By the virtue of his pragmatism in the economy and strong-arm methods in politics, Singapore’s success story has owed a lot to the founding father Lee Kuan Yew, who died on March 23.
Americans might know more about Fidel Castro, and perhaps even Kim II Sung, than they do of Lee Kuan Yew. All three leaders are considered dictators who dominated their respective nations for more than half a century. But their legacies are radically different. Fidel Castro and Kim II Sung left the people of Cuba and North Korea with poverty, desperation and isolated from the rest of the world. What Lee left to Singaporeans is a city-state renowned for its prosperity, cleanliness and order.
Lee’s experience of turning a small island into an economic engine in the Asian Pacific has been greatly touted by leaders around the world. “The Singapore Story” has become a tantalizing topic for scholars who study institutions, politics and economics. The story creates the impression that one can achieve economic success without the support of the democratic system and freedom, because Singapore’s government gives very limited freedom in many aspects to its citizens and harshly cracks down on dissidents.
However, this isn’t entirely correct.
Lee Kuan Yew once championed his ideal as “Asian values,” a unique approach to bringing his country success by finding alternatives to the West’s path to freedom and democracy. Few knew what such “Asian values” meant, but Lee’s actions during his political career demonstrated that he was more in favor of Western policies and culture than he claimed to be.
As a brilliant student, he attended the London School of Economics and graduated from Cambridge with First-Class honors in law. Though Lee publically embraced traditional Chinese values, in private he completely rejected the Chinese culture and despised Chinese traditions. In spite of being of Chinese descent, he rarely spoke Mandarin and did not learn it until he began dealing with the Chinese government.
It is also virtually unknown by most Americans that Lee was responsible for eradicating Chinese education in Singapore between the 1960s and 1980s. According to a paper by Van der Kroef published in The China Quarterly (1964), Lee expressed concerns over Singapore’s Nanyang University, then a college where courses were instructed in Mandarin. Lee forced schools funded by private philanthropies to teach more English than Chinese. “Extinction awaits Chinese schools unless they teach more English,” as one editorial report in Malaysia’s leading daily puts it.
Lee was a prophet at this point. His intention of emphasizing English education was to build a labor force that can communicate with the West thus keeping the economy open and energetic. In today’s Singapore, English is the most widely used and dominating official language in the country. Mandarin is also one of the four official languages, but has far less influence in the business and political level.
While publicly appealing to communist China’s leaders after the 1990s, Lee was by any measure a ruthless leader who persecuted, ousted and jailed thousands of communists shortly after he took office as prime minister. The fact that he was dictator did not mean that he was a friend of other authoritarian regimes and his far-sighted and draconic method to communism has won Singapore a peaceful period to develop a free market economy. His economic policy was no comparison to the colony’s former ruler Great Britain. He acknowledged that if his country adopted the welfare policy that has been introduced in the United Kingdom, it would zap the economy’s strength.
Lee’s thoughts and experiences have greatly inspired leaders in authoritarian states. His approach has had a profound influence on China’s communist leaders who always want to emulate Lee’s strategy to build a prosperous state curtailing freedom and democracy. Ironically, few of them know that Lee was once a tough anti-communism leader.
No matter how Lee claimed rejecting the West and promoted so-called “Asian values” in the public, it’s a baseless propaganda. What he did was force Singapore to be a more westernized and civilized place under the name of “Asian values” so that he could take a tough approach to implement his policy.
