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发帖数: 1 | 1 2009年国家地理访问新加坡李光耀的问答
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TRANSCRIPT OF MINISTER MENTOR LEE KUAN YEW’S INTERVIEW WITH MARK JACOBSON
FROM NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ON 6 JULY 2009 (FOR NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
JAN 2010 EDITION)
Q: “I don’t think you’d be dazzled but this is what they give when they
interview a big shot.”
Mr Lee: “Okay. Barbara Poulson, she’s the CEO, owner?”
Q: “She’s the editor. The writers don’t deal with the CEO. The writers
go economy class.”
Mr Lee: “Thank you.”
Q: “It was interesting. The thing about National Geographic is the joke but
it’s not really a joke, I guess, the photographers go business class and
the writers go economy class. I never cared for that very much myself.”
Mr Lee: “The writers go by economy class.”
Q: “The photographers go business class.”
Mr Lee: “They’d get tired. They don’t have, what do you call it, DVD?”
Q: “No, you can watch it. In the airplane, the DVD is about this close to
your face, so you can’t really move very much. It’s sort of like sitting
in the first row of the movie theatre. So actually I’ve interviewed
Presidents and I was born in 1948, there’ve been 10-12 American Presidents.
They come and they go. But I’ve never interviewed anybody who has stayed
the length that you have. It’s like interviewing George Washington and
Thomas Jefferson rolled up into one, so it’s kind of nice.”
Mr Lee: “It was one of these cataclysmic moments in history when empires
dissolved and invading armies came in and lorded it over us for three-and-a-
half years, in this case the Japanese Imperial army who were quite brutal
and then the Communists who were armed to fight the Japanese, made a bid for
power. So after all that, we came through as the Communists would call it
the crucible of fire.”
Q: “The crucible of fire. In your book, you said that the three years of
Japanese Occupation were the most, probably the most important years of your
life. Do you feel that way, do you still feel that way?”
Mr Lee: “Yes, of course. First, I was in my late teens, they captured
Singapore in February 1942. I was 18-plus and they didn’t leave until 1945
when I was 21-plus.”
Q: “Those are significant years in anybody’s life.”
Mr Lee: “So I was Chinese male, tall and they were going for people like
me because this was the centre for the collection of ethnic Chinese
donations to Chungking to fight the Japanese. So when they came in, they
were out to punish us. So they slaughtered 50,000, well the numbers estimate
go up to about 90,000 but I think verifiable numbers would be about 50,000.
And just randomly but for a stroke of fortune, I would have been one of
them.”
Q: “Well, 1945 seems to be a, if you look back over history, 1945 was a
cataclysmic year for humanity in general. You see difference between the
combination of the detonation of the atom bomb and the discovery of the Nazi
camps. So at that point, tell me what you think? It seems that humanity
began to stop thinking of itself as made in the image of the creator so
maybe it weren’t so wonderful.”
Mr Lee: “I don’t think I ever started off with that hypothesis or that
basis. I always thought that humanity was animal-like and that Confucian
theory was Man can be improved. I’m not sure it can be but it can trained,
it can be disciplined. I’m not sure you can actually change the character
of a man but you can discipline him and make him, you make a left-hander
write with his right hand but you can’t really change his natural born
instincts to use his left hand. But a Confucianist belief Man is perfectible
which is an optimistic belief.”
Q: “I would say so.”
Mr Lee: “And there are many American sociologists who also would like to
prove that to be correct, the latest one being the professor who has done
some research insists why ethnic Jews and Asians and West Indian Blacks do
so well in America and they came to the conclusion that’s because they
emphasised upbringing and education.”
Q: “Actually, I went to the University of California at Berkley back in
the 1960s and early 70s, I never graduated, then I went back and finished my
degree in 2004 to show my children their father wasn’t a bum and it was
interesting to see how the demographic composition of US, that’s the number
one public college in the United States. It was like half of the graduating
class was Asians and it was interesting and it made me feel like I would
never have gotten there.”
Mr Lee: “Most of the Asians settled in California because of the climate.”
Q: “It was sort of striking because you feel like, what you’re saying is
interesting because it’s like some people seem to thrive in certain
environments and some people don’t, I don’t know why.”
Mr Lee: “Well, we’ve got ethnic Chinese and ethnic Indians here. The
settled ones have become less hard-driving and hard-striving and we’ve got
recent migrants, they are hungry, they’re determined to succeed having
uprooted themselves and they’re doing better.”
Q: “Is that okay? Is that fine, I mean?”
Mr Lee: “No it worries the old citizens. They say look this is fierce
competition, my children won’t be getting the scholarships because they’re
doing well in schools, they push their children very hard. In fact, they
need no pushing. They come here from China with no English language and they
know that without English, they won’t get along. So there are many cases
of boys and girls aged 12, 13 who come into our secondary schools and by the
time, they finish the schools, they top the class in English.”
Q: “That’s interesting, it’s like my grandparents came to New York. When
they came in, they don’t speak English and they did great. They just really
tried hard and made a life for themselves and I think after a number of
generations, it’s very difficult to keep that kind of drive up.”
Mr Lee: “Of course, of course.”
Q: “Do you think that’s inevitable or do you think that people just get
lazy or what?”
Mr Lee: “No, I think the spurs are not stuck on your hinds. They are part
of the herd, why-go-faster? But when you’re lagging behind, you must go
faster to catch up with the herd. I’m quite sure that there are children of
the migrants who strive arduously. When they grow up in the same schools as
the Singaporeans, the same playing fields, same environment and they begin
to adopt Singaporean habits in the ways of living and thinking. So I’m
quite sure they’d become like us. Well, because we’re shrinking in our
population, our fertility ratio is about 1.29.
Q: “I actually wanted to ask you about that.”
Mr Lee: ”So it’s a worrying factor. So we’ll need a constant inflow but
we’re a small population, so we get the inflow and we get the inflow from
the educated end of the population, both Indians and Chinese and they’ve
got surplus populations. Well, I won’t say surplus but they’ve got huge
population, huge numbers.”
Q: “They have people to spare, that’s for sure.”
Mr Lee: “No and they’ve got fierce competition there, so when they come
here, higher standards of living for the time being, better social
environment with jobs.”
Q: “What would you say the parents of the second or third generation of
Singaporeans and their children are not able to compete with the new people?
How do you tell them?”
Mr Lee: “We tell them look they have got to work harder or they’ll become
stupid. It’s just that they don’t see the point of it. Why race when you
can canter and save your energy and do other things? Art, ballet, sports
whereas these new migrants, they spend all their time slogging away in the
library or at home.”
Q: “You’re not saying that arts, sports and ballet are not important, are
you?”
Mr Lee: “No, I’m not saying they are not important but an inordinate
amount of time is spent on extra-curricular activities.”
Q: “I told my son if you stop playing basketball, you do better on these
tests but I like playing basketball. I said, well.”
Mr Lee: “Well, I think it’s an inevitable evolution of any society and
therefore, a regular inflow of migrants without too huge a deluge will keep
that society on its toes.”
Q: “You have 25 per cent here of people who are expatriates. Is that too
much?”
Mr Lee: “Well, there’s a little discomfort in some areas because in some
areas, they seem to congregate, the new ones. The Indians somehow find the
East Coast congenial. They concentrate there, so they become very obvious.
The Chinese are more scattered, not so obvious except in the food courts
where they are doing the hard work because Chinese cooks from China are
willing to work for $1,000 less a month and they’re just as good. So the
employer looks for them.”
Q: “Well suppose, if you were the owner of a restaurant and you were going
to hire a chef.”
Mr Lee: “I’d choose the best chef.”
Q: “You’d chose the best chef. It wouldn’t make a difference how much you
have to pay.”
Mr Lee: “Well, because the customer will make up for any difference. I
mean, good chefs are difficult to come by. That’s as simple as that.”
Q: “The talent.”
Mr Lee: “It’s the taste buds, your nostrils, sense of colour, et cetera.”
Q: “We ate dinner at Iggys, somewhere at the Regency Hotel. He was telling
us, we were eating the food and he’s sitting there watching us eat which
is so disconcerting I have got to say and he was explaining how they put
together each dish. It was like listening to a painter telling you.”
Mr Lee: “Yes, they make it an art.”
Q: “It was an art form.”
Mr Lee: “It’s not only just food. It’s presentation, it’s for the eyes,
for the smell, for the texture and so on.”
Q: “You have a favourite food hawker?”
Mr Lee: “I can’t go.”
Q: “Or is it really too good to say?”
Mr Lee: “Well, I can’t go anymore because so many people want to shake my
hands and I become a distraction, I can’t really get down to my food.”
Q: “So can you have take-out?”
Mr Lee: “Well, that’s not quite the same. I tend to go to restaurants when
I go out and I try restaurants with a quiet corner where I can sneak in and
sneak out with my friends and not have a crowd wanting to shake hands with
me.”
Q: “One of the things that I did when I came, I’ve been here about two
weeks, and I know I have this interview with you. So they say what are you
doing in Singapore? I say well, I’m going to interview the MM and they said
, oh yeah. I said well, what would you ask him if you have a chance and
people have a lot of question. So I have integrated my questions with their
questions.”
Mr Lee: “That’s all right.”
Q: “I thought probably you would appreciate that.”
Mr Lee: “I’m 85 coming on to 86 this September. I’ve had many eggs
thrown at me.”
Q: “One thing that really struck me, coming from an American perspective
is how much people, as much as they may seem to complain, they obviously
feel a sense of home here and they love this place and this is their home
and whatever problems they may have with whatever, that love of it comes
through which I don’t think the people really in a place like America can
really appreciate that. In America, what do they know about Singapore? They
know it has an exotic name, the chewing gum and the guy that got caned. That
’s it. And one of my missions here is to kind of like explode certain
mythologies that people might have about this place.”
Mr Lee: “Well, the Americans who’ve been here and done business, stayed
here especially, if you ask them, they produced, the Americans get together
and help each other, so they produced a book for new commerce, new entrants.
So every three, four years they change and they give out all the
eccentricities of the Singapore society, where do you get good food, what
you have to watch out for, where they give you a bum rap and so on. And I
think high on the list is the clean environment, no graffiti, safe
personally, health et cetera, clean air, clean water and clean food except
for some isolated cases and a safe environment for their children. I mean,
where can you go out and jog at three o’clock in the morning and nothing
happens? I think you can see them. You’re staying at the marina around
there?”
Q: “I’m staying at Merchant Court.”
Mr Lee: “Merchant Court? Opposite?”
YY: “In fact, just next to Clarke Quay.”
Mr Lee: “Yes, yes. You can. Nobody has been mugged, nobody has been raped.
The crime rate is the lowest in Southeast Asia because we have a fairly
disciplined population. Everybody is educated, nobody, there are a few
dropouts who go in for glue sniffing and drugs and so on but we keep the
numbers down and we rescue as much of them as we can. But the social
delinquency rate amongst young people is at a minimum.”
Q: “One thing that struck me is how you never see a policeman. I live in
New York and I see police, cops all the time.”
Mr Lee: “You have got to show your presence to scare people, I mean, that
I’m around. But in Singapore, we’ve got what you call neighbourhood police
, that they are stationed in the neighbourhood. There’s a little
neighbourhood post for each precinct and they stay there for two, three,
even four years, so they get to know everybody there. So any stranger comes
in they know and they become friends with the neighbourhood. So apart from
the occasional round in a car, they make sure that houses are properly
locked up and not left open inviting thieves.”
Q: “It’s not necessary to be driving around with the search light and all
of the stuff like that. That’s the way it is in most places, really. This
is a law abiding society in general.”
Mr Lee: “Well, it’s the education in the schools and at home partly
because we’re such a densely populated kind of buildings, all high rises,
so you have got to develop habits which are considerate to your neighbours.
If you have loud blaring noise going through the walls, partition walls to
the neighbours, they’ll soon complain to the the neighbourhood police or
somebody will come up to say will you tone your volume down because you’re
waking up the neighbourhood. And they learn to accommodate each other
because we don’t allow our ethnic groups to choose to live together. When
they are resettled, they have got to ballot for their neighbours, so you get
Malays, Indians, Chinese all shuffled around together when in the first
generation, they used to sell and relocate themselves, so we have quotas and
no precinct should have more than this quota of the population. So in other
words, we bring about an integration by spreading them which means we
spread them in the schools too.”
Q: “And it’s worked.”
Mr Lee: “It’s worked. And so we have a more homogenous and more
homogenous in the sense that they haven’t changed their religions, the
Malays are still Muslims and they go to the mosques every Friday and they’
ve slightly different habits. The influence from the Middle East has made
them have head-dresses for no rhyme or reason.”
Q: “Actually, it’s an interesting question that just came up recently that
I was going to ask you about. I know that you put a premium on racial
harmony and religious harmony and it’s actually more or less legislated
here, right?”
Mr Lee: “Yes, because you can have enormous trouble once religions clash.”
Q: “Well, the two things I’ve been interested to ask you about that
because I agree with you is number one, the recent rise of Evangelical
Christians in Singapore.”
Mr Lee: “As a result of American efforts.”
Q: “I don’t know if it’s American efforts but I went to the New Creation
Church and you might as well have been in Tennessee , it was exactly the
same. As soon as you walked through the door, it was exactly the same but it
seemed very popular. Is that a new monkey (?) ranch in there?”
Mr Lee: “No, I don’t think so. You see most Chinese here are Buddhists or
Taoist ancestor worshippers, I’m one of them, so it is a tolerant society,
it says whatever you want to believe in, you go ahead. And these youngsters
, the educated ones, Western-educated especially, now they are all English-
educated, their mother tongue is the second language. Therefore, they begin
to read Western books and Western culture and so on and then the Internet.
So they begin to question like in Korea that what is this mumbo-jumbo, the
ancestors and so on? The dead have gone, they’re praying before this altar
and asking for their blessings and then they have got groups, Christian
groups who go out and evangelize. They catch them in their teens, in their
late teens when they’re malleable and open to suggestions and then they
become very fervent evangelists themselves. My granddaughter is one of them.
She’s now 28. My wife used to tell her look, don’t go for any more of
these titles, just look for MRS. It’s just around the corner, God will
arrange it.”
Q: “Well, in the US, as you say, it’s import from the US or an export.
These people have been very politically active.”
Mr Lee: “Well, they know here that if you get politically active, you will
incite the Buddhist, the Taoist, the Muslims, the Hindus and others to do
similar response. We used to teach in the schools in the 1980s to get back
some moral values as a result of Westernisation, Confucian culture as a
subject in itself for the Chinese whereupon the Malays, the Indians and so
on, they reacted. They wanted not Confucian culture, they wanted their
religion, so we decided we’ll stop this. So we took the concepts of
Confucianism and put it into civic subject, that society is more important
than the individual, that the individual must care for the society and the
interests of the society must take precedence over the individual, which is
contrary to the American or Western system which says the individual trumps
everything, freedom trumps everything, freedom of speech, freedom of
whatever you tolerate even at the expense of making others feel inconvenient
. If I don’t like abortion, you’re a doctor who aborts people, I shoot you
.”
Q: “That may happen, that’s valid I think there is a rather large
emphasis on individual autonomy in Western cultures that is sometimes
detrimental to the larger society. But that’s the way you’re brought up,
that’s what we’re used to, so it becomes….”
Mr Lee: “No, it’s the philosophy of society you start with. You get all
the Kantian theories and the Rousseau and so on, so gradually it evolved and
then along comes Maddox and Jefferson’s the right to happiness of the
society and so on. So it’s an optimistic sort of approach to life. The
Chinese start off with a completely different end of the stick that all men
are born the same and you have got to educate them and perfect them,
otherwise, they will not improve. So they put a lot of emphasis on
upbringing at home and in the schools. Well, we’re losing part of it
because the Chinese schools have disappeared. We’re trying to preserve it
or introduce it into the English speaking schools but the teachers now are
also educated in English speaking schools and have lost the old traditions.
So they’re trying to get them to go to China and see how they preserve
these qualities. But we find that in the cities, they’re also changing.”
Q: “So when, don’t take this the wrong way, but when you decided to close
the Chinese stream education and the college, what was the rationale behind
that and do you ever regret doing that?”
Mr Lee: “No, I regret not doing it faster because politically, if there’d
been a violent electoral protest in the next elections because they’re so
wedded to the idea that language means, culture means, life means everything
. But I’m a pragmatist and you can’t make a living with the Chinese
language in Singapore. The first duty of the government is to be able to
feed its people, to feed its people in a little island. There’s no
hinterland and no farming, you have got to trade and you have got to do
something to get people buy your goods or services or get people to come
here and manufacture themselves, export, ready-made markets and
multinationals which I stumbled on when I went to Harvard for a term in 1968
and I said oh, this could solve my unemployment problem. So we brought the
semiconductors factories here and one started, the whole herd came and we
became a vast centre for production of computers and computer peripherals.
But they all speak English, multinationals from Japan, Europe, whatever
European country they come from, they speak English. So Chinese-educated
were losing out and they were disgruntled because they got the poorer jobs
and lesser pay. So eventually our own Members of Parliament were Chinese-
educated and graduates from the Chinese university said okay, we have got do
something. We’re ruining these people’s careers. By that time, the
university was also losing its good students and getting bum students.
Because they took in poor students, they graduated them on lower marks and
so the degree became valueless. So when you apply for a job with a Chinese
university degree, you hide your degree and produce your school certificate.
So I tried to change it from within, the Education Minister was Chinese-
educated and English-educated to convert it from within because most of the
teachers have American PhDs. So they did their thesis in English but they’
ve forgotten their English as they’ve been teaching in Chinese, so it
couldn’t be done. So I merged them with the English speaking university.
Great unhappiness and dislocation for the first few years but when they
graduated, we put it to them do you want your old university degree or you
want English university degree? All opted for the English university degree.
That settled it.”
Q: “In recent events as China begins to ascend, I mean, would you?”
Mr Lee: “No, no. It makes no difference. We are not going to tie ourselves
to China to the extent it makes us hostage. I mean, we have many
investments there because the older generation are Chinese-educated, they
feel comfortable but the younger generation, they have enough Chinese who
want to go there and do business and they can ramp it up if you want because
once you are able to listen and speak and read without writing, you can
pick it up. And not everybody wants to go there and we’ve been offering
scholarships to their top universities, Beijing, Qinghua, Hudan, very few
takers. They say nah, I want to go to America or Britain because they know
they’re coming back here and competing in English.”
Q: “Do you think that, I mean, one question I wanted to ask you was
building a country from scratch is obviously an enormous achievement,
accomplishment.”
Mr lee: “No, it’s not a nation. It’s a society in transition. You need a
few hundred years to build a nation.”
Q: “Oh really?”
Mr Lee: “Yes.”
Q: “You have a lot of countries running around claiming they’re nations.
You don’t think they really are nations?”
Mr Lee: “Well, we make them say the national pledge and sing the national
anthem but suppose we have a famine, will your Malay neighbour give you the
last few grains of rice or will she share it with her family or fellow
Muslim or vice versa?”
Q: “Depends on the person, doesn’t it? No, it doesn’t?”
Mr Lee: “No, I think there comes a time, I read a book by Edward Wilson
who was Harvard.”
Q: “I know who he is.”
Mr Lee: “And he wrote about human beings.”
Q: “Actual past ones.”
Mr Lee: “And he described the Maoris. So when two tribes were fighting, the
third tribe will come and see which tribe is more our side, more genes like
us and they joined that side. So it’s an instinct. Can you overcome that
instinct? Edward Wilson says culture can overcome because he’s American, he
knows a mix of Europeans and others. But it takes many, many years. Yes,
they all do the military service, equal treatment, equal pay, equal hardship
, job opportunities but we live in concentric circles. Cross marriages, yes
a few, usually the parents are most unhappy. Then where do you belong, the
children of the cross marriages? Sometimes they get reabsorbed in their
father ethnic group and they carry the father’s surname. Sometimes, if you
become a Muslim then whether you’re male or female, you join the other side
. But it has happened to the margins more and more. But I think the instinct
, the human instinct is still there. I mean, it’s in America.”
Q: “I live in New York which is similar to Singapore in a way.”
Mr Lee: “No, I mean, I used to talk to an Indian. He was the
administrator of Agra and we were driving back to Delhi. This was in the
late 1970s. So he was telling me he was writing a thesis on Shakespeare, a
highly-educated man. At that time, English-educated, that generation. So I
said, supposing I pretend as a caste, supposing I pretend I’m a Brahmin,
high caste and I invite you to dinner, he said yeah I’ll come. You give me
a good dinner, I’ll come. Now supposing I want to marry your daughter? He
says that’s different. The most thorough inquiries will be made. So I said
supposing I tell you I came from Calcutta and how you’re going to find me.
He says no, you’ve got to live somewhere in Calcutta, you must have your
family, your neighbours, your friends in Calcutta, we’ll find out. Then we
’ll know what caste you belong to.”
Q: “So as long as you have enough human trail people will figure out who
you are.”
Mr Lee: “Yes, and in Japan, they do it a different way. They exclude the
Chinese and the Koreans who have been there for generations. They’re still
not Japanese citizens. Some had become since the West started criticizing
them because you may have a Japanese name and you speak perfect Japanese,
but for promotions, where is your home village? Never mind, I come from
Tokyo, Osaka or Kobe. No where is your home domicile and they will trace
you there.”
Q: “So what you’re saying now is this somewhat contradictory to the
programme that you have here where you have the quotas? It’s really human
nature, the people hang out with their own kind. Can you legislate that? Can
you do anything about that?”
Mr Lee: “It takes times. You can have a certain, as I said, concentric
circles. They overlap at the outer circles. You start with your family, your
relatives, your immediate friends and then your school friends and other
friends in the outer fringe. In the outer circles, you have common ground
but you can even invite them into your home and visit each other on festive
occasions and so on but when it comes to marriage and becoming part of the
family, that’s a very different happiness.”
Q: “Is it, will it be your goal to break down those barriers or it’s not
worth doing, it’s just a waste of time?”
Mr Lee: “I think we just leave it alone.”
Q: “You just leave it alone.”
Mr Lee: “You try to break it down, you’re going to cause a lot of
unhappiness and the older generation vote solidly against.”
Q: “As Singapore moves along, I mean, answer me this question, who has the
hardest job?”
Mr Lee: “Hardest job?”
Q: “You or your son?”
Mr Lee: “It’s to keep going at the same pace, same quality of governance
at all levels, more integrated. I mean not assimilated but more integrated,
more easy to get along with each other, a more cohesive society and a better
-educated society at all levels, not just the few at the top at universities
or polytechnics. Even the dropouts now we’re putting them into technical
institutes where they learn hands-on preparing engines, electrical equipment
and so on in a fairly splendid surroundings because otherwise the old trade
schools, they’ll say ah, already you’re a failure. But now they go into
air-conditioned buildings looking the same like polytechnics. You don’t
feel shy about being seen there. You come out with a certificate and if you
make the grade, they will go up one step to the polytechnic where you’ll
learn nearly a degree status and if you do well in the polytechnic, you go
on to university.”
Q: “Do you think that the world is more complicated now than it was when
you were a young man, when you were in the 1960s when Singapore first became
independent?”
Mr Lee: “Of course, I mean everyday is more globalised and more
complicated. You look at this swine virus. In the old days, it’d have died
in the village where the Mexican got it. He wouldn’t have been traveling to
Mexico City. Now it goes to Mexico City, it infects people there, within 24
hours, it’s around the world.”
Q: “That’s one thing I want to ask. As the country moves along, we won’t
call it a nation, as the country moves along...”
Mr Lee: “It’s a nation in the making. The optimistic view. We must have
optimism.”
Q: “Absolutely or else why bother to get up in the morning?”
YY: “Mark, MM has another appointment if you want to spare two minutes.”
Mr Lee: “I give you 45 minutes, you carry on.”
Q: “Carry on?”
Mr Lee: “Yeah, yeah, it’s all right. If you’ve come all the way two
weeks, I can postpone my appointment later.”
Q: “I appreciate that very much. But I will stick to only the questions I
have.”
Mr Lee: “No, when you say you spent two weeks here, that means you’re
doing a serious piece.”
Q: “It’s a serious piece and also as I told you, I’m very anxious to give
a realistic portrayal of the place that people have a lot of illusions
about. So therefore, I want to find out really what’s going on. Let’s ask
you a question about Singapore. One of the things that people say about
Singapore is it’s too, life is too easy here. People have lost their
curiosity and that’s the problem. How do you respond to that?”
Mr Lee: “No, I don’t think that is so much.., that’s a stereotype view.
If they’ve lost their curiosity, they wouldn’t be striving so hard to get
to university, to travel abroad, to go to higher education institutes abroad
, to learn higher skills. I mean, I’m undergoing physiotherapy because I
had a fall on the bicycle, so I’m stuck there for one hour talking to the
physiotherapist and she’s upgrading herself, she’s done her training here.
Her next stage is to go to Australia and get a degree in physiotherapy. I
said is the hospital sending you? She said no, I’m paying on my own. I said
will you get a pay rise when you come back? She said no but my chances of
promotion will be there. So you see it’s not that they have lost the
curiosity. I mean, they’re prepared to spend two years in Perth or Brisbane
or Sydney. That’s where they get the most physiotherapists because their
children are great sportsmen.”
Q: “It’s truly they keep on driving their motorcycles into the wall and
then they get up and say, let’s do it again.”
Mr Lee: “So there is this curiosity to find out about the world and it’s
affecting how they live. I mean, she was 32-years-old. I said are you
married. She said no. I said you shouldn’t leave it too late. She said well
, I haven’t found the right person. I said how is that? you are meeting
fellow nurses, you better join, you have got a social development unit where
you meet men above board, they are looking for spouses, you are looking for
spouses and you meet in groups, unless you decide we are friends, and you
want to cultivate a closer relation, and she said no, no, no, I'm a
Christian, that limits my choice to 20 per cent of the population and we
meet in Church."
Q: "Do you feel a complacency among the people here?"
Mr Lee: "No, a complacency in the sense that their expectations are high
and they expect their expectations to be met. But they want higher and
higher opportunities, more and more opportunities."
Q: "Why does Singapore have to be number one in everything? Why can't you
just be one of the ten great cities of Asia? What's wrong with that idea?"
Mr Lee: "If we don't strive to be number one, you won't be number ten. You
will be number ten. You try to be number one, you might be number two or
number three. Do your best. You don’t have to be number one but do your
best and try to be number one. That's our attitude. Look, we have got no
natural resources, we have got nothing except human beings in a small
strategic location."
Q: "You have got a good location."
Mr Lee: "But you must have people with training, with skills, well-
organized, disciplined and productive. I mean so if we didn’t have an
efficient port, we wouldn’t be the biggest container port in the world.
Where are the container TEUs from? We are not a big manufacturing China
centre, they are from China, they are from Europe or Japan, but they transit
through to Singapore because that's where they come in and six hours before
they are in, they telegraph what containers they want removed, where they
are."
Q: "I was there, I was very impressed. It was pretty cool."
Mr Lee: "So they arrive, immediately work starts, cleared, loaded, off they
go in four or five, six hours depending on the number of containers."
Q: "Do you use a personal computer?"
Mr Lee: "Yes, I do."
Q: "And do you are really up on this stuff?"
Mr Lee: "Well otherwise I'm out of the loop. I used to correct my copies
and fax it back. Then I find the young ministers are all correcting each
other's copies on the net. So I decided I better learn this or I'll be out
of it altogether."
Q: "What do you think really the overall effect that the internet is going
to be in the general sense and especially in a government like the one that
you have here where suddenly like there is this degree of personal freedom
as given to people by using the internet and a lot of this stuff on the
internet is not stuff you really want your children to see for instance."
Mr Lee: "What can you do?"
Q: "What can you do? Is that the answer?"
Mr Lee: "You have got to decide as the Chinese have decided that they have
to take the risk and they try to minimize the risk and censor this and
censor that."
Q: "Do you approve that?"
Mr Lee: "No, but we cannot censor it because you just go to some server
outside and you have got access, so it's a waste of time."
Q : "And also no matter what you do, you are not going to be able to, these
hacker guys, you can't beat them."
Mr Lee: "You have got to leave it to the parents and the schoolteachers and
peer groups, to say look don’t waste your time doing this."
Q: "One thing that puzzles in Singapore is actually a very interesting
place because of different paradoxes I find in this country. What would be,
forgive me if this a little bit on the lewd side, why would you ban Playboy
for instance and allow prostitution?"
Mr Lee: "We banned Playboy in the 1960s when it was a different world in a
different standard. It is still banned, that's all. I mean why do you want
buy Playboy now if you can go into the internet? You get more than what you
get in Playboy, that's that."
Q: "I'm not going to ask you if you looked at it recently."
Mr Lee: "No, you can't, I mean it's not possible. It's part of the
globalized village we live in and we have got to learn to adapt and live a
sufficiently wholesome life to succeed. If you become addicted to all this
porn and drugs and gambling on the net, then you are finished. I mean in
Korea, they have become addicts at this."
Q: "I think that there is a lot of addiction in that, yes, there's no doubt
about it. Speaking of that, so what made you decide to have these casinos?"
Mr Lee: "When I was a student in England, the only casino in Europe was in
Monaco."
Q: "I remember that."
Mr Lee: "The younger ministers have said look, we must have a casino,
otherwise, we are out of the circuit of this fast set that goes around the
world, with F1 and so on. And it will increase the tourist trade because the
casino will pay for all the shows. Otherwise, the shows are too expensive.
So I've been resisting it and I've told the Prime Minister, I said no, no,
don’t do that, you'll bring mafias here and money laundering and all kinds
of crime."
Q: "I think it is a definite risk."
Mr Lee: "Then I see the British having casinos and Switzerland having
casinos. I said God, the world has changed. If I don’t change, we'll be
out of business. So alright, we'll put up two casinos, so obviously they
are not going to target Singaporeans because there are not enough numbers
for two casinos. So they got to bring them in from China, India and
elsewhere and we have passed legislation to say that any family can ask for
a ban on …"
Q: "A person from that family."
Mr Lee: "And the Singaporeans when they go in, they have got to pay $100."
Q: "That doesn’t sound quite fair."
Mr Lee: "No, they are going, driving up to a place called Genting, Star
Cruises come in and they go outside the territorial limit and they gamble.
So I said you do that because I do not want to be blamed and the Prime
Minister doesn’t want, and his Cabinet doesn’t want to be blamed for those
who get addicted. And there will be those who will get addicted."
Q: "How do you, are you still morally opposed to them or does pragmatism
always take precedence in your thinking?"
Mr Lee: "Well, it is useless to resist when it is everywhere."
Q: "Well, the fact that it's everywhere, maybe it is the reason to resist."
Mr Lee: "No, you cannot stop it. You want to cut off the internet? You want
to cut off your cellphones? You want to cut off satellite TV? Then you
will become like Myanmar. It's not possible."
Q: "No, thank you. That's interesting. I hate to be jumping around but I
don’t want to take so much of your time. What do you do about this kind
of thing? I would assume in a government, it is easier to legislate people
having less children than it is to legislate having them more children."
Mr Lee: "No, we can't legislate. We don’t legislate, we just encourage
and we say if you have the third child, you will get these benefits."
Q: "Well, legislate is the wrong word but …"
Mr Lee: "We encourage them with incentives. Yeah, we pay for full pay
leave, we don’t burden the employer because the employer will then say look
I'm not going to employ these women. So the government pays for them, the
employer is entitled to two-three months, three months?"
YY: "Four months now."
Mr Lee: "No, no. Employer two months, we pay two months and it will become
six months and so on."
Q: "During the 1960s and the 1970s, you ran a programme 'Two is Enough'.
Did the government succeed too well?"
Mr Lee: "No, it has happened all over Asia. It has happened in Hong Kong, it
has happened in Korea, they never had this Stop at Two, it has happened in
Japan, it is the education that the women and equal job opportunities. Once
the women are educated, they have equal job opportunities, some of them
earning as much if not more than men, there is a certain independence of
choice. I mean they say what’s the hurry? Singlehood is no burden, my
daughter is 55, unmarried, mother has been nagging her when she was in her
30s, she's quite happy."
Q: "Do you feel an urge to have more grandchildren or is it."
Mr Lee: "I've got two boys who have got grandchildren but I feel sad for her
. Because when my wife is gone and I'm gone, this hotel which keeps her
going. She will have to manage it."
Q: "I mean the thing is like, occasionally, it seems like the Singapore
Government succeeds as I was talking to a gentleman today, he said in India,
they propose a lot of things, and fairly high percentage are never going to
get done right but in Singapore, things are proposed and you do it. And
you finish it. Therefore, if it is a mistake, then you have to redo it."
Mr Lee: "No, what is the mistake? We can't undo women's education, equal
job opportunities. But the whole problem springs as I was talking to this
physiotherapist, I said suppose you were not educated to a point where you
are independent, your mother and father would have got you matched off."
Q: "Matched off, what does that mean?"
Mr Lee: "Father and mother will look for another father and mother with an
appropriate background, no inherited diseases and similar social affluence
and then they marry them off, they get them together and meet and no
objections and then you are married. Then you love the man, or you love the
woman you marry. But she's educated and she's thinking of a degree in
physiotherapy and upgrading herself and so…"
Q: "There is this feeling that you want to keep the society going."
Mr Lee: "Well, fortunately for us."
Q: "And reproduction is an important part of that, right?"
Mr Lee: "I've been urging them. The only developed societies that have
succeeded are Sweden and France and that's not that they have succeeded,
they have just about reached replacement rate. And we've studied their
incentives and they are enormous. Crèches, full pay leave for husband and
wife, nine months and you can extend it and so on and free nurseries,
factories and offices have nurseries and feeding rooms for the mothers. We
will get to that stage eventually but meanwhile, it takes a long time to
change mindsets."
Q: "That's true."
Mr Lee: "Since we are small population and we can top up, we are topping up.
The trouble is the moment they come here, they also have one or two
children because they begin to think like Singaporeans. Why? I will lose my
chance of promotion. So I'm out of business for six months, nine months, I
come back, the others have overtaken me."
Q: "Well, I think that's what I've heard. A lot of people say like well,
foreign workers have come here and they've just come to work. That's what
they do, they are here to work, so it's hard to compete with people who are
just don’t have any other distractions. I mean I've heard this several
times."
Mr Lee: "Without them, what will happen to us? We will shrink and
eventually, one- and-a-half workers will have to support two parents and is
that sustainable?"
Q: "I don’t know, probably not."
Mr Lee: "Therefore, the one worker will move out rather than pay the heavy
taxes. And move out and give remittances to his parents wherever he is."
Q: "So, well, this is a question that came up several times when I have
been driving around in the taxicab, all I have to do is say “how's business
?” and then you don’t have to say another word. The Singapore people,
they just start talking."
Mr Lee: "The tourists have gone down."
Q: "And they have all these life stories."
Mr Lee: "Swine fever and so on."
Q: "Then I would say I'm going to see the MM, what would you ask him? And
he goes…and one thing did come up which is not, I don’t mean to…one of
the things he said well, he's the father but he should let us go. Then with
words like as a patriarch of the country, is there a point in which you
should step away because the perception is I guess that I know what you
really do, but the perception is that you are still the face of the country."
Mr Lee: "Well, no, that's a public perception which is not held by those in
the know. I mean all the top executives know that they are dealing with the
ministers and the decisions are made by the ministers. My job is really as
a long-range radar to look out for opportunities and for threats. So I can
sit down and talk to you because I have got nothing urgent in my tray."
Q: "I'm glad to hear that."
Mr Lee: "I cannot work at that old pace. I can work with subjects that
require contemplation, time, which really is backed up by my experience and
my feel of how things will develop."
Q: "Well, nobody knows Singapore better than you."
Mr Lee: "I mean, I guess, supposing I had not intervened in the casino
debate, the religious groups would fought tooth and nail to stop it and the
Prime Minister and his Cabinet were in a lot of trouble, so I stood up and
said look, I understand the views, I was of the same view but I'll tell you
the reason why I have changed my mind and that had a calming effect because
if you don’t do this, you are not going to be part of the modern world.
Either you accept that this is part of today's globalized world and you have
F1 and all this glitzy events, closed roads, light up the city and so on,
or you are out of business. And in Singapore, if you are out of business,
you are out of food."
Q: "Singapore is always been about business. They say in America, business
of America's business, I think it's true here too, right?"
Mr Lee: "It has to be. Otherwise, we won't survive."
Q: "When you look out the window, and you see all these big buildings, is
this what you envision? Is this the world that you hoped to be?"
Mr Lee: "After we were booted out from Malaysia, before Malaysia or during
Malaysia, we thought we'll grow together as a commercial centre of the
federation, the capital being Kuala Lumpur, like Washington, we'll be a kind
of New York. But once we were out on our own, I studied what happened to
Malta, Gibraltar, all the island colonies and Hongkong and I thought we were
in a similar position to Hongkong, so I knew that high-rises will be
inevitable. And Hongkong is all economy, they have packed all of them
together in a little piece of flat land across the Bay, across the harbour,
and very few houses up on the hills, on the peak, because that's where the
British overlords used to stay and moreover it's costly because they have
got to have retaining walls otherwise, you have landslides and so on. So we
decided we'll have to spread out over the whole island and have high
density living but with lots of green spaces and room for recreation and
breathing space. The school I was at was the best school in Singapore,
Raffles Institution, now we have Raffles City, four big high rises designed
by I M Paye. But what's the choice? It's a prime site, so the school has
now got spanking new buildings, where is it now? Bishan which is near
Bishan Park but it has lost, but that old school we thought, I thought about
it hard and it was made of bricks and mortar and boards, so they keep it
going in a tropical climate, prone to white ants, will be a very expensive
business. So I said let's give up."
Q: "I mean one of the things, what is the value of past place like
Singapore? Several people actually use the same metaphor, it's interesting,
I have two movies in my head, I have the movie of the world that I grew up
in, and I have the movie of the way things are now. One in my head is
getting very frayed of the past and I'm sure you know what I'm talking about
."
Mr Lee: "I used to cycle to school. Empty roads, when it rains, I have got
to have a raincoat. Now it's just not done, with all these huge buses and
cars, so my grandchildren are advised not to travel by bicycles. London has
lost a lot of its ancient buildings but it's got enough solid buildings of
stone like St Paul's Cathedral or Westminster Abbey or the Houses of
Parliament which are very costly to maintain and they keep that as icons.
Well, also the Oxbridge Colleges, they are very uncomfortable to live in, I
mean you want a brand name, you try and get there but choose a nice new
building annex that they have built, if you are put into one of the old
rooms, then you are cold and it's several centuries old."
Q: "I mean they didn’t have central heating then."
Mr Lee: "Now, they have put in some central heating, I mean they are piped."
Q: "Never so cold as I was in London."
Mr Lee: "But that's a trade off. So we keep a few along the riverside and
amongst the better buildings which are worth preserving because it's not so
expensive and they are also architecturally interesting. So there are few
landmarks. In my own constituency, I've got two streets which have been
kept up and the rest have just gone high rise but they have been kept up and
used for other purposes, no longer domestic but boutique restaurants,
studios and so on. Otherwise, you can't justify the economic costs of
maintaining them."
Q: "As you get older, do you get more sentimental?"
Mr Lee: "Sorry."
Q: "As you get older, do you feel more sentimental and nostalgic or do you
manage to avoid that? I mean I know you are a pragmatist."
Mr Lee: "No, it was a nice leisurely place, large spaces, I would travel
along what is called now Mountbatten Road, used to be called Grove Road and
there was a swamp on one side and now we have all built up areas, it was an
airport, now the airport is gone, the British flying boats used to land on
the river which I remember. I mean look, do you want to, if we were the
size of let's say the US, lots of empty spaces, then you might be able to
keep more of it. But I see New York hasn’t kept much of it either."
Q: "Well, it's a mix. In Manhattan, it's true."
Mr Lee: "You have kept the churches because they are made of stone."
Q: "The Empire State Building is still there."
Mr Lee: "But the Empire State Building now looks tacky compared to the
others….”
Q: “It looks great!”
Mr Lee: “It looks old fashioned."
Q: "Well, the view, I mean the Chrysler Building is a work of art. Most of
the buildings they've built since then are not works of art."
Mr Lee: "That's what you think but the architects. Their grandchildren
would say what a wonderful architect that was. I mean aesthetic taste
varies with each generation."
Q: "I don’t know. I think there's a kind of, did you see that building, a
picture from China and the building just fell over. I know you don’t have
that kind of construction processes here."
Mr Lee: "You see the Chinese are nouveou riche and the contractors want to
be part of the nouveou riche, so they …"
Q: "I mean how does it feel if you were living in a building next door, I
feel I have got to move."
Mr Lee: "They are in a very fast transition and they see their neighbours
getting very wealthy and they say I must get wealthy too because my children
, the money that I have got a house, got a car and so on. So they take
these shortcuts at the expense of public safety. Bridges have fallen down,
when they built this enormous barrage up the Yangtze River and the Three
Gorges, Jiu Rongji had a very hard time knocking heads together. It's the
process of getting rich in transition and watching your neighbours get rich
and you say I must get there too quick or I lose my opportunities. That's
that."
Q: "I don’t want to take more of your time. Let me just ask you a couple
more things. How would you like to be remembered?"
Mr Lee: "I don’t think I can decide that. I live my life in accordance to
what I think is worth doing. I never wanted to be in politics. I wanted
to be a lawyer and make a good living, to be a good advocate but I was
thrown into it as a result of all these political earthquakes that took
place. So I was saddled with the responsibility and I just have to be
responsible to get the place going. That's all and I mean we’ve got here
and I can't decide what posterity is going to do. I studied law and in the
law, the British said you can will yourself, you can will your property, the
longest you can do it is life and lives in being and 21 years thereafter.
After that, you can't control your trust. So in my case, I can't go that
long. All I can do is to make sure that when I leave, the institutions are
good, sound, clean, efficient and there's a government in place which knows
what it has got to do and is looking for a successive government of quality.
That's all I can do."
Q: "If you were to leave the stage in the larger sense, and say in ten years
, I think you are seen as a cult figure as you have just said about the
casino thing, I mean does it have to be somebody like you to keep the place
going or …"
Mr Lee: "No, I mean look America got going long after Jefferson, George
Washington and all that."
Q: "But I think …(indistinct)… who did big things."
Mr Lee: "Nobody, Charles de Gaulle says nobody, I am not indestructible.
When I read his biography, I read in English, and he said that, I said that
is a wise man. So I remembered that and I know that come a certain time,
and I didn’t expect to live so long either, it's just good medicine and
good surgery that has kept me here."
Q: "We used to have a joke, if I knew I was going to live this long, I
would have taken better care of myself."
Mr Lee: "Well, it so happened and I just do what I think I can contribute to
make the place, to consolidate what has been gained and it can still go to
waste. It can still spiral down."
Q: "Through no fault of anybody's?"
Mr Lee: "Look, I once had to make an impromptu speech in Sydney, I've just
come from New Zealand. So in the end they said no speech, no speeches and
the Premier of the state made a very well-prepared speech so I had to
respond. So what do I say off the cuff? I said I've just come from New
Zealand and I'll tell you what my thoughts were. In 100 years from now, I
go back to New Zealand and there will be the grass, the sheep, the cows, the
tornados or hurricanes at Wellington, and there will always be this green
pleasant place and not industrially developed because it's the last stop in
the bus line and in 100 years from today, I'm not sure that there'll be a
Singapore. It depends on what my successors do. I mean that's the cards we
were handed. So it's not up to me. What is up to me is make sure the
place is ticking, make sure the institutions are there, the systems are in
place, make sure there is a government that is fit for the job and then it
is up to them to ensure continuity. That's that."
Q: "Do you feel satisfied that that's moving along quite well? Or do you
worry?"
Mr Lee: "I think for the next ten years, with this team in charge, it is
going to be fine. Whether they will do well for the next 10-15 years depends
on whether they get a younger team in place, well imbibed into the methods
of the government, integrity, ability, and making decisions for the public
good, and not for your personal benefit. That's all. It is difficult
because it means sacrificing privacy and sacrificing pay. Now we solved the
pay problem or semi-solved it by giving them 80 per cent of the average of
six major salary earners."
Q: "Is that how you arrived at it?"
Mr Lee: "Yeah, but we are always lagging behind because whenever there's a
downturn, we don’t give the rise. Whenever there's an upturn, the private
sectors goes up, shoots up suddenly and we can't keep pace because the
public says no, this is too much."
Q: "Well, when people are getting US$16 billion bonuses for bringing the
country into the ground, it is hard to keep up."
Mr Lee: "I was once asked about the enormous, the best paid ministers in
the world. I said you should look at the wives. The lowest-paid ministers
have wives who are glittering with jewels and with big mansions."
Q: "So that means they are corrupt."
Mr Lee: "No, I didn’t say that."
Q: "That was pretty way to be said."
Mr Lee: "But it's true. So Singaporeans have to decide. Do you want to
underpay a minister and you have the kind of shenanigans as you have in the
British Parliament? You know they repair their homes in the country and in
London and charge it to their account. Or you pay them a proper wage and
said after that, look after everything. Nobody gets any special perks. That'
s your salary, you buy your car, you do what everything is yours. Official
entertainment, you have got an expense account. Your secretary monitors it
and audits channel clears it. So everything is above board and the public
knows that. So whatever they grumble, they know that they are not being
shortchanged."
Q: "There are grumbles but there are always grumbles."
Mr Lee: "There must be. Singaporeans are champion grumblers."
Q: "Thank you so much.
==========
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