The case illustrates how this tiny city-state has become a role model for China, Vietnam and other one-party governments in Asia.

But diplomats and Asian scholars wonder whether the lessons of a tiny city-state like Singapore are really applicable to much larger neighbors.

But Singapore is a tiny city-state of about four million people that has laws against spitting out gum in public and canes people for smoking pot.

And if so, where might he hope to find them, in any of possible dozens of millions of tiny city-states strewn across Dyson's walls?

They should now ask themselves whether they like the way the tiny city-state is dealing with another American citizen, Christopher Lingle.

Her remark was fairly typical of many who have not visited the tiny tropical city-state in the past five years or so.

The tiny city-state of Singapore is scrubbed clean.

Indeed, the governing party has been hugely successful in guiding this tiny city-state to economic growth and social and political stability.

The plot was apparently foiled when 13 terror suspects were arrested in Singapore, a tiny, tightly policed city-state, late last year.

Some feminists in this tiny, prosperous city-state do not.