SINGAPORE -- While its neighbors are wrestling with civil unest and economic collapse, this tiny island-state is intent on not only surviving the economic crisis but emerging in better shape.
Singapore's unusual combination of tight government control and freewheeling capitalism has already resulted in one of the world's most impressive success stories.Now the government, dominated by Singapore patriarch Lee Kuan Yew and his powerful son, Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, is angling for a second miracle.
And experts say they've a good chance of succeeding.
"Singapore is a very good place to be to emerge from the crisis with far more credibility than it had when the crisis had started," Desmond Supple, director of Barclays Capital Asia in Singapore, said in an interview.
"And this is very rare in Asia."
Poor in land and resources with a potentially volatile multiracial population, this island nation of 3.1 million was transformed under former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew into a global financial center and a harmonious society of the skilled and the educated.
For years it has been generally acknowledged that the Great Singapore Dream is the five C's: condo, car, career, credit card and cash. Singaporeans used to spend so much of their money in splendid malls and on overpriced luxury cars that Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong urged citizens in 1996 to stop chasing wealth.
Though the worst blows of the crisis have been averted, the government recently announced the country has slipped into its first recession since the mid-1980s. Unemployment has doubled to 4.5 percent, a warning to Singaporeans.
So warning that Singapore "must adapt or become irrelevant," the younger Lee recently introduced a host of measures, including painful wage cuts, to reform the economy.