A recent book of essays by former Straits Times journalist Cherian George reveals what may be the most appropriate epithet for the lion city state: Singapore, The Air-Conditioned Nation. World travellers are always unanimous in waxing lyrical about this high-tech womb, especially after a long haul from medievally unpredictable latitudes. The memory of those glacial smiles of the Singapore Girl, and the enticing - but never sexy - voices at ultra-efficient Changi Airport are a constant reminder that everything remains cool and under control.

Lee Kwan Yew himself, not by accident, chose the air-conditioner as the invention of the millennium: without it, he would never have had the means to construct his social masterpiece, a living exercise in comfort and control - from the mall orgy in Orchard Road to the politically correct selections at Border's bookstore. Control means comfort: In Singapore, there is hardly room for even a little bit of creative chaos.

The post-Lee Kwan Yew mandarins at the top of the Singaporean government have excelled in the implementation of a rigid diet. No tolerance against political dissent. No vocal space for the intelligentsia (political films or literature are banned). Total control of the media - and that includes Internet vigilance. All the privileges to the business elite. If the Singaporean government can be criticized as a nanny-state of Leviathan proportions, that's all for the best: comfort and control.

Without a tradition of intellectual public debate, no wonder the big question in multiracial Singapore was and still is a question of identity. What does it means to be Singaporean, when your world view could have been molded in English, Mandarin, Malay or Tamil (the four official languages)? As in any promised land, this is a city state of immigrants: because of it, in the '90s the population grew by almost 40 percent. The government spends fortunes on a PR blitz in India, Malaysia, China and California trying to seduce the best IT brains - not to mention investors and businessmen. Singaporeans, meanwhile, fear that races and ethnic groups may be further antagonized, with many people falling victim of the government's language policy.

The problem with the successful Singaporean model - envied all over the developing world - is essentially simple: after such knowledge, what forgiveness? Lee Kwan Yew already wrote the two essential-reading volumes of his memoirs: after 2010 he won't be involved any more in matters of government. With growing privatization, the power structure in the Lion City is bound to be more diffuse. And the government has just realized it cannot manage and control information as it did in the good old days of the economic miracle.

In a recent speech at the News Word Asia Conference, Singapore's extremely competent Minister for Trade and Industry, Brigadier-General George Yeo (an ex-Minister for Information and the Arts) acknowledged the perils of the new global media landscape. According to BG Yeo, as he is commonly known, "the media game is now played by everyone", and "world coverage shapes reality". But he also says that "in Singapore, we insist that the domestic media carries the official version accurately. Otherwise, we can't reach out to our own voters".

BG Yeo refers to an "elite in Singapore who speak English, who read many different newspapers and watch foreign news. These people are in the know when scandalous reports are made about the government in the foreign media. When this happens, the government has to act." BG Yeo could be referring to any number of nations in Asia. But the governments of Thailand, South Korea or the Philippines are hardly policing every byte or sound bite about themselves produced by the global media.

BG Yeo is adamant that "Singaporeans need to know what the government thinks". What the government thinks is usually framed in terms of economic opportunity. One of Deng Xiaoping's fondest dreams was to plant "one thousand Singapores" in China. After the Suzhou industrial park near Shanghai, Singapore now will concentrate its efforts on helping Guangdong province in Information Technology. As BG Yeo himself stressed, Guangdong exported a whopping US$92 billion last year (37 percent of Chinese exports), and already produces 30 percent of the world's disk-drives.

While maintaining its relentless competitive drive, the Singaporean government is becoming aware of attacks on all fronts: even at its strategic location in the Straits of Malacca, a corridor to virtually anything that moves between Europe and East Asia. Singapore's ultra-efficient port, the second-largest in the world after Hong Kong, is run by the government. But Malaysia has just built a brand-new port a mere 40-minute, air-conditioned drive from Singapore, and with services 30 percent cheaper.

Selected members of the Singaporean elite say the problem with the city state is too much affluence. No wonder: the island's standard of living is higher than Japan, Hong Kong or the ex-colonial master, Britain. There are simply too many Mercedes and Audis, too many Chanel boutiques, too many nouveau-whatever bistros and bars.

The second most competitive economy in the world - it used to be the first for years - grew 9 percent in 2000. In 2001, projections already dropped from 7 percent to 3 percent due to the American slowdown as 25 percent of Singapore's non-oil exports, mostly high-tech electronics, go to the United States. According to a resident Japanese banker, the government, of course, has a master plan. And the name of the game is globalization.

Now, all the world's a stage because Singapore cannot depend for markets on its troubled Southeast Asian neighbors. This is the way for DBS bank, SingTel and Raffles Holdings - a hotel chain controlled by huge Singapore Technologies, one of the top Singaporean GLCs (government-linked companies). These profitable and ultra-efficient conglomerates control Singapore's airlines, telecom, banks, shipping, petrochemicals and utilities.

So while the GLCs go global, the government wants to privatize some of their parts. But it does not want to give up control entirely: everything Sing-wise is about comfort and control. No wonder US, European and Japanese interest is less than enthusiastic. The leadership is so worried about the near-term prospects for Southeast Asia that the prime minister himself, Goh Chok Tong, has been drumming up worst-case scenarios like a global recession, an indiscriminate invasion of illegal immigrants, and uncontrolled piracy in the Straits of Malacca - all of this meaning no more foreign direct investment in the region.

Foreign direct investment in Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) countries has been falling since 1999, but Singapore's cut is rising (32 percent in 2000). China and India are increasingly perceived as possibly cheaper manufacturing bases than Asean countries.

The Singaporean solution is to pursue bilateral trade agreements outside of Asean: a deal to sell high-tech electronic products in the huge Japanese market will be ready by the end of the year.

Singapore is also trying to rev up its educational system by stressing more creativity. And it is implementing a project called Phase z.Ro - the Singaporean version of Silicon Valley, or in the officially emasculated language of comfort and control, "a thriving community of technopreneurs, venture capitalists, researchers and professional expertise". The government wants to literally incubate a culture of risk and private initiative in the minds of its cautious and risk-averse citizens.

Most developing countries would be willing to sell their national soul to have problems like Singapore's. Meanwhile, Singapore itself has to find a way to come up with solutions other than commercial to its identity problem. Singapore's question is a real test for its best and brightest: how to buy a new dress for this cute little beauty when the world at large is a supermarket full of sharks.