All countries are shaped by demography. Few, however, are as aware in which demography shapes their destiny as Singapore has been at every phase of its independent existence. Initially, Singapore's leaders focused on reducing fertility as a key element in its development strategy. A comprehensive population control programme was introduced and effectively administered, as described in the second edition of the authoritative book on Population Policies and Programmes in Singapore, by Saw Swee-Hock. Indeed, so effective was the population control effort that within a few decades, Singapore switched to being concerned about low fertility and began to introduce some of the world's strongest pronatalist policies.

Few, if any, other countries have moved as rapidly from efforts to limit fertility to pronatalism. That Singapore did so is testimony not only to the success of its early efforts, but also to the success of economic development itself. For family size and fertility behaviour change not only in response to policy but also to economic conditions. And fertility behaviour becomes a part of the broader culture and social structures. This is one of the reasons Singapore has found it harder to increase fertility in recent years than it did to reduce it earlier. Singapore achieved very positive increase in gender equality that affected everything from marriage patterns to women's work. It developed a culture of conscious choice about fertility and of high investments seeking high achievements from small numbers of offspring.

All this is especially interesting because Singapore was among the global pioneers in integrating family planning into the pursuit of economic growth. It became a model for the later, larger-scale and more draconian policies of the People's Republic of China.

In this book, Professor Saw reproduces a 1986 speech from Goh Chok Tong that uses the metaphor of a “long march” drawn from modern Chinese history. Singapore has seen two long marches. The first began with a struggle for survival and became a struggle for prosperity as an independent nation. The second was to determine what kind of “mature” country Singapore wanted to be, shifting gears from managing the challenges of pure necessity to making choices based on values.