Singapore had no resources other than the brains of its people; they were the underclass who were booted out of Malaysia Han Chinese are not Malays. From Appen

Singapore had no resources other than the brains of its people; they were the underclass who were booted out of Malaysia Han Chinese are not Malays. From Appendix 1 of "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" by Lynn & Vanhanen (p218): Singapore In 1974, data for a representative sample of 147 ethnic Chinese and 190 ethnic Malay 13-year-olds for the Standard Progressive Matrices were collected (Lynn, 1976). In relation to the British 1979 standardization sample, the Chinese obtained a mean IQ of 106 and the Malays a mean IQ of 90.5. ... The population of Singapore is 76 percent Chinese, 14 percent Malay, and 7 percent Indian