Lee Kuan Yew on China

The clever old autocrat has a lot to say about China's current and future place in the world and its implications for its neighbors, and nearly everything he has to say is very insightful. Some excerpts:

SPIEGEL: But has China's success not become dangerous for Singapore?

Mr. Lee: We have watched this transformation and the speed at which it is happening. As many of my people tell me, it's scary. They learn so fast. Our people set up businesses in Shanghai or Suzhou and they employ Chinese at lower wages than Singapore Chinese. After three years, they say: "Look, I can do that work, I want the same pay." So it is a very serious challenge for us to move aside and not collide with them. We have to move to areas where they cannot move.

SPIEGEL: Such as?

Mr. Lee: Such as where the rule of law, intellectual property and security of production systems are required, because for them to establish that, it will take 20 to 30 years. We are concentrating on bio medicine, pharmaceuticals and all products requiring protection of intellectual property rights. No pharmaceutical company is going to go have its precious patents disclosed. So that is why they are here in Singapore and not in China.

This is just the kind of thing I was talking about when I said China's current corrupt and unaccountable leadership will be a tremendous obstacle to its achieving Western levels of prosperity. Then there's the following:

SPIEGEL: During your career, you have kept your distance from Western style democracy. Are you still convinced that an authoritarian system is the future for Asia?

Mr. Lee: Why should I be against democracy? The British came here, never gave me democracy, except when they were about to leave. But I cannot run my system based on their rules. I have to amend it to fit my people's position. In multiracial societies, you don't vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion. Supposing I'd run their system here, Malays would vote for Muslims, Indians would vote for Indians, Chinese would vote for Chinese. I would have a constant clash in my Parliament which cannot be resolved because the Chinese majority would always overrule them. So I found a formula that changes that...

I don't agree with Mr. Lee's "formula", but in his favor I will say that he at least acknowledges the sheer amount of damage ethnic rivalry can do to good government, rather than pretending as so many Western observers do that the distinctions people in non-Western countries see between each other are transient, minor, of recent origin and easily brushed aside by lecturing the deluded children on the evils of a "tribalism" supposedly taught to them by their colonial masters (as if all those brown people were one undifferentiated mass before the white man came along!). Singapore would probably still be a backwater today had it remained yoked with a Malaysia in which ethnic Malays constantly feared for challenges to their dominance by ethnic Chinese.

All said, it's a rare pleasure to read a Spiegel interview in which the subject isn't some heads-in-the-clouds type with absurd economic ideas and all sorts of illusions about how nations pursue their interests. The Spiegel interviewers tried the old America-baiting tactics which work so well with so many dimwitted or politically-frustrated subjects, but Lee, who's never been one to entertain delusions about imaginary alternatives to capitalism or the "evil" nature of Imperialist Amerikkka, refused to fall for the bait every single time.

Comments

[Factory]

"he at least acknowledges the sheer amount of damage ethnic rivalry can do to good government"
Hmm ethnic rivalry is usually stoked by bad government, indeed I don't think it would be too far out to say that most serious ethnic rivalry is supported by bad governments.
Singapore's method of succession means that it could be one dead dictator away from a bad government.

[Abiola Lapite]

"Hmm ethnic rivalry is usually stoked by bad government"

Ethnic rivalry both stokes *and* is stoked by bad government, as any glance at a history of far too many Third World countries will tell you. It is wishful thinking to believe that such rivalries wouldn't exist without governments to stir them up.

"Singapore's method of succession means that it could be one dead dictator away from a bad government."

On that much we can agree, and that is why I don't agree with Lee Kuan Yew's "formula."

[ktchong]

If you did not agree with Lee's "formula", what solution would you propose? The America-style or Malaysia-style "affirmative action", both which have proven to be policy failures that have done more harm than good?