I thought Singapore was more like Hong Kong: the real money in a in finance and business, engineering (including programmers) are considered less important and so make a lot less money (they can make more by working in mainland china).

Mainland China definitely seems to value engineers than other Asian countries. They pay better even than Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan in many technical fields, which is why I had so many work mates from those countries when I was working at Microsoft in Beijing.