On Growth Two

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33. Kuan Yew Lee

Prime Minister Lee was born September 16, 1923, in Singapore. He studied at the Raffles College there and later at Cambridge. In 1949 he was graduated cum laude in law. After establishing a law practice he became, in 1952, counselor for the Singapore trade unions. In 1954 he founded the People's Action Party, which became affiliated with the international socialist movement. He was nominated secretary-general of this organization. In 1959 he was elected Prime Minister of Singapore. His party obtained victory at the polls in 1963, 1968, and 1972. It should be added that the author, in the following conversation, discusses only non-political matters, and touches on interior problems concerning Singapore. I felt this was not the place to bring up repressive measures against political opponents, press, censorship, and other hindrances to democratic government.

Is it correct to say that Singapore is turning into a brain center, the first global city?

That's too dramatic a phrase, but we are moving more and more toward the trade volume required. We must ‘plug in’ to all the centers of the developed world. This is a new kind of economic situation, one in which rapid transportation and communications have created a new economic environment in which we can play a modernized role like we once did in the nineteenth century.

This is a twenty-first-century city which you are building here in Asia, one in which you seem to follow the kind of attraction that Zürich has to

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Switzerland - a financial center. You even invest in Indonesia, I understand.

I think it is exaggerated to compare us to Zürich; we can only develop certain characteristics of Zürich. We are as interested in becoming a Rotterdam, for instance, which Zürich could not be. Yes, we have always invested in Indonesia and Malaysia. It has been our traditional role, one which we see as a constantly evolving process of an interdependent world. As standards of living go up in the developed West, whether it's Western Europe, North America, or Japan, we play a part in the transmission of products from the developed countries to the less developed ones, where there is an abundance of labor at wages relatively low compared to those in Western Europe, North America, or Japan. Also, we have lower antipollution costs.

You made a very interesting statement in a speech of October 4, 1972. The Dutch ambassador drew my attention to this. You said that countries in Southeast Asia, Indonesia or Malaysia, for instance, would not be able to afford nationalism for another thirty years. You advised them to let the multinationals do their job, and perhaps after thirty years they can talk, like Sukarno used to, about ‘satu negara satu bangsa,’¹ or one country.

Well, either these nations want to develop quickly, in which case the easiest way is to import technology from Europe, America, or Japan, or they follow what the Chinese People's Republic has been doing, everything on the basis of first principles guided by the thoughts of Chairman Mao. But even the Chinese are now beginning to import machinery and know-how. Of course they will not improve their productivity with the thoughts of Chairman Mao alone, but rather with the help of machines that are coming in.

But don't you feel that in the thirty years that they let the multinationals take over in, say, Malaysia or Indonesia, that at the same time the original character of the country will be partly destroyed?

The Japanese have had the multinationals for twenty years, and their uniqueness as a people has not been destroyed. Their social ethos and social structure have survived industrialization and the multinationals.

Japan is a special case. From your speeches I gather that you think the Japanese - you call them the dynamo of industry and economy - the Japanese are first, the Americans are second, and the Europeans lag behind in your country. It is as if you said to them, Where is your spirit of

1 In the Bahasa Indonesia language, this means ‘one nation, one people.’

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adventure? Why do you lag behind? If you are on the ball you can come here and invest and do great work. Is that true?

Yes. Technologically speaking, apart perhaps from space technology or some special industries connected with military technology, the Europeans are now as advanced as the Americans, even in aircraft production, medium-range and short-range aircraft. Perhaps in computers the Europeans are not yet quite so advanced. The idea of the EEC - European Economic Community - to confine itself to the Mediterranean Basin and to Africa seems to me an inward-looking idea even though you get all the climatic regions of the world. But it is still too small a horizon. Perhaps you have traditional links here in Singapore which could be revived, because people here, in the face of the massive investments of Japanese and American capital, would like to have a third capital investment as a balance.

But where would you set the optimum for economic growth? Your per capita income, after Japan, is the second highest in Asia: 1,500 US dollars or more.

Devalued US dollars....

Granted. But are you afraid of overdevelopment? That's what the Club of Rome is trying to find out through computer studies and other investigations.

I believe the critical task is to check population growth. If it is not checked, then we will run into critical shortages very rapidly. With zero population growth, even in the most developed countries it is still possible to have a positive or plus GNP growth. But this is not possible now. There must be growth, because the voters expect life to get better. We definitely will grow. The critical factor is population. Once we have the population rise under control, then we can sort out other things.

And in Singapore that's no problem.

The problem is population: you've got to check it.

Even in Singapore.

Yes, indeed, Otherwise the quality of life cannot go up.

You have already brought in one hundred thousand foreign laborers. I read somewhere that Singapore may even need five hundred thousand workers.

That's a temporary phenomenon. After a while, many of these industries will move out. When political stability is established in the countries around

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us, the guest workers will go back to their own countries. We just provide a base for the factories and the workers because of our political stability and administrative competence.

But, let us look at Singapore in this critical era, with trouble in Thailand starting. While in Canada you made an interesting remark. You quoted Tanzania's President, Julius Nyerere, who had spoken of the big powers acting like elephants trampling the grass. You added that the thought had occurred to you that when the elephants flirt, the grass suffers; when they make love, it could be a disaster. In other words, how to you view Singapore's survival in view of the political forces around you?

Well, it's part of the problem we have to live with. There is a détente between the Soviet Union and America. But it is a détente combined with competition in other areas, including, I believe, Western Europe. There is no détente between China and the Soviet Union. So it's an incomplete détente, for China is part of Asia and will not just go away. The Russians have become very mobile and also will not go away. Why should they? The Japanese are also a fact of life. Therefore, out of a competing interest between the Americans and the Japanese on the one hand, the Russians on the other, and China being another factor, there could be some kind of quadrilateral balance after a period of transition, in which I hope that the farther away we are away from the Chinese border the more freedom of choice for partners in progress we will have.

So you cannot say you are comfortable about the political situation around you.

No country is really comfortable. I would think that from a purely political viewpoint I have more freedom of choice than, say, Finland has. I don't have to look over my shoulder to find out whether signing an agreement with the EEC will be looked upon with disapproval. Eighteen months passed before the Finnish government was able to sign their agreement with the EEC.

Are you optimistic that balance can be brought to economic growth and population factors?

I think there is a mental block in the thinking of many of the leaders and among the population of the developing countries. On the one hand they feel resentful that the developed countries are using up so much of the world's resources. On the other hand the people of the developing countries are reproducing at such a tremendous rate that there are not enough resources even to feed the new population that they have brought into the world.

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Somehow, the leaders must become aware of these problems and in turn get it across to the population that if they want better standards of life, if they want a better environment, population growth must be checked and checked immediately. But that is still not the position of most leaders. Therefore, I am very pessimistic about the time it will require to achieve population stability.

Are you familiar with the efforts of the Club of Rome to give man the knowledge how to manage the world in the future?

Yes, I have scanned the results of the study made by the MIT team. I have also read the British Blueprint for Survival. The ideal population of the United Kingdom should be thirty million instead of fifty-five million. Here lies an obvious responsibility. It is one thing to express the ideal; another to achieve the practical result. The ideal would be zero or negative population growth and a limited GNP for most of the developed nations, allowing time for the underdeveloped countries to catch up. But that's not the way human beings behave. That's not the way nations behave. Therefore, there will inevitably be an unfair distribution of resources, owing to increasingly efficient organization in the developed countries and the continued inefficient management of population control in the developing world, which in turn will lead to catastrophes in large parts of the overpopulated Third World. That is a very pessimistic prospect, indeed.