Singapore, Disrupted: Puncturing Myths, Defining the Future

3rd Prize of the 2018 Popular Bookstores' Readers Choice Awards, Adult Book Category

In this volume of fresh essays and published articles, Chua Mui Hoong, political columnist and Opinion editor of The Straits Times takes on issues such as joblessness and safety nets, meritocracy and elitism, marketplace upheavals and leadership transitions, and persuades us that in this new age of disruption, what Singapore needs is a new order.

Singapore is in a state of disruption. Change is here – disorienting, disturbing, sometimes distressing change. Disruptive technologies are displacing jobs and dislodging workers. Society is showing signs of splintering. The gap between the “best” and the rest is growing. In establishment circles, members are breaking ranks. People are searching, probing, asking: what’s happening?

Change is also unequal. While shaking up many quarters at an alarming rate, it is not happening fast enough in the areas that truly matter, observes Chua Mui Hoong.

As a journalist who writes from both the head and the heart – and often from a heartlander’s perspective – she takes on issues such as joblessness and safety nets, meritocracy and elitism, marketplace upheavals and leadership transitions, and persuades us that in this new age of disruption, what Singapore needs is a new order. But how can Singapore reorder itself? What can it do better? How must it move, and how can all the motion be translated into real change and advancement?

Singapore is at a crossroads. How it responds to this state of disruption will determine its place in the disrupted world.