development Levy Act
- PMO | Speak Mandarin Campaign history
- Roots | Broadcasting history
- ELD | 1979 by-election results
The High-Wage Policy Was an Attempt to Escape the Low-Cost Trap
Singapore’s early industrial success depended partly on competitive labour costs.
That strategy cannot last forever in a successful economy.
As employment rises, workers gain bargaining power and expectations increase.
Other countries remain cheaper.
If firms continue competing only through low wages, national income eventually stagnates.
The 1979 corrective wage policy tried to break this trap deliberately.
Raise labour costs.
Force firms to improve productivity.
Let low-value production move elsewhere if it cannot upgrade.
Attract industries capable of paying higher wages.
This was an unusually interventionist restructuring strategy.
Why Full Employment Changed the Policy Problem
In the 1960s, Singapore’s main labour-market problem was unemployment.
By the late 1970s, the problem had changed.
There were fewer surplus workers available for rapid industrial expansion.
That meant the economy could not keep growing mainly by adding more low-cost labour.
Growth had to come increasingly from each worker producing more value.
This is productivity growth.
The policy shift therefore followed the success of earlier job creation.
Solving unemployment created a new need for upgrading.
Higher CPF Contributions Were Part of the Same Signal
The corrective wage policy included increases in CPF contribution rates as well as direct wage recommendations.
From an employer’s perspective, CPF contributions are part of labour cost.
Raising them strengthened the pressure to use labour more productively.
From a worker’s perspective, the increase also raised long-term savings.
The same policy therefore affected competitiveness and household asset accumulation at once.
That multi-purpose use of CPF would appear again in later decades.
Why the Policy Could Overshoot
A corrective policy needs calibration.
If wages rise more slowly than productivity, workers may not share enough of economic gains.
If wages rise much faster than productivity, firms become less competitive.
The three-year push successfully accelerated upgrading.
It also contributed to a higher cost structure that became a concern before the 1985 recession.
This does not make the 1979 strategy simply right or wrong.
It shows that policy effects change as conditions change.
A correction can itself require later correction.
The Skills Development Fund Made the Upgrade More Plausible
Higher wages alone do not teach a worker anything new.
That is why the Skills Development Fund was essential to the logic of restructuring.
Employers paid the levy.
The fund could support training.
Training could increase worker capability.
Higher capability could support higher productivity.
Higher productivity could support higher wages.
This is the virtuous cycle policymakers wanted.
The Skills Levy Also Changed Employer Behaviour
A levy creates a price.
If employers have to contribute regardless, using available training support becomes more attractive.
The system therefore does more than fund courses.
It changes the calculation inside the firm.
Training stops looking only like a cost.
It becomes partly supported infrastructure for productivity.
This is another example of Singapore using incentives to steer behaviour rather than relying only on instructions.
1979 Is Part of the Long History of Lifelong Learning
SkillsFuture is a much later name.
The underlying national concern is older.
Workers cannot assume that one qualification will remain sufficient for an entire career.
Industries change.
Machines change.
Competition changes.
The Skills Development Fund institutionalised the idea that adult worker training was an economic responsibility, not only a private hobby.
Speak Mandarin Was Language Planning at National Scale
Language normally evolves organically through families and communities.
Singapore attempted something more deliberate.
The Government wanted English to serve as the common inter-ethnic and international working language.
Within the Chinese community, it wanted Mandarin to replace multiple dialects as the main common Chinese language.
This is language planning.
Schools, television, radio and public campaigns all supported the same direction.
The campaign was therefore much more than a slogan.
It was an attempt to redesign the linguistic environment.
The Campaign Reduced Communication Friction Across Dialect Groups
Two Chinese Singaporeans could both be ethnically Chinese and still speak mutually unintelligible dialects.
A Hokkien speaker and a Cantonese speaker might not understand one another comfortably.
Mandarin provided a common Chinese-language bridge.
That helped bilingual education and communication across dialect communities.
The policy therefore reduced one kind of communication friction.
Dialect Loss Was the Other Side of Standardisation
Standardising language changes what becomes less common.
As Mandarin became more dominant, many younger Chinese Singaporeans used dialects less.
This weakened some intergenerational communication and cultural traditions.
Dialect songs, opera, storytelling and family vocabulary became less familiar to later generations.
This is a cultural trade-off rather than a simple failure of the campaign.
The policy achieved one objective partly by changing another cultural layer.
Good history should make that trade visible.
Media Policy Reinforced Language Policy
Television and radio were powerful because they reached millions repeatedly.
Reducing dialect programming and increasing Mandarin content changed what people heard in everyday media.
That matters because language proficiency depends partly on exposure.
The 1979 Broadcasting Act and Speak Mandarin Campaign therefore belong on the same page.
One reorganised the broadcasting institution.
The other used broadcasting as a tool of social policy.
The Broadcasting Act Prepared a More Professional Media System
RTS had to serve public information goals while competing for viewers’ attention.
The statutory-board model offered greater flexibility in hiring and investment.
That could improve production quality.
It could also increase advertising revenue.
The Government still retained policy influence over the broadcaster.
This hybrid model would shape SBC from 1980 onward.
The February By-Elections Were a Broad Electoral Snapshot
Seven constituencies voting on the same day created a larger test than a single local by-election.
Some seats were uncontested.
Others featured opposition or independent candidates.
The PAP won all seven.
What makes the results interesting today is the appearance of several figures whose later careers would become nationally prominent.
Historical discipline requires keeping that later knowledge separate from what voters could know in February 1979.
Potong Pasir and Telok Blangah Foreshadowed Later Political Stories Without Determining Them
Chiam See Tong contested Potong Pasir and lost in 1979.
J B Jeyaretnam contested Telok Blangah and lost.
Both would later win seats elsewhere or in later elections.
Those later victories were not predetermined by 1979.
A political career is a sequence of contests, organisations and changing voter decisions.
Annual history keeps those stages distinct.
1979 Linked Economic and Cultural Standardisation
The wage policy tried to move companies toward a higher-productivity standard.
The Skills Development Fund tried to raise worker capability.
The Speak Mandarin Campaign tried to standardise Chinese-language communication around Mandarin.
Broadcasting reform tried to professionalise mass media.
Different domains.
Shared governing instinct: reduce fragmentation and push toward a chosen national standard.
Standardisation Creates Efficiency and Loss
A common language can reduce communication friction.
It can weaken dialect diversity.
A higher-productivity industrial standard can raise incomes.
It can cause low-value firms to relocate and some jobs to disappear.
Institutional reform can improve efficiency.
It can reduce older forms of autonomy or identity.
1979 is valuable because these trade-offs appear in several systems at once.
From 1979 Into 1980
The Broadcasting Act becomes SBC.
Economic restructuring continues.
Higher education consolidates into NUS.
MRT planning gains a dedicated provisional authority.
The next four years therefore continue the 1979 theme: build stronger institutions for a higher-value economy.
A Final 1979 Learning Frame
Ask what the policy is trying to make people do differently.
Employers: upgrade.
Workers: train.
Chinese Singaporeans: use more Mandarin.
Broadcasters: operate with greater professional flexibility.
Voters: choose among candidates in seven local contests.
Policy becomes clearer when behaviour is identified.
1979 Was an Attempt to Make the Economy Learn Faster
The high-wage policy and Skills Development Fund can be read as one combined learning system.
Higher labour cost tells firms that old production methods are becoming less viable.
Training support gives workers and employers a route toward something better.
The state was therefore applying pressure and providing adaptation capacity at the same time.
Pressure without support can destroy firms.
Support without pressure can reduce the incentive to change.
The policy mix tried to combine both.
Economic Restructuring Changed the Geography of Industry
When low-value firms leave Singapore, production does not necessarily disappear from the regional economy.
It may move to places with cheaper land and labour.
Singapore then keeps or attracts activities requiring more capital, technology and skill.
This creates a regional division of labour.
Later ASEAN production networks would deepen this pattern.
1979 therefore belongs not only to domestic wage history but to the emerging geography of Asian manufacturing.
Training Policy Also Changed the Meaning of Employment
A job is not only a source of current wages.
It can be a site of skill formation.
If workers learn new machinery, quality systems or technical procedures while employed, the workplace becomes part of the education system.
The Skills Development Fund strengthened this connection.
Education no longer ended when school ended.
Economic restructuring required adults to keep learning.
Speak Mandarin Campaign and the School System Reinforced Each Other
Schools could teach Mandarin.
Students would struggle to use it confidently if home and media environments remained dominated by dialects.
The campaign tried to change that environment outside the classroom.
Radio and television increased exposure.
Public classes increased practice.
Campaign messages made Mandarin use socially visible.
Education policy and media policy therefore reinforced one another.
Language Standardisation Also Changed Intergenerational Memory
Dialect loss affects more than vocabulary.
Family stories can become harder to understand.
Older songs and opera can feel more distant.
Humour and expressions tied to one speech community can weaken.
This is why language policy creates heritage consequences.
A common language can strengthen communication while reducing linguistic diversity.
Both outcomes can be true at once.
Broadcasting Reform Gave Language Policy a Stronger Machine
The 1979 Broadcasting Act prepared an institution with greater capacity to produce and schedule programmes.
That mattered to language policy because media exposure is powerful.
A broadcaster with better studios, staff and production systems could create more local Mandarin content.
The later SBC drama industry was therefore connected indirectly to the language environment being reshaped in 1979.
The 1979 By-Elections Show Political Careers in Early Form
Several candidates in the February contests later became major political figures.
The temptation is to read their later importance backward into the result.
History should resist that.
Devan Nair was elected in Anson in 1979 and later became President.
Tony Tan was elected in Sembawang and much later became President.
Chiam See Tong and J B Jeyaretnam lost their 1979 contests but later won parliamentary seats.
The lesson is that one election is one data point in a longer political trajectory.
1979 Was a High-Confidence Policy Year
The corrective wage strategy required confidence that Singapore could attract higher-value investment even as low-value firms left.
The Skills Development Fund required confidence that training would raise productivity.
Speak Mandarin required confidence that language habits could be changed nationally.
Broadcasting reform required confidence that local production capability could grow.
These were not cautious policies.
They deliberately tried to accelerate change.
The Risks of Accelerated Change
Moving faster can produce faster gains.
It can also produce overshoot.
Higher wages can improve incomes and force productivity.
They can also weaken cost competitiveness if productivity does not keep pace.
Language standardisation can improve common communication.
It can also weaken heritage languages.
Institutional consolidation can improve efficiency.
It can also reduce older identities.
1979 is a powerful year for studying the benefits and costs of purposeful acceleration.
1979 in the Longer Economic Story
1979 begins the corrective wage push.
1981 establishes the National Computer Board.
1982 commits to MRT.
1985 recession exposes the danger of an overheated cost structure.
1986 policy resets wages and CPF.
Seen across the whole sequence, Singapore’s restructuring was not one perfect master plan.
It was a cycle of intervention, results, new problems and correction.
That is a more realistic model of development.
A Final 1979 Systems Lesson
Infrastructure changes what people can do.
Incentives change what people choose to do.
1979 is unusually rich in incentive policy.
Pay more for labour so firms upgrade.
Levy employers so training is funded.
Promote Mandarin so language behaviour shifts.
Restructure broadcasting so professional capability grows.
The year teaches that governments shape systems not only by constructing things but by changing the rewards around behaviour.
1979 Was a Turning Point From Employment Quantity to Employment Quality
Earlier economic policy asked how to create enough jobs.
By 1979, policy increasingly asked what kind of jobs Singapore should have.
Low-value assembly had helped solve unemployment.
It would not generate rising incomes forever.
The corrective wage policy and Skills Development Fund therefore shifted the target from employment quantity toward job quality and productivity.
The Year Connects Directly to Modern Skills Policy
Modern Singapore often speaks about lifelong learning, reskilling and staying employable as technology changes.
The institutional ancestry reaches back decades.
The 1979 Skills Development Fund established the principle that employers and the state should support continued workforce upgrading.
The language has changed.
The core economic problem remains recognisable.
Workers and firms have to learn faster than jobs become obsolete.
That makes 1979 a foundation year not only for the high-wage restructuring period, but for Singapore’s much longer attempt to make learning a permanent part of economic life.
Its policies would echo through every later debate about productivity, skills and economic upgrading.
That is why 1979 belongs firmly in the annual Master Track: it changed not only what Singapore built, but what people and firms were encouraged to become.
The year’s reforms became the starting point for the higher-skill, higher-cost economy that Singapore would spend the 1980s learning how to manage.
The effects would continue long after the original campaigns and wage recommendations ended.
The 1979 Restructuring Was a Second Industrial Revolution
Singapore’s first industrialisation phase had focused on job creation.
The next phase focused on productivity and value.
This is why the late-1970s restructuring is sometimes described as a second industrial revolution.
The country wanted fewer activities that used large amounts of low-skilled labour for low margins.
It wanted more electronics, engineering, petrochemicals, precision work and services capable of paying higher wages.
1979 is the policy pivot that makes this ambition explicit.
Why Cheap Labour Could Become a Strategic Weakness
Cheap labour helps attract factories at an early development stage.
It can also discourage automation.
If hiring another worker is cheaper than buying a better machine, firms may postpone upgrading.
That keeps productivity low.
Low productivity limits wage growth.
The economy can become stuck.
The corrective wage policy deliberately made the old equilibrium less comfortable.
Higher Wages Also Changed Household Aspirations
Wage policy is not only an employer cost.
Higher wages change what households can aspire to.
Better housing.
More education for children.
Consumer goods.
Travel.
Savings.
Economic upgrading therefore changes social expectations.
Once living standards rise, later policy is judged against the new baseline rather than the poverty of the 1960s.
Skills Development Fund Created Shared Responsibility
The fund did not place all training responsibility on the worker.
Employers paid a levy.
The state administered the system.
Workers participated in training.
This distributed responsibility across the labour market.
That matters because skills have spillover benefits.
A trained worker may later change companies.
If each employer fears losing its training investment, firms may underinvest collectively.
A national fund helps overcome that coordination problem.
Worker Training Reduced the Risk of Structural Unemployment
When old industries shrink, workers can become unemployed even if new industries are growing.
The problem is skill mismatch.
A worker trained for one machine may not be ready for electronics production.
A clerk may need computer skills.
A technician may need new certification.
Training reduces the time required for labour to move from declining sectors into expanding sectors.
That makes the whole economy more adaptable.
Speak Mandarin Changed the Soundscape of Public Singapore
Language campaigns change what people hear in public space.
Shop signs.
Radio.
Television.
School conversations.
Government campaigns.
As Mandarin became more common, dialects became less dominant in mass public communication.
The linguistic landscape of the city changed gradually through millions of individual conversations.
Language Policy Also Connected Singapore More Strongly to a Wider Mandarin World
Mandarin created a linguistic bridge to Chinese-language media, education and business beyond Singapore.
That benefit became more significant as China later opened and grew economically.
But 1979 policymakers could not know the full scale of China’s later rise.
The immediate policy logic was domestic communication and bilingual education.
Later economic usefulness should not be projected backward as the sole reason for the campaign.
Broadcasting Reform Amplified National Campaigns
A national campaign becomes much more powerful when the country has mass media capable of repeating it.
Broadcasting could demonstrate Mandarin pronunciation.
Show campaign messages.
Normalise certain language choices.
Later SBC programming could create entire Mandarin-speaking fictional worlds for audiences.
Media institutions and language policy therefore reinforced each other.
The By-Elections Showed a Political System Still Dominated by the PAP
PAP candidates won all seven seats in the February by-elections.
That result reflected the party’s continued electoral dominance during the period.
At the same time, opposition and independent candidates were contesting seats and building political careers.
These two facts can coexist.
Dominance does not mean absence of competition.
Competition does not mean equal electoral strength.
Precise political history keeps both in view.
1979 Was a Year of High Policy Confidence
The Government believed it could deliberately accelerate economic and social change.
Raise wages to restructure industry.
Create a levy to push training.
Run a national campaign to reshape language use.
Reorganise broadcasting.
This confidence produced real transformation.
It also created later correction costs when some interventions overshot.
The year is therefore a strong case study in the power and limits of deliberate policy engineering.
1979 and the Meaning of a Learning Society
If the economy keeps upgrading, learning cannot stop at age sixteen, eighteen or twenty-two.
Workers must adapt repeatedly.
Employers must redesign processes.
Schools must prepare students for jobs that may not yet exist.
1979 therefore helps explain a much later Singapore idea: lifelong learning.
The label changes.
The structural problem remains.
A Final 1979 Learning Frame
Use three verbs.
Raise wages.
Train workers.
Standardise communication.
Then ask what each intervention gains and what it risks losing.
That question turns 1979 from a list of policies into a study of deliberate social and economic transformation.
History of Singapore | 1979
Singapore in 1979 deliberately changed incentives.
Companies were pushed to upgrade.
Workers gained a training fund.
Language use became a national campaign.
Broadcasting prepared for institutional reform.
The year’s deepest lesson is that economic and social transformation can be engineered through incentives as well as infrastructure.
Continue forward: History of Singapore | 1980
Continue backwards: History of Singapore | 1978