News update Singapore PAP a 'successful party' George Yeo: Challenge for Asian govts to adapt to growing urban society

By Rachel Chang

The new realities of an urbanised state - 'small families, the anonymity of city environments, everybody on mobile phones and the Internet, growing social mobility' - could be the CCP's Achilles' heel, said Mr Yeo. -- PHOTO: LIANHE ZAOBAO

URBANISATION is the biggest challenge the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) faces today because it pulls apart the social glue that has held societies together, said Foreign Minister George Yeo on Tuesday.
This is partly why China's leaders are interested in Singapore's political system, as the People's Action Party is the one dominant political party in Asia that has not fallen from power due to the forces of urbanisation.

In China, Confucianism has bound the sprawling country since ancient times, but it requires 'a certain accepted set of hierarchical social relationships which are all dissolving now in the modern world'.
The new realities of an urbanised state - 'small families, the anonymity of city environments, everybody on mobile phones and the Internet, growing social mobility' - could be the CCP's Achilles' heel, said Mr Yeo in his closing address at the FutureChina Global Forum.

Calling the PAP 'probably the most successful urban political party in Asia', he said urbanisation was the top issue for political parties across the continent.
The challenge is how Asian political parties can reinvent themselves in the face of a shrinking rural power base.