Singapore

Singapore ( (listen)), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory is composed of one main island and 58 smaller islets, the combined area of which has increased by almost 25% since the country's independence as a result of extensive land reclamation projects. Singapore is positioned about one degree (137 kilometres or 85 miles) north of the equator, and is situated off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula and the southernmost tip of the mainland Asian continent. The island country shares its southern maritime border with Indonesia's Riau Islands and its northern, western, and eastern maritime borders with the Johor state of Peninsular Malaysia. Singapore is surrounded by the littoral waters of the Johore Strait and the Singapore Strait to its north and south, respectively, and is geographically positioned within the confluence of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, being bounded by the Malacca Strait to its west and the South China Sea to its east.
Although Singapore has a millennia-long history as a constituent part of various Hindu-Buddhist thalassocracies and Islamic sultanates, modern Singapore, then part of the erstwhile Johor Sultanate, was founded in 1819 when Stamford Raffles, a British colonial officer, established a trading post of the East India Company on the island. In 1826, the island and its satellite islets were fully ceded by the Johor Sultanate, and Singapore was incorporated into the Straits Settlements, a group of East India Company territories in the Malay peninsula. From 1830 to 1858, the Straits Settlements were administered from Calcutta as a Malayan subdivision of the East India Company's Bengal Presidency; following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Presidency and its constituent Settlements were reorganised into the British Raj. In 1867, Britain's colonial holdings in the Malay archipelago were separated from British India, and the administration of the Straits Settlements was transferred from Calcutta to London, bringing the Straits Settlements under the direct control of the British Crown as a crown colony.From 1867 to the 1940s, Singapore grew into a successful entrepôt that attracted settlers and sojourners from the region and beyond. During the Second World War, Imperial Japan successfully invaded Singapore, resulting in an interregnum of British rule corresponding with a brief Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945. Following Japan's surrender in 1945, the Straits Settlements were dissolved, with Singapore being returned to British control as a standalone crown colony in 1946. Following a protracted period of agitation against British colonial rule, Singapore gained internal self-governance from the British Empire in 1959. In 1963, Singapore, the Federation of Malaya, and the British Bornean crown colonies of Sarawak and North Borneo (Sabah) federated to form the fully emancipated Malaysian Federation, but after two tumultuous years as a constituent state of Malaysia and following intractable differences, Singapore seceded in 1965 to become a fully sovereign nation. After early years of turbulence, the newly sovereign nation, viewed as a nonviable state by many due to its size, absence of natural resources, and lack of a hinterland, defied odds by rapidly developing and industrialising under the leadership of the founding People's Action Party to become a high-income economy and developed country within a single generation.
The city-state is home to 5.6 million residents, 39% of whom are foreign nationals, including permanent residents. There are four official languages of Singapore: English, Malay, Chinese, and Tamil; Malay, as the language of Singapore's indigenous people, is accorded special status in the country's constitution as the national and ceremonial language, while English is the lingua franca, being spoken as a common tongue by the vast majority of Singaporeans. As a legacy of colonial rule, Singapore's citizen population is racially, culturally, and religiously diverse, with one indigenous ethnic group, the Malays, and two settler-descended ethnic groups, the Chinese and Indians, forming the historical and contemporary core of the country's citizen populace. As a reflection of this diversity, multiracialism has been enshrined as a foundational principle of the state, and has shaped the country's politics and national policies, particularly in education and housing.
Singapore is a unitary parliamentary republic with a Westminster system of unicameral parliamentary government. The Economist Intelligence Unit rated Singapore a "flawed democracy" in 2019. As one of the five founding members of ASEAN, Singapore is also the headquarters of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Secretariat and Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) Secretariat, as well as many international conferences and events. Singapore is also a member of the United Nations, World Trade Organization, East Asia Summit, Non-Aligned Movement and the Commonwealth of Nations.Singapore is a highly developed country and is ranked 9th on the UN Human Development Index, the highest in Asia for a sovereign state, with the 7th highest GDP per capita in the world. Singapore is placed highly in key social indicators: education, healthcare, quality of life, personal safety and housing, with a home-ownership rate of 90%. Singaporeans enjoy one of the world's longest life expectancies and one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world. Singapore is additionally classified as an Alpha+ global city, and is the only country in Asia with an AAA sovereign rating from all major rating agencies. It was ranked the most expensive city to live in since 2013 and has been identified as a tax haven. Singapore is a popular tourist destination, with well-known landmarks such as the Marina Bay Sands, Gardens by the Bay, Jewel—Changi Airport, the Orchard Road shopping belt, the resort island of Sentosa and the Singapore Botanic Gardens, the only tropical garden in the world to be honoured as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.