Singapore's patriarch, Lee Kuan Yew, arouses contrasting emotions. He is the revered genius who led Singapore to its position as one of the world's wealthiest, safest, cleanest and most efficient countries. But he also comes across as an increasingly outmoded type of paternalistic autocrat.
Mr Lee has never felt constrained from making gratuitous and patronising comments on Hong Kong. He is deft with sarcasm, delivering faint praise or veiled warnings in the most polite manner.
Yet it often seems as if, beneath the surface, he is actually disturbed by the advantages that Hong Kong possesses over Singapore, as a result of our closeness to the mainland and our more free-wheeling image. Thus, he gropes for arguments to redress the balance and perhaps to frighten us.
His latest remarks, as reported in the Sunday Morning Post, seem to imply that we in Hong Kong should both envy Singaporeans for being coddled in a society of only 4 million people, and at the same time worry a lot about our future in a nation of 1.3 billion.
It may be hard to disagree with him in a political sense, given concerns in Hong Kong about influence from Beijing, although Mr Lee, with his record, is presumably not much opposed to authoritarian government in principle. But, in a wider sense, if being small and separate is so nice, why has Singapore put so much energy into the collectivism of free-trade agreements within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and with China and others?
The answer is obvious: the benefits of being part of a larger economic area are plain to see; Hong Kong is part of China; Singapore craves parallel advantage.
And why has Singapore, over the years, progressively liberalised its financial markets, in line with international trends but against the grain of its own instincts? Why has it even made concessions on chewing gum and become more friendly to backpackers? Why has Mr Lee's son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, just announced a more liberal stance on freedom of speech? And why is he toying with the idea of casinos?