It is foolish to allow ourselves to be hypnotized by the disparity in the population ratios between Singapore and her neighbours. What counts is the fighting strength of the armed forces, not the size of the populations. The war-making potential of a small, vigorous, well-educated and highly motivated population should never be underestimated.
In material terms, we have left behind our Third World problems of poverty. However, it will take another generation before our arts, culture and social standards can match the First World infrastructure we have installed.
Superior intelligence, discipline and ingenuity would substitute for resources.
The ideal of free medical services collided against the reality of human behaviour, certainly in Singapore. My first lesson came from government clinics and hospitals. When doctors prescribed free antibiotics, patients took their tablets or capsules for two days, did not feel better and threw away the balance. They then consulted private doctors, paid for their antibiotics, completed the course and recovered.
I learnt that while overall sentiment and mood do matter, the crucial factors are institutional and organisational networks to muster support.
We learnt on the job and we learnt quickly. If there was one formula for our success, it was that we were constantly studying how to make things work, or how to make them work better. I was never a prison of any theory. What guided me were reason and reality. The acid test I applied to every theory or scheme was, would it work? This was the golden thread that ran through my years in office. If it did not work, or the results were poor, I did not waste more time and resources on it. I almost never made the same mistake twice, and I tried to learn from the mistakes others had made. I discovered early in office that there were few problems confronting me in government which other governments had not met and solved.
I learnt to ignore criticism and advice from experts and quasi-experts, especially academics in the social and political sciences. They have pet theories on how a society should develop to approximate their ideal, especially how poverty should be reduced and welfare extended. I always tried to be correct, not political correct.
In politics I had to range over the whole gamut of the problems of human society.
We overcame one problem only to be faced with an even more daunting one. There were times when it looked hopeless.
We learnt some valuable lessons in those early years as apprentices in the exercise of power. We never stopped learning because the situation kept on changing and we had to adjust our own policies. I had the advantage of several ministers who read widely and were attracted to new ideas but not mesmerised by them. We passed interesting books and articles we had read to each other. When we started, we were ignorant and innocent, but we were saved by being careful to probe and test ideas before we implemented them.
The core team stayed together for over two decades. They were all older than I was and were never inhibited from telling me what they thought, especially when I was wrong. They helped me stay objective and balanced, and saved me from any risk of megalomania which could so easily come with long years in office.
I have had to sing four national anthems; such were the political upheavals of the last 60 years. The swirling currents of political changes swept me along.
Would my colleagues and I have embarked on our journey had we known the hazards and perils we would face when we formed the PAP in 1954? Had we known how complex and difficult were the problems that lay ahead, we would never have gone into politics with the high spirits, enthusiasm and idealism of the 1950s. How could we ever hope to compete against the Malayan Communist Party? We did not think in those terms. We just wanted the British out.
We pressed on, oblivious of the dangers ahead. Our visceral urges were stronger than our cerebral inhibitions.
A mathematician really has little say in what goes on in the world around him, in the way things are going on in the country. This does not matter at all in a large developed country like Britain, but in Singapore it would matter very much to me. I would prefer to be doing things and perhaps be cursed by other people than have to curse at someone else and not be able to do any more.
The communists impressed me by the great importance they placed on the woman a prospective cadre was attached to. They knew a wife could make an enormous difference to a man’s reliability and commitment to the cause.
While I make up my mind more on analysis and reason, she decides more on a “feel” and has an uncanny knack of sensing the real feelings and positions of a person behind the smiles and friendly words.
Meeting the wives of foreign leaders, she would give me a good reading of the husband’s friendliness of otherwise from the way the wife acted or talked to her.
Best systems was that developed by Shell. They concentrated on what they termed a man’s “currently estimated potential”. This was determined by three qualities - a person’s power of analysis, his imagination and his sense of reality. Together they made up an over-arching attribute Shell called “helicopter quality”, the ability to see facts or problems in a larger context and to identify and zoom in on critical details.
The veterans felt that they should not have such an easy path to office, but should learn and wait. I did not think young and talented men would sit and wait; either they were going to make it or they would want to move on.
Ability can be assessed fairly accurately by a person’s academic record and achievement in work. Character is not so easily measured. After some successes but too many failures, I concluded that it was more important, though more difficult, to assess a person’s character.
Our greatest task was to find the people to replace my aging ministers and myself.
Leadership is more than just ability. It is a combination of courage, determination, commitment, character and ability that makes people willing to follow a leader. We needed people who were activists with good judgement and interpersonal skills.
Over lunch, just the two of us, this conversation had more impact on me than any other exchange I have ever had. He said investors had been confident because they were comfortable with the ministers in charge, especially with me. But they could see that he was getting on and were looking beyond and behind him to see who would replace him. They could not see a younger minister with the potential to be minister for finance. I had many more years to go, but he did not think he could carry on for much longer. He had met many CEOs of American corporations. They had to retire at 65. Several years before a CEO’s retirement, he had to put before the board one or more candidates for them to choose one as his successor. I resolved that I must not be found wanting in this respect, and that I must place Singapore in competent hands before I retired.
It was a slow and difficult process with a high attrition rate. Successful, capable professionals and executives are not natural political leaders, able to argue, cajole and demolish the arguments of opponents at mass rallies, on television and in Parliament.
Mao tried to solve this problem of suitable successors by arranging a Cultural Revolution as a substitute for the Long March. It was not possible for us to simulate a Japanese invasion and occupation, and the subsequent struggle for independence. Our solution was to look for men with the right character, ability and motivation, and hope that when they encountered the inevitable crises, they would emerge tested as leaders.
A veteran of war and revolution, he saw the student demonstrators at Tiananmen as a danger that threatened to throw China back into turmoil and chaos, prostrate for another 100 years. He had lived through a revolution and recognised the early signs of one at Tiananmen. Gorbachev, unlike Deng, had only read about revolution and did not recognise the danger signals of the Soviet Union’s impending collapse.
When I saw this on television, I felt that this demonstration would end in tears. No emperor of China can be lampooned and ridiculed and continue to reign.
In Taiwan, there was sadness and sympathy for the students but not fear. There were no mass demonstrations of protest or grief. They were not about to be governed by China.
Raja thought he lacked the sophistication and subtlety of Zhou Enlai, who would have handled the discussions differently and without communist jargon. I was disappointed that the leader of such a huge country looked tough and strong but lacked finesse.
If Hong Kong became just another Chinese city, it was of no value to China. What made Hong Kong useful to China were its strong institutions, management expertise, sophisticated financial markets, the rule of law, the transparency of legislation and regulations, a level playing field for all, plus a cosmopolitan lifestyle with English as the language of business. It had to retain the characteristics that made it indispensable intermediary between China and the world, as during British rule.
Six weeks after Tiananmen, we offered to give 25K Hong Kong families Approval In-Principle permanent residence, without their having to move to Singapore until the need arose.
We had to be a nation or we would cease to exist. We had to subsidise education, health and housing even though I tried to avoid the debilitating effects of welfarism. But the Singaporean cannot match the Hong Konger in drive and motivation. In Hong Kong when a main fails, he blames himself or his bad luck, picks himself up and tries again, hoping his luck will change. A Singaporean has a different attitude to government and to life. He prefers job security and freedom from worry. When he does not succeed, he blames the government since he assumes its duty is to ensure that his life gets better. He expects the government not only to arrange a level playing field but, at the end of the race, to give prizes even to those who have not done so well.
I did not understand then that when the communists “liberated” the mainland in 1949, with the influx of some 1-2 million refugees from China had come some of the best entrepreneurs, professionals and intellectuals from Shanghai and Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Guangdong. They formed a thick layer of talent that was to transform Hong Kong into one of the most dynamic cities in the world, helped by the more enterprising and resourceful of the Chinese workers who had decided to leave China rather than live under communist rule.
A similar refugee inflow from the mainland in 1949 also helped Taiwan. Without it, Taiwan would not have had the top talent that had governed China until 1949. When all this happened in 1949, I did not understand the importance of talent, especially entrepreneurial talent, and that trained talent is the yeast that transforms a society and makes it rise.
In Kim I found a man who had been tempered through many a crisis. He had learnt to control his emotions in order to achieve his higher purposes. He had been captured by the KCiA when he was in Japan and tortured, and would probably have been killed but for the intervention of the Americans. Yet in order to win the election in 1997 he formed an alliance with a former KCIA director, and made him his prime minister when he won the election.
I emphasised, however, that unless the top leaders were beyond reproach, and the higher echelons cleaned up before the lower, it would be a waste of time.
He asked how I had stayed in power for so long, winning successive elections. Because, I replied, people knew I did not lie and was sincere in advancing their interests. Ordinary people could not follow the intricacies of an economic or a political problem so they learnt whom to trust. To win such trust, I never said anything which I did not believe in, and people slowly recognized that I was honest and sincere. This was my most powerful asset. It was also US President Reagan’s strength. He had good speechwriters. He worked on their drafts, using their ideas but putting them into his own words. He did not allow himself to be “voiced over” by his speechwriters, so when he delivered a speech, he came across as a man of sincerity and conviction.
In order to compete worldwide, they set out to acquire the most advanced technology for their industries. What impressed me most was their emphasis on investing in the people who work these machines and manage the company. To make the best use of state-of-the-art machines, they have continual training and retraining of their staff. This philosophy ensured that they would always be out in the forefront.
Also uniquely Japanese was their way of paying workers fringe benefits in allowances, overtime, bonuses and company welfare. These amounted to more than the basic wage, unlike the practice in Singapore. Because supplementary benefits were high, a company faced with a recession could immediately trim bonuses and allowances to save as much as 40-50 per cent of their wage bill, and restore them later when company profits recovered. This made life-long employment possible. Management and workers shared the profits, and also shared the hardships in lean years when the company did not make profits. Workers were conscious that the company’s long-term wellbeing was crucial for their life-long employment. Their companies provided medical and dental care, housing, including hostels for bachelors and housing loans at highly subsidised rates, family recreational facilities, education for employee’s children, farewell and welcoming parties, long-service gifts, stock options and congratulatory and condolence allowances. The ties that bound them to their company were many and strong. I wanted to emulate them but gave up after discussions with Singapore employers. We did not have their culture of strong worker loyalty to their companies. Moreover, many of our big employers were American and European MNCs with different company cultures.
Because they were cut off from Western technology and had a difficult time reaching the top, depending much on reverse engineering, the Japanese are miserly in passing on their technology, as Taiwanese, Koreans and Southeast Asians have found. Having earned their newly found wealth the hard way, they are loath to part with it to spendthrift Third World regimes, to benefit, not the people, but a few leaders. It is a minor miracle that under American suasion, they have become the world’s largest aid donor. Singaporeans have also come up the hard way, so I understand Japanese sentiments. We have always preferred to give aid in the form of training and technical assistance, not in grants which could be misused.
MITI’s advice to our officials in 1980 was, given Singapore’s geographic position and environment, to prepare for a possible role as a center for knowledge and information, to complement Tokyo. The Japanese believed that for such a centre to succeed, the people had to be reliable and trustworthy. We took their advice to heart. After a careful study of what it took to be such a knowledge and information center, we redoubled our emphasis on the teaching of sciences, mathematics and computers in all our schools.
Back in his office, over a working lunch, he explained the difference between British and Japanese managements. Japanese executives and engineers start work on the factory floor. They had to understand the low-level workers to lead them effectively before they could rise from the ranks. The British dockyard executive sat in his carpeted office and did not visit the men on the shop floor or in the dockyards. That was bad for morale and productivity.
Pride in their job and the desire to excel in their given roles, whether as cook, waiter or chambermaid, makes for high productivity, and in manufacturing, near-zero defect products. No nation in Asia can match them, not the Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese or Southeast Asians. They consider themselves a special people. You are either born a Japanese and therefore in that magic circle, or you are not. This myth of being special makes them a formidable force as a nation, a corporation or a team in any workplace.
Japanese workers were more skilled and were multi-skilled, more flexible and adaptable, had less job-hopping and absenteeism. They accepted the need for life-long learning and training. All workers considered themselves grey-collar workers, not white- or blue-collar. Technicians, group leaders and supervisors were willing to soil their hands. How long would it take for Singapore workers to catch up? He thought in 10-15 years. When pressed, Hizaki said Singapore workers would never catch up 100 percent. He gave two reasons. First, the Japanese worker would cover for his work-mate who had to attend to other urgent business; the Singapore worker looked only after his own job. Second, there was a clear division in Singapore between the rank and file and the officer cadre, which was the British system, where a polytechnic or university graduate came straight into the officer grade.
The Japanese have a deeply ingrained habit of wanting to achieve perfection and going to the limits in whatever they did, whether in flower arrangement, sword-making or war.
I argued that it was best to draw the Chinese out to become a part of the modern world. Japan should get bright Chinese students to study in Japan and develop close relationships with young Japanese. The exposure of China’s brightest and best to the United States, Japan and Europe would make them less inward-looking and would get them to understand that if China wanted to grow and prosper, it had to be a law-abiding member of the international community. If the Chinese were isolated and thwarted in their efforts at economic reform and progress, they would become hostile to the advanced countries.
America’s generosity of spirit grew out of an innate optimism that it could give and still have more to give. Unfortunately this spirit weakened in the late 1980s because of trade and budget deficits. To correct the deficits, America demanded that Japan and other NIEs open up their markets, revalue their currencies upwards, import more American products and pay royalties for intellectual property.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Americans have become as dogmatic and evangelical as the communists were. They want to promote democracy and human rights everywhere, except where it would hurt themselves as in the oil-rich Arabian peninsula. Even so, the US is still the most benign of all the great powers, certainly less heavy-handed than any emerging great power. Hence, whatever the differences and frictions, all non-communist countries in East Asia prefer America to be the dominant weight in the power balance of the region.
My reservations in the 1960s about dealing directly with Americans were because they acted as if their wealth could solve all problems. Many of their officials then were brash and inexperienced, but I found them easier to work with than I expected.
America’s political process, however, can be unnerving for its friends. Within 25 years I have seen impeachment proceedings started against two American presidents. Fortunately no great harm was done to the state of the union. Just as great a source of anxiety is the speed at which policies in Washington change with changes in the principal players. It makes for unpredictable relationships. According to friendly diplomats in Washington, these new faces bring fresh ideas and act as a “flushing mechanism” to prevent the consolidation and fossilisation of a ruling elite. I believe only a wealthy and solidly established nation like America can roll with such a system.
In spite of many mistakes and shortcomings America has succeeded, and spectacularly so. In the 1970s and ‘80s, its industries were going down as against Japanese and German industries, but they came back with unexpected vigour in the 1990s. American corporations lead the world in the use of computers and information technology. They have exploited the digital revolution to restructure and flatten their organisations, and increased productivity to previously unheard of levels while keeping inflation low, increasing profits and staying ahead of the Europeans and Japanese in competitiveness. Their strength is in their talent, nurtured in their universities, think-tanks,, and in the R&D laboratories of their MNCs. And they attract some of the brightest minds from the world over, including many from India and China, to new, high-growth sectors like Silicon Valley. No European or Asian nation can attract and absorb foreign talent so effortlessly. This gives America a valuable advantage, like having a magnet to draw in the best and brightest from the world.
It has taken some time for Europeans to acknowledge the superiority of the American free-market economy, especially its corporate philosophy of concentrating on rates of return on equity. American executives are driven by their ceaseless search for increased shareholder value through higher productivity and competitiveness. The cost of this high performance-high reward system is an American society more divided than European or Japanese society. These two societies do not have the equivalent of the American underclass.
I suggested that a people must have reached a high level of education and economic development, must have a sizable middle class, and life must be no longer be a fight for basic survival, before that society could work such a democratic political system. The following year the Asahi Shimbum forum again discussed democracy and human rights, and their effect on economic development. I said that since different societies had developed separately for thousands of years in disparate ways, their ideals and norms were bound to be different. Therefore it was not possible to insist that American or European standards of human rights of the late 20th century be imposed universally. However with satellite television, it had become increasingly difficult for any government to hide its cruelties to its own people. Slowly but inevitably, the community of nations would find a balance between non-interference in another country’s internal affairs and the moral right to insist on more civilised and humane treatment by all governments of their own peoples.
There is no Asian models as such, but there are fundamental differences between East Asian Confucian and Western liberal societies. Confucian societies believe that the individual exists in the context of the family, extended family, friends and wider society, and that the government cannot and should not take over the role of the family. Many in the West believe that the government is capable of fulfilling the obligations of the family when it fails, as with single mothers. East Asians shy away from this approach. Singapore depends on the strength and influence of the family to keep society orderly and maintain a culture of thrift, hard work, filial piety and respect for elders and for scholarship and learning. These values make for a productive people and help economic growth.
I stressed that freedom could only exist in an orderly state, not when there was continuous contention or anarchy. In Eastern societies the main objective was to have a well-ordered society so that everyone could enjoy his freedom to the maximum. Part of contemporary American society were totally unacceptable to Asians because they represented a breakdown of civil society with guns, drugs, violent crime, vagrancy and vulgar public behavior. America should not foist its system indiscriminately on other societies where it would not work.
Man needs a moral sense of right and wrong. There is such a thing as evil, and men are not evil just because they are victims of society. I said in Foreign Affairs that many of the social problems in the US were the result of the erosion of of the moral underpinnings of society and the diminution of personal responsibility. Some American liberal intellectuals had developed the theory that their society had advanced to a stage where everyone would be better off if they were allowed to do their own thing. This encouraged Americans to abandon a moral or ethical basis for society.
In 20 minutes, I described how the issue of free trade was really the question of war or peace for the world.
Nations wax and wane. I argued that if a nation on the rise, with an excess of energy, was not allowed to export its goods and services, its only alternative would be to expand and capture territory, incorporate the population and integrate it to make for a bigger economic unit. That was why nations had empires which they controlled as one trading bloc. It was a time-honored way for growth. The world had moved away from that after the end of WW2. GATT, the IMF, the World Bank and new rules made possible a prosperous and dynamic Germany in spite of large numbers of Germans returning from the East into a shrunken land area. So also with the Japanese, who had to leave Korea, China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia and to be packed into a few Japanese islands. The Germans and the Japanese were able to stay within their boundaries and grow through trade and investments. They cooperated and competed with other nations and were able to prosper and flourish without wars. But if trade in goods and services was blocked, then China would revert to its historical solution of small warring states conquering one another to gain control of more territory and people until they became one colossal continental empire. This tight, logical exposition may have convinced the legislators intellectually, but many found it emotionally difficult to accept.
Yet I believed the Chinese placed great importance on fidelity. They knew that people who betrayed their friends would also betray them.
It was the same ritual as when Johnson gave me dinner in 1967. But Nixon’s style was different. He shook every hand with enthusiasm and the appropriate greeting: “Glad to see you again.” “How nice to see you.” “How good of you.” In between he would insert a few words of praise or comment on a particular guest as I shook hand with him. In the midst of all this he said in an aside, “Never use the wrong expression, like ‘How do you do.’ You may have met the man before. It will show you did not recognise him and he will be offended. Always use a neutral phrase like ‘How nice to see you.’ ‘How good to see you.’ ‘It is good to see you.’ And if you recognise him, ‘Ah, it is a long time since we last met. How good to see you again.’” He was a professional but had little small talk and never told jokes, unlike Reagan whose conversation was rich with such social lubricants.
Marshall Green asked for my views on Nixon’s visit to China in 1972. I said they could not be faulted except for the element of surprise. If it had been done with less surprise, the favourable results would have been even better. The surprise factor had planted apprehension in Japanese and Southeast Asian minds that big powers were prone to sudden policy switches which could leave them on the wrong side.
My greatest benefit was not more knowledge but the contacts and friendships I made with scholars who were not only knowledgable about contemporary affairs but also had access to the nerve centres of American government and business. I found many other fresh ideas and picked the brains of other highly intelligent people who were not always right. They were too political correct. Harvard was determinedly liberal. No scholar was prepared to say or admit that there were any inherent differences between races or cultures or religions. They held that human beings were equal and a society only needed correct economic policies and institutions of government to succeed. They were so bright I found it difficult to believe that they sincerely held these views they felt compelled to espouse.
Kissinger was circumspect in his choice of words to justify American intervention. Surrounded by doves, he was careful not to appear a hawk. Speaking slowly in his heavy German-accented English, he gave me the impression of a man who was not going to be swept along by the mood of the moment.
He was a serious thinker, knowledgeable about Asia and the world. He always wanted the big picture. For over an hour in my office, I answered his questions. The Culture Revolution was then at its height. As far as we could make out, Mao wanted to remake China. Like the first Chinese emperor, Qinshihuang, who had burnt all the books of the time to wipe out what had gone before, Mao wanted to erase the old China and paint a new one. But Mao was painting on an old Chinese picture imbedded in mosaic; the rains would come, Mao’s paint would be washed off, and the mosaic would reappear. Mao had only one lifetime and did not have the time or power to erase over 4,000 years of Chinese history, tradition, culture and literature. Even if all the books were burnt, the proverbs and sayings would survive in the folk memory of the people. Mao was doomed to fail.
Only then did I learn that, like me, Nixon had the habit of making notes after a serious discussion.
For a superpower such as the US, all countries except the Soviet Union and China are small. You will not mind my saying that in comparison Singapore is a tiddler. Outside the State Department’s bureau for East Asian and Pacific affairs, very little attention is paid to it.
The administration is very different. Heaven knows there are enough simpletons in it, but there are also first-rate men.
I viewed the Americans with mixed feelings. I admired their can-do approach but shared the view of the British establishment of the time that the Americans were bright and brash, that they had enormous wealth but often misused it. It was not true that all it needed to fix a problem was to bring resources to bear on it. Many American leaders believed that racial, religious and linguistic hatreds, rivalries, hostilities and feuds down the millennia could be solved if sufficient resources were expended on them.
They meant well but were heavy-handed and lacked a sense of history.
But America was the only country with the strength and determination to stem this relentless tide of history and reverse the erosion os people’s will to resist the communists.
I was relieved the Americans were prepared to oppose communists wherever they threatened and whatever the cost. Because Americans were resolutely anti-communist and prepared to confront them. Nehru, Nasser and Sukarno could afford to be non-aligned. This was a comfortable posture and one I had adopted without at first realising that it was a luxury paid for by Americans. Without them out front, together with the British, Europeans, Australians and New Zealanders, checking the Russian and Chinese communists, Singapore could not have been critical of China or Russia.
In many speeches I had emphasised that the governments of Southeast Asia must use the time the Americans were buying for us by their intervention in Vietnam to solve the problems of poverty, unemployment and inequity in our societies.
I have always found it difficult to feel the texture of another person’s mind when an interpreter stood in between. When they spoke to me in English I could feel the grain of their thinking. When I had for interpreters to tell me what they said, it was more difficult to read their body language. When a person speaks in English, even if it is not grammatical or idiomatic, I get the feel of the way his mind works. His pauses and hesitations in the middle of a sentence sometimes change the nuance of a sentence; an interpreter would have smoothed out these pauses and given me the substance without the wrinkles that would indicate his reservations.
Until the Europeans settle on a common language, they cannot equal the uniformity and the benefits of scale that America enjoys. EU engineers and managers will therefore not be so easily interchangeable as Americans when working on major projects.
In 1957 the Russians sent a sputnik into space. It was a spectacular demonstration of the superiority of Soviet technology. They loomed even larger in my mind after they sent the first man into space in 1961. It lent credence to their claim that history was on their side.
He also spoke of Russia, that the EU was not treating the leaders in Moscow with the respect that was due. The Russians were a proud people and felt belittled and slighted by this. If the correct approach was not maintained, he was convinced Russian nationalists and militarists would get back into power and “the whole cycle would start again.”
In 1995 Kohl visited Singapore again and repeated his concern over Russia. His European partners did not understand that Russia was crucial to peace in Europe. They had to help Russia become stronger and more democratic and not go back to dictatorship and expansionism. Europe would need Russia as a balance against China. For these reasons, Germany was Russia’s top aid donor with US$52B in 1989, more than half of all international assistance. He despaired of the Americans. They were becoming inward-looking.
When I got to know him better, beneath the outward bulk and apparent clumsiness I discovered a good mind with keen political instinct. He was a strong character, resolute and consistent in pursuing his objectives. His great vision enabled him to come to terms with Germany’s past and he was determined that the past would never again be repeated. Hence his single-minded pursuit of the European Monetary Union which he referred to as a question of war and peace. He believed the Euro would make the process of European integration irreversible.
I countered that if there were no free trade, then the world must prepare for another war. The Chinese had built their ancient empire because they needed to establish order over a wide expanse of territory and its many peoples so that goods and services could be exchanged freely within their empire. When all parts of the globe was carved up into various empires as before WW2, war resulted from competition for more raw materials, more markets and more wealth.
If all immigrants were racists, then the world was in for a difficult time. We had two alternative solutions to problems created by migrations that had taken all around the world: either to accept that all men had equal rights, or to return to the rule of the strong over the weak. For colored peoples of the world to demand retribution for past wrongs was not the answer to man’s survival.
Sihanouk was an extraordinary personality, highly intelligent and full of energy and joie de vivre. He had the airs and graces of and educated French gentleman, with all the accompanying gestures and mannerisms, and spoke English the French way. He was an excellent host who made each visit a memorable and enjoyable occasion.
I reassured him that eventually Vietnam could do better than Singapore. There was no reason why the present peace and stability should not last for a long time, for the lessons East Asia had learnt from the last 40 years was that war did not pay. In two big wars, in Korea and Vietnam, and in the guerrilla war in Cambodia, there had been no victors, only victims.
Our investors had run into a thicket of problems. I told Khai that if he wanted to attract investors, he must make the early ones welcome. They should be helped to succeed after they had fixed their assets to Vietnam’s soil. To treat investors with fixed assets in Vietnam as captives was the surest way to drive others away. Their officials dealt with investors as they had dealt with American soldiers, as enemies to be led into ambush and destroyed. Instead investors should be treated as valued friends who needed guidance through the maze of their bureaucracy with its landmines and other traps.
I told PM Kiet that the sum involved was just a $1M but the principle was important. If they reneged on the agreement, they would lose the confidence of the Singapore business community. Kiet must have intervened to get the project through, but not without further changes to the original agreement and several outstanding issues still unresolved.
The top leaders continued to be fearful of the social ills that followed the opening up of Vietnam, and also of losing political control, and slowed down liberalization. Unlike China, where most of the mayors and provincial governors were young, tertiary-educated men, the top men in charge of Vietnam’s cities and provinces were all former guerrilla commanders. They were aghast at what had happened in Moscow and the Soviet Union, and they did not approve of the social evils that had infected China’s coastal cities. This was not what they had fought for.
He sounded bitter and chastened. I remembered the haughty and arrogant leader who came to Singapore in 1978. Seeing how tough he was in defeat, I was thankful that Deng Xiaoping had punished the Vietnamese. They would have been unbearable as the victorious Prussians of Southeast Asia.
In my note to the cabinet I described Vietnam’s terrible state, although it was six years after their opening up. In 1975 Saigon could vie with Bangkok; now (in 1992) it lagged more than 20 years behind. I felt that for the time being the people had lost confidence in their leaders, and the leaders had lost confidence in their system. However, they were an energetic and intelligent people, Confucianist at the grass roots. I believed they would bounce back in 20 to 30 years. Every meeting had started and ended punctually. Their leaders were serious men.
Vietnam should not have too many international airports and seaports, but should concentrate on building one big international airport and one big international seaport so that the could be included in the world network of airports and seaports.
We discussed the loss-incurring state-owned enterprises (SOEs). They wanted to privatise them or sell them off to the workers and others. I explained that this method would not provide them with what was critical - efficient management. Singapore Airlines was 100 percent government-owned, but it was efficient and profitable because it had to compete against international airlines. We did not subsidise it; if it was not profitable, it would have to close down. I recommended that they privatise their SOEs by bringing in foreign corporations to get an injection of management expertise and foreign capital for new technology. A change in the management system was essential. They needed to work with foreigners to learn on the job. Privatising within the country by selling to their own people could not bring about this result.
The Vietnamese cunningly exploited the fears and desires of the countries of Asean that wanted to befriend them. They talked tough over their radio and newspapers. I found their leaders insufferable. They were filled with their own importance, and prided themselves as the Prussians of Southeast Asia. True, they had suffered, taken all the punishment that American technology had inflicted on them, and through sheer endurance plus their skillful propaganda, exploiting the American media, defeated the Americans. They were confident they could beat any other power in the world, even China, if it interfered with Vietnam. For us, the puny states of Southeast Asia, they had nothing but contempt. They declared they would establish diplomatic relations with member states of Asean individually, and refused to deal with Asean as a group.
I do not believe democracy necessarily leads to development. I believe that what a country needs to develop is discipline more than democracy.
Kukrit’s view was that we (Asean) had to be strong and firm and play “big brother to the Indochinese countries”. We could help them, every now and then, in ways that would be sufficient to keep them just beyond the point of starvation. We had to show our affluence, strength and solidarity, and occasionally ask them to join in song and dance festivals.
Unlike Marcos of the Philippines, Suharto did not spirit his wealth outside his country in readiness for a quick exit. He remained in Jakarta. After 32 years as the president, he was not about to run away. I did not understand why his children needed to be so rich. But for their excesses he would have had a different place in Indonesia’s history.
Loong said that in the event of a conflict, the SAF did not want any of its soldiers to be put in a difficult position where his loyalty to the nation might conflict with his emotions and his religion. We did not want any soldier to feel he was not fighting for a just cause, or worse, that his side might not be in the right. In time, as our national identity became more developed, this would be less of a problem.
He was direct and asked what we were building the SAF for. I replied equally directly that we feared that at some time or other there could be a random act of madness like cutting off our water supplies, which they had publicly threatened whenever there were differences between us. We had not wanted separation. It had been thrust upon us. If the water shortage became urgent, in an emergency, we would have to go in, forcibly if need be, to repair damaged pipes and machinery and restore the water flow. He denied that any such precipitate action would happen. I said I believed that he would not do this, but we had to be prepared for all contingencies.
Superstitious beliefs and a general reluctance to take responsibility for severe punishment, especially the death sentence, made Asian jurors most reluctant to convict. They preferred acquittal or conviction on a lesser charge. The reporter said that he could predict whenever a pregnant woman was a member of a jury there would be no conviction on a murder charge, for otherwise her child would be born cursed.
If we do not stand up to and answer our critics from the foreign media, Singaporeans especially journalists and academics, will believe that their leaders are afraid of or unequal to the argument, and will lose respect for us.
Where I come from, if an accuser is not prepared to face the person he has attacked, there is nothing more to be said.
Behind each successful project was a dedicated and able officer, trained in that discipline, and apply himself to our unique problems. There would have been no clean and green Singapore without Lee Ek Tieng. I could spell out broad conceptual objectives, but he had to work out the engineering solutions.
They had assumed that people who went into politics were gentlemen with private means. Indeed, in pre-war Britain people without private incomes were seldom found in Parliament. While this is no longer the case in Britain or the US, most successful people are too busy and doing too well to want to be in the government.
In the US highly paid persons from the private sector are appointed by the president for brief periods of one or two terms. Then they return to their private sector occupations as lawyers, company chairmen or lobbyists with enhanced value because they now enjoy easy access to key people in the administration. I thought this “revolving door” system undesirable.
People had for so long been accustomed to having public servants paid modest salaries that the idea that ministers not only exercised power but also paid in accordance with the importance of the job upset their sense of propriety. I was able to help the PM justify this change and rebut the arguments that ministers were more than adequately compensated by the honour of high office and the power they wielded, and that public service should entail sacrifice of income. I believed this high-minded approach was unrealistic and the surest way to make ministers serve only briefly, whereas continuity in office and the experience thus gained have been a great advantage and strength in the Singapore government. Our ministers have provided the experience and judgement the government has shown in its decisions, the result of their ability to think and plan long-term.
With the founder generation of leaders, honesty had become a habit. My colleagues would spurn any attempt to suborn them. They had put their lives in jeopardy to achieve power, not to enrich themselves, but to change society. However, this group could not be replicated because it was not possible to recreate the conditions that made them different. Our successors have become ministers as one of many career options, and not the most attractive one. If we underpay men of quality as ministers, we cannot expect them to stay long in office earning a fraction of what they could outside. With high economic growth and higher earnings in the private sector, ministers’ salaries have to match their counterparts’ in the private sector. Underpaid ministers and public officials have ruined many governments in Asia. Adequate remuneration is vital for high standards of probity in political leaders and high officials.
When the Chinese communists came to power they made a great play of their total honesty and dedication. Waiters and chambermaids in the China of the 1950s and ‘60s would return every scrap of property left behind in the hotel, even things the guests had intended to discard. It was an ostentatious display of their total disinterest in material possessions. But during the height of the Cultural Revolution, the system broke down. Favouritism, nepotism and convert corruption infected high places. The whole society was degraded as opportunists masqueraded as revolutionaries and achieved “helicopter promotions” by betraying and persecuting their peers and superiors. Corruption became worse when China embarked on their open-door policy in 1978. Many communist cadres who felt they had been deceived and had wasted their best years of their lives set out to make up for lost time and enrich themselves in every way they could. The same happened with communists in Vietnam. After they opened up to foreign investments and the free market in the late 1980s corruption infected the Communist Party. Both regimes, once justly proud of their total selflessness and dedication to the communist cause, are bedeviled by worse corruption than the decadent capitalist Asian countries they used to revile and despise. A precondition for an honest government is that candidates must not need large sums of money to get elected, or it must trigger off the cycle of corruption. The bane of most countries in Asia has been the high cost of elections. Having spent a lot to get elected, winners must recover their costs and also accumulate funds for the next election.
The students saw the communists as exemplars of dedication, sacrifice and selflessness, the revolutionary virtues displayed in the spartan lives of the Chinese communist leaders. Those were the prevailing beliefs of the time.
Petty power invested in men who cannot live on their salaries is an invitation to misuse that power.
It showed that our brightest women were not marrying and would not be represented in the next generation. The implications were grave. Our best women were not reproducing themselves because men who were their educational equals did not want to marry them.