“Nothing is more Chinese about Singapore than its punishments. Caning offenders and minor criminals is a legacy of the British empire as much as the Chinese tradition of corporal punishment. But the use of public confession is an old Confucian practice. It shows that the critic has submitted to orthodoxy. It has to be imposed to enforce obedience or, as Lee [Kuan Yew] would have it, ‘social cohesion.'”

–Buruma, Bad Elements