Lee Kuan Yew hails from a very small country, but, for decades, he has been a very big man — at home and on the world stage. During more than a half-century of public life, including some 30 years as Prime Minister, Lee transformed Singapore from a simple trader of commodities into a sophisticated hub of finance and technology — The Little Red Dot, as many of its people affectionately call it.
A stern, patriarchal figure, Lee realized his ambitions for Singapore through the sheer force of his personality, buttressed by an unapologetic conviction that he knew best. The same qualities that influenced his finer policies affected his worse ones too. Single-mindedness, for example, could become heavy-handedness. The stain on Lee’s standing is that, in the controlled experiment of molding a society in his own severe image, he marginalized social liberties both sacred and mundane: from expressing dissent to chewing gum.
That dark side will undoubtedly color Lee’s legacy. Yet he has always had too much vision to be limited to tiny Singapore, or to be your run-of-the-mill strongman. Lee possesses an ability to interpret the past, understand the present and divine the future. The more enduring, and endearing, part of him is the globalist long sought out by national leaders and corporate titans for his counsel on the way of the world.
(MORE: Why Lee Kuan Yew, Modern Singapore’s Founding Father, Stepped Down)
Lee’s powerful intellect is captured in a new book, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World. It’s a collection of interviews with him by Harvard University professor Graham Allison, Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Robert Blackwill and Harvard’s Belfer Center researcher Ali Wyne, while also drawing on other selected and cited writings by and about Lee. Now 89, officially retired and somewhat frail, Lee has mellowed with age — not unlike his creation Singapore, governed today with a lighter touch even as its citizens grow more vocal. Yet, as the book, and the adaptation here of the China chapter, reveal, Lee is as sharp, direct and prescient as ever. Though the volume was completed before China’s current territorial tensions with its neighbors, it helps expose, and explain, Beijing’s hardball mind-set.
Over the years Lee has been called many things — unflattering as well as admiring. But perhaps the single most fitting description is: The Man Who Saw Tomorrow.
Are Chinese leaders serious about displacing the U.S. as the No. 1 power in Asia and, eventually, the world?
Of course. They have transformed a poor society by an economic miracle to become now the second largest economy in the world — on track to become the world’s largest economy. They have followed the American lead in putting people in space and shooting down satellites with missiles. Theirs is a culture 4,000 years old, with 1.3 billion people, with a huge and very talented pool to draw from. How could they not aspire to be No. 1 in Asia, and in time the world? The Chinese people have raised their expectations and aspirations. Every Chinese wants a strong and rich China, a nation as prosperous, advanced and technologically competent as America, Europe and Japan. This reawakened sense of destiny is an overpowering force. The Chinese will want to share this century as co-equals with the U.S.
(MORE: The Singapore Story)
How will China’s behavior toward other countries change if China becomes the dominant Asian power?
At the core of their mind-set is their world before colonization and the exploitation and humiliation that brought. In Chinese, China means Middle Kingdom, recalling a world in which they were dominant in the region, when other states related to them as supplicants to a superior and vassals came to Beijing bearing tribute. Will an industrialized and strong China be as benign to Southeast Asia as the U.S. has been since 1945? Singapore is not sure. Neither is Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand or Vietnam. We already see a China more self-assured and willing to take tough positions. The concern of America is what kind of world they will face when China is able to contest their pre-eminence. Many medium and small countries in Asia are also concerned. They are uneasy that China may want to resume the imperial status it had in earlier centuries and have misgivings about being treated as vassal states having to send tribute to China as they used to in past centuries. [The Chinese] tell us that countries big or small are equal; [that they] are not a hegemon. But when we do something they do not like, they say you have made 1.3 billion people unhappy. So please know your place.
What is China’s strategy for becoming No. 1?
The Chinese have concluded that their best strategy is to build a strong and prosperous future, and use their huge and increasingly highly skilled and educated workers to outsell and outbuild all others. The Chinese have calculated that they need 30 to 40 — maybe 50 — years of peace and quiet to catch up, build up their system, and change it from the communist system to the market system. They must avoid the mistakes made by Germany and Japan. Their competition for power, influence and resources led in the last century to two terrible wars. The Russian mistake was that they put so much into military expenditure and so little into civilian technology that their economy collapsed. I believe the Chinese leadership has learned that if you compete with America in armaments, you will lose. You will bankrupt yourself. So, keep your head down, and smile for 40 or 50 years.
VIDEO: TIME Explains: China’s Future
What are the major hurdles in executing that strategy?
There will be enormous stresses because of the size of the country and the intractable nature of the problems: the poor infrastructure, the weak institutions, the wrong systems that they have installed. Straight-line extrapolations from [China’s] remarkable record are not realistic. China has more handicaps going forward and more obstacles to overcome than most observers recognize. Chief among these are their problems of governance: the absence of the rule of law, which in today’s China is closer to the rule of the emperor; a huge country in which little emperors across a vast expanse exercise great local influence; cultural habits that limit imagination and creativity, rewarding conformity; a language that is exceedingly difficult for foreigners to learn sufficiently to embrace China and be embraced by its society; and severe constraints on its ability to attract and assimilate talent from other [countries].
China will inevitably catch up to the U.S. in absolute GDP. But its creativity may never match America’s because its culture does not permit a free exchange and contest of ideas. How else to explain how a country with four times as many people as America — and presumably four times as many talented people — does not come up with technological breakthroughs?
(PHOTOS: Set Adrift in Western China)
Technology is going to make their system of governance obsolete. By 2030, 70% or maybe 75% of their people will be in cities, small towns, big towns, megabig towns. They are going to have cell phones, Internet, satellite TV. They are going to be well informed; they can organize themselves. You cannot govern them the way you are governing them now where you just placate and monitor a few people because the numbers will be so large.
How do China’s leaders see the U.S. role in Asia changing as China becomes No. 1?
The leadership recognizes that as the leading power in the region for the seven decades since World War II, the U.S. has provided a stability that allowed unprecedented growth for many nations including Japan, the Asian tigers and China itself. China knows that it needs access to U.S. markets, U.S. technology, opportunities for Chinese students to study in the U.S. and to bring back to China new ideas about new frontiers. It therefore sees no profit in confronting the U.S. in the next 20 to 30 years in a way that could jeopardize these benefits. Rather, its strategy is to grow within this framework, biding its time until it becomes strong enough to successfully redefine this political and economic order.
What impact is China’s rise having on its neighbors in Asia?
China’s strategy for Southeast Asia is fairly simple: China tells the region, “Come grow with me.” At the same time, China’s leaders want to convey the impression that China’s rise is inevitable and that countries will need to decide if they want to be China’s friend or foe. China is also willing to calibrate its engagement to get what it wants or express its displeasure.
(MORE: The New Great Wall Of China)
Will China become a democracy?
No, China is not going to become a liberal democracy; if it did, it would collapse. Of that I am quite sure, and the Chinese intelligentsia also understands that. If you believe that there is going to be a revolution of some sort in China for democracy, you are wrong. Where are the students of Tiananmen now? They are irrelevant. The Chinese people want a revived China. Can it be a parliamentary democracy? This is a possibility in the villages and small towns. The Chinese fear chaos and will always err on the side of caution. It will be a long evolutionary process, but it is possible to contemplate such changes. Transportation and communications have become so much faster and cheaper. The Chinese people will be exposed to other systems and cultures and know other societies through travel, through the Internet and through smart phones. One thing is for sure: the present system will not remain unchanged for the next 50 years. To achieve the modernization of China, her communist leaders are prepared to try every method, except for democracy with one person and one vote in a multiparty system. Their two main reasons are their belief that the Communist Party of China must have a monopoly on power to ensure stability and their deep fear of instability in a multiparty free-for-all, which would lead to a loss of control by the center over the provinces. To ask China to become a democracy, when in its 5,000 years of recorded history it never counted heads — all rulers ruled by right of being the emperor; if you disagree, you chop off heads, not count heads.
How should one assess new Communist Party chief Xi Jinping?
He has had a tougher life than [his predecessor] Hu Jintao. His father was rusticated, and so was he. He took it in stride, and worked his way up. It has not been smooth sailing for him. His life experiences must have hardened him. He is reserved — not in the sense that he will not talk to you, but in the sense that he will not betray his likes and dislikes. There is always a pleasant smile on his face, whether or not you have said something that annoyed him. He has iron in his soul, more than Hu Jintao, who ascended the ranks without experiencing the trials and tribulations that Xi endured. He is a person with enormous emotional stability who does not allow his personal misfortunes or sufferings to affect his judgment. He is impressive.
Adapted from Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World. Interviews and selections by Graham Allison and Robert D. Blackwill, with Ali Wyne. To be published by The MIT Press, February 2013. © 2013 Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. All rights reserved.
MORE: Behind the Story: TIME’s Hannah Beech Discusses China’s Next Leader, Xi Jinping
