This paper argues that the welcoming by western humanists of pedagogies of critical and creative thinking in Asian universities--as if such thinking will breed an eastern counter-voice to western neo-liberalism--is misguided. The paper will question the rise of creative and critical thinking in higher education in Asia by analysing the intersections of the neo-liberal economy, new media technologies, and such new "thinking" in the post-colonial context of Singapore and its national university. The paper will conclude that in the new hegemonic configuration under technological acceleration, higher education becomes a nationalist "and" globalist project in which privileged Singaporean students constitute the new "upwardly mobile" by branding themselves as "creative Asians".