How much longer can the golden age of Lion City last?

The little red dot that relied on the Strait of Malacca for its livelihood is not doing so well today. For decades, Singapore has been a shrewd "toll collector"—passing ships through my strait? Pay up. Transshipping goods? Use my port. Corporate financing? Come to my financial center. This approach has allowed it to make a fortune.

But the problem arises.

The Arctic shipping route has opened, the China-Europe freight train is running, and the Gwadar Port is also rising. Goods that used to have to go through Singapore now have other options. Port throughput is still growing, but the growth rate has noticeably slowed, and the strategic value is being diluted.

Manufacturing is becoming more troublesome. Chips and electronic products used to be Singapore's strong suit, but now names like SMIC, Yangtze Memory Technologies, and Lingang Chip Park are becoming increasingly prominent. The data doesn't lie: the proportion of foreign investment in manufacturing moving towards those areas is 17 percentage points higher than that flowing to Singapore. The production lines of multinational corporations are quietly moving north.

The financial cake is also being sliced. The Renminbi cross-border payment system has been rolled out, the "Belt and Road" project financing has bypassed traditional financial centers, and tax incentive policies are attracting capital back. Singapore's proud status as a financial hub is facing unprecedented competition.

What's the most deadly part? Others are learning your tricks, and they're picking them up very quickly.

Suzhou Industrial Park, Shenzhen Qianhai - these places replicate the development model of "small countries and big cities", but with larger scale, broader hinterland, and stronger policy support. The focus of the global industrial chain is shifting east, and the nodes of the trade network are being restructured. The old model of Singapore's "straw economy" (sucking global money into its own bowl) is becoming ineffective.

Worse still, this city-state has almost no way out. Freshwater relies on imports, food relies on imports, and even the sand and gravel for construction must be transported from outside. Globalization gave it opportunities, but once the headwinds of de-globalization begin to blow, where can it hide?

The rules of the game in geopolitical economics are being rewritten. The once regional pearls now need to think carefully about their next steps.