The Intricacies of the Middle-Income Trap: The Comparative Analysis Between China and Singapore

When we talk about the twentieth and the early twenty-first centuries, there were a lot of issues which had relations to the like of war, terrorist attacks and political upheavals, although it may be too early to judge whether the chosen countries meet the given criteria; one salient point of history will be recorded. With 80 % of the world’s population moving out of poverty to a middle-class social structure, the Chinese ethnic will be as ever a key player in this transition. Since 2008 global financial crisis, the mutual trade relationship between the member of ASEAN and China have been enhancing and strengthening through various ways. Especially, sino-diaspora is one of great strengths for Chinese development process. Rivalry in trade between China and its regional neighbours in ASEAN has become a major preoccupation for many regional policymakers. Regarding Chinese development model, since Xi’s ‘New Vision’, the Singaporean model is an objective which Chinese government and technocrats are going to pursuit for escaping ‘middle-income trap’. Two variants of development models are used, Singaporean model and new frame of Chinese model, which are highly accepted and used in sub-Saharan African countries. The main outcome of this easy will be the similarity and difference between two models and the role of government would be examined.