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<!-- headline one : start --><TR>Not so egalitarian
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'Look at China. The bright come from anywhere. You can be the son of a farmer, worker. If you pass the Imperial Examinations... you're a xiu cai (county scholar) or a jun shi (military strategist) or a zhuang yuan (top imperial scholar). If you come top of the examination, chances are the emperor will want you to marry his daughter.
'And when these scholars retire, they go to a place with a milder climate along the Yangtze. There's one town called Suzhou which had the Zhuang Yuan Jie (Imperial Scholars' Street). They had multiple wives, so multiple children. That street produced many zhuang yuan and that's why it's called Zhuang Yuan Jie.
'And that's why we chose Suzhou. It succeeded. We were dealing with extremely smart and bright people, brighter than the people we sent. Our people had the knowledge, they didn't, but they had a fine IQ.'
MM Lee, giving an example from China of how societies may eventually become less egalitarian as new generations benefit from the preceding ones. The Singapore-Suzhou Industrial Park was a collaboration with the Suzhou authorities.
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<!-- headline one : start --><TR>Not so egalitarian
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><!-- show image if available --></TBODY></TABLE>
<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->
'Look at China. The bright come from anywhere. You can be the son of a farmer, worker. If you pass the Imperial Examinations... you're a xiu cai (county scholar) or a jun shi (military strategist) or a zhuang yuan (top imperial scholar). If you come top of the examination, chances are the emperor will want you to marry his daughter.
'And when these scholars retire, they go to a place with a milder climate along the Yangtze. There's one town called Suzhou which had the Zhuang Yuan Jie (Imperial Scholars' Street). They had multiple wives, so multiple children. That street produced many zhuang yuan and that's why it's called Zhuang Yuan Jie.
'And that's why we chose Suzhou. It succeeded. We were dealing with extremely smart and bright people, brighter than the people we sent. Our people had the knowledge, they didn't, but they had a fine IQ.'
MM Lee, giving an example from China of how societies may eventually become less egalitarian as new generations benefit from the preceding ones. The Singapore-Suzhou Industrial Park was a collaboration with the Suzhou authorities.