Workforce Development Agency
Singapore Human Capital Summit
Building Competitiveness: Harnessing Strategic People Trends in Asia
In Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew, Minister Mentor, Singapore
Facilitated Q&A by Prof. Narayan Pant, Dean of Executive Education, INSEAD
Transcript (Draft: 19 November 2008)
Emcee:
It is my great pleasure first to introduce Professor Narayan Pant, who is well known to many of you from INSEAD, who is going to conduct a dialogue with Minister Mentor. Professor Pant, welcome.
And now it is my great pleasure to invite Minister Mentor, Mr Lee Kuan Yew.
Moderator:
It is a distinct pleasure and honour to be able to welcome Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew to the Singapore Human Capital Summit.
Minister Mentor Lee is a senior leader of Asia and the world and his counsel is sought in the realm of decision making from Washington to Beijing. But it is particularly an honour to welcome him to this event because in his entire career, he has spent and devoted a considerable portion of his time and attention to the identification, nurturing and promotion of talent in Singapore.
Indeed, in many of his speeches and his writings, he has said that the only resources Singapore has had in its decades of development were human resources. In short, what he did was build the world’s first knowledge economy, even before that term became popular. Minister Mentor Lee, welcome.
MM Lee:
Thank you.
Moderator:
The way this is going to proceed is I’ll ask a couple of questions to Minister Mentor and then open up the conversation to the audience. I understand that there are mikes around. And we hope to make this as interactive a session as possible.
Minister Mentor, to start with a bit of an open-ended question first. What do you see, given current environments as some of the key challenges and opportunities that will face people who are tasked with the job of developing talent in Singapore and indeed in Asia today?
MM Lee:
You are talking about Singapore and Asia or the developed countries because they are two different categories of problems they will face.
Moderator:
Singapore and Asia, sir.
MM Lee:
I would say if you take Singapore and you can take Japan, maybe South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong into one category and the rest of Asia into the other category. By the time you get somebody into the workforce, he has been through the educational system that the government has provided. And how good that basis is, determines at what level you are picking him up, using him, training him, improving him on what he’s already got.
I think the Japanese have done theirs very well. We’ve watched them closely and we learn many things from them. I think the Koreans have also studied them and because of their long association have also modeled themselves on the Japanese. We have not modelled ourselves on the Japanese. We have just judiciously picked up pointers on how we can improve our system because we are more Western orientated.
First you must have a workforce that speaks in one language. When we started, we had a workforce which spoke in multiple languages. So when they are put together, they use pidgin-Malay or pidgin-dialects. We decided, way back in 1965 that our working language would be English, for political and economic reasons. Political because had we chosen Chinese, we would have disadvantaged the minorities and that would have caused endless problems. And anyway, what would Chinese do for us in Singapore, because at that time China was a closed society and our trade was with the Western world, so we chose English.
Malaysia has started off with the same basics as us, British-rule, multiple schools - Malay, Chinese, Tamil, whatever – decided to choose Malay. Chinese and Indians in Malaysia decided that they will stick to their Chinese schools and their Tamil schools. And so they have got a workforce which is divided into different components. All learning Malay but not as their master language but as a second language in Chinese schools and probably also in the Tamil schools. So when they meet in University, they don’t quite gel together. And I suppose in the workplace, eventually, they begin to understand each other with a bit of sign language. That is not maximum productivity.
Having got them in at that level, depending on the state of your economy and the demands of your employers, you got to train your workers to meet their demands. So over the years, we have a rolling plan where the Ministry for Education gets feedback from Ministry for Labour who are in constant touch with the big employers, Multinationals, the Government and so on. So that we keep on concentrating on producing people who are needed for the jobs to be done.
When we started, we were not in a position to have the classical, broad educated gentlemen which the people in Harvard defines as a broad, classical education. We train them in order that they can make a living in the economy that we were developing. And as the economy developed, and they moved upwards, so their skills and their knowledge must go up. And it’s gone up, until today we’ve got about 25 and aiming for 30 percent at tertiary levels and in universities, another 40, 45 percent in polytechnics where it’s more hands-on training and another 20 percent in institutes of technical education where it’s really learning how to do things, repair machines, air conditioners, whatever. Finally you reach a plateau because you’ve maximised what there is in the population. And I was greatly impressed by the Japanese because at the lower levels, they have really done that. So they have produced defect-free cars, defect-free TV sets. They fit each other like lego-bricks. We can’t quite do that because we are multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-religious, but we try.
I give you an example. We used to get their landscape architects to study how we can plant flowers, shrubs, palms, trees in open spaces in the city and roundabouts, so it doesn’t look just barren concrete. And after two years, the place freshened up and so they went back. And after two years, the greenery doesn’t look the same, so we called them back, what went wrong? And their explanation was telling. They said before you become a landscape architect, in school they would already, from the primary stage, have decided whether you've got that aesthetic sense of colours, shapes, forms, a sense of what is aesthetics. If you got it in a high degree, then you become a sculptor, a painter, architect, interior decorator and a landscape artist. And you can have Japanese Gardens.
We just pick them by their O levels and A levels, what they scored in mathematics, science, languages, not what they did or how well they did in the aesthetics. We've had the same problem with architecture. We have stereotype buildings. I wondered why. Because we employ or rather we train people who scored well in engineering.
When my son who had a schoolmate who won a scholarship to Cambridge and wanted to do architecture. They were not interested in his A levels. They said: 'Give me a portfolio of all your drawings.' And on the basis of his portfolio, they said: 'Right, we'll take you for architecture.' And today, he’s refurbishing heritage centres and so on.
So you must have that touch, that feel. So now you see more designs with a better sense of the aesthetics. And that is human resource development. What is there in a man or in a woman? And you got to identify that early. Is he a musician, is he a dancer, is he a swimmer, a sportsman? So now we have specialised schools for sports, for music, for the arts, whatever, physical education, etc.
And that’s human resource development. And as you go up the ladder, and so you refine and refine, and finally you graduate from university with an MBA, and you say you want to go into financial services, how good is your mathematics? You want to go run a company, how is your ability to manage people and so on. So this is an unending process in which you maximise the talent, the capabilities you have in your population. And at the very top when you are competing in the total economy, you got to have high performers and that’s where foreign talent comes in. We have a population of about 3.5 million, with 1.2 million of foreign workers. Of those foreign workers, there are about a 170,000 who are professionals. Without that foreign talent, the Singapore economy would not be humming as it is.
So you have to manage this problem, because the Singaporeans feel that if he’s not there, I would have gotten the job. But they doesn’t understand if he and his team is not there, that enterprise may never have come about, and you will have no jobs. That is a problem which political leaders have to manage and explain to people, why it is that you need foreign talent? Because that gives you the extra boost. That’s the way we have done it in Singapore. We keep on learning.
So at the end of the day, what is it that will retain your own talent in a very mobile world where talent is in short supply and where other people are trying to attract your talent. We are losing bright students in America who are being green harvested. They are offered during the financial boom in the financial sector an internship during their long vacation and they say come and join us for two years, three years. And they are into very big jobs and they are taken to China because they can speak Chinese. And they are part of the American team, English educated and at the same time, able to connect with the Chinese because they are also Chinese speaking. So this is win some, lose some. And we got to win more than we lose. And America has done well because she has been winning more than she has been losing because the Europeans, with their welfare problems, welfare weight, burdens of high taxes that keep everybody comfortable. The bright and the energetic and the enterprising go to London and New York and elsewhere, so they are losing talent. New Zealand loses about 50,000 of their top men every year to Australia.
So in this globalised environment with airlines flying you anywhere you want to go like you take a bus, attracting talent and keeping your own is a key to success.
Moderator:
Thank you Minister Mentor. Now it was said in the past that the ability to attract and keep people in Asia was particularly challenging because cultural differences meant that you needed to behave differently in different countries in Asia in order to be successful. Do you see that changing? And as a consequence of that, is talent going to become even more fungible than before, because barriers, cultural barriers to success go down?
MM Lee:
No, I don’t think that’s possible. Because culture – our group of people do not change so readily. You can take a Chinese or an Indian and bring them to America. And as a minority in the American milieu, he will begin to absorb the American ethos. But you bring a few Americans to China or India and you think that you can spread this ethos into India and China, you are dead wrong. The missionaries tried this. They sent missionaries to China, to India. But these are ancient systems, societies, ancient civilisations with their own set of beliefs as well as multiple Gods or multiple deities. And people who are converted was in its decimal. It’s a question of us being diluted in a bigger mass.
Therefore, one of the things that is of constant concern for us is at this moment is, we have a population that's already attuned to the Singapore way of doing things. They don't rush. They accept certain norms of behaviour. And if we have more foreigners than Singaporeans, then the Singaporeans may become like the foreigners, and we lose our basic attributes and we'll be down the spiral. So we have to take them in at a rate where they imbibe our values.
At the very top it doesn’t matter. People lead different lives. They have got their own clubs, they got their own pleasure centres. But at mid-levels, when it’s cheek by jowl, living together, working together, it is important that the Singaporeans outnumber the migrants. You will never get the Chinese to become non-Chinese or the Indians to become non-Indians. Each will march to its own drum. Or for that matter, the Malays or the Thais or whatever.
But if you take small groups and put them in America and you scatter them, then they will become like the Americans. But if you take them in a lump and put them together, that may take a longer time. That’s the way human nature is.
Moderator:
You were referring in your earlier comments about the fact that men and women are formed, very early in the developmental process. And hence the kind of education they receive, early on in the system is actually very important. In a lot of the countries in the region, whether it is in China or India, a lot of the emphasis in education has been laid on tertiary education, building grand institutions of engineering, science, medicine and so on. Do you see that changing? And indeed do you see a lot of emphasis being placed in these economies on lower-level and primary education?
MM Lee:
If you want to develop your whole society, you’ve got to make the whole society literate. This means minimum basic schooling should be at least 10, if not 12 years, before they begin to specialise in whatever they want to do. In fact by the early teens, you will know what they can do, what they can’t do and you help them and their parents decide, which way they go. If you are not mathematically inclined but you are good at music, but you can’t play the violin or you are not a concert pianist, you can be very good at the guitar and you can make a good living performing in nightclubs or parties, etc. So these are the finer points and details that we learn as we went along. It is wrong when we are trying to make him what he is not.
Moderator:
Minister Mentor, I would like to turn this over to the audience to see if there are any questions. Questions for Minister Mentor Lee? There’s one over there. Sir, if you could you please tell us who you are and where you’re from.
Delegate:
My name is David Duric and I’m from Thomson Reuters, I am French. And I’m one of the 170,000 expats living here. Question about motivation, motivating talent. It is one of the key factors for performance of talented people. Given your experience and your perspective, what are the key learnings about the motivational factors of human beings?
MM Lee:
At the early stages, you got to make it quite clear that knowledge, learning, application of knowledge is what will gain you a good life. If they come to the conclusion that the system depends on good connections, skiving, cheating, then you are in trouble because he sees no reason in acquiring all this knowledge.
So you got to have a system and we set out to create a system where the more you learn, the more skilful you are, the better the jobs you will get, and the better the homes you would own. It has worked out that way. We have done these surveys often enough. We got our public housing here. We have two rooms, three rooms, four rooms, five rooms and condominium-size or condominium-type of public housing. And you will find the education level matches each other. And because we have no segregation, no minority feels he is done in because he is a minority. He can see his neighbour, Chinese, Indian, Malay. He’s probably not doing as well because he didn’t make the grade and he only made semi-skilled or skilled work, you’ve got to settle for that. So when we dispensed subsidies during periods of inflation or high costs, we go by the nature of the flats they occupy. The lower number of rooms and the higher the number of people living in the flats, that means the lower their income. The lower the income is because of their lower skills and knowledge.
So the first motivation that you must get in place is knowledge and skills get you somewhere, and not connections and being smart in cheating or skiving. Once you got that and once you have reached the top, then you got your Maslow’s laws where finally you face graduates who now say they want self fulfillment. And they say the grass is greener there. I’m going to Perth, I’m going to sell my condominium for a big fortune and I can buy two, three bungalows in Perth and three, four cars and live happily ever after.
Moderator:
Another question from the audience? Sir?
Delegate:
My name is Ashok and I am from India. Minister Mentor, your presence here has been very motivating to all of us. My question is like what happened in the last decade in Europe, that the whole of Europe has come up as a single commercial force. Do you expect a similar momentum happening in the next decade in Asia?
MM Lee:
I think a decade will be too ambitious a time. You must remember, Europe went this route after two devastating world wars, 1914, 1939. Millions died, economies were devastated. During the Cold War, from 1950 onwards, sorry, 1946, 47, the Americans came in, pumped in a commercial plan and they recovered, gave them the technology and the export markets. And they have decided that it doesn’t make sense. France trying to defeat Germany and Germany tries to conquer the world, and Germany got divided and they suffered devastation. So they decided, Jean Monet, iron and steel first. Iron and steel community. That treaty of Rome in 1956. That treaty of Rome in the economic community. Slowly that evolved into the European Union. And their ambition is to have Europe from the Atlantic to as far deep as possible. Maybe at first, they thought Ukraine, Moulin Rouge and Georgia may belong to Europe. Now I think they know that the Russians say this is my territory, my sphere of influence. But their ambition is to create an entity, an economic entity where everybody is at peace with each other and they help each other to develop. Let’s not quarrel, let’s go together. You are dispossessed, you are poor, poor infrastructure. So Ireland was poor, they gave Ireland the carbon market. They invested in Ireland, the Irish spoke English, the Americans went in, exported to Europe, now Ireland is a booming economy. And Eastern Europe after 40+ years of Russian domination hoped to join the system. But because there are more of them and as this is a globalised world, they are not making the same progress as Ireland. So they are a bit disappointed but eventually they will.
Asia hasn’t gone through that, they’ve got varying systems. We don’t have a common religion. There is something called an European civilisation that goes back to the Roman empire. It excluded the Germanic tribes, then it had the Renaissance, they had their enlightenment. So large tracks of Europe, although definitely carved out as nation-states with languages of their own, they shared a common European culture. That is not the case in Asia, it will take us some time to get together. But the logic of India and China taking in all the investments will force the other countries to combine their markets, in order not to be marginlised. But it’s going to take much longer than 10 years.
Moderator:
Minister Mentor, going back to your initial comments about building a meritocracy, encouraging people, expanding the pool of people who come into the workforce, must all societies eventually become less egalitarian, from the following perspective – If the first generation uses merit to achieve success, can that success then sort of give preferential advantages to the children of those successful people? So must there be an evolution in the direction of less egalitarianism?
MM Lee:
I have watched this process and it’s very difficult to get people to accept this. In the first phase as we open up, you have children of very able hawkers, taxi drivers who never had an education, but because they are able, their IQ was high, their energy levels were good. Similarly their wives too, they produced bright children who were denied education.
We provided education. And the first 20 years saw a crop of people who transformed themselves from shanty huts to professionals to chief executives. Then they begin to have what is called associative mating. If you become a doctor, you are not likely to want to marry a cleaner in the hospital. You will probably marry either a senior nurse or a nursing officer or a fellow doctor. And so too with lawyers. So therefore when you have this associative mating, you already start off. If you take two dices and both dices say King, Queen, King, Ace. Then you throw. Then you either get two Kings, two Queens, two Aces or one or the other. In the old days, they were all mixed up. Five, six, seven or two, three, four, you throw. Sometimes two Aces come out, but most times no. And the strange thing we noticed is that, the lower the educational levels, the more children they have in the hope that one will make it. So they are loading up the system with a lot of children who are not going to make it. But that’s the way the world is. And I’ve explained this; I think I lost votes after I explained the awful truth.
Nobody believed it, but slowly it’s dawned on them, especially the graduates. You marry a non-graduate, then you will worry about whether your son or daughter is going to make it to university. You marry another graduate, especially if she gets a first or an upper second and if you get a first or upper second. Chances are you don’t have to worry about them. They will look after themselves. So that leads to the kind of problems that Britain has. The British believe that all men are equal but in fact they are not equal. You take cows, dogs, horses, whatever it is, or even papaya trees. You start out with the best seeds. Such is life. I said this once at a mass rally and it caused great unhappiness.
I say you look at China. The bright come from anywhere. You can be the son of a farmer, worker. If you pass the Imperial Examinations, three stages, in your town, in the provincial capital, and every three years in Beijing. You are a xiu cai (county scholar) or a jun shi (military strategist) or a zhuang yuan (top imperial scholar). If you come top in the examination, the chances are the emperor will want you to marry his daughter.
And when they retire, they go to a place with a milder climate along the Yangtze. There's one town called Suzhou which had the name, Zhuang Yuan Jie (Imperial Scholars' Street). They had multiple wives, so multiple children. And that street produced so many zhuang yuan and that's why it's called Zhuang Yuan Jie.
And that's why we chose Suzhou. And it succeeded. We were dealing with extremely smart and bright people, brighter than the people we sent because our people had the knowledge, they didn't have, but they had a high IQ and quick learners.
Moderator:
Let me take another question from the audience?
Delegate:
Thank you sir. I am from Bangladesh. It is my great honour and privilege to giving me this chance of asking this question to a legendary personality, Minister Mentor of Singapore. In the 60s, you had a dream of modern Singapore. Now the Singapore has become modern. What do you think about the state in which you are in? The other thing is once you are dealing with the problems of labour unions and others. So in some of the developing countries, in Asian countries, the number of trade unions are growing at a very large rate. So what are the magical power that you utilised in Singapore where there is no strikes in Singapore nowadays? What is your lessons for other trade union leaders of Asia and other developing countries. Your advice I would like to have. Thank you Sir.
MM Lee:
That is a very multiple series of questions. First, what do I think of where we are? I worry about it. I've got a younger generation that thinks this is a natural state of affairs, it will always be like this, not knowing how we got here, not knowing the base on which the superstructure is resting, that it is organisation, training, discipline and tough-minded leadership. Without that, it will spiral downwards within five to 10 years, and we'll be back to square one and it will never rise again.
That first rise was a stroke of destiny, good fortune. I had a team. Nobody does things on his own. No one man can succeed. I had a brilliant team, we complemented each other, we made up for each other’s deficiencies. We did not plan this. We did not envisage this Singapore because we did not know how the world was going to develop. But we knew that if we did not connect with the world, without the hinterland, we will never get anywhere. So we made the world our hinterland and we made ourselves useful to that world. How? By building First World conditions in a Third World region. So we built the infrastructure, we trained our people to live and behave like First World citizens, took a long time. Not to spit, not to litter, not to make too much noise, be educated, be polite.
And the Western media made fun of us. But we've got here.
Will we always stay here? Not at all. The moment we have weak leadership, the moment people lose their sense of endeavour, that effort, that discipline, they’ll just peter out.
What do I advise about trade unions? I can’t advise about trade unions. The ILO used to come here and tell us, your business, the way you run your unions is wrong. You must have unions that confront the employer and hard bargaining, then out of that comes maximum benefits for the employee. I started my career with the unions, representing them in negotiations with the objective of building up a political base, so I charged them no fees. And they became my political base, so I understood what is it that they wanted. So when we were “turfed” out of Malaysia in 1965, without a hinterland, we either change our system or we perish.
The unions were very communist-controlled. We have endless strikes, go-slows, sit-ins and riots. So I called them up and said, “let’s make up our minds. Do we want to survive and make ourselves useful to the developed countries of the world because they are the only people who can help us develop. Or do you want to continue this, in which case we will perish.” The fear of going down the drain made them accept my propositions so I restored to the employer with the right to hire and fire. No strikes without a secret ballot, essential services when a strike is declared. If the Minister says this is an essential service, it’s sent to arbitration, the strike must stop and the matter must be settled by arbitration. And we had fair arbitration. So in that way, over the years, we had the unions working together with the government and working in negotiations with the employer in a tripartite fashion called the national wages council. Every year, we review how the economy has been doing, the representation of the unions, the employers and the government. The government acting partly as a big employer but partly as an arbitrator to make sure that the facts are out. Then we make recommendations, broad recommendations for this sector that is doing well, that sector that is not doing so well and then we leave it to the unions to resolve it with the employers.
The ILO came in and said that it’s all wrong, I think the ILO has now changed its mind and they are bringing other trade unions from the third world to have a look at us. But, it’s not so easy to duplicate. It was a stroke of destiny that created this condition and if we do not keep this sense of equity, it will be lost. How is the equity maintained?
Not only because the employers gives the unions a fair deal. If he doesn’t make his eight, or nine or 12 percent of return on capital, he is not going to do his business here. He will move elsewhere. Go to Vietnam, it has a cheaper base. So he can only pay as much as his company will bear, provided he can pay his shareholders that amount of dividend each year and keep his share prices up. It is then the business of the government through the fiscal system to give everybody a fair bite. How? Good housing, good education for their children, good health services. They are heavily subsidised. So you can be a taxi driver’s son or a hawker’s son, you will not be denied healthy living conditions. Running water, hot and cold, electricity, whatever, good playing fields, good schools, good polyclinics, good hospitals, gives you a start in life.
How you perform is up to you, your motivation, your willingness to put in the effort, to learn and acquire knowledge and skills and to be useful to the economy and that’s how we maintain it. So, I was just listening to the news just now and I think the World Bank or somebody said that we are the only country that has no slums and the third world and other countries should study us. We have no slums because we set out to make sure that there are no slums. Because if we have slums, we are going to have a lot of dispossessed people who will get alienated and who will finally become rebellious.
I have not been to Bangladesh. I’ve known all your leaders and I met them at Commonwealth conferences and they have come here. I think you got a complicated situation.
Moderator:
Thank you Minister Mentor. And if I may bring us to possibly the final panel of this discussion. I would like to spend a little bit of time talking about your views on the short and medium term economic prospects of the region and as a follow on to that, given that it seems as if we are going into a period of at least short term economic slowdown. How do the people in the hall whose job is developing talent continue to keep their eyes on talent despite short term pressures on finances?
MM Lee:
Well, nobody can say how long or how deep this recession will be. We will see how it works out. I’ve just reading Henry Paulson explaining why he couldn’t save Lehman Brothers in today’s IHT. I’ve also met Paul Volcker, I’ve read him too. I’ve met many other CEOs. My own guess is if the banking system does not malfunction, then in three, four years, five years, the economy, the world economy will be restored. If the banking system malfunctions, then I don’t know. It’s going to be a difficult business. Let’s assume it’s three to five years, that’s the optimistic scenario. I think Asia will do better than the other regions because it has two large economies which are climbing up the J-curve, China and India.
If you look at the IMF assessments of China and India’s growth rates for 08, 09. For 08, the Chinese has gone down from 12.9% for 07 to now let’s say 9%, 9.1%, 9.2%. And for 2009, similarly 9%. For India, it’s about 8%. That’s because there’s enough of an internal market to carry themselves on. If India and China carries on at that rate and with the inter-linkage now established between China and the ASEAN countries, China and Korea and Japan, Taiwan and ASEAN. And India too. We all have Free Trade Agreements with China, with India, with Japan. I think East Asia can make 3 to 5%.
If you go by IMF estimates, they say 5 to 6 percent, but that’s taking China into the equation. If you say ex-China, Japan makes 2%-3%, then I would say the rest of Asia might make 3% to 4% to 5%, which isn’t bad for this condition. I think this is the time, when things are down, when you have increased unemployment. Use that time to build up skills and knowledge, invest in it. We do that each time, so when the recovery takes place, we got a better qualified workforce to go up to the next level. You got to be optimistic enough, realistic enough, that this will recover. When? I don’t know. So make use of this time to increase your human capabilities, your human resources. That’s what we intend to do. We got our Continuing Education and Training Schemes, they call it CET. We’ve got all kinds of work development projects to get people who are displaced from their jobs, because of relocations to move to another job which requires different skills, different set of skills to prepare for the next kind of job that they can get.
Moderator:
Thank you. We have five minutes left to take one last short question.
Delegate:
My name is Jonas and I’m from Kelly Services. It’s a US based company and we have operations…
MM Lee:
Are you a Singaporean?
Delegate:
I’m about to say that I am one of the 3.5 million Singaporeans and a heartlander to boot as well sir. I’ve got a question on leadership. And I think you alluded to that as well, leadership and your team in Singapore and I think I can confidently also say that Singapore got to where it is because of what I deem as cohesive, sound and perhaps even consistent leadership. In your experience, sir, what leadership attributes worked for you then and do you see these leadership that you held to changing or for that matter any additional leadership attributes that must now be considered and harnessed for Singapore’s future given the increasing volatility and unpredictability.
MM Lee:
That is a very pertinent and deep question which I’ve asked myself. I’m no longer moving around in the constituencies as I used to. So I haven’t quite got a feel of the ground which is essential for any decision-making, or what you do in a policy situation.
First, we have a generation now that assumes that this is the base and I want to improve on this base which isn’t easy. I took people from shanty huts, hole in the ground for the lavatory to high-rises, running water and electricity, jobs. That was a different time. Now their aspirations have soared. They are now better educated, they believe they know as much as the minister. Sometimes they think that they know more than the minister. You can see it in the letters to the press, forum pages, which isn’t a bad thing, provided they understand that they may not be right because the ministers aren’t stupid.
First, Singapore must have an A-team. If we field a B-team, we are in trouble. We got to have a first division A-team. I don’t care whether it’s PAP or any other party, you need first class people with good minds. A sense of obligation to do a good job for the people and the ability to execute. That’s an A-team.
We take a lot of trouble, head hunting, selecting. Psychomotor tests, psychiatric tests, putting them at the deep end of the pool. Testing them for at least two terms, two-five, four, five-year terms before they get to higher office. So we know that they got what it takes. But if you start voting for whoever is a glib speaker then you are in very deep trouble. Because the fact that you can talk plausibly doesn't mean you can perform effectively. They're two different qualities and a good politician must be able to do both.
Why are we more difficult to handle? Because our economy now is more complex. It’s no longer just a catching up phase where you see what’s being done elsewhere and I must do the same, just choose the right industry and services which fits your situation. Now we have almost reached the level of the developed countries. We got to decide where is our future? Assuming that China and India will grow, then we must accept that whatever we do, they will eventually be able to do and probably do as well, if not better. Definitely the Chinese are doing that. If you see their educational institutions and the way they have expanded their schools, their universities, their colleges and the fanatic pace at which they are working and learning. You will know that they are going to get there. So what is it that we can do that they cannot do in 20, 30 years’ time?
So I sit down and I looked at them. Then we discussed it among the ministers and I talk to people, Singaporeans who are doing business there and after three years, a chap in shanghai says, “look, I may be Shanghainese, but I am doing the job that your Singaporeans paid and I want his pay”. And he is able to do the job after three years because he is smart and he has learnt English too. So where are our comparative advantages? My conclusion is our system. They can have the individual catch up with us but they can’t change the system so easily. Rule of law, transparency, no guan xi (relationships), fair play. Meritocracy and not friendship and relatives. And most important of all, patents. Why are anybody with a pharmaceutical discovery would be risking its products into generics if he goes into China or India? But if he comes to Singapore, he knows that intellectual property will be protected. We will do research with him, with them, whether it is Glaxco Smith Kline or Merck or whatever.
And you can see that the pharma industry is growing. I was just listening to the news just now and they said exports for pharmacological products have gone up. Why? They can do it cheaper in Vietnam, China and India. But why have they chosen Singapore? Because of the system. Safety, protection, rule of law and R&D facilities that will supplement theirs and respect for their rights. So there are these segments where the Chinese and the Indians will take 20, 30, even 40, 50 years before they can transform their system into a Singapore system and maybe more than that because you cannot transform systems. You cannot transform culture.
The Singapore culture is a result, an amalgam of 150 years of British rule imposed on an Asian population which has a deep faith in education and learning which is part of the Chinese culture and also part of the Indian culture. So that combination has given us this curious outcome which is to our advantage and we got to maximize that, maximize this prize and make the best we can and eventually supposing they become five times Japan, they still have to come down to South East Asia and do business and like the Japanese, they will come to Singapore. And today we have 3200 new Chinese companies and another 3300 or more Indian companies because from here, here they find a hospitable place, efficient, safe, desirable living conditions from which they can venture into the outside world. And good connections, sound connections with India, China and South East Asia. Those are our assets. Maximize them.
Moderator:
Ladies and gentleman. I trust that you have enjoyed the scintillating conversation as much as I have. What a terrific way to end the Singapore Human Capital Summit. Please join me in thanking Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew for his time and his insights.
