This article takes Singapore, an emerging education hub, as a focal point from which to investigate its attempts to become a global city and knowledge-based economy. It outlines how discourses of the knowledge economy are used to rationalise particular policy interventions and the transnational education forms arising from them. It speculates on the types of traits and attributes expected of citizens in a knowledge economy. The article offers a more nuanced analysis of state-market relations under conditions of globalisation and highlights the need for a historical and geographical sensibility in understanding postcolonial development.