A Letter From Singapore

Within one month last spring, several events took place that may have shattered Singapore’s image as a democratic outpost in Asia. First, Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew had four journalists on a Chinese-language newspaper jailed for printing a picture of Chairman Mao playing ping-pong. Then he accused an English-language daily of accepting money from Communist agents in Hong Kong, upon which the paper folded. Shortly afterwards, he harassed a somewhat critical English language paper out of existence. And finally, he announced the expulsion from Singapore of New York Times stringer Anthony Polsky.

This news broke a long spate of reports from the island republic indicating successes at every turn. Lee Kuan Yew and his P...