Lee says Asia will become world's largest economic region in 50 yrs
Asian Political News, Dec 12, 2005
SINGAPORE, Dec. 9 Kyodo
Singapore's elder statesman Lee Kuan Yew has projected that Asia will become the world's largest economic region in 50 years, powered by China and India, and is well-disposed to achieving a giant trading bloc.
''China, India and Southeast Asia will grow faster than NAFTA or the EU, in the next 50 years,'' Lee, currently minister mentor in the country's Cabinet, said in a recent interview in his office ahead of the first East Asia Summit that will be held in Kuala Lumpur next Wednesday.
The gap between Asia versus Europe and America will close, he said in the interview with Kyodo News. ''By 2050, the center of gravity will be in Asia, maybe sooner. It will be the biggest single economic region in the world.''
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The 82-year-old Lee, who was prime minister from 1959 until 1990 and is regarded as Singapore's founding father, said the region has huge potential to achieve a largely economic-based East Asian community in future.
Such an economic bloc would be so compelling that Japan and China should be willing to put aside their deep-seated antagonism over the interpretation of Japan's military aggression in China before and during World War II and jump onto the bandwagon.
''In the end it does not depend upon whether China and Japan agree or do not agree, it depends upon the economic advantage of an East Asian trading community. Once it is formed, does China want to stay out? Does Japan want to be left out?''
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''I believe this process is driven not by the political considerations alone, but more by economic imperatives. It's driven by globalization that results from technological advances,'' Lee said. ''Therefore, it makes sense for the ASEAN region to come together.''
The creation of an East Asian Community is expected to be discussed at the East Asia Summit involving leaders from 16 countries, namely the 10 ASEAN member nations, Japan, China, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand. It is also on the agenda of a summit meeting of leaders of ASEAN and Northeast Asian countries, called the ''ASEAN-plus-three summit.''
Lee said the spate of free trade agreements currently being negotiated between ASEAN and countries such as China, Japan, South Korea and India are already sowing the seeds of a single trading bloc in the region.
''So I see a growing network of FTAs -- bilateral, multilateral. Eventually they will link up East and South Asia through their ties with Southeast Asia,'' Lee said.
Leaders of ASEAN and the three Northeast Asian countries had already agreed at the ''ASEAN-plus-three-summit'' last year to endorse the formation of an expert group to conduct a study on the feasibility of an East Asian Free Trade Area for the region.
Lee emphasized that Asian countries are likely to cooperate economically rather than politically, and so the proposed East Asian community cannot be expected to mirror the European Union.
''I believe the key countries in Asia will come together economically, though not politically.''
''It is not easy to have an East Asia Community like the European Community. It would take many decades because all the countries are at different levels of growth.''
He said that China and India together are expected to account for 40 percent of the world's economy in 40 years, regaining their former economic glory of two centuries ago when they also dominated the world economy because of their large populations.
In particular, China will dwarf Japan economically and emerge as the political leader in Asia by 2030, he said.
''China looks potentially a very big economy. If she continues on this path, by 2030, her economy will be bigger than Japan's,'' Lee said. And ''as a leader in the political/diplomatic field, I think in 20, 30 years, China's weight cannot be denied.''
One example of China's fast-growing influence is its recent diplomatic strategy against the resolution by Japan, India, Brazil and Germany -- the so-called Group of Four nations aspiring to permanent membership on the U.N. Security Council.
However, Lee believes that Japan will continue to retain its technological lead in Asia, which should be positive for the region.
''In technology, in the quality of the products and the innovation of products, Japan is still the leader. If Japan can keep that up, its role is a very important one for the rest of Asia, not just Southeast Asia.''
COPYRIGHT 2005 Kyodo News International, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group
Monday, October 22, 2007
Personal Reflections on Leadership (2000)
Lee Kuan Yew:
"Personal Reflections on Leadership"*
Conversations on Leadership, 2000-2001
"No one picked me out as a leader. It just happened in the process of natural elimination. Or as the communists used to tell us, they emerge through struggle. If you didn't have it, you got melted in the crucible."
-Lee Kuan Yew
Presentation and Discussion
Lee Kuan Yew was elected Prime Minister of Singapore for a staggering eight terms, and has served in the position of Senior Minister since 1990. To a capacity audience at the second Leadership Roundtable, Lee recounted stories and shared his perspectives on leadership. Below is a faithful reporting, in his own words, of Lee Kuan Yew's fascinating and often surprising reminiscences.
On identifying potential leaders
I'm somewhat skeptical about making a leader out of a non-leader. I tried hard to look for successes in the last 30 years. I meet lots of people with effervescence, energy, who speak well, but you put responsibility on them and it isn't done.
I visited a sheep farm near Canberra during a meeting of Commonwealth leaders. The farm had 10,000 sheep and six to eight dogs. The dogs brought all the sheep into the pen in 10 minutes with just whistles and signals. The farmer told me that if you get the right dog, training them only takes two or three months. The question is how to get the right dog. Some litters only produce one to two, some none. I found out that a sheepdog must have strong eyes, so when the dog looks at the sheep, they quail and follow him. I'm not sure humans need stronger eyes, but there may be some measure of truth here. I had to run through hundreds of potential candidates to find a few potential leaders.
On making great leaders
It's a somewhat pessimistic view on making great leaders, but if you identify someone who's got the potential, all lessons can be taught. The lessons are standard lessons-what mistakes to avoid. They'll become better leaders in a shorter time and make fewer mistakes.
I was in New York in the 1970s and Isaac Singer, the Nobel Prize winner in literature, was asked if he taught writing and he said yes. He was asked, can you make a great writer? Can you teach great writing? He said "Yes, if he's got it in him, then I can bring it out faster and I can teach him how to do it better. But he's got to have a big story inside here or here [the head or the heart]. If you ain't got that, then all you've got are words or phrases and a lot of fluff in between, and you get a nasty review, and it ends up in the remainder bookshop."
On his experience leading an anti-colonial struggle
The skills required to be a leader in an anti-colonial struggle are simple: enormous charisma and exuberance, and you've got to command the trust and belief of your followers that you're going to give them the better life. And most of them say, "Look at all those fine big houses and big white farms. Now that we are in charge, you will have those." That's what I did, too. I said "Look at all those big offices and stores. They're all British and we're in charge. You will be running those big stores."
By the time I got in charge-we started in 1950, we got in office in 1959, and so in nine learning years we knew that wasn't true. We did a quiet U-turn. I said, of course, if you get rid of them too quickly, there'll be an empty store. Better go slow and make sure of this, that, and the other. If we hadn't done that and we chased the British out, we would have collapsed. I wouldn't have been re-elected. As it was, we decided this wasn't going to work, so let's figure out how we're going to give them something without ruining the economy. So we figured out a new strategy, a joined militia. That would fix the communists. Then we'd have a bigger resource base-rubber, tin, palm oil-so that we'd have a better economy. So we joined militia. Then I found that we got captured by Malay extremists, Muslim extremists. So we got out of that one and were independent on our own in 1965. By then we had learned enough of what didn't work.
If I appointed a leader and the others didn't agree, they would withhold their cooperation and he wouldn't succeed.
By that time we'd seen India and we'd seen the British, and Indonesia was a mess. So we concluded that you have to create wealth before you distribute it. A large part of the survival of my party and me was our ability to convince our people and our unions and our union leaders that we had to work with management, and produce good products at low prices that will sell worldwide. Then we'd share the profits. Had we failed in that, we would have gone down. We succeeded. Thereafter we just improved upon it election after election, and we produced result after result. And so they decided we had the secret formula, the touch of Midas. They re-elected me leading the party eight times, and my successor twice already. Without that U-turn and without teaching them the facts of life, we would have been finished.
On political leadership
It's a very tough job, especially in political leadership. Being a CEO or the general of an army is different. You don't have to persuade people who can say 'Boo' to you to get them on your side. When campaigning, no one has to listen to you at all. And when the campaign is over, people have to believe that you've got something for them that you can do that will make them cast their vote for you. It requires a totally different set of skills. Those skills can only be developed if you have a natural urge, a natural interest in people, in wanting to do something for them, which they can sense and feel. If you haven't got that and you just want to be a great leader, try some other profession.
On leading a change in the national language
English was the language of an elite minority that the British nurtured. So with the surge of independence movements and nationalism, when we first became self-governing we made Malay our national language.
The Chinese Chamber of Commerce was very hot on the Chinese language. If you remember, China was supposed to be a very powerful nation, getting rapidly industrialized, and Chinese would be a great language. So they insisted that we should make Chinese the national language. I called them up and I called other chambers up and said "Do you want riots? Because if you make Chinese the national language, all of the Malays and the Indians and others will be disadvantaged and that will be the end of us. And moreover, who are we going to trade with-China? What do they have to trade with us, or buy or sell from us?" So I didn't make English the national language [at that time].
I knew it was an emotional subject, so I said, "Let's leave things alone and let events decide what language is our working language." So I introduced English as a second language into the Chinese schools and into the Malay schools, as well as the Tamil schools. And into the English schools we introduced Chinese, Malay, and Tamil for those whose mother tongues are those languages. Then I allowed year by year the graduates from these schools to show the parents who got the best jobs. That settled it after 20 years. But it took 20 years.
On the issue of leadership succession
I found eight to ten possible successors. And in 1988 when I fought my last election at the age of 65, I called them up and said, "Now you choose [among yourselves] your leader and I'll hand over." I didn't want to appoint him because I've seen how things can go wrong. If I appointed a leader and the others didn't agree, they would withhold their cooperation and he wouldn't succeed. So I threw the onus onto them. There was no outstanding person who obviously could be superior to anybody else. So they chose Goh Chok Tong, and I said "Fine." Goh is a very able person, but he lacks communicative skills. He used to speak haltingly in English because his first language was Hokkien, and his English had this Hokkien lilt, which was a disadvantage. Nor did he know Mandarin, which is the language of the educated. But nonetheless I said, "Alright, you'll take over." And he said "No, no. Please stay on for two years while I find my feet and get to know my neighbors." So he took over in 1990, and I advised him. I said, "Brush up your languages and your ability to communicate. " So we found him teachers in English and Malay and he applied himself. And I must say that in the 10 years since then, he has improved his communication skills considerably, and his English is now more fluent. For this he deserves high marks.
Mao Tse-Tung could not have become Deng Xiao-Ping, and vice versa. . . .He had a different temperament. He was a romanticist.
What he had is a certain determination to succeed. And that determination came not from a desire to be a great man, but to do something for Singapore and the people. He came from a very poor family and a hard life. He won a scholarship and took a first in economics at our university. He then went to Williams College, and when he came back the Finance Minister, who knew him well, who was a very good assessor of people, put him in charge of an ailing shipping company called Neptune Orient Lines. It was in the red, and had been so for several years. He turned it around in three years. When dealing with wealthy ship owners in Hong Kong and Tokyo, where gifts are not golf balls but sachets of gold, diamonds, and other things in the golf bags, he kept himself above all that. And when my Finance Minister wanted to retire, I said to him, "No, you will not leave me in the lurch. You find me a successor." He produced Goh Chok Tong, and made him a Finance Minister. Then the others chose him, and he is a success.
On the importance of context
Different situations call for different types of leaders. The same country, China in the 1930s and 1940s, required a Mao Tse-Tung. But China in the 1970s did not require a Mao Tse-Tung. It needed a Deng Xiao-Ping. One was a destroyer of the old system, a visionary. And he kept on wanting to destroy the system that he had created with a cultural revolution. The other was a pragmatist who saw that the communist system wasn't working long before the Soviet Union imploded, and said, "Change." And he had the courage to do that.
Mao Tse-Tung could not have become Deng Xiao-Ping, and vice versa. He couldn't have done it. He had a different temperament. He was a romanticist.
On the three leaders of the 20th century he would recommend teaching to Harvard students
I would teach them Winston Churchill, because I admired him. He changed the course of history when it easily could have been lost if the British hadn't stood up to the Germans and sought some peace, which wouldn't have lasted.His good fortune lay in having Franklin Roosevelt on the other side and in the stupidity of the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor. That saved the world. So I would say Winston Churchill, yes, for one.
Second I would study [French president Charles] de Gaulle. I think he's a cussed difficult man, but I think he's a very great man. He's a Frenchman, and he's a proud one. Without him France today would have lost its self-respect. He gave back to the French a sense of amour-propre and then revived their ideas of grandeur, which nobody else would have been capable of doing. But he was also a realist and he knew he had to come to terms with Germany. It's difficult to be a great man without power, but he was a great man. I loved and savored his audacity. When he went to North Africa and walked up to [Henri] Giraud, who was a French governor there, and he found American guards protecting Giraud, he said "Giraud, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, American guards defending a general of France!" What impudence! But he had that dare. "To hell with the Americans! We are French! We demand it, we run this country! This is Algiers, France!" You need a certain megalomania. It appeared he had it.
It goes without saying I would also study Deng Xiao-Ping. I think he's a very big man. He's very realistic. Without him there would be no China.
Who else? Quite a few. But if you say three, I would pick those three.
Questions and Issues
Is Lee Kuan Yew's suspicion correct that not everyone has the innate potential to become a leader? (Or is he referring specifically to political leadership?) For those who indeed possess leadership potential, what are the lessons they need to be taught, and are these lessons standard ones, as Lee claims? Given Lee's belief that political leaders require a very different set of skills from military and business leaders, do the lessons differ according to type of leadership? And if different situations call for different types of political leaders, as Lee points out, should the lessons taught to potential political leaders be differentiated even further according to the type of political context or circumstance (e.g., anti-colonial struggle vs. established democracy)?
Conclusions
Almost half a century of experience and observation have shaped Lee Kuan Yew's perspectives on political leadership. He has concluded that few have the potential to become the leaders of a country, but those who do can acquire all the knowledge and skills they need through direct experience and training. Political leadership in his experience is enormously challenging and requires a very different set of skills from military or business leadership. He has further observed that different political circumstances require different types of leaders. Whatever the circumstance, Lee believes that a political leader must possess a natural interest in creating a better life for the citizens of his or her nation. Without this interest, and with only a desire to become a great leader, an individual is unlikely to succeed in commanding the trust and belief of the citizenry necessary to grasp and retain the elusive reins of national power.
* Lee Kuan Yew's visit was made possible through the generosity of Ambassador Richard Fisher and Nancy Collins Fisher and the Collins Family International Fellowship.
Lee Kuan Yew led Singapore's independence movement and is considered the founding father of modern Singapore. He was the founder and Secretary General of the People's Action Party, entering politics as a Legislative Assemblyman in 1955. He became his country's first Prime Minister when he led his party to victory in the Legislative Assembly elections of 1959. He continued in this position through seven successful general elections until his resignation in 1990. His predecessor promptly appointed him as Senior Minister, a post he still holds. He is the author of The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (New York:Prentice Hall, 1999) and From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000 (New York: HarperCollins, 2000).
"Personal Reflections on Leadership"*
Conversations on Leadership, 2000-2001
"No one picked me out as a leader. It just happened in the process of natural elimination. Or as the communists used to tell us, they emerge through struggle. If you didn't have it, you got melted in the crucible."
-Lee Kuan Yew
Presentation and Discussion
Lee Kuan Yew was elected Prime Minister of Singapore for a staggering eight terms, and has served in the position of Senior Minister since 1990. To a capacity audience at the second Leadership Roundtable, Lee recounted stories and shared his perspectives on leadership. Below is a faithful reporting, in his own words, of Lee Kuan Yew's fascinating and often surprising reminiscences.
On identifying potential leaders
I'm somewhat skeptical about making a leader out of a non-leader. I tried hard to look for successes in the last 30 years. I meet lots of people with effervescence, energy, who speak well, but you put responsibility on them and it isn't done.
I visited a sheep farm near Canberra during a meeting of Commonwealth leaders. The farm had 10,000 sheep and six to eight dogs. The dogs brought all the sheep into the pen in 10 minutes with just whistles and signals. The farmer told me that if you get the right dog, training them only takes two or three months. The question is how to get the right dog. Some litters only produce one to two, some none. I found out that a sheepdog must have strong eyes, so when the dog looks at the sheep, they quail and follow him. I'm not sure humans need stronger eyes, but there may be some measure of truth here. I had to run through hundreds of potential candidates to find a few potential leaders.
On making great leaders
It's a somewhat pessimistic view on making great leaders, but if you identify someone who's got the potential, all lessons can be taught. The lessons are standard lessons-what mistakes to avoid. They'll become better leaders in a shorter time and make fewer mistakes.
I was in New York in the 1970s and Isaac Singer, the Nobel Prize winner in literature, was asked if he taught writing and he said yes. He was asked, can you make a great writer? Can you teach great writing? He said "Yes, if he's got it in him, then I can bring it out faster and I can teach him how to do it better. But he's got to have a big story inside here or here [the head or the heart]. If you ain't got that, then all you've got are words or phrases and a lot of fluff in between, and you get a nasty review, and it ends up in the remainder bookshop."
On his experience leading an anti-colonial struggle
The skills required to be a leader in an anti-colonial struggle are simple: enormous charisma and exuberance, and you've got to command the trust and belief of your followers that you're going to give them the better life. And most of them say, "Look at all those fine big houses and big white farms. Now that we are in charge, you will have those." That's what I did, too. I said "Look at all those big offices and stores. They're all British and we're in charge. You will be running those big stores."
By the time I got in charge-we started in 1950, we got in office in 1959, and so in nine learning years we knew that wasn't true. We did a quiet U-turn. I said, of course, if you get rid of them too quickly, there'll be an empty store. Better go slow and make sure of this, that, and the other. If we hadn't done that and we chased the British out, we would have collapsed. I wouldn't have been re-elected. As it was, we decided this wasn't going to work, so let's figure out how we're going to give them something without ruining the economy. So we figured out a new strategy, a joined militia. That would fix the communists. Then we'd have a bigger resource base-rubber, tin, palm oil-so that we'd have a better economy. So we joined militia. Then I found that we got captured by Malay extremists, Muslim extremists. So we got out of that one and were independent on our own in 1965. By then we had learned enough of what didn't work.
If I appointed a leader and the others didn't agree, they would withhold their cooperation and he wouldn't succeed.
By that time we'd seen India and we'd seen the British, and Indonesia was a mess. So we concluded that you have to create wealth before you distribute it. A large part of the survival of my party and me was our ability to convince our people and our unions and our union leaders that we had to work with management, and produce good products at low prices that will sell worldwide. Then we'd share the profits. Had we failed in that, we would have gone down. We succeeded. Thereafter we just improved upon it election after election, and we produced result after result. And so they decided we had the secret formula, the touch of Midas. They re-elected me leading the party eight times, and my successor twice already. Without that U-turn and without teaching them the facts of life, we would have been finished.
On political leadership
It's a very tough job, especially in political leadership. Being a CEO or the general of an army is different. You don't have to persuade people who can say 'Boo' to you to get them on your side. When campaigning, no one has to listen to you at all. And when the campaign is over, people have to believe that you've got something for them that you can do that will make them cast their vote for you. It requires a totally different set of skills. Those skills can only be developed if you have a natural urge, a natural interest in people, in wanting to do something for them, which they can sense and feel. If you haven't got that and you just want to be a great leader, try some other profession.
On leading a change in the national language
English was the language of an elite minority that the British nurtured. So with the surge of independence movements and nationalism, when we first became self-governing we made Malay our national language.
The Chinese Chamber of Commerce was very hot on the Chinese language. If you remember, China was supposed to be a very powerful nation, getting rapidly industrialized, and Chinese would be a great language. So they insisted that we should make Chinese the national language. I called them up and I called other chambers up and said "Do you want riots? Because if you make Chinese the national language, all of the Malays and the Indians and others will be disadvantaged and that will be the end of us. And moreover, who are we going to trade with-China? What do they have to trade with us, or buy or sell from us?" So I didn't make English the national language [at that time].
I knew it was an emotional subject, so I said, "Let's leave things alone and let events decide what language is our working language." So I introduced English as a second language into the Chinese schools and into the Malay schools, as well as the Tamil schools. And into the English schools we introduced Chinese, Malay, and Tamil for those whose mother tongues are those languages. Then I allowed year by year the graduates from these schools to show the parents who got the best jobs. That settled it after 20 years. But it took 20 years.
On the issue of leadership succession
I found eight to ten possible successors. And in 1988 when I fought my last election at the age of 65, I called them up and said, "Now you choose [among yourselves] your leader and I'll hand over." I didn't want to appoint him because I've seen how things can go wrong. If I appointed a leader and the others didn't agree, they would withhold their cooperation and he wouldn't succeed. So I threw the onus onto them. There was no outstanding person who obviously could be superior to anybody else. So they chose Goh Chok Tong, and I said "Fine." Goh is a very able person, but he lacks communicative skills. He used to speak haltingly in English because his first language was Hokkien, and his English had this Hokkien lilt, which was a disadvantage. Nor did he know Mandarin, which is the language of the educated. But nonetheless I said, "Alright, you'll take over." And he said "No, no. Please stay on for two years while I find my feet and get to know my neighbors." So he took over in 1990, and I advised him. I said, "Brush up your languages and your ability to communicate. " So we found him teachers in English and Malay and he applied himself. And I must say that in the 10 years since then, he has improved his communication skills considerably, and his English is now more fluent. For this he deserves high marks.
Mao Tse-Tung could not have become Deng Xiao-Ping, and vice versa. . . .He had a different temperament. He was a romanticist.
What he had is a certain determination to succeed. And that determination came not from a desire to be a great man, but to do something for Singapore and the people. He came from a very poor family and a hard life. He won a scholarship and took a first in economics at our university. He then went to Williams College, and when he came back the Finance Minister, who knew him well, who was a very good assessor of people, put him in charge of an ailing shipping company called Neptune Orient Lines. It was in the red, and had been so for several years. He turned it around in three years. When dealing with wealthy ship owners in Hong Kong and Tokyo, where gifts are not golf balls but sachets of gold, diamonds, and other things in the golf bags, he kept himself above all that. And when my Finance Minister wanted to retire, I said to him, "No, you will not leave me in the lurch. You find me a successor." He produced Goh Chok Tong, and made him a Finance Minister. Then the others chose him, and he is a success.
On the importance of context
Different situations call for different types of leaders. The same country, China in the 1930s and 1940s, required a Mao Tse-Tung. But China in the 1970s did not require a Mao Tse-Tung. It needed a Deng Xiao-Ping. One was a destroyer of the old system, a visionary. And he kept on wanting to destroy the system that he had created with a cultural revolution. The other was a pragmatist who saw that the communist system wasn't working long before the Soviet Union imploded, and said, "Change." And he had the courage to do that.
Mao Tse-Tung could not have become Deng Xiao-Ping, and vice versa. He couldn't have done it. He had a different temperament. He was a romanticist.
On the three leaders of the 20th century he would recommend teaching to Harvard students
I would teach them Winston Churchill, because I admired him. He changed the course of history when it easily could have been lost if the British hadn't stood up to the Germans and sought some peace, which wouldn't have lasted.His good fortune lay in having Franklin Roosevelt on the other side and in the stupidity of the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor. That saved the world. So I would say Winston Churchill, yes, for one.
Second I would study [French president Charles] de Gaulle. I think he's a cussed difficult man, but I think he's a very great man. He's a Frenchman, and he's a proud one. Without him France today would have lost its self-respect. He gave back to the French a sense of amour-propre and then revived their ideas of grandeur, which nobody else would have been capable of doing. But he was also a realist and he knew he had to come to terms with Germany. It's difficult to be a great man without power, but he was a great man. I loved and savored his audacity. When he went to North Africa and walked up to [Henri] Giraud, who was a French governor there, and he found American guards protecting Giraud, he said "Giraud, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, American guards defending a general of France!" What impudence! But he had that dare. "To hell with the Americans! We are French! We demand it, we run this country! This is Algiers, France!" You need a certain megalomania. It appeared he had it.
It goes without saying I would also study Deng Xiao-Ping. I think he's a very big man. He's very realistic. Without him there would be no China.
Who else? Quite a few. But if you say three, I would pick those three.
Questions and Issues
Is Lee Kuan Yew's suspicion correct that not everyone has the innate potential to become a leader? (Or is he referring specifically to political leadership?) For those who indeed possess leadership potential, what are the lessons they need to be taught, and are these lessons standard ones, as Lee claims? Given Lee's belief that political leaders require a very different set of skills from military and business leaders, do the lessons differ according to type of leadership? And if different situations call for different types of political leaders, as Lee points out, should the lessons taught to potential political leaders be differentiated even further according to the type of political context or circumstance (e.g., anti-colonial struggle vs. established democracy)?
Conclusions
Almost half a century of experience and observation have shaped Lee Kuan Yew's perspectives on political leadership. He has concluded that few have the potential to become the leaders of a country, but those who do can acquire all the knowledge and skills they need through direct experience and training. Political leadership in his experience is enormously challenging and requires a very different set of skills from military or business leadership. He has further observed that different political circumstances require different types of leaders. Whatever the circumstance, Lee believes that a political leader must possess a natural interest in creating a better life for the citizens of his or her nation. Without this interest, and with only a desire to become a great leader, an individual is unlikely to succeed in commanding the trust and belief of the citizenry necessary to grasp and retain the elusive reins of national power.
* Lee Kuan Yew's visit was made possible through the generosity of Ambassador Richard Fisher and Nancy Collins Fisher and the Collins Family International Fellowship.
Lee Kuan Yew led Singapore's independence movement and is considered the founding father of modern Singapore. He was the founder and Secretary General of the People's Action Party, entering politics as a Legislative Assemblyman in 1955. He became his country's first Prime Minister when he led his party to victory in the Legislative Assembly elections of 1959. He continued in this position through seven successful general elections until his resignation in 1990. His predecessor promptly appointed him as Senior Minister, a post he still holds. He is the author of The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (New York:Prentice Hall, 1999) and From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000 (New York: HarperCollins, 2000).
Thursday, October 11, 2007
AsiaMedia 2007
Full Transcript: Tom Plate and Jeffrey Cole interview Lee Kuan Yew
Singapore's first prime minister talks about China, the United States, and international politics as well as the future of media in Asian countries like Singapore and around the world
By Tom Plate
Pacific Perspectives Columnist
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
This is the complete transcript of Minister Mentor (as the founder of modern singapore is now known) Lee Kuan Yew's interview with syndicated columnist Tom Plate of the UCLA Media Center and new-media expert Jeffrey Cole of the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future. It took place on Sept. 27, 2007 in the minister's private office at Istana, Singapore.
Q: How are you?
Lee: Ageing rather fitfully as we all do, but when you're past 80, it's a pretty steep climb.
Q: The thing is you have not retired?
Lee: I think if you retire, the idea of just reading books and playing golf ... you just disintegrate.
Q: There's such a high correlation between people who retire and play golf and die, right? If you don't play golf and don't retire … follow the logic!
Lee: You have to have something more than that. You have got to wake up every morning feeling there's something worth doing and you're not just lying back and coasting along. Once you coast along, it's finished.
Q: It's great to be in Singapore right now because it's so bustling!
Lee: It's partly just sheer luck. I would say 60 percent hard work, 40 percent luck. Sixty percent because we put ourselves into this position, went through some very hard times starting with the Asian crisis, SARS and so on -- but we have got onto the right track. We could see China growing, India coming on. We're just at the junction of the two and placed ourselves to take the tailwind of both of them -- but keeping all our other bases intact, our connections: U.S., Europe, Japan.
Q: You even have good relations with Taiwan?
Lee: That's crucial. That's part of the old -- our past.
Q: But that's not all that easy to do?
Lee: It's still tough, but it doesn't matter. The mainland knows these were the terms on which we established relations with them.
Q: One of the first questions I asked you roughly 10 years ago when I started the column on Asia and America was what would be the one thing you would say to the American people about the United States' role in Asia. You thought for a few minutes and then you said: "Tell the American people that America must get the relationship with China right, because if that relationship is gotten right, it benefits everybody in Asia. And if it's not gotten right, it's going to create problems." Have we more or less got the relationship right?
Lee: I think it's not bad. Congress is in a fractious mood looking for excuses for what's gone wrong, believing China's exchange rate offers unfair advantage. Yes, the Chinese should up the value of their yuan -- maybe 10 percent, 15 percent -- but it's not going to help you. It's not going to solve the problem. It might create problems for them if they do it so suddenly. But if they do it gradually, I think it shouldn't be a problem.
Q: They probably will do it?
Lee: They'll do it gradually. They're scared of unemployment. They're scared of what happened to Japan when the factories relocated. They need their low-end jobs, making shoes, garments, whatever. If these factories move, you have got unemployment -- that's a real problem for them. They're scared of it as they're moving up-market. It's a new game for them and they're nervous. Their legitimacy depends upon solving the economic problems and not having riots in the cities even as their old state-owned enterprises retrench.
Q: What would you say to Americans who say if China rises, America has to fall?
Lee: No, I do not see a win-lose, zero sum game here. It was the U.S. that brought China into the World Trade Organization (WTO). It was George W. H. Bush that opened the door, invited China to start selling to America. That was carried on by President Clinton. Clinton finally, with his then Treasury Secretary Rubin, got the Chinese into WTO.
You have got two choices with China. Keep them out -- but the U.S. must have done its calculations, because if you keep them out, then you have them as a spoiler. They're going to do reverse engineering, steal your patents and where is the profit in that? You slow them down, there's no doubt about that. You slow down their transformation but at the same time, you are not benefiting from that transformation. If you go back and remember the 1980s and early 90s, you needed that market to grow but you never factored in the speed at which they would grow. That's scary. That's happened and I think they know that it's a difficult transformation for them. It's not easy. They have got enormous problems -- internal problems, disparity within the cities, between the cities and the countryside, and now with cell phones and satellite TV, they have to change track, instead of just going helter-skelter for gold … now they're talking about achieving a harmonious society.
Q: Do we on the whole know pretty much what the real picture inside China is?
Lee: I think your China-watchers are well briefed, they know.
Q: There shouldn't be any big surprises? We pretty much know where the tensions are?
Lee: [Nods affirmatively]
Q: You mentioned Bob Rubin and Clinton. The genius of their approach was they convinced the Chinese that it was in their interest to join WTO. They weren't doing anybody any favors, was it going to be good for China?
Lee: No, I think they had [Chinese Premier] Zhu Rongji to deal with and that made the difference. Zhu Rongji was the man who pushed the Chinese side. He was backed by [President] Jiang Zemin. He did the sums and decided that if China was going to catch up with the world, they had to open up and this will force a continual opening-up, joining WTO and having to abide by the rules -- and now they're in.
Q: You see them still going there -- going in that same opening-up direction?
Lee: Their problem now is convincing the world that they're serious about a "peaceful rise." These are thinking people. You're not dealing with ideologues.
I don't know if you've been seeing this or heard of this series that [the Chinese] produced called The Rise of the Great Nations. It's now on the History Channel. I got our station here to dub it in English and show it. It was quite I would say a bold decision to tell the Chinese people this is the way the European nations, the Russians and Japanese became great. Absolutely no ideology and they had a team of historians, their own historians. To get the program going, they went to each country, interviewed the leaders and historians of those countries.
You should watch the one on Britain, because I think that gives you an idea of how far they have gone in telling their people this is what made Britain great. I was quite surprised. The theme was [doing away with] the Divine Right of Kings, a Britain that was challenged by the barons who brought the king down to Runnymede and then they had the Magna Charta, and suddenly your "Divine Right" is based on Parliament and [the barons] are in Parliament. That gave the space for the barons to grow and the middle class eventually emerged. When the King got too uppity, Charles the First got beheaded.
Now this series was produced in a communist state, you know. In other words, if you want to be a great nation, so, if the leader goes against the people's interests, you may have to behead him! They also said that because there was growing confidence between the people and the leaders, the country grew.
It is in fact a lesson to support their gradual opening up and their idea of how they can do it without conflict -- the "peaceful rise." They have worked out this scheme, this theory, this doctrine to assure America and the world that they're going to play by the rules.
Q: You think they'll be able to do that fast enough to accommodate the middle class who want clean air and so much else?
Lee: I cannot say what they will do. I go there once in a year, I spend one week. I get reports, I read it but I'm not a China-watcher. I have got many other things to watch, I'm a Singapore-watcher! My guess is they're going to move pragmatically one step at a time and the first thing they are trying to do right at this moment is to get the succession to the next Standing Committee right. [The chairman will] have his team and the next five years will be his policy.
I think the policy will be let's grow, let's have more equality in the country and keep the country as one. Let's have no trouble abroad, let's make quite sure that Taiwan doesn't do stupid things which will force the mainland to act. Let's have a successful Olympics and then we are into a new age, one step at a time.
The first problem is blue skies for the Olympics, and the way to do that is the way they did it in 1999 when I went there for the 50th anniversary and I found blue skies. I asked our ambassador about this: He said they stopped all factories for the last two weeks. I think they're going to do that, maybe the last four weeks before and the cars will be cut down by half, odd and even numbers and so on. But to go and clean up properly will take umpteen years, retrofit coal mines and so on. That's a very costly and slow business.
They are engaging us in Singapore, and we're going to do an EcoCity with them, choosing the site now. They have agreed. They've offered us several sites and we're choosing one where there can be sustainable growth. What we've done in Singapore, we recycle water, you keep your air clean, you do this, you do that, higher costs, more social discipline, more engineering, sewers, recycling water, et cetera and so on. It's a slow process but they want to learn how it can be done. That's important.
Q: If we could move to the other superpower, the United States. I know you're reluctant to give out advice, unlike American journalists who always try to tell you what to do, but for America, since you've been a friend of America and you've seen it over decades, what are two, three things, that you worry about in America?
Lee: I think in the next 10 years you have got to extricate yourself from these problems in the Middle East. It may take you five years to get it stabilized and then after that, you gradually have more time and energy to think about the other big problems in the world. This is sucking up too much of your resources. To solve this, you have got to tackle the two-state problem in Israel because as long as that's festering away, you're giving your enemies in the Muslim world an endless provocation from which they can get new recruits for crazy adventures to try and knock you down, to blow themselves up and blow the world up. How you're going to do that, I don't know.
Q: Did you follow the Israeli lobby debate in the U.S.? Two professors -- from Harvard and the University of Chicago -- did this paper about the alleged extreme influence of the Israeli lobby in American foreign policy. Even if the paper overstated or used some unwise language in making its case, is there something to this?
Lee: You have got to settle this issue with the Jewish lobby. If you have this as a festering sore, you get Muslims entangled in hate campaigns. I'm not saying if you solve this, everything will be sweet and harmonious -- but if you solve this you will remove a cancer in the [international] system. Then you can better tackle the other problems. You are alone in this [Middle East policy] because the Europeans are not with you. Nobody helps you, but everybody doesn't want to openly oppose you.
Q: What about inside America itself? Do you see any indices that worry you, whether it's education?
Lee: For the next 10, 15, 20 years what you have will keep you going as the most enterprising, innovative economy with leading-edge technology, both in the civilian and military field. You have got that already.
You will lose that gradually over 30, 40, 50 years unless you are able to keep on attracting talent and that's the final contest, because what you have done, the Chinese and other nations are going to adopt parts of it to fit their circumstances and they are also going around looking for talented people and wanting to build up their innovative enterprising economies. And finally this is now an age where you will not have military contests between great nations because you will destroy each other, but you will have economic and technological contests between the great powers.
I see that as the main arena of competition by 2040, 2050 and it'll be the U.S.; China for sure; Japan, keeping up with the U.S. and trying to retain its separate position from China, closer to the U.S. and hoping to maintain a special position; India, somewhat behind China, trying to catch up. I don't know about Brazil.
Q: Charles de Gaulle had a great comment about Brazil. His advisers said to President de Gaulle that he had to go to Latin America -- Brazil. He said why? They said Brazil has great potential. De Gaulle said, "Ah, yes Brazil has great potential ... and always will."
Lee: I put my money on China, India and Western Europe. If Western Europe can get past the welfare approach to society and get their unions modernized, I think they have got the technological basis and the talent to rise again, not as a military power because I don't think they got the stomach for that, but as an economic power which they can do. I think they'll give the world a run for their money.
Can they do it? I don't know. Their history is so deep, you never know. Under pressure, as they feel they're being left behind by history, they may decide to do it. I mean, you look at [French President] Sarkozy, he may or may not succeed, but he's convinced himself and he's convincing quite a group of the French elite. The CEOs of the big multinationals in France don't need convincing. They know it. It's the broad think-tanks, the media, the intellectuals who still feel that they have a superior system. They loath having to give that [welfare approach] up, but they may, you know, because that's the only way to catch up.
Russia may become a player if they are able to find a way to convert the oil and gas into a more enterprising economy. I don't know if they can get out of their corruption and the mismanagement of the resources, but they have got talented people.
But long-term for America, if you ask me, say, project another 100 years, 150 years into the 22nd century, say, 2150, whether you stay on top depends upon the kind of society you will be because if the present trends continue, you'll have a Hispanic element in your society that's about 30, 40 percent. So, the question is do you make the Hispanics Anglo-Saxons in culture or do they make you more Latin American in culture."
Q: That is exactly the right question.
Lee: I mean, if they came in drips and drabs and you scatter them across America, then you will change their culture, but if they come in large numbers, like Miami, and they stay together, or in California, then their culture will continue and they may well affect the Anglo-Saxon culture around them. That's the real test.
But on the [China] side, you can be quite sure that their numbers are so great -- the Chinese Hans -- they can take any number of new migrants, they will be absorbed. So, long-term, I think the Chinese have figured this out. Then, if they just stay with "peaceful rise" and they just contest for first position economically and technologically, they cannot lose. If they are not Number One, they will be Number Two. If they are not Number Two, they are Number Three. They have figured that out.
Q: Singapore is one of the world's most wired countries, far ahead of the pack. How do you imagine over time that this will change Singapore? What will be your sense of what happens in an educated country with high standards, when anyone can get anything on the Web, videos and blogs so that the role of a centralized media become less and less dominant?
Lee: Well, it is already on its way because the print media here is not growing the same way, they are stagnating. It's not declining as fast as, say, it is in America or Britain ... And this is happening here.
The young, they read things on the Internet. I mean, I am part of the older generation. Yes, I read some stuff on the Internet, but at the end of the day, I say, well, let's see what the proper analysis is. So, I look up, I look at the editorial pages and the op-ed pages. I am not sure that the young will do that anymore, but the way the print media can stay in the contest is not to be the first with the news because that's not possible, but to be the first with the background and the analysis and the ones with the high credibility will stay in business.
You must have credibility because you get so much on the Internet. Whom do you believe? Finally, you've got to say, who is saying this? And you don't know. But if you say, this is The New York Times, this is the Washington Post or the L.A. Times, then you say, well, that is the standard.
I mean, that goes for every country, I think, but we have a different problem here because we are bilingual. English is our first language, well, for the younger generation. The older generation, Chinese was their first language, but the ones below 30 now, below 35, the majority, English is their first language and Chinese or Malay and whatever will be their second language. But with the rise of China, we are already seeing more and more going to China doing business and more Chinese coming here doing business. So, they are going to start reading the Chinese blogs, the Chinese news. It's already happening. So, the trend will be from print to screen.
Q: China has not given up hope in terms of trying to control the content on the Internet. But my sense since the last time I talked with you and with some of your brightest people, is that you have a sense of inevitably, that this new technology is going to overwhelm efforts to control it, is that right?
Lee: Right, it is not possible. Look, you are going to have a PDA that is also running video and you can have your servers blocked. But if you've got a 3G phone, you use another server, and so then you are through.
No, it's not only going to happen, it's already happening. Otherwise, how do you get all these pictures of the monks in Myanmar or Yangon or Mandalay coming out? It's all on cell-phones. Now, there are areas which are blocked out now. They are blacked out, sure, but they are still coming out because you've got a 3G phone and I am quite sure Reuters or whatever news agency must have given their correspondents and stringers, saying, here, use this. You take it and you use this and you get it through. Otherwise, how can you get it through because the government is already blocking out [communication]. Many of the areas are now non-functioning, you can't use the cell-phone. But images are still coming through. I just saw something this morning. So?
Q: Right. So, that the role of the centralized media is less important. Even if you can control the centralized media, that's less and less valuable than before.
Lee: I don't know if you've caught up with this story. It's a bit of scandal going on. [Former Deputy Prime Minister] Anwar Ibrahim leaked a video, an old video, way back in 1980, of an Indian lawyer talking to a top judge about how he can arrange to get him promoted to be the "Number One" or whatever. I think it was an eight-minute video and Anwar has now put it on the Internet and it's on YouTube! So the Malaysian bar -- which have already been dismayed at the degradation of their judiciary and the corruption and judge-buying and case-buying -- they have demanded a royal commission to inquire into the facts.
So, the government, under pressure now, has appointed a committee of judges and one eminent person, to check on the authenticity of this tape. So that's bought them some time, but in the meantime, 2,000 lawyers, following what the Pakistani lawyers did, have marched on to the prime minister's office to deliver a petition to investigate this matter. Now, this would not have happened without the Internet and without YouTube. I mean it is so simple, you see.
Q: That's a changing world.
Lee: But at the same time, there is the problem of credibility. So, you have a website called Malaysiakini. That means "Malaysia Now" and it's got some very good articles in it and some of them are signed regularly by the same person. So when we get that, we read it and then we say, okay, circulate it. But you get a lot of rubbish, too, and you have got to filter it. It's a waste of time.
Q: Well, your earlier point about the credibility of serious newspapers and serious magazines is more important now than ever.
Lee: You've got to go by them. You know, it's like the ratings agencies which put a lot of financial institutions down.
Q: This is the future of professional journalism, if there is any?
Lee: No, you'll always have it. But if we don't use this [new technology], then we are just one hand tied behind us: Should we allow our opponents to have that advantage? This is a highly competitive world. But the flood of information leads to overload. Therefore, you've got to have somebody filter it for you.
Q: Can I go back to your comment about Myanmar and the video that's getting out from the hand-helds, where, unlike Tiananmen in 1989, you cannot just pull the plug on all visuals. With regard to Myanmar -- and I realize anyone's guess is as good as anyone else's -- but did you see that it's plausible to ask China, as it did at the Six-Party Talks, in some way to work skillfully and work behind the scenes to assume a role in moving Myanmar forward out of the Middle Ages and maybe into the real world?
Lee: I'm not sure the Chinese have got that power. And in Myanmar, these are rather dumb generals when it comes to the economy.
Q: They are!
Lee: How they can so mismanage the economy and reach this stage when the country has so many natural resources?
Q: It's a gift!
Lee: It's stupid. So I'm not sure. The Chinese, they've tried, and, in fact, we have tried to talk them out of isolation. I tried through a general called Khin Nyunt. He's the most intelligent of the lot. I sold him the idea, or at least he bought the idea, that the way for them to go forward was to get out of uniform and do it like Suharto, form a party -- Golkar -- and then take over as a civilian party. But halfway through, Suharto fell. So, it ended up as the wrong advice, they back-tracked. Then they chucked Kyin Nyunt out.
Q: Timing is everything!
Lee: Meanwhile, I had advised several of our hoteliers to set up hotels there. They have sunk in millions of dollars there and now, their hotels are empty. But, you know, you've got really economically dumb people in charge. Why they believe they can keep their country cut off from the world like this indefinitely, I cannot understand. And you know, you need medicines -- they smuggle in from Thailand. It doesn't make sense.
We will see how it is, but whatever it is, I do not believe that they can survive indefinitely. Look, the day they decided to close down the government in Yangon and go into this Pyinmana, or whatever the place is called where there's nothing and they are putting up expensive buildings for themselves and a golf course -- and the top general had a lavish wedding for his daughter which was then out on YouTube -- the daughter was like a Christmas tree! Flaunting these excesses must push a hungry and impoverished people to revolt. But what will happen, I don't know because the army has got to be part of the solution. If the army is dissolved, the country has got nothing to govern itself because they have dismantled all administrative instruments.
Q: You have a candidate in the coming American presidential election that you prefer? You'd like to endorse whom? I have my candidate, but you've got to get American citizenship!
Lee: Who's your candidate?
Q: You! You've helped run this pretty well country for so many years.
Lee: You need to have an American who is not only good on television but he must have the networking that can raise him the funds and the grassroots support.
Q: I notice you said "him".
Lee: Well, her, him/her. No, [Hillary Clinton is] leading, she's leading. Will she be good for America?
Q: I don't know.
Lee: Sorry?
Q: What do you think? I'm too close to her.
Lee: What do you mean you're too close to her?
Q: I'm right there. I'm American, I'm right in the middle of it. I don't like any of them. She may be good enough, though she's not the best that we've got.
Lee: She's good enough?
Q: She's probably good enough.
Lee: Well, we have to live with whoever wins.
Q: I read somewhere recently that you actually have a bit of a worry about your country's survivability over the long run? Are you serious?
Lee: Singapore is not a 4,000-year culture. This is an immigrant community that started in 1819. It's a migrant community that left its moorings and therefore, knowing it's sailing to unchartered seas, guided by the stars, I say let's follow the stars and they said okay, let's try. And we've succeeded and here we are, but has it really taken root? No. It's just worked for the time being. If it doesn't work, again, we say let's try something else. This is not entrenched. This is not a 4,000-year society.
Q: You really have a sense of the country's endangerment.
Lee: Yes, of course.
Q: It's amazing, you come in here and you walk around here in one of the great cities in the world. Yet you are worried about survival.
Lee: Where are we? Are we in the Caribbean? Are we next to America like the Bahamas? Are we in the Mediterranean, like Malta, next to Italy? Are we like Hong Kong, next to China and therefore, will become part of China? We are in Southeast Asia, in the midst of a turbulent, volatile, unsettled region. Singapore is a superstructure built on what? On 700 square kilometers and a lot of smart ideas that have worked so far -- but the whole thing could come undone very quickly.
For this to work, you require a world where there are some rules of international law and there is a balance of forces of power that will enforce that international law and the U.S. is foremost in that. Without that balance of power and international law, the Vietnamese will still be in Cambodia and the Indonesians will still be in East Timor, right? Why are they out? Because there were certain norms that had to be observed. You can't just cross boundaries. This little island with four and a half million people, of whom 1.3 are foreigners working here, has got to maintain an army, navy and an air force. Can we withstand a concerted attempt to besiege us and blockade us? We can repel an attack, yes. Given the armed forces in the region and our capability, we can repel and we can damage them. Three weeks, food runs out, we are besieged, blockaded.
Q: Who will come after you? Who would come after you?
Lee: There are assets here to be captured, right?
Q: Some unnamed bad regime?
Lee: When [Malaysia] kicked us out [in 1965], the expectation was that we would fail and we will go back on their terms, not on the terms we agreed with them under the British. Our problems are not just between states, this is a problem between races and religions and civilizations. We are a standing indictment of all the things that they can be doing differently. They have got all the resources. If they would just educate the Chinese and Indians, use them and treat them as their citizens, they can equal us and even do better than us and we would be happy to rejoin them.
Q: Do you think it's healthy for the citizens of Singapore to feel that pressure, that tension that it all could change quickly? Do you think that makes them run this country more effectively, be better citizens by not getting complacent?
Lee: My generation, the ones above 50, who have lived through the first part, they know. The ones under 30 ,who've just grown up in stability and growth year by year, I think they think that I'm selling them a line just to make them work harder but they are wrong. The problem is they don't believe. They think I'm wrong. That's a problem that all countries face. You look at the Japanese, I remember their parents. After their defeat, they had great leaders not just in politics but in business at every level. They travel, they work, and they sold their goods like mad to rebuild Japan. Now you look at them ... You look at the younger generation, will they work like some of the fathers did? I don't think so, but in a corner will they do it again? I think yes because it's a deeply-imbedded culture. They will fight. That's the difference between an ancient culture and a new one. Theirs is embedded, ours is not. At the same time that ancient culture is preventing them from making rational decisions about migration, immigration and meeting the problems of ageing.
Q: Singapore's armed forces are in pretty good shape, right? So when are you all planning to invade neighboring Indonesia?
Lee [laughing]: All we want is a quiet peaceful world. We have made something of our lives and we'll be quite happy to carry on like this and help them get along and do better. We started this LKY School of Public Policy, giving them scholarships to prove to them it's done by good governance. It's not by robbing you.
Q: I (Plate) graduated from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. And so I'm a big fan of public policy schools. I think you all are doing a great job at the Singapore policy school. I think you chose a wonderful dean [former U.N. Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani]. I was recently there to offer a humble seminar. The quality of the students knocked me out.
Lee: I think that's an investment worth making because [students from the region] will go back and they will tell their media chaps and their leaders and say, look this country works because it's working like this: first, it's honest; second, it's rational; third, it makes decisions and follows through on those decisions. The decisions are made after very careful consideration of all options and consequences.
Q: I agree with you and if you look at the course list, it's a very impressive course list. Now, you were educated in England and many of your top people were educated in America or England, so Western education for a long time has been the cutting edge, has been the leader, the place you wanted to go to. Is it your sense that American higher education is still terrific?
Lee: It will stay like that for as long as you keep on getting talented people into your country and staying on, but will you do that? I think yes for 10, 20 years, but 30, 40, 50 years, I'm not sure because other countries will become more attractive or as attractive. It is the extra inputs you get.
Let me explain how I see it. If Singapore depended on its own domestic talent, we wouldn't have made it, but we were the center for education in this region from British days and many came to be educated and many stayed behind. Our top layer was drawn from a larger base and in my first Cabinet of 10, there were only two of us who were born and bred in Singapore. The others came from Malaysia, China, Ceylon, from India and elsewhere. It's a talent pool that was drawn from a bigger region, and that's the secret of your success. You drew in first your talent from Europe because you offered them opportunities. In the last few decades, you've been drawing your talent from all over the world, including Asia. If you can continue to do that, you will continue to succeed.
Not only must you attract them, you must get them to stay.
Q: How are you doing on that?
Lee: We give a lot of scholarships to Chinese and Indians. If one quarter stay on here in Singapore, we're winners, especially with the Chinese. They come in here, they get an English education, they get our credentials and they're off to America because they know that the grass is greener there. The Indians, strangely enough, more of them stay here in Singapore because they want to go home to visit their families, America is too far away. We are net gainers for how long? I think in the case of China, maybe another 20, 30 years and then the attraction is gone. We can't offer them that difference in opportunities and standards. India, maybe longer -- 50, 60 years before their infrastructure catches up. Anyway, this is not my worry anymore!
Q: On India, there's been a lot of hype in America, in foreign affairs publications and so on, about India becoming the next superpower. I was in New Delhi about three months ago -- it seems to me India's got a long way to go.
Lee: They are a different mix, never mind their political structures. They are not one people. You can make a speech in Delhi; [Prime Minister] Manmohan Singh can speak in Hindi and 30, 40 percent of the country can understand him. He makes a speech in English and maybe 30 percent of the elite understand him.
In China, when a leader speaks, 90 percent will understand him. They all speak one language, they are one people. In India, they have got 32 official languages and in fact, 300-plus different languages. You look at Europe, 25 languages, 27 countries, how do you? The European Parliament? Had we not moved into one language here in Singapore, we would not have been able to govern this country.
Q: Minister Mentor, thank you very much.
The views expressed above are those of the author and are not necessarily those of AsiaMedia or the UCLA Asia Institute.
Date Posted: 10/9/2007
Singapore's first prime minister talks about China, the United States, and international politics as well as the future of media in Asian countries like Singapore and around the world
By Tom Plate
Pacific Perspectives Columnist
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
This is the complete transcript of Minister Mentor (as the founder of modern singapore is now known) Lee Kuan Yew's interview with syndicated columnist Tom Plate of the UCLA Media Center and new-media expert Jeffrey Cole of the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future. It took place on Sept. 27, 2007 in the minister's private office at Istana, Singapore.
Q: How are you?
Lee: Ageing rather fitfully as we all do, but when you're past 80, it's a pretty steep climb.
Q: The thing is you have not retired?
Lee: I think if you retire, the idea of just reading books and playing golf ... you just disintegrate.
Q: There's such a high correlation between people who retire and play golf and die, right? If you don't play golf and don't retire … follow the logic!
Lee: You have to have something more than that. You have got to wake up every morning feeling there's something worth doing and you're not just lying back and coasting along. Once you coast along, it's finished.
Q: It's great to be in Singapore right now because it's so bustling!
Lee: It's partly just sheer luck. I would say 60 percent hard work, 40 percent luck. Sixty percent because we put ourselves into this position, went through some very hard times starting with the Asian crisis, SARS and so on -- but we have got onto the right track. We could see China growing, India coming on. We're just at the junction of the two and placed ourselves to take the tailwind of both of them -- but keeping all our other bases intact, our connections: U.S., Europe, Japan.
Q: You even have good relations with Taiwan?
Lee: That's crucial. That's part of the old -- our past.
Q: But that's not all that easy to do?
Lee: It's still tough, but it doesn't matter. The mainland knows these were the terms on which we established relations with them.
Q: One of the first questions I asked you roughly 10 years ago when I started the column on Asia and America was what would be the one thing you would say to the American people about the United States' role in Asia. You thought for a few minutes and then you said: "Tell the American people that America must get the relationship with China right, because if that relationship is gotten right, it benefits everybody in Asia. And if it's not gotten right, it's going to create problems." Have we more or less got the relationship right?
Lee: I think it's not bad. Congress is in a fractious mood looking for excuses for what's gone wrong, believing China's exchange rate offers unfair advantage. Yes, the Chinese should up the value of their yuan -- maybe 10 percent, 15 percent -- but it's not going to help you. It's not going to solve the problem. It might create problems for them if they do it so suddenly. But if they do it gradually, I think it shouldn't be a problem.
Q: They probably will do it?
Lee: They'll do it gradually. They're scared of unemployment. They're scared of what happened to Japan when the factories relocated. They need their low-end jobs, making shoes, garments, whatever. If these factories move, you have got unemployment -- that's a real problem for them. They're scared of it as they're moving up-market. It's a new game for them and they're nervous. Their legitimacy depends upon solving the economic problems and not having riots in the cities even as their old state-owned enterprises retrench.
Q: What would you say to Americans who say if China rises, America has to fall?
Lee: No, I do not see a win-lose, zero sum game here. It was the U.S. that brought China into the World Trade Organization (WTO). It was George W. H. Bush that opened the door, invited China to start selling to America. That was carried on by President Clinton. Clinton finally, with his then Treasury Secretary Rubin, got the Chinese into WTO.
You have got two choices with China. Keep them out -- but the U.S. must have done its calculations, because if you keep them out, then you have them as a spoiler. They're going to do reverse engineering, steal your patents and where is the profit in that? You slow them down, there's no doubt about that. You slow down their transformation but at the same time, you are not benefiting from that transformation. If you go back and remember the 1980s and early 90s, you needed that market to grow but you never factored in the speed at which they would grow. That's scary. That's happened and I think they know that it's a difficult transformation for them. It's not easy. They have got enormous problems -- internal problems, disparity within the cities, between the cities and the countryside, and now with cell phones and satellite TV, they have to change track, instead of just going helter-skelter for gold … now they're talking about achieving a harmonious society.
Q: Do we on the whole know pretty much what the real picture inside China is?
Lee: I think your China-watchers are well briefed, they know.
Q: There shouldn't be any big surprises? We pretty much know where the tensions are?
Lee: [Nods affirmatively]
Q: You mentioned Bob Rubin and Clinton. The genius of their approach was they convinced the Chinese that it was in their interest to join WTO. They weren't doing anybody any favors, was it going to be good for China?
Lee: No, I think they had [Chinese Premier] Zhu Rongji to deal with and that made the difference. Zhu Rongji was the man who pushed the Chinese side. He was backed by [President] Jiang Zemin. He did the sums and decided that if China was going to catch up with the world, they had to open up and this will force a continual opening-up, joining WTO and having to abide by the rules -- and now they're in.
Q: You see them still going there -- going in that same opening-up direction?
Lee: Their problem now is convincing the world that they're serious about a "peaceful rise." These are thinking people. You're not dealing with ideologues.
I don't know if you've been seeing this or heard of this series that [the Chinese] produced called The Rise of the Great Nations. It's now on the History Channel. I got our station here to dub it in English and show it. It was quite I would say a bold decision to tell the Chinese people this is the way the European nations, the Russians and Japanese became great. Absolutely no ideology and they had a team of historians, their own historians. To get the program going, they went to each country, interviewed the leaders and historians of those countries.
You should watch the one on Britain, because I think that gives you an idea of how far they have gone in telling their people this is what made Britain great. I was quite surprised. The theme was [doing away with] the Divine Right of Kings, a Britain that was challenged by the barons who brought the king down to Runnymede and then they had the Magna Charta, and suddenly your "Divine Right" is based on Parliament and [the barons] are in Parliament. That gave the space for the barons to grow and the middle class eventually emerged. When the King got too uppity, Charles the First got beheaded.
Now this series was produced in a communist state, you know. In other words, if you want to be a great nation, so, if the leader goes against the people's interests, you may have to behead him! They also said that because there was growing confidence between the people and the leaders, the country grew.
It is in fact a lesson to support their gradual opening up and their idea of how they can do it without conflict -- the "peaceful rise." They have worked out this scheme, this theory, this doctrine to assure America and the world that they're going to play by the rules.
Q: You think they'll be able to do that fast enough to accommodate the middle class who want clean air and so much else?
Lee: I cannot say what they will do. I go there once in a year, I spend one week. I get reports, I read it but I'm not a China-watcher. I have got many other things to watch, I'm a Singapore-watcher! My guess is they're going to move pragmatically one step at a time and the first thing they are trying to do right at this moment is to get the succession to the next Standing Committee right. [The chairman will] have his team and the next five years will be his policy.
I think the policy will be let's grow, let's have more equality in the country and keep the country as one. Let's have no trouble abroad, let's make quite sure that Taiwan doesn't do stupid things which will force the mainland to act. Let's have a successful Olympics and then we are into a new age, one step at a time.
The first problem is blue skies for the Olympics, and the way to do that is the way they did it in 1999 when I went there for the 50th anniversary and I found blue skies. I asked our ambassador about this: He said they stopped all factories for the last two weeks. I think they're going to do that, maybe the last four weeks before and the cars will be cut down by half, odd and even numbers and so on. But to go and clean up properly will take umpteen years, retrofit coal mines and so on. That's a very costly and slow business.
They are engaging us in Singapore, and we're going to do an EcoCity with them, choosing the site now. They have agreed. They've offered us several sites and we're choosing one where there can be sustainable growth. What we've done in Singapore, we recycle water, you keep your air clean, you do this, you do that, higher costs, more social discipline, more engineering, sewers, recycling water, et cetera and so on. It's a slow process but they want to learn how it can be done. That's important.
Q: If we could move to the other superpower, the United States. I know you're reluctant to give out advice, unlike American journalists who always try to tell you what to do, but for America, since you've been a friend of America and you've seen it over decades, what are two, three things, that you worry about in America?
Lee: I think in the next 10 years you have got to extricate yourself from these problems in the Middle East. It may take you five years to get it stabilized and then after that, you gradually have more time and energy to think about the other big problems in the world. This is sucking up too much of your resources. To solve this, you have got to tackle the two-state problem in Israel because as long as that's festering away, you're giving your enemies in the Muslim world an endless provocation from which they can get new recruits for crazy adventures to try and knock you down, to blow themselves up and blow the world up. How you're going to do that, I don't know.
Q: Did you follow the Israeli lobby debate in the U.S.? Two professors -- from Harvard and the University of Chicago -- did this paper about the alleged extreme influence of the Israeli lobby in American foreign policy. Even if the paper overstated or used some unwise language in making its case, is there something to this?
Lee: You have got to settle this issue with the Jewish lobby. If you have this as a festering sore, you get Muslims entangled in hate campaigns. I'm not saying if you solve this, everything will be sweet and harmonious -- but if you solve this you will remove a cancer in the [international] system. Then you can better tackle the other problems. You are alone in this [Middle East policy] because the Europeans are not with you. Nobody helps you, but everybody doesn't want to openly oppose you.
Q: What about inside America itself? Do you see any indices that worry you, whether it's education?
Lee: For the next 10, 15, 20 years what you have will keep you going as the most enterprising, innovative economy with leading-edge technology, both in the civilian and military field. You have got that already.
You will lose that gradually over 30, 40, 50 years unless you are able to keep on attracting talent and that's the final contest, because what you have done, the Chinese and other nations are going to adopt parts of it to fit their circumstances and they are also going around looking for talented people and wanting to build up their innovative enterprising economies. And finally this is now an age where you will not have military contests between great nations because you will destroy each other, but you will have economic and technological contests between the great powers.
I see that as the main arena of competition by 2040, 2050 and it'll be the U.S.; China for sure; Japan, keeping up with the U.S. and trying to retain its separate position from China, closer to the U.S. and hoping to maintain a special position; India, somewhat behind China, trying to catch up. I don't know about Brazil.
Q: Charles de Gaulle had a great comment about Brazil. His advisers said to President de Gaulle that he had to go to Latin America -- Brazil. He said why? They said Brazil has great potential. De Gaulle said, "Ah, yes Brazil has great potential ... and always will."
Lee: I put my money on China, India and Western Europe. If Western Europe can get past the welfare approach to society and get their unions modernized, I think they have got the technological basis and the talent to rise again, not as a military power because I don't think they got the stomach for that, but as an economic power which they can do. I think they'll give the world a run for their money.
Can they do it? I don't know. Their history is so deep, you never know. Under pressure, as they feel they're being left behind by history, they may decide to do it. I mean, you look at [French President] Sarkozy, he may or may not succeed, but he's convinced himself and he's convincing quite a group of the French elite. The CEOs of the big multinationals in France don't need convincing. They know it. It's the broad think-tanks, the media, the intellectuals who still feel that they have a superior system. They loath having to give that [welfare approach] up, but they may, you know, because that's the only way to catch up.
Russia may become a player if they are able to find a way to convert the oil and gas into a more enterprising economy. I don't know if they can get out of their corruption and the mismanagement of the resources, but they have got talented people.
But long-term for America, if you ask me, say, project another 100 years, 150 years into the 22nd century, say, 2150, whether you stay on top depends upon the kind of society you will be because if the present trends continue, you'll have a Hispanic element in your society that's about 30, 40 percent. So, the question is do you make the Hispanics Anglo-Saxons in culture or do they make you more Latin American in culture."
Q: That is exactly the right question.
Lee: I mean, if they came in drips and drabs and you scatter them across America, then you will change their culture, but if they come in large numbers, like Miami, and they stay together, or in California, then their culture will continue and they may well affect the Anglo-Saxon culture around them. That's the real test.
But on the [China] side, you can be quite sure that their numbers are so great -- the Chinese Hans -- they can take any number of new migrants, they will be absorbed. So, long-term, I think the Chinese have figured this out. Then, if they just stay with "peaceful rise" and they just contest for first position economically and technologically, they cannot lose. If they are not Number One, they will be Number Two. If they are not Number Two, they are Number Three. They have figured that out.
Q: Singapore is one of the world's most wired countries, far ahead of the pack. How do you imagine over time that this will change Singapore? What will be your sense of what happens in an educated country with high standards, when anyone can get anything on the Web, videos and blogs so that the role of a centralized media become less and less dominant?
Lee: Well, it is already on its way because the print media here is not growing the same way, they are stagnating. It's not declining as fast as, say, it is in America or Britain ... And this is happening here.
The young, they read things on the Internet. I mean, I am part of the older generation. Yes, I read some stuff on the Internet, but at the end of the day, I say, well, let's see what the proper analysis is. So, I look up, I look at the editorial pages and the op-ed pages. I am not sure that the young will do that anymore, but the way the print media can stay in the contest is not to be the first with the news because that's not possible, but to be the first with the background and the analysis and the ones with the high credibility will stay in business.
You must have credibility because you get so much on the Internet. Whom do you believe? Finally, you've got to say, who is saying this? And you don't know. But if you say, this is The New York Times, this is the Washington Post or the L.A. Times, then you say, well, that is the standard.
I mean, that goes for every country, I think, but we have a different problem here because we are bilingual. English is our first language, well, for the younger generation. The older generation, Chinese was their first language, but the ones below 30 now, below 35, the majority, English is their first language and Chinese or Malay and whatever will be their second language. But with the rise of China, we are already seeing more and more going to China doing business and more Chinese coming here doing business. So, they are going to start reading the Chinese blogs, the Chinese news. It's already happening. So, the trend will be from print to screen.
Q: China has not given up hope in terms of trying to control the content on the Internet. But my sense since the last time I talked with you and with some of your brightest people, is that you have a sense of inevitably, that this new technology is going to overwhelm efforts to control it, is that right?
Lee: Right, it is not possible. Look, you are going to have a PDA that is also running video and you can have your servers blocked. But if you've got a 3G phone, you use another server, and so then you are through.
No, it's not only going to happen, it's already happening. Otherwise, how do you get all these pictures of the monks in Myanmar or Yangon or Mandalay coming out? It's all on cell-phones. Now, there are areas which are blocked out now. They are blacked out, sure, but they are still coming out because you've got a 3G phone and I am quite sure Reuters or whatever news agency must have given their correspondents and stringers, saying, here, use this. You take it and you use this and you get it through. Otherwise, how can you get it through because the government is already blocking out [communication]. Many of the areas are now non-functioning, you can't use the cell-phone. But images are still coming through. I just saw something this morning. So?
Q: Right. So, that the role of the centralized media is less important. Even if you can control the centralized media, that's less and less valuable than before.
Lee: I don't know if you've caught up with this story. It's a bit of scandal going on. [Former Deputy Prime Minister] Anwar Ibrahim leaked a video, an old video, way back in 1980, of an Indian lawyer talking to a top judge about how he can arrange to get him promoted to be the "Number One" or whatever. I think it was an eight-minute video and Anwar has now put it on the Internet and it's on YouTube! So the Malaysian bar -- which have already been dismayed at the degradation of their judiciary and the corruption and judge-buying and case-buying -- they have demanded a royal commission to inquire into the facts.
So, the government, under pressure now, has appointed a committee of judges and one eminent person, to check on the authenticity of this tape. So that's bought them some time, but in the meantime, 2,000 lawyers, following what the Pakistani lawyers did, have marched on to the prime minister's office to deliver a petition to investigate this matter. Now, this would not have happened without the Internet and without YouTube. I mean it is so simple, you see.
Q: That's a changing world.
Lee: But at the same time, there is the problem of credibility. So, you have a website called Malaysiakini. That means "Malaysia Now" and it's got some very good articles in it and some of them are signed regularly by the same person. So when we get that, we read it and then we say, okay, circulate it. But you get a lot of rubbish, too, and you have got to filter it. It's a waste of time.
Q: Well, your earlier point about the credibility of serious newspapers and serious magazines is more important now than ever.
Lee: You've got to go by them. You know, it's like the ratings agencies which put a lot of financial institutions down.
Q: This is the future of professional journalism, if there is any?
Lee: No, you'll always have it. But if we don't use this [new technology], then we are just one hand tied behind us: Should we allow our opponents to have that advantage? This is a highly competitive world. But the flood of information leads to overload. Therefore, you've got to have somebody filter it for you.
Q: Can I go back to your comment about Myanmar and the video that's getting out from the hand-helds, where, unlike Tiananmen in 1989, you cannot just pull the plug on all visuals. With regard to Myanmar -- and I realize anyone's guess is as good as anyone else's -- but did you see that it's plausible to ask China, as it did at the Six-Party Talks, in some way to work skillfully and work behind the scenes to assume a role in moving Myanmar forward out of the Middle Ages and maybe into the real world?
Lee: I'm not sure the Chinese have got that power. And in Myanmar, these are rather dumb generals when it comes to the economy.
Q: They are!
Lee: How they can so mismanage the economy and reach this stage when the country has so many natural resources?
Q: It's a gift!
Lee: It's stupid. So I'm not sure. The Chinese, they've tried, and, in fact, we have tried to talk them out of isolation. I tried through a general called Khin Nyunt. He's the most intelligent of the lot. I sold him the idea, or at least he bought the idea, that the way for them to go forward was to get out of uniform and do it like Suharto, form a party -- Golkar -- and then take over as a civilian party. But halfway through, Suharto fell. So, it ended up as the wrong advice, they back-tracked. Then they chucked Kyin Nyunt out.
Q: Timing is everything!
Lee: Meanwhile, I had advised several of our hoteliers to set up hotels there. They have sunk in millions of dollars there and now, their hotels are empty. But, you know, you've got really economically dumb people in charge. Why they believe they can keep their country cut off from the world like this indefinitely, I cannot understand. And you know, you need medicines -- they smuggle in from Thailand. It doesn't make sense.
We will see how it is, but whatever it is, I do not believe that they can survive indefinitely. Look, the day they decided to close down the government in Yangon and go into this Pyinmana, or whatever the place is called where there's nothing and they are putting up expensive buildings for themselves and a golf course -- and the top general had a lavish wedding for his daughter which was then out on YouTube -- the daughter was like a Christmas tree! Flaunting these excesses must push a hungry and impoverished people to revolt. But what will happen, I don't know because the army has got to be part of the solution. If the army is dissolved, the country has got nothing to govern itself because they have dismantled all administrative instruments.
Q: You have a candidate in the coming American presidential election that you prefer? You'd like to endorse whom? I have my candidate, but you've got to get American citizenship!
Lee: Who's your candidate?
Q: You! You've helped run this pretty well country for so many years.
Lee: You need to have an American who is not only good on television but he must have the networking that can raise him the funds and the grassroots support.
Q: I notice you said "him".
Lee: Well, her, him/her. No, [Hillary Clinton is] leading, she's leading. Will she be good for America?
Q: I don't know.
Lee: Sorry?
Q: What do you think? I'm too close to her.
Lee: What do you mean you're too close to her?
Q: I'm right there. I'm American, I'm right in the middle of it. I don't like any of them. She may be good enough, though she's not the best that we've got.
Lee: She's good enough?
Q: She's probably good enough.
Lee: Well, we have to live with whoever wins.
Q: I read somewhere recently that you actually have a bit of a worry about your country's survivability over the long run? Are you serious?
Lee: Singapore is not a 4,000-year culture. This is an immigrant community that started in 1819. It's a migrant community that left its moorings and therefore, knowing it's sailing to unchartered seas, guided by the stars, I say let's follow the stars and they said okay, let's try. And we've succeeded and here we are, but has it really taken root? No. It's just worked for the time being. If it doesn't work, again, we say let's try something else. This is not entrenched. This is not a 4,000-year society.
Q: You really have a sense of the country's endangerment.
Lee: Yes, of course.
Q: It's amazing, you come in here and you walk around here in one of the great cities in the world. Yet you are worried about survival.
Lee: Where are we? Are we in the Caribbean? Are we next to America like the Bahamas? Are we in the Mediterranean, like Malta, next to Italy? Are we like Hong Kong, next to China and therefore, will become part of China? We are in Southeast Asia, in the midst of a turbulent, volatile, unsettled region. Singapore is a superstructure built on what? On 700 square kilometers and a lot of smart ideas that have worked so far -- but the whole thing could come undone very quickly.
For this to work, you require a world where there are some rules of international law and there is a balance of forces of power that will enforce that international law and the U.S. is foremost in that. Without that balance of power and international law, the Vietnamese will still be in Cambodia and the Indonesians will still be in East Timor, right? Why are they out? Because there were certain norms that had to be observed. You can't just cross boundaries. This little island with four and a half million people, of whom 1.3 are foreigners working here, has got to maintain an army, navy and an air force. Can we withstand a concerted attempt to besiege us and blockade us? We can repel an attack, yes. Given the armed forces in the region and our capability, we can repel and we can damage them. Three weeks, food runs out, we are besieged, blockaded.
Q: Who will come after you? Who would come after you?
Lee: There are assets here to be captured, right?
Q: Some unnamed bad regime?
Lee: When [Malaysia] kicked us out [in 1965], the expectation was that we would fail and we will go back on their terms, not on the terms we agreed with them under the British. Our problems are not just between states, this is a problem between races and religions and civilizations. We are a standing indictment of all the things that they can be doing differently. They have got all the resources. If they would just educate the Chinese and Indians, use them and treat them as their citizens, they can equal us and even do better than us and we would be happy to rejoin them.
Q: Do you think it's healthy for the citizens of Singapore to feel that pressure, that tension that it all could change quickly? Do you think that makes them run this country more effectively, be better citizens by not getting complacent?
Lee: My generation, the ones above 50, who have lived through the first part, they know. The ones under 30 ,who've just grown up in stability and growth year by year, I think they think that I'm selling them a line just to make them work harder but they are wrong. The problem is they don't believe. They think I'm wrong. That's a problem that all countries face. You look at the Japanese, I remember their parents. After their defeat, they had great leaders not just in politics but in business at every level. They travel, they work, and they sold their goods like mad to rebuild Japan. Now you look at them ... You look at the younger generation, will they work like some of the fathers did? I don't think so, but in a corner will they do it again? I think yes because it's a deeply-imbedded culture. They will fight. That's the difference between an ancient culture and a new one. Theirs is embedded, ours is not. At the same time that ancient culture is preventing them from making rational decisions about migration, immigration and meeting the problems of ageing.
Q: Singapore's armed forces are in pretty good shape, right? So when are you all planning to invade neighboring Indonesia?
Lee [laughing]: All we want is a quiet peaceful world. We have made something of our lives and we'll be quite happy to carry on like this and help them get along and do better. We started this LKY School of Public Policy, giving them scholarships to prove to them it's done by good governance. It's not by robbing you.
Q: I (Plate) graduated from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. And so I'm a big fan of public policy schools. I think you all are doing a great job at the Singapore policy school. I think you chose a wonderful dean [former U.N. Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani]. I was recently there to offer a humble seminar. The quality of the students knocked me out.
Lee: I think that's an investment worth making because [students from the region] will go back and they will tell their media chaps and their leaders and say, look this country works because it's working like this: first, it's honest; second, it's rational; third, it makes decisions and follows through on those decisions. The decisions are made after very careful consideration of all options and consequences.
Q: I agree with you and if you look at the course list, it's a very impressive course list. Now, you were educated in England and many of your top people were educated in America or England, so Western education for a long time has been the cutting edge, has been the leader, the place you wanted to go to. Is it your sense that American higher education is still terrific?
Lee: It will stay like that for as long as you keep on getting talented people into your country and staying on, but will you do that? I think yes for 10, 20 years, but 30, 40, 50 years, I'm not sure because other countries will become more attractive or as attractive. It is the extra inputs you get.
Let me explain how I see it. If Singapore depended on its own domestic talent, we wouldn't have made it, but we were the center for education in this region from British days and many came to be educated and many stayed behind. Our top layer was drawn from a larger base and in my first Cabinet of 10, there were only two of us who were born and bred in Singapore. The others came from Malaysia, China, Ceylon, from India and elsewhere. It's a talent pool that was drawn from a bigger region, and that's the secret of your success. You drew in first your talent from Europe because you offered them opportunities. In the last few decades, you've been drawing your talent from all over the world, including Asia. If you can continue to do that, you will continue to succeed.
Not only must you attract them, you must get them to stay.
Q: How are you doing on that?
Lee: We give a lot of scholarships to Chinese and Indians. If one quarter stay on here in Singapore, we're winners, especially with the Chinese. They come in here, they get an English education, they get our credentials and they're off to America because they know that the grass is greener there. The Indians, strangely enough, more of them stay here in Singapore because they want to go home to visit their families, America is too far away. We are net gainers for how long? I think in the case of China, maybe another 20, 30 years and then the attraction is gone. We can't offer them that difference in opportunities and standards. India, maybe longer -- 50, 60 years before their infrastructure catches up. Anyway, this is not my worry anymore!
Q: On India, there's been a lot of hype in America, in foreign affairs publications and so on, about India becoming the next superpower. I was in New Delhi about three months ago -- it seems to me India's got a long way to go.
Lee: They are a different mix, never mind their political structures. They are not one people. You can make a speech in Delhi; [Prime Minister] Manmohan Singh can speak in Hindi and 30, 40 percent of the country can understand him. He makes a speech in English and maybe 30 percent of the elite understand him.
In China, when a leader speaks, 90 percent will understand him. They all speak one language, they are one people. In India, they have got 32 official languages and in fact, 300-plus different languages. You look at Europe, 25 languages, 27 countries, how do you? The European Parliament? Had we not moved into one language here in Singapore, we would not have been able to govern this country.
Q: Minister Mentor, thank you very much.
The views expressed above are those of the author and are not necessarily those of AsiaMedia or the UCLA Asia Institute.
Date Posted: 10/9/2007
Friday, September 28, 2007
How Lee Kuan Yew made Singapore Asia's least corrupt nation (2000)
By Wilson Lee Flores
When I asked the nation's top business leaders from John Gokongwei, Jr., Lucio Tan, Enrique Zobel to young tycoon Luis Miguel Aboitiz as to who they admire the most for enlightened leadership, they unanimously mentioned the name of 77-year-old Lee Kuan Yew, founding father of Singapore and now Senior Minister.
Zobel says, "Lee is very straightforward, superhonest and he always knew what he was talking about. Lee Kuan Yew is a great leader whom I admire the most."
Lucio Tan explains: "Lee Kuan Yew has strong political will and selflessness as a leader." In fact, Gokongwei goes a step further, describing Lee as "the world's greatest businessman." He adds: "Lee Kuan Yew is the greatest businessman, because he efficiently managed the Republic of Singapore like a successful giant corporation." Lee is an exceptional Asian leader who personifies excellent management, integrity and discipline.
Even John Chambers, boss of global giant Cisco Systems, says: "There are two equalizers in life: the Internet and education. Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew is a world leader who understands this and is using the power of the Internet to position Singapore for survival and success in the Internet economy."
Billionaire media tycoon Rupert Murdoch of News Corp. says, "More than 40 years ago, Lee Kuan Yew transformed what was a poor, decrepit colony into a shining, rich and modern metropolis ?all the time surrounded by hostile powers. With his brilliant, incisive intellect, he is one of the world's most outspoken and respected statesmen."
Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher says: "In office, I read and analyzed his every speech. He had a way of penetrating the fog of propaganda and expressing with unique clarity the issues of our times and the way we tackle them. He was never wrong." Success In Stamping Out Corruption
One of the remarkable successes of Lee Kuan Yew's management of Singapore is his making his nation the least corrupt in Asia, by institutionalizing "clean, no-money elections" and recruiting the best people into government. He says: "They must be paid a wage commensurate with what men of their ability and integrity are earning for managing a big corporation or successful legal or other professional practice. They have to manage a big corporation or successful legal or other professional practice. They have to manage a Singapore economy that yielded an annual growth rate of eight to nine percent in the last two decades, giving its citizens a per capita income that the World Bank rated in 1995 as ninth highest in the world." He debunked what Western liberals claimed about a free unfettered press exposing corruption, pointing out that the freewheeling press of India, the Philippines, Thailand, South Korea and Japan have not stopped pervasive corruption.
One way Lee Kuan Yew cleaned up Singapore was by shaming corrupt officials. In fact, one of his cabinet ministers took his own life due to "loss of face" from corruption charges. "We had established a climate of opinion which looked upon corruption in public office as a threat to society." Lee laments that in much of Asia, corruption has become a way of life for government officials. He said: "The higher they are, the bigger their homes and more numerous their wives or mistresses, all bedecked in jewelry appropriate to the power and position of their men." Another method Lee used to stamp out corruption ?in 1960, his government allowed the courts to treat proof that an accused was living beyond his means or had property his income could not explain as corroborating evidence that the accused had accepted or obtained a bribe," Lee explains. Surviving Malaysian Expulsion, Accounts Of World Leaders
On a recent visit to Singapore, I called the office of Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew who was then in America. I had requested the statesman to autograph my copy of his latest 778-page memoir entitled From Third Word to First, The Singapore Story: 1965-2000. His secretary explained that Lee's autograph is worth 10,000 Singapore dollars for each signed book, and that the proceeds would be donated to charities. Even in such a seemingly minor detail as the cost of an autographed book, Lee had a specific plan which reflected his pragmatic business-like ways, his efficiency and his public service.
The memoir is an eloquent chronicle of Lee Kuan Yew's extensive experiences in statecraft, politics and international diplomacy. In 1965, when the Muslim majority Malaysia expelled Singapore and forced it to exist as a city-state with no natural resources or army, few people gave it much chance of survival. The world has many tiny states which have languished in obscurity, with even resource-rich small stakes like Nauru mired in problems. In 1965, the Sydney Morning Herald said: "An independent Singapore was not regarded as viable three years ago. Nothing in the current situation suggests that it is more viable today." The Sunday Times of Britain said in 1965 also predicted the eventual collapse of Singapore without British aid. Today, after decades of good governance and struggle, Singapore is a thriving nation with the world's fourth highest per capita income.
In this latest book, Lee fearlessly expresses his ideas, seeking "to be correct, not politically correct." He is unapologetic for his aggressive responses to his political opponents, his often unorthodox views on Western-style democratic systems, the Western concepts of human rights. Lee also recounts his impressions of nations, leaders and historic events as diverse as Indonesia from Suharto to President Wahid, Thailand, the Sultan of Brunei, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, British leaders, Japan, America to Taiwan, Hong Kong and others. He advised Wahid: "I said if he expected his ministers to be honest, they had to be paid so that they could live up to their status without corruption." In acerbic Lee Kuan Yew style, he describes Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, China's poetry-quoting Jiang Zemin, the late Mao Zedong (whom he likened to first Chinese emperor Qinshihuang), the incorruptible Zhu Rongji to the bold reformer Deng Xiaoping (whom he remembers as "a five-footer but a giant among men"). Impressions Of Marcos, Cory And Philippine Problems
Among the most interesting parts of the book were Lee Kuan Yew's references to the Philippines and his sadness that our talented nation could suffer so many socio-political and economic troubles. An anecdote recounts the 1985 official trip to Washington, DC where State Secretary George Shultz asked Lee to convince President Ronald Reagan that his old friend Ferdinand Marcos was then the problem of the Philippines, not the solution. During the EDSA uprising the following year 1986, when the US government asked Lee's opinions, he said America should not accept a fraudulent election, and put pressure on Marcos to call new elections. In those days, Lee feared a prolonged crisis might cause bloodshed and chaos, he worried that Marcos might fight it out if he had no place to go, so he invited Marcos to take political asylum in Singapore. Instead of accepting Lee's offer, Marcos accepted Reagan's offer of asylum in Hawaii, where he later encountered many lawsuits. When Marcos sent a message to Lee wanting to flee to Singapore, it was already too late and President Aquino objected.
Lee Kuan Yew is blunt and honest in his assessments of our leaders. He says that Imelda "had a penchant for luxury and opulence. When they (Marcos and Imelda) visited Singapore... they came in style in two DC-8s, his and hers." On Corazon C. Aquino, Lee says: "I had hopes that this honest, god-fearing woman would help regain confidence for the Philippines and get the country back on track... She was a sincere, devout Catholic." He had the impression that President Aquino believed that democracy would solve the country's economic and social problems. The Aquino government created a Constitution that was once again inspired by the American model. Lee asked the rhetorical question: Is there no incompatibility between the American-type separation of powers with the culture and habits of the Filipino people that had caused so much problems for all past presidents? Lee got the impression from our leaders that there was none.
There are three things which Lee believes have hampered Philippine progress. First, the traditional power elite who have a detached attitude towards the sufferings of the masses, similar to the mestizo hacienderos of other former Spanish colonies in Latin America. Another obstacle to progress is overpopulation due to the Catholic Church opposition to birth control, which aggravates the poverty crisis. A third obstacle to progress is what Lee describes as "a soft, forgiving culture." His example of this is the case of the Marcoses, who had been accused of pillaging the nation for 20 years, but they are now back. Lee is even puzzled that the late General Fabian Ver was given by the Estrada government military honors at his burial.
This Singaporean statesman laments that many political and other troubles have hampered Philippine economic progress. He writes: "This was a pity because they had so many able people, educated in the Philippines and the US. Their workers were English-speaking, at least in Manila. There was no reason why the Philippines should not have been one of the more successful ASEAN countries. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was the most developed, because America had been generous in rehabilitating the country after the war... Some Filipinos write and speak with passion. If they could get their elite to share their sentiments, what could they not have achieved?"
When I asked the nation's top business leaders from John Gokongwei, Jr., Lucio Tan, Enrique Zobel to young tycoon Luis Miguel Aboitiz as to who they admire the most for enlightened leadership, they unanimously mentioned the name of 77-year-old Lee Kuan Yew, founding father of Singapore and now Senior Minister.
Zobel says, "Lee is very straightforward, superhonest and he always knew what he was talking about. Lee Kuan Yew is a great leader whom I admire the most."
Lucio Tan explains: "Lee Kuan Yew has strong political will and selflessness as a leader." In fact, Gokongwei goes a step further, describing Lee as "the world's greatest businessman." He adds: "Lee Kuan Yew is the greatest businessman, because he efficiently managed the Republic of Singapore like a successful giant corporation." Lee is an exceptional Asian leader who personifies excellent management, integrity and discipline.
Even John Chambers, boss of global giant Cisco Systems, says: "There are two equalizers in life: the Internet and education. Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew is a world leader who understands this and is using the power of the Internet to position Singapore for survival and success in the Internet economy."
Billionaire media tycoon Rupert Murdoch of News Corp. says, "More than 40 years ago, Lee Kuan Yew transformed what was a poor, decrepit colony into a shining, rich and modern metropolis ?all the time surrounded by hostile powers. With his brilliant, incisive intellect, he is one of the world's most outspoken and respected statesmen."
Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher says: "In office, I read and analyzed his every speech. He had a way of penetrating the fog of propaganda and expressing with unique clarity the issues of our times and the way we tackle them. He was never wrong." Success In Stamping Out Corruption
One of the remarkable successes of Lee Kuan Yew's management of Singapore is his making his nation the least corrupt in Asia, by institutionalizing "clean, no-money elections" and recruiting the best people into government. He says: "They must be paid a wage commensurate with what men of their ability and integrity are earning for managing a big corporation or successful legal or other professional practice. They have to manage a big corporation or successful legal or other professional practice. They have to manage a Singapore economy that yielded an annual growth rate of eight to nine percent in the last two decades, giving its citizens a per capita income that the World Bank rated in 1995 as ninth highest in the world." He debunked what Western liberals claimed about a free unfettered press exposing corruption, pointing out that the freewheeling press of India, the Philippines, Thailand, South Korea and Japan have not stopped pervasive corruption.
One way Lee Kuan Yew cleaned up Singapore was by shaming corrupt officials. In fact, one of his cabinet ministers took his own life due to "loss of face" from corruption charges. "We had established a climate of opinion which looked upon corruption in public office as a threat to society." Lee laments that in much of Asia, corruption has become a way of life for government officials. He said: "The higher they are, the bigger their homes and more numerous their wives or mistresses, all bedecked in jewelry appropriate to the power and position of their men." Another method Lee used to stamp out corruption ?in 1960, his government allowed the courts to treat proof that an accused was living beyond his means or had property his income could not explain as corroborating evidence that the accused had accepted or obtained a bribe," Lee explains. Surviving Malaysian Expulsion, Accounts Of World Leaders
On a recent visit to Singapore, I called the office of Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew who was then in America. I had requested the statesman to autograph my copy of his latest 778-page memoir entitled From Third Word to First, The Singapore Story: 1965-2000. His secretary explained that Lee's autograph is worth 10,000 Singapore dollars for each signed book, and that the proceeds would be donated to charities. Even in such a seemingly minor detail as the cost of an autographed book, Lee had a specific plan which reflected his pragmatic business-like ways, his efficiency and his public service.
The memoir is an eloquent chronicle of Lee Kuan Yew's extensive experiences in statecraft, politics and international diplomacy. In 1965, when the Muslim majority Malaysia expelled Singapore and forced it to exist as a city-state with no natural resources or army, few people gave it much chance of survival. The world has many tiny states which have languished in obscurity, with even resource-rich small stakes like Nauru mired in problems. In 1965, the Sydney Morning Herald said: "An independent Singapore was not regarded as viable three years ago. Nothing in the current situation suggests that it is more viable today." The Sunday Times of Britain said in 1965 also predicted the eventual collapse of Singapore without British aid. Today, after decades of good governance and struggle, Singapore is a thriving nation with the world's fourth highest per capita income.
In this latest book, Lee fearlessly expresses his ideas, seeking "to be correct, not politically correct." He is unapologetic for his aggressive responses to his political opponents, his often unorthodox views on Western-style democratic systems, the Western concepts of human rights. Lee also recounts his impressions of nations, leaders and historic events as diverse as Indonesia from Suharto to President Wahid, Thailand, the Sultan of Brunei, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, British leaders, Japan, America to Taiwan, Hong Kong and others. He advised Wahid: "I said if he expected his ministers to be honest, they had to be paid so that they could live up to their status without corruption." In acerbic Lee Kuan Yew style, he describes Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, China's poetry-quoting Jiang Zemin, the late Mao Zedong (whom he likened to first Chinese emperor Qinshihuang), the incorruptible Zhu Rongji to the bold reformer Deng Xiaoping (whom he remembers as "a five-footer but a giant among men"). Impressions Of Marcos, Cory And Philippine Problems
Among the most interesting parts of the book were Lee Kuan Yew's references to the Philippines and his sadness that our talented nation could suffer so many socio-political and economic troubles. An anecdote recounts the 1985 official trip to Washington, DC where State Secretary George Shultz asked Lee to convince President Ronald Reagan that his old friend Ferdinand Marcos was then the problem of the Philippines, not the solution. During the EDSA uprising the following year 1986, when the US government asked Lee's opinions, he said America should not accept a fraudulent election, and put pressure on Marcos to call new elections. In those days, Lee feared a prolonged crisis might cause bloodshed and chaos, he worried that Marcos might fight it out if he had no place to go, so he invited Marcos to take political asylum in Singapore. Instead of accepting Lee's offer, Marcos accepted Reagan's offer of asylum in Hawaii, where he later encountered many lawsuits. When Marcos sent a message to Lee wanting to flee to Singapore, it was already too late and President Aquino objected.
Lee Kuan Yew is blunt and honest in his assessments of our leaders. He says that Imelda "had a penchant for luxury and opulence. When they (Marcos and Imelda) visited Singapore... they came in style in two DC-8s, his and hers." On Corazon C. Aquino, Lee says: "I had hopes that this honest, god-fearing woman would help regain confidence for the Philippines and get the country back on track... She was a sincere, devout Catholic." He had the impression that President Aquino believed that democracy would solve the country's economic and social problems. The Aquino government created a Constitution that was once again inspired by the American model. Lee asked the rhetorical question: Is there no incompatibility between the American-type separation of powers with the culture and habits of the Filipino people that had caused so much problems for all past presidents? Lee got the impression from our leaders that there was none.
There are three things which Lee believes have hampered Philippine progress. First, the traditional power elite who have a detached attitude towards the sufferings of the masses, similar to the mestizo hacienderos of other former Spanish colonies in Latin America. Another obstacle to progress is overpopulation due to the Catholic Church opposition to birth control, which aggravates the poverty crisis. A third obstacle to progress is what Lee describes as "a soft, forgiving culture." His example of this is the case of the Marcoses, who had been accused of pillaging the nation for 20 years, but they are now back. Lee is even puzzled that the late General Fabian Ver was given by the Estrada government military honors at his burial.
This Singaporean statesman laments that many political and other troubles have hampered Philippine economic progress. He writes: "This was a pity because they had so many able people, educated in the Philippines and the US. Their workers were English-speaking, at least in Manila. There was no reason why the Philippines should not have been one of the more successful ASEAN countries. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was the most developed, because America had been generous in rehabilitating the country after the war... Some Filipinos write and speak with passion. If they could get their elite to share their sentiments, what could they not have achieved?"
Sunday, September 23, 2007
The Singapore Story 1998 Times Asia - Part 5
ASIA
SEPTEMBER 21, 1998 VOL. 152 NO. 11
One day, after a tutorial on constitutional law [at the London School of Economics], I approached the lecturer, Glanville L. Williams. I had seen from the lse calendar that he was from St. John's College, Cambridge, where he had taken a Ph.D. I asked him about Cambridge and the life there. He said it was a small town whose existence centered on the university, very different from London. The pace of life was more leisurely. Students and dons moved around on bicycles. It sounded attractive, and I decided to visit it.
I went up in late November 1946 and met a Raffles College student, Cecil Wong, who had got into Fitzwilliam House, a non-collegiate body for poorer students where the fees were much lower. Cecil took me to see the censor of Fitzwilliam, W.S. Thatcher, who was the equivalent of the master of a college. He took a liking to me and offered to take me in that same academic year when the Lent term started in early January 1947.
Cambridge was a great relief after London. In the immediate post-war years it was a blissfully quiet provincial market town. There was little traffic--many bicycles, but only a few private cars and some buses and trucks. Most of the dons, the fellows of colleges, tutors, lecturers and professors, and even the censor of Fitzwilliam rode bicycles. I bought myself a second-hand bicycle for £8 and cycled everywhere, even in the rain.
For exercise, I decided to join the Boat Club. I had first to practice, not by going out on the boat, but by "tubbing" on the river bank: sitting in a stationary tub and being instructed how to hold the oar, how to stretch myself and pull it back, where to put my feet. After two practices a week for three weeks, I made it to a boat. On the afternoon of my second scheduled outing , a snowstorm broke and I assumed the practice was cancelled. I was severely reproached. Seven others and the cox had turned up but could not take the rowing eight out because I was missing. I decided that the English were mad and left the Boat Club.
At the end of June, Choo wrote that she had taken a Class I diploma. Toward the end of July came the best news of all, a cable from Choo that she had been awarded the Queen's scholarship [for study in England]. But the Colonial Office could find no place for her in any university for the academic year beginning October 1947. She would have to wait until 1948. Stirred to action, I puzzled over how to get her into Cambridge.
I wrote and asked to see Miss Butler, the mistress of Girton [a Cambridge women's college]. She was willing to see me, and I turned up at the appointed time. I told her that my friend, Miss Kwa, was a very bright girl, brighter than I was, and that she had come top of the list, ahead of me in Raffles College on many occasions. Miss Butler was amused at this young Chinese boy talking in glowing terms of his lady friend being a better student than he was, and intrigued by the idea that perhaps the girl was exceptional. That same day I cabled Choo: "Girton accepts. Official correspondence following. Get cracking."
She boarded a troopship in Singapore in late August. I was waiting impatiently at the docks when she finally arrived in Liverpool in early October and was overjoyed to see her after a long year of separation. We went off at once to London by train, and after five days there we went on to Cambridge.
After a few weeks of hectic adjustments, she told me she found me a changed man. I was no longer the cheerful, optimistic go-getter, the anything-can-be-done fellow, bubbling with joie de vivre. I appeared to have become deeply anti-British, particularly of the colonial regime in Malaya and Singapore, which I was determined to end. One year in London and Cambridge had crystallized in me changes that had started with the Japanese capture of Singapore in 1942. I had now seen the British in their own country, and I questioned their ability to govern these territories for the good of the locals.
Meanwhile, Choo and I discussed our life in Britain with an eye to the future. We decided that it would be best if we got married quietly in December during the Christmas vacation and kept it a secret. Choo's parents would have been most upset had they been asked; Girton College might not have approved; and the Queen's scholarship authorities might have raised difficulties. We were already mature, in our mid-20s, and we had made up our minds. Unaware of our true motive, a friend recommended an inn at Stratford-on-Avon as a place to spend Christmas and to visit the renowned Shakespeare theater. Once we arrived, we notified the local Registrar of Marriages of our intention, and after two weeks of residence were duly married. On the way to Stratford-on-Avon we had stopped in London, where I bought Choo a platinum wedding ring from a jeweler in Regent Street. But when we went back to Cambridge, she wore the ring on a chain around her neck.
We took our final law examinations in May 1949, and when the results came out in June, I was satisfied. I had made a First and won the only star for Distinction on the final Law Tripos II honors list. Choo also made a First, and we cabled the good news to our parents. It was a good cachet for the next stage of my life.
I was happy at the prospect of going home, but looked back on my four years in England with satisfaction and some pleasure. I had seen a Britain scarred by war, yet whose people were not defeatist about the losses they had suffered, nor arrogant about the victory they had scored. Every bomb site in the City of London was neatly tended, with bricks and rubble piled to one side, and often flowers and shrubs planted to soften the ruins. It was part of their understated pride and discipline.
Choo and I sailed home on a Dutch liner, the Willem Ruys. It was the best ship plying between Southampton and Singapore--new, air-conditioned, with excellent Indonesian and Dutch food, and wonderful service provided by literally hundreds of djongos, or Javanese waiters, dressed in native costume. It was a farewell fling. We traveled first class in adjoining cabins, and had a wonderful time--except when I got seasick in the Bay of Biscay and again on the Arabian Sea, and was reduced to a diet of dry toast and dried beef. Otherwise, it was a memorable journey.
We reached Singapore on 1 August. It was good to be home. I knew I was entering a different phase of my life. I was quickly reminded of its hazards. Although we were traveling first class, the immigration officer, a Mr. Fox who came on board wearing a natty bow tie, made sure that I knew my place. He kept Choo and me waiting to the very last. Then he looked through Choo's passport and mine and said enigmatically, "I suppose we will hear more about you, Mr. Lee." I glared at him and ignored his remark. He intended to intimidate, and I was not going to be intimidated.
While Mr. Fox kept me waiting in the first class lounge of the Willem Ruys, I popped out on deck to wave to my family--Father, Mother, Fred, Monica and Suan--on the quay with some friends. Choo's family was also waiting for her, but when we disembarked, we parted company. She went back with her parents to Pasir Panjang, I to Oxley Road. We parted as friends, not giving away the secret of our marriage in Britain.
Excerpted from The Singapore Story by Lee Kuan Yew, published by Times Editions, Singapore (680 pages). 1998 Lee Kuan Yew
SEPTEMBER 21, 1998 VOL. 152 NO. 11
One day, after a tutorial on constitutional law [at the London School of Economics], I approached the lecturer, Glanville L. Williams. I had seen from the lse calendar that he was from St. John's College, Cambridge, where he had taken a Ph.D. I asked him about Cambridge and the life there. He said it was a small town whose existence centered on the university, very different from London. The pace of life was more leisurely. Students and dons moved around on bicycles. It sounded attractive, and I decided to visit it.
I went up in late November 1946 and met a Raffles College student, Cecil Wong, who had got into Fitzwilliam House, a non-collegiate body for poorer students where the fees were much lower. Cecil took me to see the censor of Fitzwilliam, W.S. Thatcher, who was the equivalent of the master of a college. He took a liking to me and offered to take me in that same academic year when the Lent term started in early January 1947.
Cambridge was a great relief after London. In the immediate post-war years it was a blissfully quiet provincial market town. There was little traffic--many bicycles, but only a few private cars and some buses and trucks. Most of the dons, the fellows of colleges, tutors, lecturers and professors, and even the censor of Fitzwilliam rode bicycles. I bought myself a second-hand bicycle for £8 and cycled everywhere, even in the rain.
For exercise, I decided to join the Boat Club. I had first to practice, not by going out on the boat, but by "tubbing" on the river bank: sitting in a stationary tub and being instructed how to hold the oar, how to stretch myself and pull it back, where to put my feet. After two practices a week for three weeks, I made it to a boat. On the afternoon of my second scheduled outing , a snowstorm broke and I assumed the practice was cancelled. I was severely reproached. Seven others and the cox had turned up but could not take the rowing eight out because I was missing. I decided that the English were mad and left the Boat Club.
At the end of June, Choo wrote that she had taken a Class I diploma. Toward the end of July came the best news of all, a cable from Choo that she had been awarded the Queen's scholarship [for study in England]. But the Colonial Office could find no place for her in any university for the academic year beginning October 1947. She would have to wait until 1948. Stirred to action, I puzzled over how to get her into Cambridge.
I wrote and asked to see Miss Butler, the mistress of Girton [a Cambridge women's college]. She was willing to see me, and I turned up at the appointed time. I told her that my friend, Miss Kwa, was a very bright girl, brighter than I was, and that she had come top of the list, ahead of me in Raffles College on many occasions. Miss Butler was amused at this young Chinese boy talking in glowing terms of his lady friend being a better student than he was, and intrigued by the idea that perhaps the girl was exceptional. That same day I cabled Choo: "Girton accepts. Official correspondence following. Get cracking."
She boarded a troopship in Singapore in late August. I was waiting impatiently at the docks when she finally arrived in Liverpool in early October and was overjoyed to see her after a long year of separation. We went off at once to London by train, and after five days there we went on to Cambridge.
After a few weeks of hectic adjustments, she told me she found me a changed man. I was no longer the cheerful, optimistic go-getter, the anything-can-be-done fellow, bubbling with joie de vivre. I appeared to have become deeply anti-British, particularly of the colonial regime in Malaya and Singapore, which I was determined to end. One year in London and Cambridge had crystallized in me changes that had started with the Japanese capture of Singapore in 1942. I had now seen the British in their own country, and I questioned their ability to govern these territories for the good of the locals.
Meanwhile, Choo and I discussed our life in Britain with an eye to the future. We decided that it would be best if we got married quietly in December during the Christmas vacation and kept it a secret. Choo's parents would have been most upset had they been asked; Girton College might not have approved; and the Queen's scholarship authorities might have raised difficulties. We were already mature, in our mid-20s, and we had made up our minds. Unaware of our true motive, a friend recommended an inn at Stratford-on-Avon as a place to spend Christmas and to visit the renowned Shakespeare theater. Once we arrived, we notified the local Registrar of Marriages of our intention, and after two weeks of residence were duly married. On the way to Stratford-on-Avon we had stopped in London, where I bought Choo a platinum wedding ring from a jeweler in Regent Street. But when we went back to Cambridge, she wore the ring on a chain around her neck.
We took our final law examinations in May 1949, and when the results came out in June, I was satisfied. I had made a First and won the only star for Distinction on the final Law Tripos II honors list. Choo also made a First, and we cabled the good news to our parents. It was a good cachet for the next stage of my life.
I was happy at the prospect of going home, but looked back on my four years in England with satisfaction and some pleasure. I had seen a Britain scarred by war, yet whose people were not defeatist about the losses they had suffered, nor arrogant about the victory they had scored. Every bomb site in the City of London was neatly tended, with bricks and rubble piled to one side, and often flowers and shrubs planted to soften the ruins. It was part of their understated pride and discipline.
Choo and I sailed home on a Dutch liner, the Willem Ruys. It was the best ship plying between Southampton and Singapore--new, air-conditioned, with excellent Indonesian and Dutch food, and wonderful service provided by literally hundreds of djongos, or Javanese waiters, dressed in native costume. It was a farewell fling. We traveled first class in adjoining cabins, and had a wonderful time--except when I got seasick in the Bay of Biscay and again on the Arabian Sea, and was reduced to a diet of dry toast and dried beef. Otherwise, it was a memorable journey.
We reached Singapore on 1 August. It was good to be home. I knew I was entering a different phase of my life. I was quickly reminded of its hazards. Although we were traveling first class, the immigration officer, a Mr. Fox who came on board wearing a natty bow tie, made sure that I knew my place. He kept Choo and me waiting to the very last. Then he looked through Choo's passport and mine and said enigmatically, "I suppose we will hear more about you, Mr. Lee." I glared at him and ignored his remark. He intended to intimidate, and I was not going to be intimidated.
While Mr. Fox kept me waiting in the first class lounge of the Willem Ruys, I popped out on deck to wave to my family--Father, Mother, Fred, Monica and Suan--on the quay with some friends. Choo's family was also waiting for her, but when we disembarked, we parted company. She went back with her parents to Pasir Panjang, I to Oxley Road. We parted as friends, not giving away the secret of our marriage in Britain.
Excerpted from The Singapore Story by Lee Kuan Yew, published by Times Editions, Singapore (680 pages). 1998 Lee Kuan Yew
The Singapore Story 1998 Times Asia - Part 4
ASIA
SEPTEMBER 21, 1998 VOL. 152 NO. 11
On 15 August, the Japanese Emperor broadcast to his subjects and announced the surrender. We heard this almost immediately, because people had become bold and many were listening to Allied radio broadcasts, especially the BBC. For three weeks after the Emperor's broadcast, there were no signs of the British arriving. It was an unnatural situation. Unlike the British, the Japanese troops had not been defeated and demoralized in battle. They were despondent and confused, but still very much in charge and still had the power to hurt us. When locals who could not contain their elation celebrated their defeat, Japanese soldiers passing by would gate-crash their parties and slap the merrymakers. The Japanese army expected to be called to account by the British and punished for its misdeeds, but it was also resentful and apprehensive that the population would turn on its officers when they arrived. Shots were reported to have been heard from Japanese officer's messes, for several could not accept the surrender and preferred to commit hara-kiri, either Japanese-style with a dagger or, less painfully, with a revolver. But the locals were fortunate. The Japanese did not kill civilians, as far as I know, nor were there ugly or brutal incidents. They left the population alone until the British took over. Their military discipline held.
The three-and-a-half years of Japanese occupation were the most important of my life. They gave me vivid insights into the behavior of human beings and human societies. My appreciation of governments, my understanding of power as the vehicle for revolutionary change, would not have been gained without this experience. The Japanese demanded total obedience and got it from nearly all. They were hated by almost everyone, but everyone knew their power to do harm and so everyone adjusted.
Punishment was so severe that crime was very rare. People could leave their front doors open at night. Every household had a head, and every group of 10 households had its head, and they were supposed to patrol their area from dusk till sunrise. But it was a mere formality. They carried only sticks and there were no offenses to report--the penalties were too heavy. As a result I have never believed those who advocate a soft approach to crime and punishment, claiming that punishment does not reduce crime.
I had not yet read Mao's dictum that "power grows out of the barrel of a gun," but I knew that Japanese brutality, Japanese guns, Japanese bayonets and swords, and Japanese terror and torture settled the argument as to who was in charge, and could make people change their behavior, even their loyalties. The Japanese not only demanded and got their obedience; they forced them to adjust to a long-term prospect of Japanese rule, so that they had their children educated to fit the new system, its language, its habits and its values, in order to be useful and make a living.
In the confused interregnum between the Japanese surrender on 15 August 1945 and the establishment of effective British control of the island toward the end of September, anti-Japanese groups took the law into their own hands. They lynched, murdered, tortured or beat up informers, torturers, tormentors and accomplices--or suspected accomplices--of the Japanese. I remember the thudding of feet as people were chased in broad daylight down the back lanes around our two homes in Victoria Street and China Building. I heard the sound of blows and screams as they were knifed and killed.
On Wednesday, 12 September 1945, at about 10:30 in the morning, I walked to City Hall, where the surrender ceremony would take place. I saw a group of seven high-ranking Japanese officers arrive from High Street, accompanied by British military police wearing their red caps and armbands. The crowd hooted, whistled and jeered but the Japanese were impassive and dignified, looking straight ahead. Some 45 minutes later, Lord Louis Mountbatten, the British commander-in-chief, South East Asia Command, appeared, wearing his white naval uniform. He raised his naval cap high with his right hand and gave three cheers to the troops that formed the cordon in front of the steps. He loved uniforms, parades and ceremonies.
These were moments of great exhilaration. The Japanese occupation nightmare was over and people thought the good times were about to return. The signs were favorable. The troops were generous with their cigarettes--Players Navy Cut in paper packets, unobtainable for the last three years. Good quality beer, Johnnie Walker whisky and Gordon's dry gin found their way into the market, and we believed that soon there would be plenty of rice, fruit, vegetables, meat and canned foods.
By early 1946, however, people realized that there was to be no return to the old peaceful, stable, free-and-easy Singapore. The city was packed with troops in uniform. They filled the newly opened cafes, bars and cabarets. The pre-war colonial business houses could not restart immediately, for their British employees had died or were recuperating from internment. Ship arrivals were infrequent, and goods were scarce in Britain itself. It looked as if would be many years before the pre-war flow of commodities resumed. It was a world in turmoil where the hucksters flourished. Much of the day-to-day business was still done on the black--now the free--market.
All this while, I had also been preoccupied over what I was to do about my uncompleted education and my growing attachment to Choo. I discussed the matter with my mother. We decided that, with her savings and jewelry, my earnings from the black market and my contract work, the family could pay for my law studies in Britain.
On New Year's Eve, I took Choo to a party for young people at Mandalay Villa in Amber Road. Just before the party broke up, I led her out into the garden facing the sea. I told her that I no longer planned to return to Raffles College but would go to England to read law. I asked her whether she would wait for me until I came back three years later after being called to the Bar. Choo asked if I knew she was two-and-a-half years older than I was. I said I knew and had considered this carefully. I was mature for my age, and most of my friends were older than me anyway. Moreover, I wanted someone my equal, not someone who was not really grown up and needed looking after, and I was not likely to find another girl who was my equal and who shared my interests. She said she would wait. We did not tell my parents. It would have been too difficult to get them to agree to such a long commitment.
The Britannic was a 65,000-ton cunard liner that sailed across the Atlantic from Liverpool to New York before the war. No ship as large or as fast did the Southampton to Singapore run. It was packed with troops on their way home for demobilization. There were some 40 Asiatics on board, most of them Chinese, sleeping twice as many to a cabin as would have been normal for paying passengers. I was glad to be one of them.
I had no law textbooks with me to prepare myself for my studies, so I spent my time playing poker with some of the Hong Kong students. It was a relatively innocent pastime. I was shocked to see the unabashed promiscuity of some 40 or 50 servicewomen, non-commissioned officers and other ranks, who flirted with the officers. One night, a Hong Kong student, his eyes popping out of his head, told me they were unashamedly making love on the lifeboat deck. I was curious and went up to see for myself. What a sight it was! The deck was a hive of activity, with couples locked in passionate embraces scattered all over it. Some were a little less indelicate. They untied the canvas covers of the lifeboats to get inside them for a little privacy. But to see dozens of men and women openly engaging in sex contrasted sharply with my memory of the Japanese soldiers queuing up outside the "comfort house" at Cairnhill Road. "French letters," now called condoms, littered the deck.
[In London] I was suffering from culture shock before the phrase was coined. The climate, the clothes, the food, the people, the habits, the manners, the streets, the geography, the travel arrangements--everything was different. I was totally unprepared except for the English language, a smattering of English literature and previous interaction with British colonials.
For a large bedsitter, I paid the princely sum of £6 a week, a big amount for someone who had stopped earning. Fortunately, it included breakfast. There was a gas fire and a retractable gas ring in the room, and I had to put shillings into a meter to light the fire and cook for myself. I was desperately unhappy about food. It was rationed, and the restaurants where I could eat without coupons were expensive. I had disastrous experiences with boiling milk, which spilt over, and frying bacon and steaks that filled the room with powerful smells. The odors refused to go away for hours even though, in spite of the cold, I opened the sash window and the door to create a through draft. They clung to the bedclothes and the curtains. It was awful.
I was thoroughly unhappy over the little things I had always taken for granted in Singapore. My family provided everything I needed. My shoes were polished, my clothes were washed and ironed, my food was prepared. All I had to do was to express my preferences. Now I had to do everything for myself. It was a physically exhausting life, moreover, with much time spent on the move from place to place. I was fatigued from walking, and traveling on buses and tubes left me without the energy for quiet study and contemplation.
SEPTEMBER 21, 1998 VOL. 152 NO. 11
On 15 August, the Japanese Emperor broadcast to his subjects and announced the surrender. We heard this almost immediately, because people had become bold and many were listening to Allied radio broadcasts, especially the BBC. For three weeks after the Emperor's broadcast, there were no signs of the British arriving. It was an unnatural situation. Unlike the British, the Japanese troops had not been defeated and demoralized in battle. They were despondent and confused, but still very much in charge and still had the power to hurt us. When locals who could not contain their elation celebrated their defeat, Japanese soldiers passing by would gate-crash their parties and slap the merrymakers. The Japanese army expected to be called to account by the British and punished for its misdeeds, but it was also resentful and apprehensive that the population would turn on its officers when they arrived. Shots were reported to have been heard from Japanese officer's messes, for several could not accept the surrender and preferred to commit hara-kiri, either Japanese-style with a dagger or, less painfully, with a revolver. But the locals were fortunate. The Japanese did not kill civilians, as far as I know, nor were there ugly or brutal incidents. They left the population alone until the British took over. Their military discipline held.
The three-and-a-half years of Japanese occupation were the most important of my life. They gave me vivid insights into the behavior of human beings and human societies. My appreciation of governments, my understanding of power as the vehicle for revolutionary change, would not have been gained without this experience. The Japanese demanded total obedience and got it from nearly all. They were hated by almost everyone, but everyone knew their power to do harm and so everyone adjusted.
Punishment was so severe that crime was very rare. People could leave their front doors open at night. Every household had a head, and every group of 10 households had its head, and they were supposed to patrol their area from dusk till sunrise. But it was a mere formality. They carried only sticks and there were no offenses to report--the penalties were too heavy. As a result I have never believed those who advocate a soft approach to crime and punishment, claiming that punishment does not reduce crime.
I had not yet read Mao's dictum that "power grows out of the barrel of a gun," but I knew that Japanese brutality, Japanese guns, Japanese bayonets and swords, and Japanese terror and torture settled the argument as to who was in charge, and could make people change their behavior, even their loyalties. The Japanese not only demanded and got their obedience; they forced them to adjust to a long-term prospect of Japanese rule, so that they had their children educated to fit the new system, its language, its habits and its values, in order to be useful and make a living.
In the confused interregnum between the Japanese surrender on 15 August 1945 and the establishment of effective British control of the island toward the end of September, anti-Japanese groups took the law into their own hands. They lynched, murdered, tortured or beat up informers, torturers, tormentors and accomplices--or suspected accomplices--of the Japanese. I remember the thudding of feet as people were chased in broad daylight down the back lanes around our two homes in Victoria Street and China Building. I heard the sound of blows and screams as they were knifed and killed.
On Wednesday, 12 September 1945, at about 10:30 in the morning, I walked to City Hall, where the surrender ceremony would take place. I saw a group of seven high-ranking Japanese officers arrive from High Street, accompanied by British military police wearing their red caps and armbands. The crowd hooted, whistled and jeered but the Japanese were impassive and dignified, looking straight ahead. Some 45 minutes later, Lord Louis Mountbatten, the British commander-in-chief, South East Asia Command, appeared, wearing his white naval uniform. He raised his naval cap high with his right hand and gave three cheers to the troops that formed the cordon in front of the steps. He loved uniforms, parades and ceremonies.
These were moments of great exhilaration. The Japanese occupation nightmare was over and people thought the good times were about to return. The signs were favorable. The troops were generous with their cigarettes--Players Navy Cut in paper packets, unobtainable for the last three years. Good quality beer, Johnnie Walker whisky and Gordon's dry gin found their way into the market, and we believed that soon there would be plenty of rice, fruit, vegetables, meat and canned foods.
By early 1946, however, people realized that there was to be no return to the old peaceful, stable, free-and-easy Singapore. The city was packed with troops in uniform. They filled the newly opened cafes, bars and cabarets. The pre-war colonial business houses could not restart immediately, for their British employees had died or were recuperating from internment. Ship arrivals were infrequent, and goods were scarce in Britain itself. It looked as if would be many years before the pre-war flow of commodities resumed. It was a world in turmoil where the hucksters flourished. Much of the day-to-day business was still done on the black--now the free--market.
All this while, I had also been preoccupied over what I was to do about my uncompleted education and my growing attachment to Choo. I discussed the matter with my mother. We decided that, with her savings and jewelry, my earnings from the black market and my contract work, the family could pay for my law studies in Britain.
On New Year's Eve, I took Choo to a party for young people at Mandalay Villa in Amber Road. Just before the party broke up, I led her out into the garden facing the sea. I told her that I no longer planned to return to Raffles College but would go to England to read law. I asked her whether she would wait for me until I came back three years later after being called to the Bar. Choo asked if I knew she was two-and-a-half years older than I was. I said I knew and had considered this carefully. I was mature for my age, and most of my friends were older than me anyway. Moreover, I wanted someone my equal, not someone who was not really grown up and needed looking after, and I was not likely to find another girl who was my equal and who shared my interests. She said she would wait. We did not tell my parents. It would have been too difficult to get them to agree to such a long commitment.
The Britannic was a 65,000-ton cunard liner that sailed across the Atlantic from Liverpool to New York before the war. No ship as large or as fast did the Southampton to Singapore run. It was packed with troops on their way home for demobilization. There were some 40 Asiatics on board, most of them Chinese, sleeping twice as many to a cabin as would have been normal for paying passengers. I was glad to be one of them.
I had no law textbooks with me to prepare myself for my studies, so I spent my time playing poker with some of the Hong Kong students. It was a relatively innocent pastime. I was shocked to see the unabashed promiscuity of some 40 or 50 servicewomen, non-commissioned officers and other ranks, who flirted with the officers. One night, a Hong Kong student, his eyes popping out of his head, told me they were unashamedly making love on the lifeboat deck. I was curious and went up to see for myself. What a sight it was! The deck was a hive of activity, with couples locked in passionate embraces scattered all over it. Some were a little less indelicate. They untied the canvas covers of the lifeboats to get inside them for a little privacy. But to see dozens of men and women openly engaging in sex contrasted sharply with my memory of the Japanese soldiers queuing up outside the "comfort house" at Cairnhill Road. "French letters," now called condoms, littered the deck.
[In London] I was suffering from culture shock before the phrase was coined. The climate, the clothes, the food, the people, the habits, the manners, the streets, the geography, the travel arrangements--everything was different. I was totally unprepared except for the English language, a smattering of English literature and previous interaction with British colonials.
For a large bedsitter, I paid the princely sum of £6 a week, a big amount for someone who had stopped earning. Fortunately, it included breakfast. There was a gas fire and a retractable gas ring in the room, and I had to put shillings into a meter to light the fire and cook for myself. I was desperately unhappy about food. It was rationed, and the restaurants where I could eat without coupons were expensive. I had disastrous experiences with boiling milk, which spilt over, and frying bacon and steaks that filled the room with powerful smells. The odors refused to go away for hours even though, in spite of the cold, I opened the sash window and the door to create a through draft. They clung to the bedclothes and the curtains. It was awful.
I was thoroughly unhappy over the little things I had always taken for granted in Singapore. My family provided everything I needed. My shoes were polished, my clothes were washed and ironed, my food was prepared. All I had to do was to express my preferences. Now I had to do everything for myself. It was a physically exhausting life, moreover, with much time spent on the move from place to place. I was fatigued from walking, and traveling on buses and tubes left me without the energy for quiet study and contemplation.
The Singapore Story 1998 Times Asia - Part 3
ASIA
SEPTEMBER 21, 1998 VOL. 152 NO. 11
Day-to-day life had to go on under the Japanese occupation. At first everybody felt lost. My father had no work, I had no college, my three brothers and sister had no school. There was little social activity. We felt danger all around us. Knowing somebody in authority, whether a Japanese or a Taiwanese interpreter with links to the Japanese, was very important and could be a life-saver. His note with his signature and seal on it certified that you were a decent citizen and that he vouched for your good character. This was supposed to be valuable when you were stopped and checked by sentries. But it was safest to stay at home and avoid contact and conflict with authority.
One of my first outings was into town. I walked two miles to the second-hand bookshops in Bras Basah Road that specialized in school textbooks. On the way, I saw a crowd near the main entrance to Cathay cinema. Joining the crowd, I saw the head of a Chinese man placed on a small board stuck on a pole, on the side of which was a notice in Chinese characters. The man had been beheaded because he had been caught looting, and anybody who disobeyed the law would be dealt with in the same way.
Late in 1943 I read an advertisement in the Syonan Shimbun inserted by the Japanese information or propaganda department called the Hodobu, which was located in Cathay Building. It wanted English-language editors. I turned up to be interviewed by an American-born Japanese, George Takemura, a tall, lean, fair-skinned man who spoke English with an American accent.
My job was to run through the cables of Allied news agencies: Reuters, UP, AP, Central News Agency of China and TASS. These cables, sent out in Morse code, had been intercepted by Malay radio operators. Radio signals were not clear in the later afternoons and early evenings, and because reception was poor, many words were garbled or lost. I had to decipher them and fill in the missing bits, guided by the context, as in a word puzzle. The cables then had to be collated under the various battle fronts and sent from the top floor of Cathay Building to the floor below, where they would be revamped for broadcasting.
It was a strange life. My work would begin at 7 p.m. Tokyo time, which was 5:30 p.m. Singapore time and still daylight. Radio reception was poor until about midnight Tokyo time. So the first shift from 7 p.m. to 12 a.m. was hard work, but one got home early to sleep. The period 12 a.m. to 9 am was broken into two shifts, with a two- to three-hour break in between. Reception was better, and there was less puzzling over missing words or parts of words, but it meant sleeping at awkward hours.
From the end of 1943, food became scarcer and scarcer. Reduced to eating old, moldy, worm-eaten stocks mixed with Malayan-grown rice, we had to find substitutes. My mother, like many others, stretched what little we could get with maize and millet and strange vegetables we would not normally have touched, like young shoots of sweet potato and tapioca plants cooked in coconut milk. They could be quite palatable, but they had bulk without much nutrition. It was amazing how hungry my brothers and I became one hour after each meal. Meat was a luxury. There was little beef or mutton. Pork was easier to buy and we could raise chickens ourselves, but there were no leftovers to feed them.
Meanwhile, inflation had been increasing month by month, and by mid-1944 it was no longer possible to live on my salary. But there were better and easier pickings to be had as a broker on the black market. The brokers operated mainly in High Street or Chulia Street, off Raffles Place. I joined them in 1944, and learned how to hoard items, especially small pieces of jewelry going cheap. I would buy them, hold them for a few weeks, and then sell them as prices inevitably went up. It was easy to make money if one had the right connections.
The key to survival was improvisation. One business I started changed the course of my life. While brokering on the black market, I met Yong Nyuk Lin, a Raffles College science graduate. I had been asked by Basrai Brothers, Indian stationers in Chulia Street, if I could get them stationery gum, which was in short supply--there was little left from pre-war stock. Could I perhaps make some myself? I asked Nyuk Lin whether he could make gum. He said he could, using tapioca flour and carbolic acid. So I financed his experiments.
Nyuk Lin's method was to take a big cylindrical pot, fill it with tapioca flour, and place the pot in a big wok of boiling oil. He used palm oil, which was freely available and cheap. He kept the oil at a constant high temperature to heat the tapioca flour, which needed to be stirred all the while until it became a deep golden brown dextrine. It looked and smelled like beautiful caramel. He added water to the "caramel," which dissolved it into mucilage or gum, and finally carbolic acid as preservative to prevent mold from setting in. The gum was poured into empty Scotts Emulsion bottles, which I discovered were plentiful and cheap. I marketed the gum under the name "Stikfas" and had an attractive label designed by an artistic friend with the word in light brown brushwork against a white background.
The gum turned a decent profit, and we made it in two centers. One was my home, with my mother and sister helping; the other was Nyuk Lin's home, where he was helped by his wife and his wife's younger sister, Kwa Geok Choo, the only person who had done better than me at Raffles College. She was at home, at a loose end, doing domestic chores as there were no maids. Making gum was one chore that gave her pin money, and my visits to check on production led to a friendship that developed over the months.
The gum-making lasted for some six to seven months until late 1944. By then, the war was going badly for the Japanese. Few merchant ships came through, and trade was at a standstill; business dwindled, and offices did not need gum. I discontinued gum-making, but continued to visit Choo at her Tiong Bahru home to chat and keep up the friendship.
I felt certain the British would soon push their way down the Malayan peninsula and feared that the recapture of Singapore would mean street-to-street and house-to-house fighting to the bitter end, with enormous civilian casualties. I decided it would be better to get out of Singapore while things were still calm, and I could resign from the Hodobu without arousing suspicion over my motives. I applied for leave and went up to Malaya to reconnoiter Penang and the Cameron Highlands, to find out which was the safer place.
Although I saw little military activity as I wandered around Penang, I ruled it out. It would be a logical stepping stone for the British forces on their way down to Singapore. There would be street fighting, building by building. So I went on to the Cameron Highlands where Maurice Baker, my friend at Raffles College, had his home in Ringlet village at 3,200 feet. He and some friends were living off their savings, planting vegetables and root crops. I paid for my whole trip by selling at an enormous profit half a dozen steel hoes purchased in Singapore. The farmers needed them badly. On my return journey I bought a basket of beautiful vegetables unobtainable in Singapore, and spent a day-and-a-half guarding them on the train. Once back, I discussed the next move with my mother. We decided it would be best to move to the Cameron Highlands. I gave one month's notice to the Hodobu.
As I took the lift down in Cathay Building the day before I stopped work, the lift attendant, whom I had befriended, told me to be careful; my file in the Kempeitai office had been taken out for attention. I felt a deep chill. I wondered what could have provoked this and braced myself for the coming interrogation. From that moment, I sensed that I was being followed. Day and night, a team tailed me. I went through all the possible reasons in my mind and could only conclude that someone had told the Kempeitai I was pro-British and had been leaking news that the war was going badly for the Japanese, and that was why I was leaving. At least two men at any one time would be outside the shophouse in Victoria Street where we stayed after moving from Norfolk Road.
I endured this cat-and-mouse game for some eight weeks. At times, in the quiet of the early morning, at 2 or 3 a.m., a car would pass by on Victoria Street and stop near its junction with Bras Basah Road. It is difficult to describe the cold fear that seized me at the thought that they had come for me. Like most, I had heard of the horrors of the torture inflicted by the Kempeitai. But one day, two months after it began, the surveillance ceased. It was an unnerving experience.
SEPTEMBER 21, 1998 VOL. 152 NO. 11
Day-to-day life had to go on under the Japanese occupation. At first everybody felt lost. My father had no work, I had no college, my three brothers and sister had no school. There was little social activity. We felt danger all around us. Knowing somebody in authority, whether a Japanese or a Taiwanese interpreter with links to the Japanese, was very important and could be a life-saver. His note with his signature and seal on it certified that you were a decent citizen and that he vouched for your good character. This was supposed to be valuable when you were stopped and checked by sentries. But it was safest to stay at home and avoid contact and conflict with authority.
One of my first outings was into town. I walked two miles to the second-hand bookshops in Bras Basah Road that specialized in school textbooks. On the way, I saw a crowd near the main entrance to Cathay cinema. Joining the crowd, I saw the head of a Chinese man placed on a small board stuck on a pole, on the side of which was a notice in Chinese characters. The man had been beheaded because he had been caught looting, and anybody who disobeyed the law would be dealt with in the same way.
Late in 1943 I read an advertisement in the Syonan Shimbun inserted by the Japanese information or propaganda department called the Hodobu, which was located in Cathay Building. It wanted English-language editors. I turned up to be interviewed by an American-born Japanese, George Takemura, a tall, lean, fair-skinned man who spoke English with an American accent.
My job was to run through the cables of Allied news agencies: Reuters, UP, AP, Central News Agency of China and TASS. These cables, sent out in Morse code, had been intercepted by Malay radio operators. Radio signals were not clear in the later afternoons and early evenings, and because reception was poor, many words were garbled or lost. I had to decipher them and fill in the missing bits, guided by the context, as in a word puzzle. The cables then had to be collated under the various battle fronts and sent from the top floor of Cathay Building to the floor below, where they would be revamped for broadcasting.
It was a strange life. My work would begin at 7 p.m. Tokyo time, which was 5:30 p.m. Singapore time and still daylight. Radio reception was poor until about midnight Tokyo time. So the first shift from 7 p.m. to 12 a.m. was hard work, but one got home early to sleep. The period 12 a.m. to 9 am was broken into two shifts, with a two- to three-hour break in between. Reception was better, and there was less puzzling over missing words or parts of words, but it meant sleeping at awkward hours.
From the end of 1943, food became scarcer and scarcer. Reduced to eating old, moldy, worm-eaten stocks mixed with Malayan-grown rice, we had to find substitutes. My mother, like many others, stretched what little we could get with maize and millet and strange vegetables we would not normally have touched, like young shoots of sweet potato and tapioca plants cooked in coconut milk. They could be quite palatable, but they had bulk without much nutrition. It was amazing how hungry my brothers and I became one hour after each meal. Meat was a luxury. There was little beef or mutton. Pork was easier to buy and we could raise chickens ourselves, but there were no leftovers to feed them.
Meanwhile, inflation had been increasing month by month, and by mid-1944 it was no longer possible to live on my salary. But there were better and easier pickings to be had as a broker on the black market. The brokers operated mainly in High Street or Chulia Street, off Raffles Place. I joined them in 1944, and learned how to hoard items, especially small pieces of jewelry going cheap. I would buy them, hold them for a few weeks, and then sell them as prices inevitably went up. It was easy to make money if one had the right connections.
The key to survival was improvisation. One business I started changed the course of my life. While brokering on the black market, I met Yong Nyuk Lin, a Raffles College science graduate. I had been asked by Basrai Brothers, Indian stationers in Chulia Street, if I could get them stationery gum, which was in short supply--there was little left from pre-war stock. Could I perhaps make some myself? I asked Nyuk Lin whether he could make gum. He said he could, using tapioca flour and carbolic acid. So I financed his experiments.
Nyuk Lin's method was to take a big cylindrical pot, fill it with tapioca flour, and place the pot in a big wok of boiling oil. He used palm oil, which was freely available and cheap. He kept the oil at a constant high temperature to heat the tapioca flour, which needed to be stirred all the while until it became a deep golden brown dextrine. It looked and smelled like beautiful caramel. He added water to the "caramel," which dissolved it into mucilage or gum, and finally carbolic acid as preservative to prevent mold from setting in. The gum was poured into empty Scotts Emulsion bottles, which I discovered were plentiful and cheap. I marketed the gum under the name "Stikfas" and had an attractive label designed by an artistic friend with the word in light brown brushwork against a white background.
The gum turned a decent profit, and we made it in two centers. One was my home, with my mother and sister helping; the other was Nyuk Lin's home, where he was helped by his wife and his wife's younger sister, Kwa Geok Choo, the only person who had done better than me at Raffles College. She was at home, at a loose end, doing domestic chores as there were no maids. Making gum was one chore that gave her pin money, and my visits to check on production led to a friendship that developed over the months.
The gum-making lasted for some six to seven months until late 1944. By then, the war was going badly for the Japanese. Few merchant ships came through, and trade was at a standstill; business dwindled, and offices did not need gum. I discontinued gum-making, but continued to visit Choo at her Tiong Bahru home to chat and keep up the friendship.
I felt certain the British would soon push their way down the Malayan peninsula and feared that the recapture of Singapore would mean street-to-street and house-to-house fighting to the bitter end, with enormous civilian casualties. I decided it would be better to get out of Singapore while things were still calm, and I could resign from the Hodobu without arousing suspicion over my motives. I applied for leave and went up to Malaya to reconnoiter Penang and the Cameron Highlands, to find out which was the safer place.
Although I saw little military activity as I wandered around Penang, I ruled it out. It would be a logical stepping stone for the British forces on their way down to Singapore. There would be street fighting, building by building. So I went on to the Cameron Highlands where Maurice Baker, my friend at Raffles College, had his home in Ringlet village at 3,200 feet. He and some friends were living off their savings, planting vegetables and root crops. I paid for my whole trip by selling at an enormous profit half a dozen steel hoes purchased in Singapore. The farmers needed them badly. On my return journey I bought a basket of beautiful vegetables unobtainable in Singapore, and spent a day-and-a-half guarding them on the train. Once back, I discussed the next move with my mother. We decided it would be best to move to the Cameron Highlands. I gave one month's notice to the Hodobu.
As I took the lift down in Cathay Building the day before I stopped work, the lift attendant, whom I had befriended, told me to be careful; my file in the Kempeitai office had been taken out for attention. I felt a deep chill. I wondered what could have provoked this and braced myself for the coming interrogation. From that moment, I sensed that I was being followed. Day and night, a team tailed me. I went through all the possible reasons in my mind and could only conclude that someone had told the Kempeitai I was pro-British and had been leaking news that the war was going badly for the Japanese, and that was why I was leaving. At least two men at any one time would be outside the shophouse in Victoria Street where we stayed after moving from Norfolk Road.
I endured this cat-and-mouse game for some eight weeks. At times, in the quiet of the early morning, at 2 or 3 a.m., a car would pass by on Victoria Street and stop near its junction with Bras Basah Road. It is difficult to describe the cold fear that seized me at the thought that they had come for me. Like most, I had heard of the horrors of the torture inflicted by the Kempeitai. But one day, two months after it began, the surveillance ceased. It was an unnerving experience.
The Singapore Story 1998 Times Asia - Part 2
ASIA
SEPTEMBER 21, 1998 VOL. 152 NO. 11
But the war did not go well. Soon stories came down from Malaya of the rout on the war front, the ease with which the Japanese were cutting through British lines and cycling through rubber estates down the peninsula, landing behind enemy lines by boat and sampan, forcing more retreats. By January the Japanese forces were nearing Johor, and their planes started to bomb Singapore in earnest, day and night. I picked up my first casualties one afternoon at a village in Bukit Timah. Several MAS units went there in Singapore Traction Company buses converted into ambulances. A bomb had fallen near the police station and there were several victims. It was a frightening sight, my first experience of the bleeding, the injured and the dead.
That same morning all British forces withdrew to the island from Johor. Next day, the papers carried photos of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, the last to march across the Causeway, to the sound of Highland Laddie played on their bagpipes, although there were only two pipers remaining. It left me with a life-long impression of British coolness in the face of impending defeat. The Royal Engineers then blew open a gap in the Causeway on the Johor side. But they also blew up the pipeline carrying water from Johor to the island. The siege of Singapore had begun.
In the middle of January, the schools were closed. As the shelling got nearer to the city, my mother proposed that the whole family move to her father's house, which was farther out and so less likely to be hit. I supported the move but told her I would stay and look after the house in Norfolk Road while continuing to report for duty at the Raffles College MAS station. I would not be alone as Koh Teong Koo, our gardener, would stay at Norfolk Road to guard the house while I was on duty at the college. He was also the rickshaw puller who had taken my brothers and sister to and from school every day since 1937. We had built an air-raid shelter, a wooden structure dug into the ground and covered with earth, which my mother had stocked up with rice, salt, pepper, soya bean sauces, salt fish, tinned foods, condensed milk and all the things we might need for a long time. Money was not a problem because the Shell Co. had generously paid my father several months' salary when he was ordered to evacuate the oil depot at Batu Pahat.
The military took over the entire college on 10 February as British forces withdrew, and two days later the MAS unit had to disband. At first I stayed at home, but as the shelling got closer I joined my family at Telok Kurau. The following day we heard distant rifle shots, then some more, closer to us. There had been no sound of big guns, shells or bombs. Curious, I went out by the back gate to the lane abutting the kampong where I used to play with my friends, the fishermen's children. Before I had walked more than 20 yards along the earth track, I saw two figures in dun-colored uniforms, different from the greens and browns of the British forces. They were outlandish figures, small, squat men carrying long rifles with long bayonets. They exuded an awful stink, a smell I will never forget. It was the odor from the great unwashed after two months of fighting along jungle tracks and estate roads from Kota Bharu to Singapore.
A few seconds passed before I realized who they were. Japanese! An immense fear crept over me. But they were looking for enemy soldiers. Clearly I was not one, so they ignored me and pressed on. I dashed back to the house and told my family what I had seen. We closed all the doors and windows, though God knows what protection that could have given us. Rape and rapine were high among the fears that the Japanese forces inspired after their atrocities in China since 1937. But nothing of note happened the rest of that day and night. The British forces were retreating rapidly to the city center and not putting up much of a fight.
The news soon spread that the British had surrendered. The next day, some friends returning from the city reported that looting had broken out. British and other European houses were being stripped by their Malay drivers and gardeners. This aroused great anxiety in my family. What about 28 Norfolk Road, with all our food and other provisions that would now have to see us through for a very long time? With my mother's agreement, I took Teong Koo, the gardener, with me and walked back some eight miles from Telok Kurau to Norfolk Road. We made it in just over two hours. I saw Malays carrying furniture and other items out of the bigger houses along the way. The Chinese looters went for the goods in warehouses, less bulky and more valuable.
The Japanese conquerors also went for loot. In the first few days, anyone in the street with a fountain pen or a wristwatch would soon be relieved of it. Soldiers would go into houses either officially to search, or pretending to do so, but in fact to appropriate any small items that they could keep on their person. At first they also took the best of the bicycles, but they stopped that after a few weeks. They were in Singapore for only a short time before leaving for Java or some other island in the archipelago to do battle and to capture more territories. They could not take their beautiful bicycles with them.
My first encounter with a Japanese soldier took place when I tried to visit an aunt, my mother's younger sister, in Kampong Java Road, just across the Red Bridge over the Bukit Timah canal. As I approached the bridge, I saw a sentry pacing up and down it. Nearby was a group of four or five Japanese soldiers sitting around, probably the other members of his detail. I was sporting a broad-brimmed hat of the kind worn by Australian soldiers, many of which had been discarded in the days before the surrender. I had picked one up, thinking it would be useful during the hard times ahead to protect me from the sun.
As I passed this group of soldiers, I tried to look as inconspicuous as possible. But they were not to be denied attention. One soldier barked "Kore, kore!" and beckoned to me. When I reached him, he thrust the bayonet on his rifle through the brim of my hat, knocking it off, slapped me roundly and motioned me to kneel. He then shoved his right boot against my chest and sent me sprawling on the road. As I got up, he signaled that I was to go back the way I had come. I had got off lightly. Many others who did not know the new rules of etiquette and did not bow to Japanese sentries at crossroads or bridges were made to kneel for hours in the sun, holding a heavy boulder over their heads until their arms gave way.
Later that same day a Japanese non-commissioned officer and several soldiers came into the house. They looked it over and, finding only Teong Koo and me, decided it would a suitable billet for a platoon. It was the beginning of a nightmare. I had been treated by Japanese dentists and their nurses at Bras Basah Road who were immaculately clean and tidy. So, too, were the Japanese salesmen and saleswomen at the 10-cent stores in Middle Road. I was unprepared for the nauseating stench of the unwashed clothes and bodies of these Japanese soldiers. They roamed all over the house and the compound. They looked for food, found the provisions my mother had stored, and consumed whatever they fancied, cooking in the compound over open fires. I had no language in which to communicate with them. They made their wishes known with signs and guttural noises. When I was slow in understanding what they wanted, I was cursed and frequently slapped. They were strange beings, unshaven and unkempt, speaking an ugly, aggressive language. They filled me with fear, and I slept fitfully. They left after three days of hell.
While this platoon was camping in the house, British, Indian and Australian forces were marched to captivity. The march started on 17 February 1942, and for two days and one night they tramped past the house and over the Red Bridge on their way to Changi. I sat on my veranda for hours at a time watching these men, my heart heavy as lead. Many looked dejected and despondent, perplexed that they had been beaten so decisively and so easily. The surrendered army was a mournful sight.
There were some who won my respect and admiration. Among them were the Highlanders whom I recognized by their Scottish caps. Even in defeat they held themselves erect and marched in time--"Left Right, Left Right, Left, Left!" shouted the sergeant major. And the Gurkhas were like the Highlanders. They too marched erect, unbroken and doughty in defeat. I secretly cheered them. They left a life-long impression on me. As a result, the Singapore government has employed a Gurkha company for its anti-riot police squad from the 1960s to this day.
Soon after the Japanese soldiers left my house, word went around that all Chinese had to go to a registration center at the Jalan Besar stadium for examination. I saw my neighbor and his family leave and decided it would be wiser for me to go also, for if I were later caught at home the Japanese military police, the Kempeitai, would punish me. So I headed for Jalan Besar with Teong Koo. As it turned out, his cubicle in his coolie-keng, the dormitory he shared with other rickshaw pullers, was within the perimeter enclosed by barbed wire. Tens of thousands of Chinese families were packed into this small area. All exit points were manned by the Kempeitai.
After spending a night in Teong Koo's cubicle, I decided to check out through the exit point, but instead of allowing me to pass, the soldier on duty signaled me to join a group of young Chinese. I felt instinctively that this was ominous, so I asked for permission to return to the cubicle to collect my belongings. He gave it. I went back and lay low in Teong Koo's cubicle for another day and a half. Then I tried the same exit again. This time, for some inexplicable reason, I got through the checkpoint. I was given a "chop" on my left upper arm and on the front of my shirt with a rubber stamp. The kanji or Chinese character jian, meaning "examined," printed on me in indelible ink, was proof that I was cleared. I walked home with Teong Koo, greatly relieved.
I discovered later that those picked out at random at the checkpoint I had passed were taken to the grounds of Victoria School and detained until 22 February, when 40 to 50 lorries arrived to collect them. Their hands were tied behind their backs and they were transported to a beach at Tanah Merah Besar, some 10 miles away on the east coast, near Changi Prison. There they were made to disembark, tied together and forced to walk toward the sea. As they did so, Japanese machine-gunners massacred them. Later, to make sure they were dead, each corpse was kicked, bayoneted and abused in other ways. There was no attempt to bury the bodies, which decomposed as they were washed up and down the shore.
SEPTEMBER 21, 1998 VOL. 152 NO. 11
But the war did not go well. Soon stories came down from Malaya of the rout on the war front, the ease with which the Japanese were cutting through British lines and cycling through rubber estates down the peninsula, landing behind enemy lines by boat and sampan, forcing more retreats. By January the Japanese forces were nearing Johor, and their planes started to bomb Singapore in earnest, day and night. I picked up my first casualties one afternoon at a village in Bukit Timah. Several MAS units went there in Singapore Traction Company buses converted into ambulances. A bomb had fallen near the police station and there were several victims. It was a frightening sight, my first experience of the bleeding, the injured and the dead.
That same morning all British forces withdrew to the island from Johor. Next day, the papers carried photos of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, the last to march across the Causeway, to the sound of Highland Laddie played on their bagpipes, although there were only two pipers remaining. It left me with a life-long impression of British coolness in the face of impending defeat. The Royal Engineers then blew open a gap in the Causeway on the Johor side. But they also blew up the pipeline carrying water from Johor to the island. The siege of Singapore had begun.
In the middle of January, the schools were closed. As the shelling got nearer to the city, my mother proposed that the whole family move to her father's house, which was farther out and so less likely to be hit. I supported the move but told her I would stay and look after the house in Norfolk Road while continuing to report for duty at the Raffles College MAS station. I would not be alone as Koh Teong Koo, our gardener, would stay at Norfolk Road to guard the house while I was on duty at the college. He was also the rickshaw puller who had taken my brothers and sister to and from school every day since 1937. We had built an air-raid shelter, a wooden structure dug into the ground and covered with earth, which my mother had stocked up with rice, salt, pepper, soya bean sauces, salt fish, tinned foods, condensed milk and all the things we might need for a long time. Money was not a problem because the Shell Co. had generously paid my father several months' salary when he was ordered to evacuate the oil depot at Batu Pahat.
The military took over the entire college on 10 February as British forces withdrew, and two days later the MAS unit had to disband. At first I stayed at home, but as the shelling got closer I joined my family at Telok Kurau. The following day we heard distant rifle shots, then some more, closer to us. There had been no sound of big guns, shells or bombs. Curious, I went out by the back gate to the lane abutting the kampong where I used to play with my friends, the fishermen's children. Before I had walked more than 20 yards along the earth track, I saw two figures in dun-colored uniforms, different from the greens and browns of the British forces. They were outlandish figures, small, squat men carrying long rifles with long bayonets. They exuded an awful stink, a smell I will never forget. It was the odor from the great unwashed after two months of fighting along jungle tracks and estate roads from Kota Bharu to Singapore.
A few seconds passed before I realized who they were. Japanese! An immense fear crept over me. But they were looking for enemy soldiers. Clearly I was not one, so they ignored me and pressed on. I dashed back to the house and told my family what I had seen. We closed all the doors and windows, though God knows what protection that could have given us. Rape and rapine were high among the fears that the Japanese forces inspired after their atrocities in China since 1937. But nothing of note happened the rest of that day and night. The British forces were retreating rapidly to the city center and not putting up much of a fight.
The news soon spread that the British had surrendered. The next day, some friends returning from the city reported that looting had broken out. British and other European houses were being stripped by their Malay drivers and gardeners. This aroused great anxiety in my family. What about 28 Norfolk Road, with all our food and other provisions that would now have to see us through for a very long time? With my mother's agreement, I took Teong Koo, the gardener, with me and walked back some eight miles from Telok Kurau to Norfolk Road. We made it in just over two hours. I saw Malays carrying furniture and other items out of the bigger houses along the way. The Chinese looters went for the goods in warehouses, less bulky and more valuable.
The Japanese conquerors also went for loot. In the first few days, anyone in the street with a fountain pen or a wristwatch would soon be relieved of it. Soldiers would go into houses either officially to search, or pretending to do so, but in fact to appropriate any small items that they could keep on their person. At first they also took the best of the bicycles, but they stopped that after a few weeks. They were in Singapore for only a short time before leaving for Java or some other island in the archipelago to do battle and to capture more territories. They could not take their beautiful bicycles with them.
My first encounter with a Japanese soldier took place when I tried to visit an aunt, my mother's younger sister, in Kampong Java Road, just across the Red Bridge over the Bukit Timah canal. As I approached the bridge, I saw a sentry pacing up and down it. Nearby was a group of four or five Japanese soldiers sitting around, probably the other members of his detail. I was sporting a broad-brimmed hat of the kind worn by Australian soldiers, many of which had been discarded in the days before the surrender. I had picked one up, thinking it would be useful during the hard times ahead to protect me from the sun.
As I passed this group of soldiers, I tried to look as inconspicuous as possible. But they were not to be denied attention. One soldier barked "Kore, kore!" and beckoned to me. When I reached him, he thrust the bayonet on his rifle through the brim of my hat, knocking it off, slapped me roundly and motioned me to kneel. He then shoved his right boot against my chest and sent me sprawling on the road. As I got up, he signaled that I was to go back the way I had come. I had got off lightly. Many others who did not know the new rules of etiquette and did not bow to Japanese sentries at crossroads or bridges were made to kneel for hours in the sun, holding a heavy boulder over their heads until their arms gave way.
Later that same day a Japanese non-commissioned officer and several soldiers came into the house. They looked it over and, finding only Teong Koo and me, decided it would a suitable billet for a platoon. It was the beginning of a nightmare. I had been treated by Japanese dentists and their nurses at Bras Basah Road who were immaculately clean and tidy. So, too, were the Japanese salesmen and saleswomen at the 10-cent stores in Middle Road. I was unprepared for the nauseating stench of the unwashed clothes and bodies of these Japanese soldiers. They roamed all over the house and the compound. They looked for food, found the provisions my mother had stored, and consumed whatever they fancied, cooking in the compound over open fires. I had no language in which to communicate with them. They made their wishes known with signs and guttural noises. When I was slow in understanding what they wanted, I was cursed and frequently slapped. They were strange beings, unshaven and unkempt, speaking an ugly, aggressive language. They filled me with fear, and I slept fitfully. They left after three days of hell.
While this platoon was camping in the house, British, Indian and Australian forces were marched to captivity. The march started on 17 February 1942, and for two days and one night they tramped past the house and over the Red Bridge on their way to Changi. I sat on my veranda for hours at a time watching these men, my heart heavy as lead. Many looked dejected and despondent, perplexed that they had been beaten so decisively and so easily. The surrendered army was a mournful sight.
There were some who won my respect and admiration. Among them were the Highlanders whom I recognized by their Scottish caps. Even in defeat they held themselves erect and marched in time--"Left Right, Left Right, Left, Left!" shouted the sergeant major. And the Gurkhas were like the Highlanders. They too marched erect, unbroken and doughty in defeat. I secretly cheered them. They left a life-long impression on me. As a result, the Singapore government has employed a Gurkha company for its anti-riot police squad from the 1960s to this day.
Soon after the Japanese soldiers left my house, word went around that all Chinese had to go to a registration center at the Jalan Besar stadium for examination. I saw my neighbor and his family leave and decided it would be wiser for me to go also, for if I were later caught at home the Japanese military police, the Kempeitai, would punish me. So I headed for Jalan Besar with Teong Koo. As it turned out, his cubicle in his coolie-keng, the dormitory he shared with other rickshaw pullers, was within the perimeter enclosed by barbed wire. Tens of thousands of Chinese families were packed into this small area. All exit points were manned by the Kempeitai.
After spending a night in Teong Koo's cubicle, I decided to check out through the exit point, but instead of allowing me to pass, the soldier on duty signaled me to join a group of young Chinese. I felt instinctively that this was ominous, so I asked for permission to return to the cubicle to collect my belongings. He gave it. I went back and lay low in Teong Koo's cubicle for another day and a half. Then I tried the same exit again. This time, for some inexplicable reason, I got through the checkpoint. I was given a "chop" on my left upper arm and on the front of my shirt with a rubber stamp. The kanji or Chinese character jian, meaning "examined," printed on me in indelible ink, was proof that I was cleared. I walked home with Teong Koo, greatly relieved.
I discovered later that those picked out at random at the checkpoint I had passed were taken to the grounds of Victoria School and detained until 22 February, when 40 to 50 lorries arrived to collect them. Their hands were tied behind their backs and they were transported to a beach at Tanah Merah Besar, some 10 miles away on the east coast, near Changi Prison. There they were made to disembark, tied together and forced to walk toward the sea. As they did so, Japanese machine-gunners massacred them. Later, to make sure they were dead, each corpse was kicked, bayoneted and abused in other ways. There was no attempt to bury the bodies, which decomposed as they were washed up and down the shore.
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