How can a small nation do well in a world filled with so many giants? Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore comments on this and other issues in an interview with internationally syndicated columnist TOM PLATE.
Plate: Do you feel the new administration in Washington is fully sensitive to the downside of any abrupt change from engagement, especially on an issue like Taiwan?
DPM Lee: Well, we are watching this situation but our sense overall is that they are reviewing their position, they haven't set a fixed hard line and they have been quite careful to nuance their approach to complement their position with the Republican right and not give the wrong signal on Taiwan.
I had a sense that, on the whole, Taipei and Beijing were calming down, and it seemed to me the relationship was going in the right direction. But now I just worry that with the recent arms package offered to Taiwan by Washington, that it could get blown off course.
The problem is that Taiwan could get feisty, and thus, Beijing antsy.
The Taiwanese, of course, pressed hard for all the weaponry, saying that they need to have the defense requirements and they have to protect their security because their destroyers are getting old. That is one approach, but then you have to see what the overall balance is and what the basis of the security is. There is some understanding with China on the political course forward.
Plate: You are not quite as alarmist as some of us, like me! You think they are working to get a handle on it. In your view, is China well informed about the new Bush administration?
DPM Lee: I do not know. I think the Chinese were more comfortable with Al Gore - he was someone they were familiar with and so they were expecting a continuation of his team and his policies. Now they have Bush. But they will have to live with it.
If you read some of the analysis in their think-tanks, the Chinese say that some day they will be able to work something out. They think that the fundamentals will enable them to, if not become friends, at least be able to work together.
Plate: You have built an important docking facility to facilitate the docking and shore leave of US ships and crew in the region. When you started to build this, how did this effect Singapore-China relations?
DPM Lee: We do not discuss these things with China. We believe it makes sense for the US to have a security presence in the region and we have said so publicly many times. If we only did things that certain other countries approved of, we would soon lose our credibility as an independent voice and I think our position would be severely compromised with all of our neighbors and partners.
But, of course, if the US were not present in the region, our room for such a maneuver would be less.
Plate: Going directly to Singapore, are you happy with the current generational products of your education system?
DPM Lee: It's not bad, overall. We have established a very high average standard in terms of math, science, language, post-schools and universities overseas, and the professions. I think what is not quite there is the peaks for the very, very able ones.
We can do better for the able students, and that able means not just 1 per cent but probably 10 per cent, 20 per cent, maybe even 30 per cent of the students who could benefit from a more flexible system that would give them more room to develop their own individual abilities and aptitudes.
We really should also try to have a system where you encourage people to go beyond what is taught to you and go and do a certain amount of exploration on your own - whether it is doing projects or going on board a Peace Corps-type trip overseas, or doing some scientific work with a university.
Now that we have a base, we have to get the excellence part into it and we can do that. One of the things we want them to come out and do is to come out and have some entrepreneurial spot. We don't want them only to be entrepreneurs if they drop out of school.
Plate: Could Singapore ever develop its own Oxford or Cambridge?
DPM Lee: I think it is difficult to do it based on our own students. If you look at Oxford, or nowadays probably something more like a Harvard or MIT, any of the other many institutions in America, you are really choosing from the top half per cent of the population.
I looked at the MIT websites some time last year and it said out of the class, that half of them came from the top half per cent of their high schools.
If we only took the top half per cent of our high schools, we would only have 150 students. We hope we are taking 20 to 30 per cent into universities in Singapore. We can bring in bright students from the region to our universities and we are indeed making generous scholarships basically on a needs basis. Anyone who wants to can come here and we will work with them.
We set a limit that one quarter of the student population gets financial aid, which is very high. Within that, if we can make some special arrangement for the bright spots - perhaps for 10 per cent of the dean's list students - then I think we can have the best of both worlds.
But if we want to be the world's best in certain disciplines like nuclear physics or economics, I think it would be very difficult.
Plate: Some people believe Singapore is too conformist and that things should loosen up.
DPM Lee: You want a safe and orderly living environment for families and for bringing up children and at the same time you want a place that is fun and exciting. Some people say you have to have anarchy to have the second or a certain degree of disorder and absence of control.
We think you do not have to control everything - but you do not have to have anarchy and a personal absence of safety or the violence that you have in some of America's inner cities.
We frown severely on drugs, and I suppose in terms of public decency we maintain certain standards, which you may consider quaint. But the scene has opened up and there is quite a vibrant cultural community. Many of the locals and young people participate.
Plate: Are the drivers of change globalization, generational pressures, conscious political change, a general loosening up, or the simple urgent need to internationalize Singapore? How would you look at that?
DPM Lee: Policy-wise, we have concluded that we are just a very ordinary place. We want people here to be in a truly globalized financial world and to spawn new programs and track what is happening in the market and understand what is going on in the world.
They are coming here looking for lifestyle, it is the difference between London and Frankfurt. Now, Frankfurt is not Singapore but people consider Frankfurt a very boring place to live and so you have to have that excitement and spark, and I see no reason why we should not have that, because it is not yet linked directly to erosion of the social order or political order.
In terms of cultural and artistic talent, I think we have succeeded in bringing from the region and partly identified from our own people quite a lively group of plays, musicals, and they put on performances of their own.
Plate: Is globalization for Singapore a good thing because it is a way to be growing outwards without having to merge with others?
DPM Lee: It cuts both ways. It enables us to link up worldwide beyond our region, so if our neighbors have an economic problem, we can link up and do business elsewhere, whether it is in London, Sydney, New York or Tokyo.
On the other hand, it creates an illusion that you can go anywhere and be comfortable. You don't have to be in Singapore or actually live here. On the contrary, you have to persuade people that they belong here and that this is their home and that there is something that binds them here which is family, opportunities and a good life, and probably also an emotional link.
The people who came through and have lived through the war or the independence effort have a certain sense of transition and therefore a history and an attachment to Singapore. The people who grew up later didn't see that or have that; and so we try to teach them about that.
Plate: For the government trying to keep the best and the brightest young people here, is this a persuasive process or literally, you have to limit the outflow?
DPM Lee: How can you limit the outflow? Half of our population travels overseas every year. American universities have opened up and many of our good students got here and if you are a good student, before you graduate, your professor will offer you a research position, or a multi-national company like IMB or Microsoft will say, come and join me and give them a signing-on bonus.
How can we limit the outflow? It is not possible. We have to make this an attractive enough place so others will come and want to make this their place to live. We have a good inflow. Our demographics are very interesting. If you look at the generations in their 20s and 30s, the proportion of new arrivals is higher than any time since the 1950s after the war.
If you go to Singapore's centres, you will hear all the different voices - Chinese from China, Indians from India, Malaysians from Malaysia - much more than a few years ago.
Plate: Has this created any problems of ethnic tension?
DPM Lee: Ethnic tension no, but some social stress because there is a sense that we are Singaporeans, so why are we letting these people come in and enjoy the same opportunities?
Sometimes, a foreigner will come and a Singaporean will lose his job and say he lost his job because the foreigner came. But if we didn't allow factories to have up to 40 per cent foreign workers at the factory, many other jobs would not be here because it is too expensive to employ 100 per cent Singaporean. So, it has actually created jobs and growth.
Plate: It is not hard to imagine history recording your father as something of a political genius. I would be fascinated to know how you see him?
DPM Lee: He doesn't need extra praise. He has been a person who has impressed on many critical points in my life and is therefore a tremendous influence. In government, we are part of a team, so we have to maintain a certain propriety.
This is not a family shop but outside of that, the family stays close and if we have some problem or crisis, we get together - basically, the unit is still there.
Plate: What are the institutions of Singapore that need strengthening?
DPM Lee: If you make an international comparison, there are quite a lot of areas where we are not badly off. The Government is working well, the quality of life is not bad, housing is high quality, the social order is good.
If you look internally as to what we could achieve and what we desire to achieve, we have a long way to go. There are many things we need to do in the Government but what holds us back is an inadequacy of people with the right kind of experience.
We have good people but never enough. We have an administrative service that is really a core group of general management for the officers in all the key post at the ministries. There are fewer than 300 of them and if we had doubled that number, I think we could have been twice as effective.
It is the same in the private sector. Every time we look for a CEO of a company, we come up against the same problem, where we don't have the right people (because we won't have enough) to make the system work.
Plate: There are countries and ideologies that say government is best when it is least?
DPM Lee: That depends on the situation. Look at Switzerland, which is a good comparison to Singapore. It is a small country about twice our size with a much more congenial environment. The countries surrounding it are not likely to cause great difficulties so you can have a great low-profile government that is very decentralized.
The country works brilliantly and has been there for 900 years. We are not in that position so we need a strong team in the Government not to do the business or to run hospitals or companies but to set the rules and enable the private sector to grow and enable the society to run.
In America, it would probably be a different position, because in America you could probably not do what you can do on one small island. We can change the settings and the country will shift directions but in America you turn the knobs and nothing will happen.
At the same time, we want able people in the private sector. Even if we took everyone out of the Government and put them in the private sector we would not have enough, so our approach has been to try to get as many as we can in the Government and make sure that when they are in there, they are doing useful work.
In terms of percentage of GDP, our Government is small. Our Government Budget is 17-18 per cent of GDP. In America, you are at around 40 per cent.
Plate: The one criticism I hear is that in a certain sense, a very effective government creates a kind of claustrophobia for the private sector because you are all over things too much and you have too many bright people all over things.
DPM Lee: What the Government has come to realize - and that is put into practice increasingly - is that you cannot have all the answers. You may think you are smart but it is just too complicated for you to know, not just individually but as a department and as an organization.
If you want to manage a financial system or urban planning or an education system, you have to be able to reach out and involve the private sector without being captured by the private sector. You can tap people who can give you quite a lot of good work merely on a pro bono basis.
We have done that with our health care and with banking. It has to be a light touch because if you try to control everything, it becomes oppressive and then after a while it will stagnate.
Plate: Because your country is so small, how do you look at where the regional economy is headed now? Are we doing the Asian financial crisis II? Do you have any wisdom on Japan?
DPM Lee: No one knows what the American economy will do. For the region, I do not think we will have an Asian financial crisis II - though there are many problems unresolved - but it is a different situation fundamentally from what was in 1997 when you had a bubble forming in many countries.
There is no such euphoria about the region now and there are no property bubbles or stock market bubbles. Quite the contrary, the countries are still picking themselves up from the problems that have been created by the crisis and taking a long time to recover.
The early rebound did not reflect the repairs that were necessary, the problem and the reform wasn't over.
Plate: The great lesson of the Asian financial crisis seems to be that this is really a community and a region and that everything everyone does effects everyone else but yet everyone still seems to go their own way. Do you think the European Union is ahead of where Asia is?
DPM Lee: I am not sure we are evolving in that direction. The Europeans have quite a different situation and have had 50 years plus of convergence.
Many different politicians brought this up along the way in several countries in Europe over several generations. We are not near that level of convergence. We are making less progress than we thought.
Plate: Have Singaporeans decided that waiting for the true full flowering of the World Trade Organization is like waiting for Godot? That is, it will never happen, so we have to move on and worry about our own national interests and cut these bilateral deals.
DPM Lee: Well, its not necessarily waiting for Godot but you have to have something to complement it with, because when true world trade does come to full fruition, it will come with so many warps and wrinkles that many problems will still have to be resolved.
(The writer is a UCLA professor and internationally syndicated columnist. He can be reached at: tplate@ucla.edu )
(CIIC 08/10/2001)
