World order LEE KUAN YEW: I see in
Iraq and Afghanistan as distractions. That is not going to change the world whatever happens in Iran or Afghanistan, because the
major changes that are taking place is the recovery of China, and to a lesser extent of India, places occupied three centuries ago before western colonization blanketed them. Three centuries ago, they were, between the two of them, 60 percent of the world GDP, just the population and the production they put out.
China’s again on the growth path. She’s now a member of WTO. She knows every year she’s growing faster than anybody else and can do that for another 20, 30 years because there are such an enormous numbers of workers back in the west and the hinterlands. Eight percent, 9 percent, 10 percent, no trouble at all.
But after that,
then they reach a ceiling where their labor is concerned, and they have to increase productivity. But by then in 30 years they’ll have an economy not per capita but in total terms bigger than the USA, which means they got resources to build up, political, strategic, and other influences. And in fact, in anticipation of that,
people already treat her differently, because they know that
this is going on a big fellow around the block. This is a
watershed. I mean the world order that we knew was dominated by the Caucasian peoples, Europe. Technology, sailing ships, and aircraft conquered the world, industrialization.
CHARLIE ROSE: Globalization.
LEE KUAN YEW: Well,
industrialization first, and then globalization. And America is the extension of Europe with a difference, and that is she’s more embracing of other races. The
20th century was the American century. The first half of the 21st
century, a large part of it will still be the American. But I believe the second half you’ll have to share top places with China and also with India, make space for them, too.
CHARLIE ROSE: You have said in a speech I read just today that the
relationship between the United States and China, based on what you just said, has become the most important global geopolitical issue of the century.
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, of course.
CHARLIE ROSE: How they both handle it.
LEE KUAN YEW:
From the Chinese side, in a very pragmatic, almost cold blooded and clinical fashion. On the American side, there’s been some vacillation. First China is a strategic adversary, then China is a strategic partner, then China is a stakeholder, and then China is not carrying its weight. CHARLIE ROSE: China wants to be as, in the famous words of Bob Zoellick, the president of the World Bank, want to be a
stake holder.
LEE KUAN YEW: Bob Zoellick coined that phrase.
CHARLIE ROSE: In Singapore, I think.
LEE KUAN YEW: I mean, wherever he was, and the Chinese were wondering what that meant.
CHARLIE ROSE: They didn’t know what
stakeholder meant. They now know.
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, they looked up the dictionary and didn’t get much out of it. They discussed it with friends, and I’m one of their friends.
So I said to them, well it means that though
you’re not a shareholder in the company, you have an interest in the company because you sell to the company, and if the company goes bust, you got no customer. And if you got no customer, your trade will go down and you have unemployment. So you have an interest in keeping that company going. And they have an interest in keeping you going because you are
a good customer. You’re
good producer for them -- cheap goods, cheap products, and good quality.
CHARLIE ROSE: There’s great hope they will become more of a
consuming economy and we’ll become more of a
saving economy. You point that out.
LEE KUAN YEW: The Chinese have had 4,000 years or 5,000 year of all kinds of catastrophes -- earthquakes, floods, famine, invasions, while the central government failed entirely, and nobody can help you.
You got to help yourself.
Let me tell you this anecdote. I was having my game left shoulder from golf being massaged by a very superior Chinese master who attended the region, and they sent him down to try to fix my game shoulder and he fixed it in three weeks. So we had a chat, because I’m 25 minutes on the couch, what can I do?
(LAUGHTER)
So there was a flood up the Yangtze River. So I said you’ve opened up, you get lots relief supplies. And he looked at me puzzled. He said you don’t understand. The relief supplies will arrive in Shanghai. The floods will prevent it from reaching the villages. And each village knows that’s going to happen from time to time, and up on the little hill they keep the rice, the salt, and all the essentials safe so that they will survive such a calamity.
And that habit, just like the Japanese have the kit underneath their beds for earthquakes, that is their habit for surviving. So they keep the money under their pillow because the banks are not trustworthy, or gold...
CHARLIE ROSE: And the habit will not change, that
habit of saving?
LEE KUAN YEW: It will take a long time.
It will take one or two generations of affluence. It may happen in the cities, but it’s not going to happen in the countryside.
CHARLIE ROSE: You say this about America, as well. You talk about the Chinese as having -- they have patience and they have persistence and they have discipline and they have organization. But you say America has something special that will be part of the inevitable competition. It is its resilience and, more importantly, its creativity.
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, of course. It’s not just American talent that gets you here. You’re just 300 million people and they have 1,300 million and very many more able people. But you are
attracting all the adventurous minds from all over the world and embracing them, and they become part of your team.
Now I don’t see two million Indians and half a million other peoples, Japanese, Koreans, and others, becoming part of China. I mean, first the language is so difficult. Secondly, the culture is not embracive. How do you fit in?
CHARLIE ROSE: What should is the United States do as it looks at the
inevitable growth of China as a dominant player. What would be a wise foreign policy? Because you have two or three decades before it reaches the full strength.
LEE KUAN YEW: Even in three decades it won’t reach its full strength. In three decades its per capita is still about one-third of America.
CHARLIE ROSE: It’s gross domestic product.
LEE KUAN YEW: For it to reach America’s standard of living and standard of technology will take more than 100 years.
CHARLIE ROSE: So what should the United States do while it has the position it has now?
LEE KUAN YEW: I think make sure that they feel that they are accepted at the top table.
CHARLIE ROSE:
Make sure that China feels accept at the top table?
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes. There are places waiting for you when you make it, but you have to
play by the rules of the game. And the key really is whether the next generation -- this generation understands it. They know that
they have no chance competing against the west, America especially, in technology and especially military technologies. There’s absolutely no chance. Let me build an aircraft carrier to protect shipping lines while they carry oil and other materials. This is the first time where the Chinese are growing but dependent on the world for resources.
CHARLIE ROSE: But they’ve gone around the world signing up contracts in Iran and Africa and...
LEE KUAN YEW: Absolutely. But before that it’s all within the Chinese empire. They don’t have to worry about the rest of the world.
This time they have to worry with the rest of the world because without the resources, the oil, the nickel, whatever, their growth will stop. CHARLIE ROSE: Will they be able to create the domestic demand that’s necessary as they find exports reduced?
LEE KUAN YEW: Slowly. But in the meantime they’re keeping the economy by an enormous expenditure on
infrastructure in the west -- high-speed roads, high-speed railways, airports, telephone lines, bringing water from the south up to the north where it’s arid and dry, huge, enormous, mammoth projects. That keeps it going.
CHARLIE ROSE: Will India have an advantage, some argue, because it’s a democracy and China is not?
LEE KUAN YEW: Let me put it this way.
(LAUGHTER)
LEE KUAN YEW: (INAUDIBLE) .
if India were as well-organized as China, it will go at a different speed, but it’s going at the speed it is because it is India.
It’s not one nation. It’s many nations. It has 320 different languages and 32 official languages. So no prime minister in Delhi can at any one time speak in a language and be understand throughout the country. You can do that in Beijing.
CHARLIE ROSE: So, in the end, do you think the system will change in Beijing?
LEE KUAN YEW: I think it will have to change as the people get more organized.
Today it’s 40 percent urban or less than 40 percent urban, and more than 60 percent rural. When you reach the tipping point and 60 and 70 percent are urban with mobile phones, PDAs, and you can download anything you want, send any messages you want -- it’s already had its effect.
The Szechuan earthquake -- in the old days nobody would know about except seismologists that who saw that an earthquake took place. Here immediately all the Chinese knew the world knew, and they had to go public. And the prime minister took a plane full of pressmen and went there and tried to comfort them and assured them that there would be...
CHARLIE ROSE: So you are saying that
communication and technology and the flow of information will have an impact.
LEE KUAN YEW: And the
urbanization. If you’re in the countryside that’s different, you can be isolated. But when you’re together in the urban center and they’re planning 10 urban centers at 40 million people each, that’s the plans on the greater scheme of things, 40 million people in four megacities all with -- you know, you can call a meeting anytime you want. You can have a riot any time you want.
So it’s a different world. Therefore you have to pay attention to what people think. And today they’re watching the Internet very carefully, because they know what the average person in the cities are thinking.
CHARLIE ROSE: What are they afraid of? What is there fear of?
LEE KUAN YEW: They’re not afraid. They just don’t want to lose control.
CHARLIE ROSE: So they’re afraid of control.
LEE KUAN YEW: No.
They’re afraid that they will lose control in the situation.
In the old days, way back in Mao’s days, everybody is dependent on the state. The state is the only employer and everybody has what you call a [Hukou]. A [Hukou[ is a residence permit. And if you lose your job because you’re anti-government or whatever, you’ve had it. There’s no other employer. But today there are multiple employers, all...
CHARLIE ROSE: So people have options.
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, absolutely. And that means
the government has lost control over the people. They can be entrepreneurs. They run their own businesses, shops, whatever it is.
CHARLIE ROSE: But are they moving toward some form,
not a western form, some form of more participation in the political process?
LEE KUAN YEW: They are
co-opting all the successful people into the government system.
(LAUGHTER)
CHARLIE ROSE: That’s a smart policy.
LEE KUAN YEW: Jiang Zemin calls it the three representatives. So whether you’re an artist or you’re a businessman, whether you’re an activist, anybody who has got the extra drive to contribute to a greater China, come and join us.
CHARLIE ROSE: Coming out of the global economic crisis, even though the United States is the dominant country, it is forced to look to build and to engage and build coalitions on a whole range of big issues, and there is never now a guarantee of unanimous support. It’s hard to put together, for example,
sanctions against Iran.
LEE KUAN YEW:
Iran is a special case. Iran has oil and gas. The Chinese desperately need oil and gas. Russia’s playing a game with Iran. Russia doesn’t need oil and gas, but Russia wants to cut the U.S. down to size and remind the U.S. you need me to run the world. With the Chinese they are doing their calculations. I think in exchange they must know if they buck the word -- once the Russians say, all right, we agree, I would bet 50/50 the Chinese will also say... CHARLIE ROSE: So if the Russians say we’ll engage in sanctions, the Chinese will follow.
LEE KUAN YEW: They would not want to be the odd-man out and be held responsible.
CHARLIE ROSE: What if the United States finds another partner or another supplier of energy for Iran?
(LAUGHTER)
LEE KUAN YEW: No, in place of Iran?
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.
LEE KUAN YEW: Where will you find...
CHARLIE ROSE: Well, in the Middle East. In Saudi Arabia and -- not possible?
LEE KUAN YEW: No, not possible.
CHARLIE ROSE: But I [heard] a Chinese diplomat say to me that they would welcome that, that if in fact they did not have a necessity of needing Iranian oil, they would go along with sanctions, because they don think...
LEE KUAN YEW: They need Iranian oil, they need Arabian oil, they need Nigerian oil, they need Angolan oil...
CHARLIE ROSE: They
need all the oil they can find anywhere.
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, of course.
CHARLIE ROSE: To fuel the economic growth at 8 percent.
LEE KUAN YEW: Absolutely.
CHARLIE ROSE: Tell me about
Russia and
how you see Russia today?
LEE KUAN YEW: Well, look, I’m doing a little bit of business in Russia.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.
LEE KUAN YEW: I’m also a member of the board of governors of Skolkovo Business School, invited to join it Medvedev, who is now the president. So I speak as one who is a semi-Russian colleague. I would say they would do enormously better if they could get their system right.
Their system is not functioning and not as functional as it should be because it has gone haywire. They’ve lost control over the various provinces, and they’re trying to bring it back to the center, but it’s difficult.
CHARLIE ROSE: What do you think of the relationship between Putin and Medvedev?
LEE KUAN YEW: Everybody knows that Mr. Medvedev is a very good friend of Putin and also knows Mr. Putin is a very powerful fellow.
(LAUGHTER)
And Mr. Medvedev is working through very powerful men called Silovikis, who are all from the FSB.
CHARLIE ROSE: Which is the former KGB.
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes. Now, Mr.
Medvedev is a highly intelligent man. He’s a good friend of Putin, and he sees no reason why he would want to clash with Putin.
CHARLIE ROSE: And Mr. Putin will return to be president another day?
LEE KUAN YEW: I would say the probabilities are high.
CHARLIE ROSE: but you also said in a speech I read that the capabilities of Russia are limited, the capabilities are limited.
LEE KUAN YEW: Well, they’ve got enormous nuclear arsenal, but what else? Their army is a very different army now. The air force -- they’re building new fighters, but, I mean, their navy -- and their population is declining -- AIDS, alcohol, drugs, and pessimism. I mean,
every year more Russians die than Russians are born because people are not optimistic. In America people are optimistic and say I’ll bring a child into the world. But when your life is so harsh, and from time to time it gets better when the oil price goes up, but that’s momentary, you have a different view of the future, so what’s the point of this?
CHARLIE ROSE: What about
Japan -- back to Asia?
LEE KUAN YEW: I think
the Japanese need an overhaul.
CHARLIE ROSE: In terms of their political system?
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, and in terms of their
acceptance of immigrants. Their birth rate -- their fertility rate is just slightly higher than ours. We’re 1.29 and they’re 1.30. They are shrinking. But we are a small population so we can make it up with numbers from young bright Indians and young bright Chinese, young bright Malaysians, and all the people around the world, and some middle easterners. We now have
Ukrainians serving in the army.
(LAUGHTER)
CHARLIE ROSE: Ukrainians in Singapore?
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, of course, Russians too, east Europeans, and British who married our local girls, and British women who married Singapore men.
But
Japan does not want immigrants, so they’re stuck. Today they have 3.2 working persons to support one adult. In 2055, they’ll have 1.2 persons to support one adult.
CHARLIE ROSE: And immigration has been America’s strength?
LEE KUAN YEW: Absolutely. But mind you,
immigration of the highly intelligent and highly-hard working, very hard working people. If you get immigration of the fruit pickers, you may not get very far.
(LAUGHTER)
CHARLIE ROSE: I met a Chinese delegation recently who was here in the last couple weeks, and I said to a very important member of the government, not at the highest level, but very important, "What are you doing here?"
He said "We’re trying to
get highly educated Chinese..."
LEE KUAN YEW: To go back.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, of course.
CHARLIE ROSE: To go back. I said, "Well, what do you say to them?" He says, "I say to them you’ll have opportunity, and I say to them, the homeland needs you."
LEE KUAN YEW: That doesn’t sell.
CHARLIE ROSE: What sells?
LEE KUAN YEW:
What would sell is you can leave anytime you want and allow your children special education facilities, and all of you can keep your American green card or passports?
CHARLIE ROSE: And that works.
LEE KUAN YEW: Well, I’m not sure whether it will work, but they will go back and test the waters, some? But will they go back and stay? Maybe, because
the older generation are emotionally tied up. But will your children stay? No. The upbringing has been here, and they go back to China and say, wow, this is a very regimented society. Papa, I’m going back.
(LAUGHTER)
So there’s no comparison. They are two, and there is chalk (ph) and cheese (ph) between the two societies, especially for young children who can see how independent American children are and grow up and become anything if you want, beatniks if you like.
CHARLIE ROSE: To use an old expression.
(LAUGHTER)
LEE KUAN YEW: Or whatever in China, you come out like sausages.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes, exactly. So will the Chinese be able to say -- one of the things that you point to in terms of this relationship between the competition, you say China and the United States will have competition, but they must avoid conflict.
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes. No, I think
both sides don’t want conflict.
CHARLIE ROSE: They don’t want conflict. China wants to spend time focusing on its internal development, it’s economic development.
LEE KUAN YEW:
China wants time to grow. If there is going to be any conflict, they’ll postpone it for 50 years.
CHARLIE ROSE: But inevitably at some point, as China grows, it will want to be the dominant nation in the world, because it will have...
LEE KUAN YEW: But it is not going back to [Tang] China or [Han] China where they were the only dominant power in the world. This time they’re going back to a world where there are several dominant poles that as inventive and more creative than them.
CHARLIE ROSE: So we’re looking at a
multi-polar world.
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, absolutely.
CHARLIE ROSE: We’ll never go back to sort of the kind of thing that we have between the Soviet Union and the United States.
LEE KUAN YEW: No. There will be the U.S., there will be China, the Indians are going to be themselves, they’re not going to be everybody’s lackey. They may not be as big as China in GDP.
CHARLIE ROSE: And you also suggest they have to develop a manufacturing capacity.
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, of course. You’re going to have --
Europe will be an economic force. It will not be a strategic, political, or military force because they can’t get together on foreign policy.
CHARLIE ROSE: It’s inevitable they can never get together?
LEE KUAN YEW: I’m not saying it’s inevitable, but if you look at them, they are still
27 different nations. I mean, they won’t accept one language, although they all
use English as a second language. But you tell them in Brussels you speak French or English or another language, which is what is actually happening in committees, they absolutely refuse. How long will that take to disappear? I don’t know. It may never happen.
CHARLIE ROSE: Take
Singapore.
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: You have said that Singapore has to maintain its
relevance.
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: It has to be a place that people want to invest in.
LEE KUAN YEW: It has to be a place that is useful to the world. Otherwise it wouldn’t exist.
CHARLIE ROSE: And that’s what you had created since the founding of the modern city-state.
LEE KUAN YEW:
We have made ourselves relevant to the world.
CHARLIE ROSE: And how will you maintain your relevancy?
LEE KUAN YEW: But keeping on changing.
You cannot maintain your relevance by just staying put. The world changes. There are shifts in the geopolitics and the economics of the world. We have to watch it and ride it. You surf with them. As the surf comes this way you ride the surf. We are keeping our links with America, with Japan, with Europe. They brought us to where we are.
CHARLIE ROSE: And you don’t have to choose sides. No other nation will have to choose sides.
LEE KUAN YEW: We absolutely
refuse to choose sides. We will not choose sides between America and China or between China and India.
CHARLIE ROSE: But I just read today an announcement by your
sovereign wealth fund in Singapore of over $1.3 billion in new investments, none coming to the United States, going to China, to India, to Brazil, and I’ve forgotten where else.
LEE KUAN YEW:
That’s just $1.3 billion out of $300 billion.
CHARLIE ROSE: But none to the United States, mostly going to all the...
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, but
the United States at the moment is in somewhat of an unstable state. Is the dollar going to decline? Yes, it is cheap, but supposing you buy and the deficits grow and Ben Bernanke is unable, your federal chairman, is unable to draw enough liquidity out of the market and you have hyperinflation. Wow. You go down and you lost money.
So everybody’s hedging, and it’s a very...
CHARLIE ROSE: They’re hedging by looking at other places, too?
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, but where? You tell me.
CHARLIE ROSE: Tell me where. If not the United States, there’s nowhere to go now.
LEE KUAN YEW: We go to parts of Euro. We’re not going to -- very little to Japan, Australia and New Zealand. The [RMB], the
Chinese Yuan in highly controlled. They can make you go up or make you go down and you’re not sure which way it’s going to go. Whereas in the U.S., you can look at the figures and can read the federal reports every time they make a decision and you can make your guess.
CHARLIE ROSE: You also said
China and the United States both have to change their mindsets.
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: What do you mean by that?
LEE KUAN YEW:
For the Americans, you have got to cease to think in terms of the Chinese as they are today. The Chinese as they are today are people who have been suffering for a very long time, especially under Mao, and who feel that the world is cruel to them. And therefore they’re
very edgy.
They are -- if you talk to Chinese leaders now, those over 60, they are with Russian as their second language. In 20, 25 years time, they’re going to meet a generation who are now in the lower ranks who have been to America and Britain and Europe and will be
English-speaking and have different models in their minds. And they will know that they’re not going to be the sole power in the world. Not ever again, because this is a globalized world , and they know that they’re dependent on the world for their growth. The resources that...
CHARLIE ROSE: So they’ve got to be part of the world.
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes. Before, I mean before meaning up to the time when the British and the others colonialized (ph) them in a partial way, everything grew within China. Whenever they needed they captured with the military.
CHARLIE ROSE: Then they found global markets.
LEE KUAN YEW: George H. W. Bush invited them to South America. He was a U.S. representative before they had ambassadors. And he had a liking for them. They were good to them. So he said you sell to us. And they sold, and it succeeded. And they said this is the way to get out of our poverty.
CHARLIE ROSE: That was your friend
Deng Xiaoping that said that?
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes.
Then they got into the world trade center as a member,
WTO. I just met Bob Rubin today, and he and Henry and I, Henry Kissinger and I, told him that Clinton turned down chi (ph) for this WTO. So we said to him it’s a great mistake, because if you turn them down, all they will do is they’ll
reverse engineer all your patents and you find generic products, imitations on the market. If you bring them in, get them to observe the rules.
CHARLIE ROSE: Well, that’s a big if. You have to get them to observe the rules.
LEE KUAN YEW: They are going to have to observe the rules, and they will.
CHARLIE ROSE: And they understand that?
LEE KUAN YEW: Because they’re making [patents] of their own now.
CHARLIE ROSE: They want to open markets around the world and be a part of the global economy.
LEE KUAN YEW: No, no.
They’re doing research almost in every sector now, including life sciences.
CHARLIE ROSE: Here’s -- which is something that Singapore got involved in very much with stem cell. Why did you do that?
LEE KUAN YEW: We figured there were smart fellows around and so many of them, whatever we do they will do in time and better. But there are some areas where they will take a very long time to be able to do what we’re doing, and that’s to change the system
from opacity to transparency, from no protection from copyright to protection of copyright and rule of law.
There are two rules of law in China, one for the ordinary citizen and the other for 76 million members of the Communist Party. And the judges will do what they know what the leaders require to keep the country stable. So would you -- look, we got all the
big Pharma companies in Singapore.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes, because you have protection and you have rule of law and you have protection of patents.
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes. And we’re doing joint research with them on the effect of these new drugs on various racial types of the population.
CHARLIE ROSE: Can you make an argument that a country who leads in technology and science, it will go a long way in terms of their place in the world?
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, of course. That’s why I think the
U.S. will still be a very powerful and considerable inventor and creator of new products. CHARLIE ROSE: When you look at the U.S. and its relationship and its concern about oil and its politics in the Middle East, do you think it’s a distraction? You think that...
LEE KUAN YEW: No, I’m not saying the Middle East is a distraction. I think trying to make a country out of Afghanistan is a distraction. There was no country for the last 30, 40 years. There’s just been fighting each other since the last king was chased out.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
LEE KUAN YEW: How on earth are you going to put these little bits together? It’s not possible.
CHARLIE ROSE: So therefore you do what?
LEE KUAN YEW: I’m not [an] expert, but in my simple mind it strikes me that you won in Iraq,
you won in Afghanistan not because you fought the Taliban, but because you got the Northern Alliance to fight them, and you provided the Northern Alliance with intelligence and the capabilities to bomb them and target them. And they captured the south.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes, but they have governance problems other there, too.
LEE KUAN YEW: That’s all right. But that’s their problem. Why do you want to make your problem?
CHARLIE ROSE: So what do you do? Would you pull all the troops out and let whatever happens to
Afghanistan, happens to Afghanistan? It’s not that threatening to the United States, is that the argument?
LEE KUAN YEW: I don’t know about that, because I think it cannot be more difficult for the United States to have their troops stuck there. The Russians are a brutal, ruthless lot of army people, and 120,000 of them were there, but they had to leave.
CHARLIE ROSE: And we helped that because we supported the Mujahideen. The Mujahideen had a lot of support from around the world who wanted to see the Soviet Union take it.
LEE KUAN YEW: But whether or not the Soviets helped to get the Americans out, I think the Americans and the NATO troops -- the
NATO members are very skeptical of the outcome.
CHARLIE ROSE: Even to the point of not wanting to send their troops to certain kinds of combat areas.
LEE KUAN YEW: Quite right. Yes, of course, because then you get shot for nothing.
CHARLIE ROSE: But those who argue if Afghanistan is abandoned -- first of all, the world will say or people will say, look, you left Afghanistan once before after the Soviets left, and now you’re leaving again. The United States has to stand for something and it has to show it’s prepared to stay. You don’t buy that at all?
LEE KUAN YEW: No.
CHARLIE ROSE: You must have a wonderful conversation with your friend Henry Kissinger then?
LEE KUAN YEW: No, no.
CHARLIE ROSE: Where do you and
Henry Kissinger different on the look or view of the U.S. role in the world?
LEE KUAN YEW: I don’t think we have any difference.
CHARLIE ROSE: Is that right? How would you define it then?
LEE KUAN YEW: I think
the U.S. could be a benign stabilizer of the of the world order.
CHARLIE ROSE: A benign stabilizer.
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes.
Without the U.S., east Asia would have never have grown. They brought peace and technology and trade and investments, and east Asia flourished. LEE KUAN YEW: That’s clear is it happened in east Asia. You’re talking about Singapore and North -- and South Korea.
LEE KUAN YEW: Absolutely.
CHARLIE ROSE: How do we do that in the Middle East? How do we do that when you have the kind of conflict that’s taking place?
LEE KUAN YEW: You can’t solve all the problems in the world.
CHARLIE ROSE: Ah.
LEE KUAN YEW: Some problems just have to be resolved by...
CHARLIE ROSE: And so what are your priorities?
LEE KUAN YEW: For Singapore?
CHARLIE ROSE: No, for the United States. What should be the priorities?
LEE KUAN YEW: I’m not an American. I do not calculate in American terms. I calculate what Americans are likely to do in relation to what will happen to me.
CHARLIE ROSE: Well, that’s why they listen to you. That’s why you’re going to see Mr. Bernanke tomorrow and that’s why you’re going to see Larry Summers and that why you’re going to see all these American officials. They want to know how you assess the way the world is working today. And your central message is you got to engage, you got to make the Chinese feel like they are a worthy part of the world community, and you have you to help them join WTO and all the things they want to do.
LEE KUAN YEW: No, they have already joined.
CHARLIE ROSE: I know they have joined, but you have to make sure they’re treated fairly.
LEE KUAN YEW: You have to make sure that they understand membership requires certainly obligations, and the obligations start with responsibility.
CHARLIE ROSE: But you also say with the United States, it has to realize most problems need an American participation in order to be solved.
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
CHARLIE ROSE: So you and I had a conference once about a whole range of leaders, and you said to me the man that you most admired of all the people you ever met was
Deng Xiaoping. That’s what you told me. Deng Xiaoping admired you too because he sent Chinese, 30,000, 40,000 of them, to Singapore to figure out what you were doing. Am I right?
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: What was it you were doing that he wanted to see?
LEE KUAN YEW: He was astonished when he came for the first time in 1978 to tell us to
prevent Vietnam from invading Cambodia because they are doing it on behalf of the Russians. Then he found a Singapore which was contrary to what he was given in his brief. He found a prosperous, orderly society, everybody owning their own homes and with a job. And so he said "How did you get there?" I said "Well, we educated our people, and look at all these companies. Americans, Japanese, Europeans, they bring technology, they train our people, we learn how to do things. And because we’re cheaper, after a while you become general managers
and company managing directors. And we learn how to do that, and we become suppliers to them." So he said "You
made use of capitalism to build a more egalitarian society, everybody owns their own home. I will do the same."
CHARLIE ROSE: And he did?
LEE KUAN YEW: He did. He did. He went back and declared twelve special economic zones, all the coastal cities, and it succeeded.
CHARLIE ROSE: So he was the greatest man you ever met because he understood -- because of the results? He changed a nation, and therefore...
LEE KUAN YEW: No, no. He’s a member of the old guard. He fought in the Long March. He chased the KMT out across the Yangtze. He led the...
CHARLIE ROSE: He was a victim of the Cultural Revolution.
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes. But he was
realistic. He knew the system was not working. He knew they were going to end up down in a deep hole. And he decided against all the advice of his fellow old guards that we would change course.
CHARLIE ROSE: And he had the brains and the power to pull it off.
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes. And when they tried to stop him in 1992 from going too fast, he went down to Shenzhen (ph) and said "Learn from all countries in the world. And most of all learn from Singapore. The order is good and they’re a very prosperous society."
CHARLIE ROSE: You’ve never had a moment where you thought
Singapore was too authoritative did you? Not one moment?
LEE KUAN YEW:
My job was to get the place going and get everybody a decent life and a decent education. And we’re now the best educated people in the whole of east Asia. Our universities -- we got three, four universities, fourth one coming up.
CHARLIE ROSE: So the end justifies the means whatever it might be?
LEE KUAN YEW: No. The ends were laudable. Everybody wants the same ends. Everybody wants good education and good health.
CHARLIE ROSE: A good life and their children to do better than they did.
LEE KUAN YEW: The means -- I had the consent and support of the population. If they opposed me and they did not cooperate, it wouldn’t have worked.
CHARLIE ROSE: You were in control of everything.
LEE KUAN YEW: No.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes you were, you know that.
(LAUGHTER)
LEE KUAN YEW: The numbers of people opposing me, including the communists in the very early years, was endless.
CHARLIE ROSE: That brings me to
President Obama. What are your observations about him?
LEE KUAN YEW: He’s a very great and eloquent man who is
very persuasive and is very able and has appointed very able people into his key positions. And what impressed me most is his
appointing people of different minds. For instance, on his economic team, there is Summers Paul Volcker, and they’re both very strong minded people.
CHARLIE ROSE: Larry Summer has much more influence than Paul Volcker.
LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, but whatever it is, he has to make the final judgment.
CHARLIE ROSE: So he wants to listen to smart people who have different views. That’s one thing you admire.
What would you want to ask him? What would you want to know about him?
LEE KUAN YEW: Two things. First, that
the 21st century will be a contest for supremacy in the Pacific because that’s where the growth will be. That’s where the bulk of the economic strength of the globe will come from. If you do not hold your ground in the Pacific you cannot be a world leader.
A world leader must hold his ground in the Pacific. That’s number one.
Number two, to hold ground in the Pacific, you must
not let your fiscal deficits and dollar come to grief. If it comes to grief in the short term and there’s a run on the dollar for whatever reason, because of deficits are too big and the world -- the financial community and the bankers and all the hedge funds and everybody come to a conclusion that you’re not going
tackle these deficits and they begin to move their assets out, that’s real trouble.
CHARLIE ROSE: And there is a risk of that perception today?
LEE KUAN YEW: Absolutely, yes. And
Ben Bernanke knows that. And he has to somehow or the other clean up and
soak up the liquidity. But if he does it too soon you get into another recession. But you cannot dig up enormous deficits that allows all the -- and do nothing about it, where people say this is hopeless.
CHARLIE ROSE: There’s always a Federal Reserve to make more money. You can’t do that.
LEE KUAN YEW: You just print more money.
CHARLIE ROSE: They will print more money, exactly. There’s the difference. So the deficits -- the looming deficit of the United States is what worries you me most because it will strike at the heart of the U.S. global leadership.
LEE KUAN YEW: Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, that’s what happened right. That’s why we’re in this recession, global recession.
CHARLIE ROSE: After Afghanistan and Iraq, questions were raised about
America’s credibility, its respect in the world. It went down, correct or not? You never bought it?
LEE KUAN YEW: It didn’t go down. I think people were roughed up by saying you’re either with me or you’re against me, and we don’t need you. We’ll go it alone. You do need them. You cannot go it alone. And all that ruffled everybody up. That was not necessary. But it’s happened and it’s water under the bridge.
CHARLIE ROSE: And
President Obama took care of that in terms of how he’s reached out.
LEE KUAN YEW: That’s all right. But now
he has to prove by his actions that he can really implement this new policy of togetherness. CHARLIE ROSE: That’s one thing, but it seems to me you are saying that the most important question people have about America, is the leadership. And the most important thing they have about America’s leadership is its economic leadership. Can to take care of its own house, because China is growing by 8 percent in the second half of 2009, and it looks better and better as it goes out.
LEE KUAN YEW: No, no,
the Chinese economy is nothing compared to the American economy once you’re stabilized.
But what the world wants to know, or what the thinking part of the banking and financial world wants to know, is that the Americans and administration and the Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, have the will to take tough measures to put this right, even if it’s not going to be done overnight but it’s moving in that direction and its going to put it right.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK, how do they do that?
LEE KUAN YEW: You’ve created all these needs. You take
health care. It’s not going to be done at the same price, surely. You’re covering 40 million extra people. So where’s the money coming from? If the world sees you’re not making any provisions for that, you’re not letting it go. And the world says this looks as if the
elected leaders have lost their will to confront the people with the truth.
CHARLIE ROSE: Is it more the Congress than the president?
LEE KUAN YEW: Both. Both, I would say.
CHARLIE ROSE: Are you confident that the United States will do something about its deficit, which is at $1.3 trillion for the last...
LEE KUAN YEW: Well, if I’m not confident, and I have no hope in that, I won’t be here, simple as that.
CHARLIE ROSE: "Be here" meaning?
LEE KUAN YEW: Being in America and wanting to understand what you’re doing and what’s going to come out of this, of your policies. So I meet people who were in the administration and are in the administration to understand the thinking and the feel and the gut feeling of what’s happening.
CHARLIE ROSE: What’s the most important change and significant change in your way of thinking about the world over the last 20 years?
LEE KUAN YEW: That the impossible can happen. I never thought the Soviet Union would implode so easily, and I never thought the Chinese would abandon the communist system and move into the free market so readily. It was unthinkable 20 years ago. Both have happened.
The world has changed.
CHARLIE ROSE: And it’s not clear exactly how it’s all going to...
LEE KUAN YEW: No, it is not clear when it will happen, but that it will happen now in the long term, 50 to 100 years, yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: And the center of gravity is shifting to Asia.
LEE KUAN YEW: It must be, because the population is there.
The talent pool of 1.3 million people plus the Japanese, the Koreans and the Vietnamese and the others, it can match Europe and America. But the talent pool was inert. It did not have science and technology, did not care about science and technology. But now everything that you do, Asia’s doing. You’re going into stem cell search, we are going into stem cell research. Tiny
Singapore has to go there in order to get into a field where the Chinese cannot compete with us. And the Chinese are in it in a very big way. They’re watching you, and whatever you do, they said, yes, we will do that. They are far behind, but given time, they’ll catch up.
CHARLIE ROSE: They’re enormously curious.
LEE KUAN YEW: They are.
CHARLIE ROSE: Enormously curious.
LEE KUAN YEW: Not just curious, they are enormously ambitious to catch up.
CHARLIE ROSE: For good reasons and for good ends?
(LAUGHTER)
LEE KUAN YEW: That you must ask them. But I think the reason is they have to -- they have
a sense of frustration that they were down for so long. Let’s make it now. Here’s our chance.
CHARLIE ROSE: And the United States has to encourage them?
LEE KUAN YEW: No,
you don’t have to encourage them. You just have to understand that they are -- look, they don’t want to be an honorary member of the west, unlike Russia. They’re quite happy
to be Chinese and to remain as such. So when you tell them you ought to do this or you ought to do that, they say yes, thank you. And in the back of their minds, we have lasted
5,000 years. Have you?
(LAUGHTER)
The Beijing Olympics if you watch it, what was the message?
CHARLIE ROSE: We’re back.
LEE KUAN YEW: No -- 5,000 years, and don’t forget, we invented all these things, and we’re going to go ahead in the next 5,000 years. It’s the only country where a language has survived 5,000 years, the only country by the present generation shares the same basic thinking as the past. And they’re very proud of it. You read Hu Jintao’s speech on the 60th anniversary, translated on the web -- what is it?
We have 5,000 years of civilization. We’re going to get there. And it’s a rousing speech. It may take us a long time, we have to work very hard. We will do it. So you don’t have to encourage them. What you have to get them to understand is with it goes
responsibility. Hungry Africans, hungry, sick other people. This is a
global problem. You can’t just take copper and gold and take it. You have to have
a responsibility for the people’s whose copper and gold you’re mining. It goes with the job, and they will have to learn that. I think
they are already beginning to learn that, so they’re giving something back.
CHARLIE ROSE: It’s a pleasure to talk to you again, as always.
LEE KUAN YEW: You’re very kind. Thank you.
Transcripts of the interview :
http://www.charlierose.com/download/transcript/10681- Copyright of Charlie Rose
[ ... ] have been edited by "hot chilly".
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