Hong Kong and Singapore are small and urban. For every square kilometer of land area, Singapore has 5.1 km of streets and highways, the third densest road network in the world, and Hong Kong has 1.9 km, the world's ninth densest.
Given that both places are also rich, you might expect their roads to be clogged with privately owned cars. But thanks to policies implemented by the Hong Kong and Singaporean governments, traffic moves more freely than in Washington, DC, where I live. Although the two governments aimed to achieve the same end—fewer cars on the roads—the policies they adopted are revealingly different.
Hong Kong, the more purely capitalist of the two, simply makes car ownership exceedingly expensive. Registering a car entails paying a one-time tax levied at 35% of the car's value. Thereafter, drivers pay an annual licensing fee based on engine capacity: around $500 for a Toyota Yaris; around $1450 for a Lincoln Navigator. Gasoline is taxed almost as highly as it is in Western Europe. Motorists in Hong Kong pay about $8 per US gallon.
Singapore's government intervenes in the country's economy more than Hong Kong's does. Having set 40 mph as a target for the minimum mean speed of traffic, Singapore's government calculates how many cars the country's roads can handle. Rather than make driving unaffordable to most citizens, Singapore rations the number of cars by requiring that drivers secure a certificate of entitlement before buying a car. Roads have tolls (shown here) whose rates vary with time of day. Gasoline in Singapore costs around $4 per US gallon.
Hong Kong and Singapore also have different—and successful—approaches to funding scientific research. As in the case of keeping traffic moving, the different approaches reflect the two territories' core philosophies.
Perhaps because of its dedication to the free market, Hong Kong has evolved into one of the most service-intensive economies in the world. Domestic manufacturing accounts for just 3% of GDP. When Hong Kong invests in basic science, its principal aim is to support its universities, not its tiny industrial base. The territory is determined to become a higher-education hub for the South China region. Good universities—the kind that talented children from Hong Kong or Guangdong want to attend—do good research.
Singapore's government is determined that the country's vibrant manufacturing sector should not fall below 25% of the total economy. Funding priorities in R&D reflect that determination. Although Singapore supports basic research, its main R&D focus is applied research and close ties to industry. Having attracted Samsung, Seagate, and other foreign companies to set up factories in the 1990s, Singapore is now persuading those and other countries to set up R&D labs there too.
Small countries, even small rich countries, lack the resources to fund a broad-based research effort. To be successful, they must, as Hong Kong and Singapore have done, look to their national interests and values, identify strategic goals, and then devise policies to reach them.
Big countries also think strategically about their investments in research. But that doesn't mean they can't learn from Hong Kong, Singapore, and other small, successful countries.
My report about physics in Hong Kong appeared in Physics Today's September 2008 issue. My report about physics in Singapore appeared in Physics Today's June 2011 issue.
