SINGAPORE has never been short of admirers. Many leaders of developing countries respect Lee Kuan Yew, its founding father, for taking his city-state from third- to first-world status while resisting Western calls for greater political liberalisation. Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s iron-fisted president, hopes that his country will become “the Singapore of Africa”. Fans of Rodrigo Duterte compare the Philippine president to Lee: strong-willed and intolerant of crime and corruption.

新加坡从来不缺少赞美之词。很多发展中国家的领导人都十分敬重它的建国之父李光耀：他抵抗着西方政治自由化的压力，并这个有“花园城市”之称的国家从第三世界带领至第一世界。卢旺达的铁拳总理保罗・卡加梅希望他的国家能够成为“非洲的新加坡”。罗德里戈·杜特尔特的追随者将他和李光耀相比较：坚强的意志和以及对犯罪和腐败的零容忍。

Lately the rich world, too, has begun to look at the island. “Want to ditch Obamacare? Let’s copy Singapore’s health-care miracle,” chirped an opinion piece on the website of Fox News, a conservative American broadcaster, soon after the election of Donald Trump. It argued that the “miracle” rested on two features dear to Republican hearts—“empowering consumers and fostering competition”. Some of the more vocal Brexiteers dream of turning Britain into “Singapore-on-Thames”: a low-tax, lightly regulated haven for businesses eager to trade with Europe. Like the proverbial blind men describing an elephant by feeling just one part of the beast, each of these admirers gets something right about Singapore, but all miss the big picture.

近来，发达国家也开始关注这个岛国。在唐纳德·特朗普当选为美国总统后，美国保守派电台福克斯新闻里就充满了这样的讨论：“想要放弃奥巴马医改计划？复制新加坡健康医疗制度的奇迹吧！”这个观点认为，新加坡的“医疗奇迹”的两大特征深得共和党的心——“赋予消费者权力和促进竞争”。一些强硬的脱欧派人士梦想把英国变成“泰晤士河畔的新加坡”：一全税收低、管制少的天堂，期待与欧洲进行自由贸易。可是，就像众所周知的盲人摸象故事一样，这些新加坡的爱慕者们都向往着新加坡令人称羡的方面，却忽视了全局。

Start with the Brexiteers. Britain’s 65m people are almost 12 times as numerous, and are scattered over a territory 337 times larger than Singapore’s. Britain is already lightly taxed and regulated by European standards, but compared with Singapore it is a behemoth. Britain’s top rate of income tax, now 45%, is double that of Singapore; and its government accounts for about 38% of GDP, about twice as much as the lean Singaporean one. Shrinking the British state much further would mean slashing spending and radically reshaping the National Health Service. Voters would punish any party that attempted such a thing.

从支持脱欧者开始说。英国的5600万人口，几乎是新加坡的12倍，分布在比新加坡大337倍的土地上。按欧盟标准，英国的税收和监管均较低。然而，与新加坡相比，英国仍然是个庞然大物。目前，英国最高的所得税率是45%，这个数字是新加坡的两倍；政府支出占GDP的38%，几乎也是新加坡的两倍。缩小英国政府规模意味着减少政府支出和对国家卫生服务部门进行彻底改革。选民会问责任何一个做出这样尝试的党派。

Even assuming the EU were to give low-tax Britain easy access to its single market, the neighbourhood is completely different. South-East Asia is a booming region of 630m people, many of whom live in countries that are unstable, corrupt or have lousy infrastructure. Efficient Singapore gives firms easy access to those consumers while minimising risks. Europe, by contrast, may be stagnant but, populist threats notwithstanding, is politically stable and mostly well governed. It makes less sense for a company to set up in Britain to sell to Spaniards than for it to base itself in Singapore to cater to Indonesians—and trebly so if Britain loses unrestricted access to Europe, as it probably will after Brexit.

假设欧盟同意让低税收的英国轻易进入它的单一市场，英国的邻国情况和新加坡也是完全不一样的。拥有6.3亿人口的东南亚是一个蓬勃发展的地区，这里的人生活在不稳定、腐败、基础设施差的国家之中。对该地区的企业来说，新加坡的高效能够让他们在低风险的情况下轻易获得消费市场。相对来说，欧洲的市场可能就比较萧条。尽管存在民粹主义的威胁，欧洲的政治稳定，政府治理基本良好。因而，相比之下，一家公司设立在新加坡去满足印度尼西亚人的需要的作法要比设在英国，向西班牙销售产品更为明智。如果英国失去自由进入欧洲的权利，那么，在它脱欧以后，这种结果也许会更明显。

American conservatives, for their part, are right that Singapore’s health-care system achieves fine results by emphasising personal responsibility, competition and low public spending. Singaporeans pay for much of their health care out of their own pockets and enjoy among the world’s highest life expectancies and lowest infant-mortality rates. The country spends just 5% of GDP on health care, of which about 2% of GDP comes from the public purse. America spends much more, 17% and 8% of GDP respectively, yet its population is much less healthy.

从美国保守派的立场来看，他们是正确的：新加坡的医疗保障制度能够取得很好的效果得益于重视个人责任、竞争和低廉的公共支出。新加坡人自己掏钱支付大部分的医药费，并享受着世界最长预期寿命和最低的婴儿出生死亡率。该国用于医疗保健的费用仅占GDP的5%，其中2%来自于公共钱包。美国用于该项的费用是GDP的17%，其中8%来自公共账户，然而，美国国民的健康程度却不如新加坡人。

However, Singapore’s system also features far more coercion and government intervention than Americans would plausibly accept. Most hospitals are state-run. Most hospices and nursing homes are private but government-funded. The government heavily subsidises acute care. It promotes competition by publishing hospital bills; American health-care providers, by contrast, make their prices as opaque as possible to discourage shopping around. The government compels Singaporeans to divert up to 10.5% of their wages into “Medisave” accounts (employers contribute, too). It also subsidises “cost-effective and essential” drugs; unapproved drugs, if available, can be prohibitively expensive.

然而，新加坡的制度的强迫性以及政府干预程度超过了美国人能乐于接受的程度。在新加坡，大部分的医院都是国营的；大部分救济院和养老院确实是私营的，却得到政府资助；政府对急诊提供了众多的补助；通过公开医院费用单促进竞争。相比之下，美国的医疗保障提供者尽可能使价格不透明，从而来阻止去其他地方消费。政府强制新加坡人将他们工资的10.5%存入“保健储蓄”账户（雇主也要支付）。政府还给予“性价比高“的必需药品补助；那些没有政府资助的药品，可能会极其昂贵。

Both the left and the right will find much to like about Singapore’s health-care system. But anyone who thought that Michelle Obama urging children to eat more apples was too nannyish will find it hard to stomach. As Kishore Mahbubani of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy puts it: “The ideology guiding Lee Kuan Yew was not Ayn Rand.”

不管是左派还是右派都会表现出对新加坡医疗保障制度的欣赏。但是，觉得米歇尔·奥巴马敦促孩子们吃更多苹果的做法是多管闲事的人对此难以忍受。李光耀公共政策学院的马凯硕评价道：“李光耀并不信奉艾茵·兰德和他的自由主义。”

A similar pattern—personal responsibility supported by coercion and a lean but robust safety net—applies across Singapore’s economy. More than 90% of Singaporeans own their own homes, but most are government-built flats bought at government-set prices, often with government-provided grants. Where Singaporeans can live depends in part on their ethnicity: to avoid racial ghettos, Singapore requires the composition of public-housing blocks to reflect the country’s racial make-up.

一个相似的模式——政治强制的个人责任和高效却粗野的安全网——同样表现于新加坡的经济。超过90%的新加坡人有自己的房子，大部分却都是通过政府定价购买的政府建造的公寓，通常都会有政府提供的补助金。新加坡人生活在哪里，在一定程度上是由他们的种族决定的：为了避免种族聚集，新加坡政府对每个公共社区的种族成分都做了要求，反映了这个国家的种族组成。

Hard bargain

难以协商

Such social engineering would appal Western voters and be struck down by Western courts. Yet Singaporeans accept it. Paternalism has enforced racial calm. The country’s Chinese majority has been spared the atrocities visited on the Chinese diaspora in, say, Malaysia and Indonesia. More important, the trade-off that Lee Kuan Yew offered still holds: illiberal politics in exchange for good government and high living standards.

这种社会机制也许会让西方选民感到惊愕，并会通过西方法庭官司得以废除。但是，新加坡人接受了它。家长制确保了种族和平。在该国的大部分中国人都幸免于马来西亚和印度尼西亚对中国侨民的暴行。更重要的是，李光耀做出的权衡仍然存在：非自由的政治换取良好的政府和高水准的生活。

Singapore’s leaders vigorously defend their reputations with defamation suits, and gerrymander constituencies to help preserve the ruling party’s majority. But they deliver safe streets, first-rate health care, good public transport and a clean, responsive public administration. In distorted form, elections allow voters to affect policy: after the ruling party suffered its worst-ever performance in 2011, winning “just” 60% of the vote, it took a more populist line and won resoundingly four years later.

新加坡的领导人通过诉讼诽谤来极力捍卫声誉，通过重新划分选区来保证执政党占大多数。但是，他们提供安全的街道，一流的医疗，良好的公共交通和廉洁高效的行政管理。通过扭曲的形式，选举可以让选民影响政策：执政党糟糕的表现让他们在2011年的大选中受到重创，“只”赢得了60%的选票。他们走了更具有民粹主义的路线，在四年之后取得了胜利。

Lee’s bargain is hard to emulate. Both parts have been essential to Singapore’s success. Yet admirers such as Mr Duterte and Hun Sen, Cambodia’s strongman, are adept only at the authoritarian bit, without the clean government or wealth creation. Singapore’s rich-world admirers, meanwhile, lack the tame politics that allow Singapore’s rulers to set policy without worrying too much about the next election—or their citizens’ civil liberties.

李光耀的做法难以效仿。上述两个特征对于新加坡的成功都至关重要。然而，像杜特尔特和柬埔寨强人洪森这样的崇拜者，也只是擅长强权，没有廉洁的政府和财富创造。同时，新加坡那些来自发达国家的追随者们缺乏驯服的政治——能够让新加坡的统治者制定政策的同时不需要太担心下一届选举或者他们公民的公民自由。

编译： HannieSun

编辑：翻吧君

英文来源：经济学人