In Singapore, reading now needs a reward

Insight: Between bedtime doomscrolling and the rise of addictive 90-second microdramas, there has never been more competition for our attention, but Singapore is trying an unusual tactic to win some of it back. The National Library Board wants Singaporeans to read for at least 15 minutes a day, using gamification tactics such as virtual coins and daily streaks to keep pages turning. If it sounds like Singapore is taking a leaf out of the attention economy playbook to fight it, it certainly has. The country’s experiment comes amid broader concerns of an emerging gap between basic literacy and deeper reading proficiency across the region, even as literacy rates remain effectively high: in fact, multiple countries in the region exceed 95%, far outpacing the global average of 87%.

Impact: What does it mean when even one of the world’s most highly educated societies is finding that keeping its people reading - and ensuring that they actually understand what they read - is proving difficult? In an economy that will only become ever more intermediated by AI, summaries are instantaneous and synthetic content is harder to distinguish from fact - so the threat of cognitive displacement feels realer than ever. In fact, an NLB and KPMG poll found that less than half of respondents said they would check the original source of a statistic before forming an opinion, even if they are reading an AI-generated summary from a search engine. If Southeast Asia’s next phase of growth depends on a workforce moving up the value chain to build up more knowledge-intensive economies, the idea of literacy itself may need to be redefined.

Indonesia has cut the minimum share price on its stock exchange from Rp50 to Rp1, meaning a stock can now trade for roughly 0.006 US cents. The market already has 291 stocks worth less than one US cent, second only to the US; when the new floor disappeared, former tech darling GoTo promptly fell 14% to Rp43. The reform is meant to improve price discovery. For some stocks, investors are about to discover just how low “low” can go.

Insight: Japan's government is doubling down on one of its most celebrated scientific achievements. The science ministry has budgeted JPY5.6 billion (USD35 million) to develop what it is calling "next-generation" induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, with a production line to be established at Kyoto University — the very place where Professor Shinya Yamanaka first created iPS cells 20 years ago. By introducing specific genes into ordinary adult skin cells, his team coaxed them back into an embryonic-like state from which they can grow into virtually any tissue. This was the conceptual breakthrough that sets iPS cells apart from conventional stem cells, which are either extracted from embryos (raising profound ethical and legal difficulties, and triggering immune rejection in recipients), or harvested from adult tissue in far more limited quantities and with far narrower developmental potential. His work earned him the Nobel Prize in 2012, while Japan became the first country in the world to conditionally approve two iPS-derived therapies – one for Parkinson's disease and one for heart failure.

Impact: The promise of the next generation of iPS cells is substantially greater. But so are the remaining obstacles. Improved cell differentiation rates should make it possible to (re)grow complex organs and potentially cure victims of strokes, kidney failure and emphysema. And theoretically, because the therapy uses the patient’s own cells, there should be no issues with the immune rejections that bedevil conventional transplant medicine. In practice, though, mutations do accumulate, raising risks of both organ rejection and cancer. Then there is the fact that stem cell therapy currently costs many millions of yen per patient. And the fact that the United States and China are closing the gap in research spending. Whether the government’s new funding package can maintain Japan’s first-mover advantage in iPS cells will be a test of its new industrial policy given that ‘advanced medicine’ is one of its 17 strategic sectors.

Insight: Japanese brands in China are navigating an environment where consumer appetite and diplomatic chill can pull in opposite directions in the same week. Kokuyo, Japan's stationery giant, drew more than 35,000 visitors to events across four Chinese cities in late August, a 50% increase on the previous year, with students snapping up locally adapted Campus notebooks ahead of the new school term. Meanwhile, however, the northern city of Dalian quietly scrapped its annual Japanese goods expo, a state-backed showcase held every year since 2008. Organizers gave no public explanation, but the context is clear. Relations have been strained since Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told Japan's parliament in November 2025 that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could constitute a "survival-threatening situation" for Japan that would trigger military intervention.   

Impact: The Dalian cancellation matters beyond its immediate commercial significance. Dalian is considered one of China's most Japan-friendly cities, home to a significant Japanese business community, and the expo historically drew senior officials from both governments. The pattern is not new, having also been cancelled in 2012 during the Senkaku Islands dispute and skipped in 2023 following the Fukushima wastewater release. Kokuyo's success, though, shows that Chinese consumer demand for Japanese products remains real. Whether brands can continue to benefit from this, however, depends less on product quality or localisation strategy than on decisions made in Tokyo and Beijing. 

Singapore has spent decades trying to engineer almost everything efficiently. Now it is taking another run at romance. A new government-built dating platform, FirstDate, is being piloted among public servants aged 21 to 35, using a Nobel Prize-winning matching algorithm to serve users just one potential partner at a time. There is even a tool for suggesting date activities and, because this is Singapore, a post-date survey. The experiment would be charmingly bureaucratic were the stakes not so high: Singapore’s fertility rate fell to a record 0.87 last year, and the country is set to become a “super-aged” society. The government has tried matchmaking before, but FirstDate feels distinctly of this era: less swipe until something sticks, more perhaps the state can optimize your love life. Whether an algorithm can solve what cash incentives, matchmaking agencies and decades of pro-family policy have not remains to be seen. But if anyone was going to turn dating into a public sector productivity problem, it was probably Singapore.

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