In The Technological Republic (2025), Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska’s decision to elevate Lee Kuan Yew and Singapore—rather than China—as a model is neither accidental nor superficial. It reflects the book’s core strategic and ideological purpose: to critique Western decline while arguing for renewal from within the Western civilizational tradition. By highlighting Singapore, the authors present a case of disciplined state capacity, technocratic governance, and long-term planning that coexists with rule of law, institutional rationality, and a broadly Western intellectual lineage. Singapore functions as a corrective mirror—demonstrating what the West could be, not what it must abandon itself to become.
China, by contrast, represents a form of authoritarian modernity that the authors deliberately avoid legitimizing as an aspirational template. To hold China up as a positive example would imply conceding that Western liberal societies are structurally incapable of competing without adopting fundamentally illiberal systems. Instead, the book uses Singapore—and Lee Kuan Yew in particular—to argue that strength, technological ambition, and national cohesion are compatible with Western norms when properly defended and renewed. The omission of China thus serves a rhetorical and philosophical purpose: the authors seek to galvanize Western self-belief, not to recommend emulation of a rival civilizational model.
China as Confirmation, Not a Cure
In The Technological Republic, China occupies an implicit but crucial role: it validates the authors’ diagnosis of Western decline while simultaneously invalidating their proposed remedy. The book argues that the West is faltering because it has lost shared purpose, mission-driven technological ambition, and alignment between the state, society, and its most capable institutions. China’s contemporary trajectory powerfully confirms this diagnosis by demonstrating what coordinated national focus, strategic clarity, and technological seriousness can achieve when those elements are present.
In practice, China exemplifies many of the capacities the authors argue the West has allowed to atrophy. It has mobilized technology through the state, aligned elite talent with national objectives, integrated industry and governance, and pursued long-term strategic planning with remarkable discipline. These achievements expose the inadequacy of Western complacency and fragmentation, showing that technological leadership is not merely a function of markets or innovation culture, but of political will and institutional coherence.
Yet China’s success rests on mechanisms that the book treats as fundamentally incompatible with the Western project. Its model depends on pervasive surveillance, party supremacy over law and institutions, suppression of dissent, and enforced ideological conformity. These are not incidental features but structural foundations of its system. To present China as a positive exemplar would therefore collapse the book’s normative framework into an argument that authoritarianism is more effective than liberal democracy.
For this reason, China can only function as a diagnostic mirror, not a prescriptive guide. It reveals what the West lacks, but not what it should become. The authors’ challenge is to recover national purpose, technological ambition, and institutional alignment without abandoning liberal principles. China proves that decline is not inevitable—but also that renewal cannot come at the cost of the values the book seeks to defend.
Technocracy Without Total Control: Why Singapore Remains Narratively Usable
Singapore poses an obvious challenge to any attempt to present it as a technocratic model free of authoritarian implications. Alongside state-led technological mobilization, long-term planning, strategic coherence, and talent alignment toward national goals, it also exhibits features commonly associated with illiberal governance: Party (Singapore’s PAP) dominance over institutions, suppression of dissent through instruments such as the Internal Security Act (ISA), and a form of instrumentalized ideology enforced by coercion. The Technological Republic avoids collapsing under this tension not by denying these realities, but by reframing their significance within a carefully bounded narrative.
The first move is a distinction of degree rather than kind. The book treats PAP dominance, the ISA, and ideological steering as limited and exceptional tools rather than as the structural foundation of Singaporean governance. ISA detentions are rare and episodic, not routine mechanisms of social management, and most economic, scientific, and professional life proceeds without continuous political intervention. PAP dominance is framed as stable, meritocratic governance rather than as total party supremacy. This contrasts sharply with China, where party control is presented as pervasive across political, economic, educational, media, and private spheres. By emphasizing scope and intensity, the authors can acknowledge coercion while marginalizing its causal role.
A second move lies in narrative framing: pragmatism versus ideology. Singapore’s political controls are described as instrumental to nation-building—order as a means to development, competence, and survival—rather than as demands for ideological conversion. The implicit message is managerial necessity rather than moral absolutism. China’s system, by contrast, is inseparable from a totalizing ideological project, reinforced through continuous campaigns, doctrinal enforcement, and civilizational claims. This framing allows the authors to argue that institutional alignment and national purpose need not entail full-spectrum authoritarianism.
Third, Singapore is cast as an exceptional, high-performing case rather than a universal or scalable model. Lee Kuan Yew’s state is presented as historically contingent: small, highly literate, cohesive, and deeply embedded in global markets. Western audiences are invited to admire its performance legitimacy without feeling compelled to accept coercion as a general rule. China, due to its size and ambition, reads as a systemic alternative in which coercive mechanisms appear unavoidable at scale. Singapore thus remains inspirational, while China feels prescriptive and morally destabilizing.
Selective emphasis reinforces this distinction. The book foregrounds Singapore’s successes in state capacity, strategic planning, and talent mobilization, while downplaying PAP institutional dominance, ISA-style repression, and instrumentalized ideology as secondary or incidental. These features are treated as side effects rather than as the engine of technocratic success. The lesson is drawn from outcomes—alignment, competence, seriousness—rather than from the political means that help sustain them.
Finally, cultural and political relatability does crucial work. Singapore appears legible to Western policymakers: market-oriented, rule-bound, ethnically plural yet cohesive, and operating within a familiar global economic order. China’s civilizational depth and entrenched authoritarianism make it feel distant, alien, and normatively unacceptable. By leaning on scale, context, and plausibility, the authors make Singapore imaginable as “alignment without oppression,” even if that image rests on a disciplined act of narrative narrowing.
In sum, Singapore functions as a technocratic model not because it lacks coercive elements, but because those elements are framed as limited, pragmatic, and non-essential to the core lesson the book seeks to impart. This narrative strategy allows The Technological Republic to argue for Western renewal through institutional alignment and purpose without forcing a direct reckoning with mass authoritarianism.
Learning Under Constraint: Geopolitics, Ideology, and the Limits of Admiration
Any comparison between Singapore and China in The Technological Republic is shaped by powerful geopolitical and ideological constraints. China is not merely another case of successful state capacity; it is the West’s primary strategic rival and leading antagonist, whose technological, industrial, and military ambitions directly challenge Western power and influence. To cite China as a positive model would therefore be politically and rhetorically explosive, inviting accusations of ideological accommodation, strategic naivety, or even tacit endorsement of an adversarial system. Such a move would undermine the book’s credibility with its intended Western audience before its argument could be seriously engaged.
Beyond politics, there is a deeper ideological barrier. Holding China up as an example risks normalizing the idea that authoritarian governance is not only effective but preferable in an era of technological competition. This would collapse the authors’ normative framework into a concession they explicitly seek to avoid: that liberal democracies cannot compete without emulating their authoritarian rivals. In this sense, China is structurally unusable as an affirmative reference, regardless of how impressive its achievements may be.
Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew, by contrast, occupies a geopolitically safe and ideologically palatable position. As a small, non-threatening city-state, Singapore does not contest Western power or aspire to reshape the international order. It has been historically aligned with the West, deeply integrated into global finance, trade, and legal norms, and broadly supportive of the liberal international system. These features allow it to serve as an example of strong statecraft without triggering fears of strategic capitulation.
This asymmetry enables the authors to admire disciplined governance, long-term planning, and technological focus without endorsing a systemic rival. Singapore can be cited without geopolitical risk, whereas China cannot be praised without reframing the entire strategic and ideological debate. The choice is therefore not only analytical but constrained by the realities of power, rivalry, and audience: what can be learned is inseparable from who is being learned from.
Moral Distance and the Manageability of Exemplars
A central reason Singapore, rather than China, functions as a usable reference in The Technological Republic lies in narrative manageability and moral distance. Lee Kuan Yew is widely framed in Western discourse as a benevolent, pragmatic autocrat—a figure associated with order, competence, and national development rather than ideological zeal or systemic repression. This framing allows the authors to extract lessons about state capacity, long-term planning, and technocratic governance without forcing sustained engagement with the darker moral dimensions of authoritarian rule.
Singapore’s political story can be told in a tightly bounded way. Its governance is often narrated as disciplined but restrained, with coercive elements appearing exceptional rather than defining. As a result, issues such as mass surveillance, extensive human rights abuses, or permanent ideological enforcement remain at the margins of the narrative. This selective moral distance makes it possible to admire institutional seriousness and administrative competence without appearing to excuse or normalize repression.
China offers no such narrative insulation. As a full-scale civilizational competitor, its achievements are inseparable from pervasive surveillance, systematic suppression of dissent, and an expansive ideological project with global ambitions. Any attempt to praise its state capacity or technological strategy inevitably raises questions about political repression and moral cost. The model cannot be extracted from its methods without appearing evasive or disingenuous.
For the authors, this difference is decisive. Singapore can be treated as a contained case whose lessons can be abstracted and domesticated for a Western audience. China cannot be morally or analytically disentangled from the authoritarian system that sustains it. The resulting moral distance makes Singapore narratively manageable, while China remains incompatible with the book’s vision of a revitalized, yet recognizably Western, technological republic.
Soft Belief Versus Enforced Conviction
A core concept in The Technological Republic is “soft belief”: the idea that successful technological and national coordination depends on a shared narrative that motivates commitment, discipline, and long-term purpose without pervasive coercion. The authors argue that societies function best when belief is internalized rather than imposed—when individuals align with collective goals because they recognize their legitimacy and efficacy, not because dissent is punished.
Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore is presented as an illustration of this dynamic. Social cohesion was cultivated through performance legitimacy, meritocratic governance, and a strong sense of national identity, producing a disciplined and high-functioning society while remaining integrated into global markets and allowing substantial personal and economic freedom. Belief in the system emerged from results and competence, reinforcing voluntary alignment even within a tightly managed political environment.
China, by contrast, exemplifies belief enforced through hard mechanisms. Social cohesion rests on party supremacy, ideological orthodoxy, censorship, nationalism, and punitive enforcement rather than culturally rooted or voluntarily sustained consent. Its unity is maintained through constant ideological reinforcement rather than trust in institutional performance alone. For the authors, this distinction is decisive: Singapore suggests that belief and purpose can be cultivated through legitimacy and competence, whereas China demonstrates a model in which belief is secured by coercion.
Innovation and Mobilization as Divergent Paths
In The Technological Republic, Karp and Zamiska draw a sharp distinction between fundamental innovation and large-scale mobilization. The former—open-ended discovery, creative risk-taking, and scientific originality—is presented as the West’s historic strength and enduring comparative advantage. The latter—coordinated deployment of existing technologies and talent toward state-defined goals—is acknowledged as an area in which China currently excels, but one that does not, by itself, guarantee sustained technological leadership.
Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew is framed as a case where strategic mobilization did not come at the expense of intellectual freedom. The state aligned talent and technology around a national vision while preserving space for experimentation, global exchange, and market integration. This balance allows Singapore to function as a template the West can plausibly learn from: coherence and seriousness without smothering the creative conditions that make innovation possible.
China’s model, by contrast, is portrayed as increasingly vulnerable to its own methods. While highly effective at mobilization, extensive regulation, party oversight, and ideological supervision risk constraining the very forms of high-end creativity and scientific unpredictability that drive long-term breakthroughs. For the authors, this trade-off is decisive. Singapore represents technological alignment compatible with innovation, whereas China exemplifies a mobilizational model that the West could only emulate at unacceptable political and creative cost.
Scale and the Usefulness of a Manageable Model
A further reason Singapore features prominently in The Technological Republic is its scale and analytical manageability. As a small, highly organized city-state, Singapore can be treated as a strategic “laboratory” in which policy, culture, and technology are tightly aligned. Cause and effect appear clearer, outcomes are easier to observe, and institutional choices can be more readily interpreted by Western audiences seeking actionable lessons rather than abstract theory.
This manageability allows the authors to extract insights without confronting the complications of a vast, civilizational-scale system. Singapore’s size makes it possible to isolate variables—state capacity, elite coordination, long-term planning—and discuss them as discrete design choices rather than as products of centuries of historical layering. The model feels bounded, intelligible, and transferable in principle, even if not in full.
China resists this form of reduction. Its enormous population, historical depth, and party-state structure produce outcomes that cannot be easily disentangled into policy lessons. More importantly, China’s rise challenges foundational Western assumptions about governance, markets, and the role of the state itself. This makes it not only analytically unwieldy but ideologically inconvenient. In contrast, Singapore’s scale permits controlled admiration, while China’s magnitude forces uncomfortable questions the book is not designed to resolve.
Arguing for Strength Without Appearing to Endorse Autocracy
For Karp, a prominent Western business leader and defense-sector executive, explicitly holding China up as a model would invite immediate political and reputational backlash. Praising an openly authoritarian rival risks accusations of ideological sympathy, strategic naïveté, or tacit endorsement of autocratic governance. Such perceptions would undermine both the book’s reception and the authors’ broader credibility within Western policy and security circles.
Lee Kuan Yew and Singapore offer a safer proxy. They allow the authors to argue for strong leadership, technological alignment, and national purpose without crossing into overt admiration of a geopolitical adversary or appearing to advocate autocracy as a system. In this sense, Singapore functions as a rhetorically defensible stand-in—permitting a call for seriousness and discipline while remaining within the acceptable bounds of Western strategic realism.
China as the Shadow Argument
In The Technological Republic, China operates as a persistent, if unacknowledged, presence—a shadow argument that drives the book’s sense of urgency. Its rapid advances in AI, software, industrial coordination, and talent mobilization illustrate what is possible when a society achieves cohesion and strategic focus. China’s rise highlights the stakes for the West and underscores the risks of inaction, even as the authors refrain from presenting it as a model to emulate.
Singapore, by contrast, serves as the narrative exemplar. It demonstrates that non-Western, non-liberal systems can cultivate state capacity, technological alignment, and disciplined governance in ways that the West can study and, in principle, emulate without abandoning liberal values. China’s achievements provoke the argument and provide contrast, but Singapore offers the actionable illustration: a contained, politically and morally palatable case that shows how alignment and purpose can be realized without requiring coercion at civilizational scale.
Summary & Implications
In The Technological Republic (2025), China is deliberately excluded as a prescriptive model because, while it confirms the book’s diagnostic claims about Western decline, its reliance on coercion and ideological control makes it incompatible with liberal democracy. Elevating China would risk turning the argument from reformist to fatalistic, suggesting that the West cannot compete without adopting authoritarian methods.
Singapore, under Lee Kuan Yew, provides a politically and morally “safe” alternative: a small, meritocratic, and globally integrated state that demonstrates disciplined, purpose-driven governance. It shows that strategic coherence, technological alignment, and national purpose can be achieved without abandoning Western values. In this framework, China serves as the existential competitor—the looming storm—while Singapore functions as the instructive tutor, offering lessons the West can realistically and ethically emulate.
References
- The Technological Republic Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West. Alexander C. Karp, Nicholas W. Zamiska. 2025