Abstract
With an especially favourable upturn in international investment in 1978, Singapore’s policy-makers acted with determination in 1979 to resolve the contradiction between labour-intensive and capitalintensive production and address the rapid intake of foreign labour. In what amounts to the most imaginative and aggressive strategy by any developing country to exploit the structure of the NIDL, the PAP government embarked on the so-called ‘Second Industrial Revolution’. The purpose of the strategy was to accelerate Singapore’s transition to a more sophisticated technological base, thereby taking it out of competition with lower wage countries and lessening its reliance on labour expansion for economic growth. Likening the NIDL to an international football league, Singapore’s leaders stressed the need to move out of the ‘overcrowded, overcompetitive third league’ and ‘up into the second league’.1