Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas

by Han Fook Kwang

  No, because Lee is not an ideological or dogmatic person. In fact, he eschews theory and fine argument. What matters to him is whether a thing works or not, with practice providing the best test. If it has been tried out elsewhere, he would want to know what the experience has been. If it has not, he would be willing to try it out if it was worthwhile doing so. This has been a constant refrain in his speeches and interviews. There is no grand theory to explain the world according to Lee.

  And yet we could not help noticing throughout the 2,000 speeches we read, and in the interviews, that there are several constants in his approach to problem-solving, which when taken together, provide as good a composite picture of the man as you can ever get.

  First is his capacity to learn from experience, and, if necessary, to change his beliefs, even radically, when they do not conform to reality. One radical change happened very early in his political career when he parted company with the socialism of the British Labour Party because he could see that it was not working in Britain, and would not work in Singapore. He had started off as a student in England believing that wealth generation was a natural product of labour, and that the difference between a good society and a bad one was in how the fruits of that labour were distributed. But when he saw how costly such a system was to maintain, and the practical consequences of subsidising a man for the rest of his life, whether for health care or public housing, he made the switch in Singapore. If a man did not own his home but rented it from the state, why would he look after it properly? If medical service were free, would it not lead to an unsustainable system and a bottomless pit? Soon after assuming office, he made Singaporeans pay for medical prescriptions, even if it was a very small sum to begin with, and the government sold public flats to the people.

  Whenever he was confronted with theory which did not work in practice, he chose the latter. “Practice decided for me, in the final implementation of policies. It was not the theory of capitalism, not Milton Friedman, that decided my policies. But in each instance, we calculated – if that doesn’t work, this wouldn’t work.”

  If there is one golden thread in Lee’s approach, it is his constant striving to seek results, not in proving a theory right.

  Second is his doggedness to achieve those results, never losing sight of his objectives, and relentlessly clearing all obstacles in the way. His determination to make Singapore a garden city, the personal effort and interest he put into the project, is typical of the man. More than any other trait of his, his determination is one which Singaporeans know only too well. He put it this way in an interview with the authors:

  “I would say that I’m very determined when I set out to do something. First, I’ve got to decide whether something is worth doing. If it’s not worth doing, well, I’m not prepared to spend the time over it, to make the effort. Then I just coast along, it doesn’t matter whether it succeeds or doesn’t succeed, it’s of no consequence.

  “But if I decide that something is worth doing, then I’ll put my heart and soul into it. I’ll give everything I’ve got to make it succeed. So I would put my strength, determination and willingness to see my objective to its conclusion. Whether I can succeed or not, that’s another matter – but I will give everything I’ve got to make sure it succeeds. If I’ve got to get good people, I get good people. If I’ve got to change tack, I will change tack. If you have decided something is worth doing, you’ve got to remove all obstacles to get there.”

  Third is the fact that Lee formed many of his political beliefs very early in his political life, and he has been consistent about them once he has accepted their validity. For example, his misgivings about the workings of democracy in Asian societies which have just become independent date back to the early 1960s, when he himself had just attained political power through the ballot box. His scepticism is hence not of a man who wants to hang on to power and to change the rules midstream but of one who has himself seen, in the early years, how one after another of the newly independent countries had been ruined by the system of one-man-one-vote.

  His tough-minded approach to the media also goes back to the 1960s, when he first had problems with the local press. It is consistent with his recent observations of how the American media had debased public respect for their leaders and had played a key part in changing social customs and mores, not necessarily for the better.

  His conversion from socialism to capitalism, perhaps his most radical U-turn, was complete in the early 1960s, so too his belief in the importance of culture in determining the dynamism of any society. Meritocracy, the belief that genes played a major role in deciding a man’s ability, the high standards he set for political leaders in their public conduct – these are all issues he had made up his mind about early on.

  Lee has had the advantage of very many years of testing the validity of these views and of working them within the Singapore system. Is he always right? Of course not. But he has one not insignificant argument going for him with which to rebut his critics: Singapore. Whether an idea was worth pursuing must ultimately rest on whether it worked in real life, and Singapore has worked for 38 years.

  This book is not entirely about serious ideas and life-and-death issues. An important aim of the authors was to try to understand the man himself, his personal beliefs and philosophy. Some of the revelations might surprise readers. As often happens with public figures, a stereotype of Lee has formed over the last 30-odd years: the Western media especially see him as ruthless, autocratic, power-hungry. But he is a much more complex person, and there are interesting insights of him throughout the book which, when taken together, should give a better picture of the man. In interviews with the authors, for example, he talked about God and religion, why he chose to become a lawyer, where he gets his ideas, and how he regards money and wealth.

  One final point: this book is not a critique of his views and there has been no attempt to be so, or to provide contrary arguments to many of Lee’s controversial ideas. The aim of the authors is much more modest: to present his views in a systematic and organised way for those who want to understand him and the Singapore he transformed – never mind if they agree or disagree with him.

  We believe that our approach in distilling the essence of his views – from the more than 2,000 speeches and the 30-odd hours of interviews with him – has not been attempted by anyone before. We leave the critique to others better qualified to do the job. More than anyone else, Lee has made Singapore what it is today. For anyone interested in how his ideas have transformed Singapore, this book should be a useful starting point.

  THE MAKING OF A POLITICIAN

  Wearing improvised gas masks, people flee from their homes as Japanese warplanes bombard Singapore in February 1942.

  1

  It Began When My World Collapsed

  The world as Lee Kuan Yew knew it came to an end on the morning of December 8, 1941. Another brave new world was about to begin. But at that very moment when the old one crumbled and its replacement burst from the sky bearing the emblem of the Japanese air force, there was only terror and destruction. Japanese war planes struck with impunity on an unsuspecting city that quiet morning to shatter 123 years of unchallenged British rule.

  “On December 8, early in the morning, when the bombs dropped, I was in Raffles College in the hostel and we were in the middle of it. Then a few days later, the two battleships, Prince of Wales and Repulse, were sunk. That was a disaster. That jolted us.

  “Then they kept on advancing and advancing. And we were recruited into the MAS, Medical Auxiliary Services, the students in Raffles College, and we volunteered. We ran around with an ambulance, collected injured people after air raids; towards the end we collected injured people after shelling. And they were, I think from the beginning of February or late January, filing into Singapore. Next thing, they were in Singapore.”

  This extract is from an interview with the authors. All extracts will carry the source at the end of the extract, except for interviews with the
authors.

  That air attack on Singapore, which was launched simultaneously with the main Japanese landings at Singora and Patani in southern Thailand, and at Kota Bharu on the east coast of Malaya, was the first of the Pacific War. One hour and ten minutes later, on the other side of the ocean, Japanese forces in the Pacific would devastate the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. It was followed by the Japanese invasion of Hongkong, and attacks on Clark airbase in the Philippines, Guam and Wake Island. Within 12 hours the might of Japan would be felt all over the Pacific Ocean.

  By February 1942 the triumphant Imperial Army was in Singapore. Lee ran into his first Japanese soldier at his maternal grandfather’s home in Telok Kurau. “I looked at this strange person with flaps on his cap. It took me a moment to realise he was a Japanese. That’s that.” For the first year undergraduate from Raffles College, it was the biggest shock of his life. His world had turned upside down and from this unexpected perspective he would receive what he now regards as the political education of his life.

  “The dark ages had descended on us. It was brutal, cruel. In looking back, I think it was the biggest single political education of my life because, for three and a half years, I saw the meaning of power and how power and politics and government went together, and I also understood how people trapped in a power situation responded because they had to live. One day, the British were there, immovable, complete masters; next day, the Japanese, whom we derided, mocked as short, stunted people with shortsighted squint eyes.”

  The Japanese were especially brutal towards the Chinese population. In one particularly infamous incident, known as Sook Ching, every male Chinese between the ages of 18 and 50 was rounded up for registration and identification. Aimed at flushing out anti-Japanese elements among the Chinese volunteers who had fought so tenaciously against the invading Japanese army, it resulted in 6,000 Chinese being massacred, according to estimates from the Japanese secret police, the Kempeitai. Other estimates put the figure at five times as high.

  Tumultuous changes were taking place everywhere as the old order on which the British Empire was firmly rooted collapsed. The German and Japanese armies were on the move throughout Europe and Asia.

  For the people of Singapore, as it was for those of Malaya, Indo-China and Indonesia, the unthinkable had happened. The great white colonial masters of Great Britain, France and the Netherlands were being overrun by the bow-legged, squat and squint-eyed yellow terror from the Land of the Rising Sun. English would be replaced by Nippon-go, God Save the King by Kimigayo and the civil orderly ways of the Anglo-Saxon world by the raw brutality and stoicism of the samurai.

  Lee Kuan Yew saw all this close up. But he was no mere spectator. It was raw politics itself, and he was right in the middle of it. To understand Lee today, what he is, what he believes in, why he does certain things and what he stands for, it is necessary to understand the temper of those tumultuous years and how they seized and shaped him. Those earthshaking events would also mould Lee’s generation and the generation before them in Singapore and all over Asia.

  If there is one point in Lee’s life when his political education began, when the idea that things could change and would be changed for better or for worse – which is the very essence of politics – this was it. For the story of Lee Kuan Yew and modern Singapore, this beginning was as brutal as it was unexpected. But it did not take place in a vacuum. It burst out of the old world with an impatience that Lee would epitomise later. To understand why it happened, it is necessary, too, to understand the old world, a world which Lee inhabited for 18 years before those Japanese fighter planes put an end to it.

  Beginnings

  When Lee’s great grandfather Lee Bok Boon left Guangdong province for Singapore in 1863 at the age of 16, he was following the footsteps of thousands of Chinese emigrants who had left their ancestral villages, many with just the shirts on their backs, to seek a new life in Southeast Asia. Their numbers fluctuated depending on the state of the economy in the receiving countries and whether it had been a good or bad harvest in their own villages. In 1907, 227,000 Chinese immigrants landed in Singapore. The number dropped to 152,000 in 1909, but rose dramatically to 270,000 in 1911, which was a year of flood and famine in southern China.

  Bok Boon married a Chinese shopkeeper’s daughter, Seow Huan Nio, in Singapore. Like many of his contemporaries his heart was still in the Middle Kingdom, and so, after making some money here, he decided to go back in 1882. But Huan Nio, who was born in Singapore and had never been to China, and was by then a mother of three children, refused to go along. Bok Boon returned to his home village to start a new life there. He died just two years later. But he could not have done too badly as the family in Singapore received a picture of a little manor house he had built and news that he had become, or rather bought for himself, a mandarinate of sorts.

  Lee’s roots can be traced to his great-grandfather Lee Bok Boon, who left Guangdong, China, at 16 to eke out a living in Singapore. This watercolour painting was commissioned after he returned, a much wealthier man, to his ancestral village in Taipu. A similar painting can be found at the manor house he built there.

  The family that Bok Boon left behind in Singapore did not need a mandarin to do well. They did what most people who wanted to get ahead in life here did; they made sure their children received an English education.

  Lee’s grandfather, Hoon Leong, went to an English school and began a career as a pharmacist. His fortunes improved markedly when he joined a Chinese shipping company, Heap Eng Mo Shipping Company, as a purser, making regular trips between Singapore and Indonesia. On one of these voyages he met Ko Liem Nio in Semarang. They married and he brought her to Singapore. He moved up the company and eventually possessed power of attorney over the concerns of Sugar King Oei Tiong Ham. His fortunes rose with Oei’s. By the time Kuan Yew was born on September 16, 1923, Hoon Leong was head of a wealthy family, though its fortunes suffered somewhat during the Depression of 1929–32.

  Lee’s grandfather, Lee Hoon Leong, rose to riches but saw his fortunes decline with the Great Depression in the 1930s. He died during the Japanese Occupation. “My grandfather was very fond of me and I used to visit him and live with him on weekends and school holidays,” Lee recalled in an interview with the authors.

  As was the practice in those days, the marriage between Lee’s parents, Lee Chin Koon and Chua Jim Neo, was an arranged one. Both came from successful middle-class families and were educated in English schools. Lee’s maternal grandfather owned the former Katong market, rubber estates at Chai Chee and a row of houses next to the present Thai embassy at Orchard Road. Those were the days when successful Chinese businessmen working within the colonial system in Singapore were able to make vast fortunes mainly in trading and property development.

  Lee as a baby with his father, Lee Chin Koon.

  A capable woman – tremendously resourceful, possessing great energy and drive, said Lee of his mother, Chua Jim Neo. She was the one who effectively ran the household, managed the finances and even had small businesses to keep the family going. “Without her, the family would have failed,” Lee told the authors.

  147 Neil Road. Lee lived in his paternal grandfather’s two-storey terrace house as a boy. Bought in 1920 for $25,000, the building stands restored today in the colourful and bustling business district of Tanjong Pagar, where Lee has served as Member of Parliament since 1955.

  Lee (standing centre) was the eldest child in his family. “I would not classify myself as wealthy, but we were not in want of food or clothes or other things in life,” he said of his family.

  Catching fish, flying kites and spinning tops

  Lee with his younger brothers Kim Yew (Dennis) and Thiam Yew (Freddy), seated. As a boy, he caught fighting fish in the drains along Changi Road, flew kites and spun tops. “It was a more do-it-yourself, amuse-yourself childhood than what the children now have, where toys are just given to them to be amused,” he told the authors.

  “I didn'
t do any work. I was too keen on running around, catching fighting fish in the drains along Changi Road, Joo Chiat Road. They were all rubber estates and they had these open drains. At the open drains ... you can catch good fighting fish and you keep them in bottles and you bury them in the earth and then you feed them with worms and you put a bit of green plants to oxygenate the water. There was great fun also flying kites and putting the thread on two poles, pounding the glue and the glass, fixing the line so you can cut the other fellow’s line. And then playing tops: you armour your top, you get a top and you put thumbtacks, polish it up and then you hit the other fellow’s and make a scar on his. It was a more do-it-yourself, amuse-yourself childhood than what children now have, where toys are just given to them to be amused. But here, you’ve got to amuse yourself, which I think in retrospect was a better way.

  “In primary school, I had no trouble doing well. Probably because my fellow students were poor and they were not very bright and advantaged … I had no trouble staying ahead of the class, so I did not try at all. I had to try later on in RI because then I met the top 150 from all over Singapore. When I got to RI, the first year, we were divided into five classes – A, B, C, D, E … We came from different schools. The segregation, the streaming, started in standard seven. So I had to make an effort in standard six to make sure that I got to the top class in standard seven and got the better teachers and was with the faster students. So when I got to standard six in 1936, I began to make some effort.

  “It was a leisurely life. They were the best and the brightest; I had to work harder than in Telok Kurau, but there was a lot of time. I played cricket. Later, in the Junior Cambridge class, I played tennis. I also took up chess, swimming. I joined the Scouts for two or three years. I don’t think I liked football. I don’t know why I preferred cricket. I do not remember it as an intense period. I made some effort in standard six, then I got into 7A. I think I came second in the school, and the chap who came first was a fellow called Teo Kah Leong, who later got into the admin service.