In fact, most people – regretfully including myself – thought it was just tinkering with the system set up by Lee Kuan Yew, rather than to create a new city-state.

After all, the (then) senior minister was still around.

Today, however, the signs of transformation are evident almost everywhere (except in politics), not least in globalising education and healthcare.

Last week, I went to a crowded cinema at the city centre and sat next to several Korean students in their school colours.

Later at a basement food-court, I encountered half-a-dozen Indonesian students also in local school uniform gulping down chicken rice. Only their accent betrayed their origin.

There are more – a lot more – from China, Malaysia, India and Vietnam, etc. The Indians have their own special school, but most enlist in local neighbourhood institutions.

Last year, foreign students totalled 80,000 (target 2015: 150,000), a figure big enough to make them part of Singapore’s landscape.

In healthcare, hospital staff now routinely ask new patients whether they speak English. The reason? More and more patients are non-locals who hail from the Middle East or countries like Russia, Indonesia or Myanmar.

Some 400,000 foreign patients sought treatment in the city’s medical facilities last year, and this is likely to exceed a million by 2012. In the past three years, they grew at an annual rate of 20%.

The demand for more doctors is so great that Singapore is recognising more medical foreign universities to increase the number. For the first time, it is importing doctors from Japan.

Launched with much publicity in 2001, the economic restructuring was aimed at a complete remake of the state, economically and socially, to survive global changes that threatened its old self.

It was aggravated by the rapid relocation of MNCs to China resulting in closures and a steady loss of jobs. Establishing education and healthcare hubs was a small part of it.

Actually the seed for the exercise was planted in the 70s, when Singapore was a very different place, during (the then) Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s trip to Europe.

China’s economic boom had not yet started, but Lee saw gathering clouds from other sources that required Singapore to move out of its low-cost industries.

He spoke to Singapore editors of protectionist threats to its exports (and a declining sympathy of the West to continue tariff protection for a wealthier Singapore) that could be a serious blow unless it changed the way it made its living.

In his view, Singapore had to restructure by forcing out unskilled, “low cost” manufacturers of cheap, uncompetitive products like textiles, plastics and umbrellas.

Its salaries and business costs were rising faster than countries in the region, which had plenty of cheap manpower. Sooner or later, he foresaw investors moving away to these countries.

To circumvent this, he wanted to move into sophisticated services like finance services, engineering and turnkey projects or provide technical consultancies to the region, he said.

These are non-physical businesses based on human skills that existed inside the “exporter’s brain.” It wasn’t possible to put up barriers against it without imposing a travel ban.

That was more than 30 years ago. What he said then makes sense even in today’s world. Lee’s foresight resulted in the first economic evolution in the early 80s.

That was even before the economies of China and India – and, of course, the Internet revolution – really took off.

These developments were to set the tone for Singapore’s restructuring to become a modern cosmopolitan of 6 million to 7 million by around 2025 that will provide high-end services to the world.

Part of it calls for the building of several global hubs, including education and healthcare, as well as finance, life sciences, tourism and digital design.

On education, it gets twin benefits – profits and human resources. It has grown into a S$8bil (RM18.4bil) industry making up 3.8% of gross domestic product.

The state also has the choice of taking in some of Asia’s top students and retaining a fair number of them for its own resource needs.

While these students come from dozens of countries, the greatest number is from China followed by Malaysia and Indonesia, India and Vietnam.

Academically the brightest from China, India, or Malaysia are over-represented among the Singapore schools’ highest achievers.

Of the 25 students who scored nine A1s this year, half were from outside Singapore: nine coming from China, two from Malaysia and one from Korea.

Last year, about a dozen out of 39 students with nine A1s – about a third – were from China.

River Valley High English teacher Muhammed Faizad Salim, 28, who had 12 China students in his class, said they start outdoing the Singaporeans in Secondary 4, which is resented by some locals.

The competition in efforts will, of course, get hotter later in the job market, considered by the government as necessary for a better Singapore.

o Seah Chiang Nee is a veteran journalist and editor of the information website littlespeck.com

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