I am not bound by theories, but my upbringing in a three-generation family made me an unconscious Confucianist. It seeps into you, the Confucianist belief that society works best where every man aims to be a gentleman.
CHINA’S LEADERS ARE impressed by Singapore’s sure-handed system of social control. Singapore, after all, is a solidly stable society, perhaps to a fault: Western critics regard Lee and his successors as little more refined than a gang of high-IQ control freaks, if not worse. But for the Chinese government in Beijing (and indeed many others in Asia, not all of whom wish to be on public record), Singapore’s system of social control adds immense credibility to its policy recommendations to others. The Chinese place social order over everything else, a priority not too hard to understand with 1.3 billion people milling about; so do Western corporations and investors looking for safe harbors to dock and invest for the long term.
For much of Asia, what’s more, the Singapore government gets high marks for aggressively engineering exceptional economic development without permitting options for messy disorder or, worse, bloody revolution. Ask Asians to vote for either the messy democracy of the Philippines, or for the comparatively noncompetitive democracy of Singapore, and the latter’s comfort, security and the other quality-of-life amenities would probably win—especially if it were a secret vote.
Many Asians were skeptical of the superficially idealistic Tiananmen Square uprising in 1989, for it could have led to a complete unraveling of China as a country. Almost everyone in the region knew that a China that came apart would be a tragic convulsion. From this perspective, the government’s crackdown was a defensible option. Underlying all these Asian perspectives is a general political philosophy that Lee not only articulates better than anyone else alive in the region, but can brag that he has underlain economic and standard-of-living results that are the region’s envy.
Here we ask him to weigh the relative impact of domestic policy and philosophy on international policy options.
I say: “Before I forget to ask you, when I was a young fellow, there was this philosopher, Frederick Hayek, who wrote a book called The Road to Serfdom, and it was a scathing critique of Communism and socialism and it was trounced by the American liberal establishment as being evil and wrong, but you think of it favorably.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Because he was right?”
“I believe Hayek was a very clear thinker and that he hit upon the eternal truth, explaining that the free market is necessary to get the economy right.”
I think we are getting to something here that’s beyond the anecdotal: “In that context, the great Thomas Hobbes, that 16th-century political realist and pessimist, overlaps with your thinking. His recurring thought about the definition of liberty was that it was too expansive; that, in fact, it was so expansive that it allowed the citizen to slide into negligence about obligations to family and community and to state on the grounds of ‘liberty’. A famous American screenwriter once put the issue of liberty or freedom this way: ‘But take care, freedom is a drug, much like any other, and too much can be a bad thing.’ Do you agree with that?”
LKY can handle being put on the spot, but his honest answer to this transcendent issue is one that irritates many in the West who otherwise would be more admiring of this man and his Singapore: “As I said, I am not bound by theories, but my upbringing in a three-generation family made me an unconscious Confucianist. It seeps into you, the Confucianist belief that society works best where every man aims to be a gentleman. The ideal is a junzi, a gentleman.
“What does that mean? That means he does not do evil, he tries to do good, he’s loyal to his father and mother, faithful to his wife, brings up his children well, treats his friends properly and he’s a good loyal citizen of his emperor. It’s the Five Relationships, Wu-Lun. The underlying philosophy is that for a society to work well, you must have the interests of the mass of the people, that society takes priority over the interests of the individual. This is the primary difference to the American principle, the primary rights of the individual.”
I say: “In that connection, the late and much-admired American neo-conservative Irving Kristol was also a modern-day Hobbesian. His New York Times obituary read in part like this: ‘In his opinion, his fellow GIs were inclined to loot, rape and murder, and only Army discipline held them in check. It was a perception about human nature at its worst that would stay with him.’ This is very Hobbesian.”
He nods: “The Confucianist believes society must take priority and if the individual has to lose, that cannot be helped. But Americans put the rights of the individual above that of society. You just cannot get some problems resolved.”
I am not bound by theories, but my upbringing in a three-generation family made me an unconscious Confucianist. It seeps into you, the Confucianist belief that society works best where every man aims to be a gentleman.
I mention that Hobbes viewed human beings with more than a pinch of pessimism. He thought them at the bottom line so potentially vicious that they had to be restrained by state intervention from their worst instincts and actions.
LKY believes that the state needs to play a forceful and preeminent role in maintaining order.
I look up from my notes and then at Lee: “One way of expressing individualism politically is one-man, one-vote. You say you are not a big fan of one-man, one-vote, and yet, the outcome of your policies in Singapore is highly utilitarian in a philosophically rigorous way—to satisfy the needs of the greatest number in the best possible manner.”
He looks around the State Room and answers, staring straight at me: “Well, because unless you do that, you are going to have an underclass. In Singapore, that underclass used to be large numbers of Malays who do not do well in school especially in mathematics and science. But we’ve to give everybody a chance to make a living.”
“But your basic point is that if you have one-man, one-vote and you have these lobbies and you have this deadlock of democracy, you are going to have that underclass, you are going to have the excessive freedom and it leads to drugs and everything else and, therefore, one-man, one-vote in a certain way is an impediment to a democratic result. Is that right?”
“Yes, I think so.”
I think to myself (and no sense trying to compliment him, we now know that won’t work): how many highly intelligent leaders in this world would have the guts to openly say this?
I tell LKY about a former UCLA student who graduated from the elite Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and got a great job at a respected transportation-governmental agency in New York: “I said to her: ‘I think I’m going to write a book on Lee. Now, don’t get mad at me because I know he is considered a soft authoritarian, and you know I’m not selling out or anything like that. It’s going to be an objective book, you know; it’s not going to be a PR book or anything.’ There was a pause, and then she looked at me and said: ‘Sometimes I think we could use some more soft authoritarianism in the United States.’ ”
“Now she is 25. And I say, whatever do you mean? She says that when you see what happens to public policy and how it gets churned up by the special interests and the money interests, good public policy gets eviscerated.”
Lee is puzzled: “Gets what?”
I cannot believe I have actually used a word unfamiliar to this profoundly articulate man. I explain: “You know, gets chopped up and diluted by the special interests and the lobbies in the process. You say to yourself, we could use an LKY here to set us straight. I mean, I think there are a lot of young Americans that are saying the process is not right.”
Those black eyes seemed to shimmer a little: “You have carried individualism and the pressing of sectional interests to beyond the limits where the good of the majority is being eroded. Every time there is a shooting spree, the gun lobby works hard and the guns keep being sold. So, there is no end to this problem. One psychotic student causes tremendous carnage. It doesn’t make sense. In England, they don’t allow guns. But, now, they’ve got a thuggish generation using knives in and out of school. However, you cannot kill so many with a knife.”
I happen to agree: “So that if you look at America right now, I think the system is not the answer for everyone; maybe it needs to be revised. So, the American ideology is we have done so well because of our system, but now it is occurring to young people that we are in trouble because of our system.”
“No, any system needs to be revised from time to time. No system lasts forever. Conditions change, some flaws in the system are carried to excess and you’ve got to revise them. You cannot say this is a general principle that’s good for eternity.”
“Right. In fact, Aristotle said words such as democracy and monarchy are not definitions of an ideal type but merely ‘described different ways of deciding practical questions’, and that is your view, right?”
“Yes.”
“Winston Churchill once said, if you want to develop serious doubts about democracy, try to conduct a five-minute conversation on the issues with the average citizen.”
Even the outspoken Lee didn’t want to touch that one. But I seem to detect the trace of a smile. It’s almost as though we came to the same recollection subconsciously. In a famous 1947 House of Commons debate, Winston Churchill was to remark: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” But after spending an afternoon or two with Lee Kuan Yew, you might be tempted to ask: are we now so sure?
The Confucianist believes society must take priority and if the individual has to lose, that cannot be helped. But Americans put the rights of the individual above that of society. You just cannot get some problems resolved.
By the way, I say to him, the most commonly used Western cliché to describe LKY is as a ‘soft authoritarian’.
I ask: “Are you really so ‘soft’? On the other hand, are you really such an ‘authoritarian’? Are you content to be known this way to your people? If not, how?”
The answer comes back from the coughing LKY without irony or apology: “ ‘Authoritarian’ means one has not got the consent of the people to your policies. My policies have been endorsed by the electorate every four to five years by a clear majority, never below 60 percent. I do not consider myself authoritarian.”
My policies have been endorsed by the electorate every four to five years by a clear majority, never below 60 percent. I do not consider myself authoritarian.
He would differentiate his view from that of the Russian political concept of a ‘sovereign democracy’ by pointing to results. You can postulate the need for strong state control and the elimination of true political pluralism in the name of development and stability, if you want. But then you have to deliver the goods. If you don’t, all you’ve done is to seize power.