Singapore got rich because so many foreign firms moved there to use it as their base of operations. That isn't a scalable approach for a larger countries (Singa

Singapore got rich because so many foreign firms moved there to use it as their base of operations. That isn't a scalable approach for a larger countries (Singapore's population is only around 5 million) that can't rely on foreign firms to supply all their jobs. In terms of producing successful local firms Singapore has actually been quite unsuccessful.