Comments by "Zhi Han Lee" (@lzh4950) on "Why are there so few city-states?" video.

  1. Read a article from my local newspaper in 2007 (in the lead-up to the Singapore GP; the article was comparing it to the Monaco GP) that said that almost all residents are millionaires, & luxury cars like Mercs are small change as supercars are the standard on the roads there. Went there 2 years later & was disappointed to see mostly Smarts on the roads instead
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  2. The Indonesian Riau islands are just ~20km from Singapore & Indonesia used to be part of several large empires too e.g. Srivijaya, Majapahit. Indonesia was mad when Singapore joined Malaysia in 1963 instead of itself instead & retaliated with gurella warfare (called Konfrontasi - 'confrontation' in Indonesian). The president then (Sukarno) was later ousted in a coup by Suharto though, who ended the warfare, & that might be a reason that Singapore's 1st prime minister was relatively more friendly with him. In 2014 a diplomatic row occurred when Indonesia named some new warships after marines that had bombed McDonald House in Singapore during the gurella warfare (IIRC it is because Indonesia officially/technically/legally regards them as heroes, as they died after being arrested & executed by Singapore)
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  3.  @de0y  Think also because the then regional government of Singapore was relatively more outspoken against the pro-native ( bumiputera ) affirmative action policies, favouring equal treatment of all races instead. Can imagine the central government found Singapore pesky/irritating as a result. Also realised it interesting that Malaysia's United Malays United Organisation (Malaysia's ruling political party for much of it's history) still campaigns using a similar mantra today as back when Singapore was part of Malaysia (1963-65) - that the Malays (the majority of the natives in the region) are at a disadvantage (& hence ought to benefit from affirmative action, besides also alluding to Malaysia's 1969 racial riots I think). Meanwhile IIRC Malaysia's Democratic Action Party was formed by Malaysia's members of Singapore's ruling People Action Party after Singapore was expelled from the rest of Malaysia
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  4. Was thinking whether Bahrain & Qatar would be mentioned too as I thought they had only 1 city each (Manama & Doha respectively) & the rest of the countries are the cities' rural outskirts
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  5. Singapore used to be a rural island off the shores of present-day peninsular/western Malaysia, whose development accelerated later than peninsular/western Malaysia after Sir Stamford Raffles realised Singapore's value (arising from its deep waters & strategic location for maritime trade), & was thus colonised later than peninsular/western Malaysian cities I think (e.g Melaka/Malacca, Penang)
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  6. As some one from Singapore the concepts of 'hometown' & domestic travel were alien to me, since for the former all the country's residents are from the same 'hometown' - Singapore, and for the latter, local travel (within a city) = domestic travel (within a country). There's an interesting video about how the former could have limited the passion/support for our local football league's clubs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPLd8hPg6zo
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