Singapore Government Press Release
SENIOR MINISTER LEE KUAN YEW'S INTERVIEW WITH ARNAUD de BORCHGRAVE OF UPI
SINGAPORE, May 15 (UPI) -- Asia's senior statesman Lee Kuan Yew is also known as Asia's Henry Kissinger, the oracle to whom others turn in a crisis. He has been active in every major Asian event for 40 years; a staunch Cold War ally of the U.S. and close friend ever since; an unofficial mediator between China and Taiwan. Lee Kuan Yew is a man who rejected Western-type democracy in favor of authoritarian government to build Singapore into the world's largest port (Hong Kong, in volume, is the 2nd largest) and an ultra modern city state of four million, now ranked first (the U.S. is 12th) in a Foreign Policy Magazine survey that measured a country's exposure to the forces of globalisation. He retired as prime minister in 1990, but is still Singapore's dominant political figure with the title of Senior Minister. UPI editor-at-large Arnaud de Borchgrave interviewed him in Singapore.
de Borchgrave: On aid to Taiwan, what do you think would be the wisest policy at this juncture? Drop the Aegis system for something less sophisticated?
Lee Kuan Yew: The strategic question for America is: do you want to encourage a situation in which the Taiwanese government, relying on American support, decides that there is no need to discuss eventual reunification with China? In that case the danger of armed conflict between Taiwan and China is greatly increased and America will be drawn in. America’s allies and friends in the Asia Pacific do not see any advantage in a drift towards armed confrontation over Taiwan. The US has expressed its strong opposition to China using force to re-unite Taiwan with the mainland. China wants dialogue and negotiations, but on the basis that Taiwan acknowledges the one China principle, which means that Taiwan and the mainland are both parts of one China. The present Taiwan government have not accepted this. The position of President Chen Shuibian of the DPP, is that the "one-China principle" is a subject for discussion. His party stands for independence. President Chen does not accept that the talks should be about how to reunite the mainland and Taiwan, although the US, all other permanent members of the UNSC, and all countries in the UN (except 20) recognise "one China".
Q: How would you alleviate China’s fears about Taiwan? Is it Taiwan’s economic prosperity Beijing is worried about?
A: China does not fear Taiwan’s prosperity and is helping to make it more competitive by encouraging Taiwanese investments to exploit the mainland’s cheaper labour, land and other resources. A more prosperous Taiwan means not just more investments in China but an even stronger desire among the majority of Taiwanese not to upset the status quo. But a Taiwan that is drifting away from China and creeping towards independence will set off alarm bells in Beijing.
All in East Asia know that the PRC will go to any lengths to prevent Taiwan’s independence. Unless Taiwan is willing to talk about the terms for an eventual reunification, there will be increased problems and heightened tension between China and Taiwan.
Many in the region regard a US presence as stabilising and benign and want it to balance the growing weight of China. But none believe that a line drawn across the Taiwan Straits can be held for very long.
Q: If Taiwan were to go the route of UDI (unilateral declaration of independence), how would you expect China to react?
A: If Taiwan declares UDI, China will use force. After their repeated threats, China has to do so or be seen as a paper tiger. But I do not foresee Taiwan declaring independence after the US has said that it will not support it.
Q: Do you see Taiwan eventually accepting the one China solution with three different systems, including Hong Kong?
A: I'd like to put it in a different way. I'm not a mainlander, not a Taiwanese, nor a Hong Konger. So I have the privilege of distance. People in Hong Kong after nearly four years under the new regime still do not identify themselves as Chinese. At a meeting I attended in Hong Kong, the
audience was asked to raise their hands if they were Chinese. Very few did. Then when "Hong Kong Chinese" were asked to raise their hands, all the hands shot up. You must understand these are people who ran away from Communism and want no part of it. Even though, admittedly, Communism is evaporating. Marxism is dead in China while Leninism endures. As for
Taiwan, they are even more anti-Communist. Even the children of mainlanders who went over to Taiwan with Chiang Kai Chek consider themselves Taiwanese first and Chinese second. So it is a very deep-seated sense of distinctiveness.
Q: So the younger generations could opt for independence?
A: If they could do so now, they would. And this is the dilemma. For all intents and purposes, they have been independent since the Japanese left in 1945. The native Taiwanese believe that the mainlanders who settled there were squatters. That sense of superiority disappeared when Chiang's son died in 1988 and power passed to a native Taiwanese. Since then Taiwanese culture and specificity has flourished. All of this has now had a profound impact socially, linguistically and politically.
Q: But China is becoming more like Taiwan, at least economically.
A: In terms of a free market economy, yes.
Q: Won't pluralism have to follow?
A: But that's going to take 20 to 30 years. I don't believe this will happen in the next decade. Younger people do not rise to the ranks of the top leadership in China. Traditionally and historically, you have to wait until you have reached your sixties. We have to wait for the current generation, people now in their 20s who have been exposed to western education and the ways of pluralistic societies. They must reach their 50s before we will see the changes that are inevitable sooner or later. Maybe the age of the Internet, satellite TV and global transparency will shorten the time frame.
Q: When I arrived In Singapore, it seemed the world was suddenly upside down. Headlines in the Singapore Strait Times said, "The U.S. vs. The Rest of the World"; "Bush Has Alarm Bells Ringing Across Asia and Europe"; "New US-UN Rift Sign of World in Flux." The U.S., betrayed by 14 nations, had just been voted out of the U.N. Human Rights Commission t to be replaced by the Sudan. And the U.S., the country most impacted by narcotics trafficking, also lost its seat on the International Narcotics Control Board. What is going on and where do you think the U.S. went wrong?
A: I think there's growing discomfort at the unilateralism that has been accentuated since the Bush Administration came to power. It was already there with Clinton but Clinton was a master wordsmith and managed to disguise his real intentions. Bush is a straight talker who speaks what's in his mind. Even when he doesn't intend to, it still comes out.
Q: The U.S. is seen as too big and too cocky?
A: People feel squatted upon. And what you're seeing is too much unilateralism and the message is 'enough is enough.'
Q: The Sudan, that enlightened champion of human rights, replacing the U.S. on the Commission? Isn't that a world gone crazy?
A: It is, it is. But in a bizarre sort of way, it also signals that they are fed up with being told what to do by the U.S. They see a U.S. T-shirt with standards that the U.S. itself has not achieved.
Q: The world is clearly in a greater state of flux than at any time since the end of the Cold War. As we look at the next 50 years of the 21st century, what is your idea of a viable global security system, especially for this part of the world?
A: What existed since World War II has evolved. It was frozen by the Cold War. Lines were clear. But this was re-delineated in 1972 when Nixon and Kissinger went to Beijing. That was good fortune for China. Without that breakthrough we would not have seen a Deng Xiao Ping to bring China into the modern age, first the coastal cities, then the riverine cities, which saved China from the kind of explosion that demolished the Soviet Union.
We are gradually moving toward a very different system, in which China becomes the largest player on this side of the Pacific. Not suddenly, but over two or three decades. Like Europe, where they could not possibly balance the Soviet Union and therefore NATO was necessary with America and Canada, we are now in a similar position. Japan, however advanced and highly developed, South Korea, and even a reunited Korea, and the rest of Asia, cannot balance China. There is nothing Hong Kong and Taiwan are doing that China cannot do better if they educate their people into the modern age, which they are doing.
I would go one step further. There is nothing the Japanese and Koreans have done that China can't do better in the years to come. You cannot stop them. Shanghai is now a city of almost 15 million and still streaming in, as well as into Shenzhen. Its new Silicon Valley attracts the cream of the crop. There is a reverse brain drain with highly motivated and well educated Chinese giving up lucrative jobs and good lifestyles abroad and returning to new challenges in Mainland China. Take your Ivy League and West Coast Universities and multiply by five and imagine that concentrated in two cities.
Q: What you are saying is that the U.S. can't prevent China from becoming a major player in the world.
A: You can't. No way. But the Chinese leadership can. They can abort the process if they change course from the inevitable consequences of an open market, especially if they go into conflict over Taiwan. But I was greatly encouraged to read the speech of President Jiang Zemin at last week's Fortune 500 Forum in Hong Kong: very moderate and highly controlled. It is clear China wants to avoid conflict and go into the WTO (World Trade Organization) and face the new rules of international play. Given their size and wealth and technological competence, it is quite logical that they will want a bigger say in how the neighbourhood is run.
Q: Much is made in America about the way China does not tolerate political dissent. Is western-style democracy conceivable in a country of 1.3 billion where hundreds of millions live below the poverty line?
A: In China’s known 4,000-year history no government was elected by counting heads. No Chinese government in history has tolerated any political group that wanted to unseat it.
I do not believe western-style democracy will come about in China within the next 30 years. However some form of participatory government will evolve. They have already started with village-level elections. It is not inconceivable that in the medium term, the practice could move up the ladder. China is a hugely complex country. It has never had a functioning democracy, so its approach will likely be tentative and experimental. They will avoid a free-for-all contest with unpredictable results. But China’s governance cannot remain static. The information age with the Internet and instant access to information is increasing the ability of the Chinese people to communicate with each other and make their views felt. As the population moves in 50 years’ time from over 70 per cent in the rural areas to over 70 per cent in the urban areas, the system must change. The people and the society are already changing.
Q: America’s political rightwing is divided between "engagers" and "containers." But since the latest incident over the South China Sea, engagers say their position has become increasingly precarious. For example, Curt Weldon (R-PA), an engager, says that on his last three trips to China he met with senior military officials who believe in the "inevitability of war" with the U.S. "sooner or later." So where do we go from here?
A: When senior military officials talk to a visiting US senator or congressman about the "inevitability of war" with the US "sooner or later", I do not take that as a policy statement. It's part of their military mindset. No Chinese leader can afford to work or plan on the basis of an inevitable war with the US. The consequences would be debilitating for their economic modernisation. To work on the assumption that they cannot avoid a war with the US is to adopt an apocalyptic view of their own future. The stakes must be so high that they are prepared to abandon any hope of a modern, industrialised and technologically capable China. They will do this only if they fear that they will lose Taiwan.
Q: We are trying to weave China into a web of mutual interests with the U.S. through trade. Should this extend to the security field?
A: I've been watching on CNN and CNBC what Bush and Don Rumsfeld have been saying. They have decided that China is going to do what she's going to do and the U.S. is going to do what she must do. So I do not think that for the moment there is any high expectation of a change in policy. But at the same time, I do not believe this policy is set in concrete. I reserve judgement for the next two years by which time the Bush administration will have tested out its new framework and seen the Chinese reaction, and that of east Asian countries, and for that matter the rest of the world. There is no question that China will cause a major displacement in the balance of power when she finally arrives as a major player on the world scene, say 30 years hence.
Q: Falun Gong means what in your judgement? A sect, a spiritual or political movement? Or a subversive movement as Beijing claims?
A: A year or so ago I was talking to a Chinese leader and said, You know when you have rapid economic development and rapid change in peoples' lives, even though for the better, from hovels to high-rises, they are disoriented. This happened in Singapore and we had a sudden growth in religious activity. People became Christians, the Buddhists got active, and various sects got going. This was in the 1970s and it puzzled me. So we formed a committee to study the problem here and in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Japan where there was similar rapid transformation. And they experienced exactly the same phenomenon. The Koreans were becoming Christians in huge numbers. And the explanation was - which I believed was sound - that a sense of rootlessness had triggered a group search for eternal truths and spiritual solace. So you become religious. In Japan, each time there's a crisis new sects pop up. My Chinese interlocutor said that in China vast masses in the interior had spawned sects that developed into powerful movements that believe in the invulnerability of themselves and their leader, very much like the Boxer rebellion. So the Chinese want to take no chances. It's as simple as that.
Q: To the point where the regime could be in jeopardy?
A: Since that conversation, I must admit I have a big question mark against the Falun Gong. For no rhyme or reason, they started demonstrating in Singapore. They started putting up banners to protest against arrests in China. They caused a public disturbance and we told them to disperse. They refused, so we arrested them. Interestingly enough, most of them were Chinese mainlanders who were working in Singapore. We were then bombarded with e-mails from all over the world. So I do not believe this is simply a deep-breathing, meditating exercise. It's a heavy breathing political exercise.
Q: As modern Singapore's Founding Father and leader for 40 years, you long argued that rapid economic development and western democratic politics were incompatible. Isn't this now changing under the pressure of globalisation and transparency?
A: Yes, of course. We have changed and continue to change and cannot possibly predict what we will look like ten years from now. With the exponential growth of the Internet, we are bound to be a very different society. The people are more involved, sending e-mails to ministers and getting replies. But this doesn't mean we are going to be like a western society. The values are different. We also have the growing divide, not between Indians and Chinese and Malays and Chinese, but between the Muslims and non-Muslims. Islam is going through a renaissance and globalising. Its disciples are using modern technology to reassert themselves and spread the Muslim message. Throughout 150 years of British rule and 36 years of independence, dress was never an issue. But now the Muslims have made it a major one. I'm sure you've seen the covered heads of women around town. It's part of this worldwide movement. And we have a problem.
Q: You are known as Asia's Henry Kissinger and premier geopolitical thinker. Where do you see the major threats in the next ten years? Is it Islamist extremism?
A: To call it a threat antagonises the majority of Muslim moderates, the very people we should convince to be part of the mainstream. This world is going to globalise whether we like it not. The biggest threat will be the challenges to the status quo -- from China and India.
Q: Hence the rapprochement between the U.S. and India as a balance to China's growing geopolitical clout?
A: It makes good geopolitical sense. India lost a good 40 years going with the Soviets and they now realise it.
Q: How do you explain Chinese proliferation of weapons of mass destruction expertise to other countries.
A: It's one of the counter-irritants to U.S. arms exports to Taiwan. They sell this technology to Pakistan and Iran which in their view is a tit for tat for the weapons and military technology you sell to Taiwan.
Q: And the second biggest threat to global stability after the challenges to the status quo from China and India?
A: I would say the Gulf, when those regimes change over the next few years, a transition that will be aggravated by the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. That is the real tinderbox in the foreseeable future. The Muslim nuclear weapon - which already exists in Pakistan - will travel to other Muslim countries in the years to come. Rational people don't worry me. China is rational, so is India, America, Europe and the rest of the world. But not the Islamist fundamentalist extremists. I am very worried because this fanaticism is growing in Indonesia, which is next door to us.
The following are additional questions from UPI and SM’s written answers, not carried in UPI’s report on 15 May 2001:
Q: U.S. alliances with Japan, Korea and Australia and security arrangements with Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, and commitments to Taiwan, all have given China the conviction that it is being encircled. Is this a real Chinese fear? If so, how do we ease such fears?
A: "Encirclement" is too simplistic a word to describe the complex relationship between US and China, and between US and China’s neighbours. China is not like the former Soviet Union. It does not pose a world wide ideological challenge, nor does it want to communise the world.
The presence now of US forces in East Asia is the result of three wars the US fought in Asia: against Japan in WW2 (1941/1945), against Communist North Korea and China, leading UN forces in the Korean peninsula (1950/1953), and against Communist North Vietnam (1954/1975). There is no East Asian military alliance directed against China. However China’s leaders believe that the US will yield to any extension of Chinese influence reluctantly, and only when they have to. This is a fact of life.
Q: Chinese authorities appear to be encouraging a dangerous form of nationalism. Xenophobic literature now popular in China claims that American scientists are working on racially selective biological weapons. This was the kind of disinformation the Soviet Union engaged in during the Cold War. How does one change these perceptions - or do we simply learn to live with them?
A: Nationalism has been a strong force in China since the Japanese invasion in the 1930s. It became a useful unifying factor once Marxism-Leninism-Maoism ceased to hold the Chinese people in thrall. Nationalist sentiments were heightened when the American media started China-bashing, making no distinction between the Chinese leaders’ policies and the Chinese people. It reached a peak with the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade on 7 May 1999.
I have not read the xenophobic literature claiming that American scientists are working on racially selective biological weapons. It’s not credible. Educated Chinese must know this is nonsense. It is not possible to have biological agents differentiate between different races of human beings. Furthermore, there are large numbers of Americans who are of Chinese descent or origin, and the Japanese and Koreans are ethnically not much different from the Chinese. They too would be greatly alarmed. I doubt it is officially encouraged. The Chinese leaders are keenly aware that nationalism cuts both ways.
Q: The Tiananmen generation of pro-democracy youth has now been succeeded by anti-American nationalist fervour. Is the leadership instigating this in order to detract attention from serious internal problems?
A: I did not see any evidence of the leadership instigating anti-American nationalist fervour after Tiananmen. If anything, the repeated replays of Tiananmen clips over Western networks like CNN and BBC, years after the event, offended ordinary Chinese and increased their sense of the West putting them down. The Chinese were portrayed as lacking a civilised society. This humiliated them as a people. While they may secretly admire America’s technological achievements and prosperity, they are angered when depicted as uncivilised and backward. It makes little sense for the US to alienate the younger generation of Chinese who are much more exposed to the West and absorbing new ideas and values about life and society.
Q: A new leadership will be taking over China’s destiny in the next two years. What can the U.S. do to influence changes in Chinese policy?
A: There is not much the US can do directly to influence changes in Chinese policy. Indirectly and over time, trade and investments, technological exchanges and more people-to-people contact, especially of managers and professionals, must lead to increased awareness on the Chinese side of their shortcomings as a society. Their students educated in America and Europe will be powerful agents of change. They will want to get things right.
Q: Will China’s membership in WTO and its sponsorship of the 2008 Olympic games improve relations with the U.S. - or are we both destined to become strategic competitors with regular crises on the menu?
A: With WTO membership, the Chinese will widen and deepen their contacts with the West. They have to do this because they want the benefits of trade, investments, technology transfers, and inputs of high calibre Western managers, engineers and scientists.
The Olympic games is a one off event. The Chinese know that should they win the 2008 bid, their society will be scrutinised by the world community for the next seven years. They want to showcase their new society.
The US-China relationship is complex and multi-faceted. Between an incumbent superpower and an emerging power there will always be both competition and cooperation, both friendly and adversarial situations. Friction from time to time cannot be avoided because the Chinese will be pushing the envelope and the Americans will want to resist them where they can. Such friction need not turn into a crisis.
Q: What conclusions do you draw from U.S. surveillance flights off the Chinese coastline and the way the Chinese air force intercepted the EP-3E on April 1?
A: It was an accident or to be diplomatically correct, an incident, that was waiting to happen. These flights had been increased in December last year during the waning days of the Clinton administration, and the Chinese airforce had routinely intercepted them. Such encounters were always fraught with the danger of accidents.
Nobody intended this collision. It would be folly to let this accident and its aftermath become the defining factor in relations between a Bush Administration still in its first hundred days, and a Chinese leadership in the process of transition to a fourth generation.
Q: With the kind of political freedom that exists in Russia since the end of the Cold War, could China survive as a unitary state?
A: If China had taken the big bang approach that Gorbachev took, it would have imploded like the Soviet Union.
Q: Since the advent of the worldwide web and the self-accelerating technologies of the 21st century, the Westphalian system of international relations - based on the absolute sovereignty of the nation-state since 1648 - appears to be eroding in most parts of the world. It won’t be too long before electronics will be worn, ingested or implanted, removing the last barrier to human interaction and conferring awesome power on the individual. How do you see technology impacting governance in the next generation?
A: No one can predict how societies and the way they are organised and governed will change as individuals become nearly as well informed as the government leaders. China’s leaders will not accept that the US and EU can unilaterally change the rules about sovereign rights to allow the West to interfere in China’s internal affairs, as they did in Kosovo. However in the next 20 or 30 years, China will be a radically different society and its system of government will be correspondingly different.