Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas

by Han Fook Kwang

  I have Mahayanas and Hinayanas all mixed up in Singapore.

  My interest now in this thing is that I have Mahayanas and Hinayanas all mixed up in Singapore. So at any one particular time, I have to find out which is the dominant consensus. There is always a consensus either on one side or the other, but I have to find out which is the dominant one. And I would like to believe that, in the long run, besides Hinayana and Mahayana Buddhists, there are lots of other people interested in maintaining peace, stability and some semblance of man’s inevitable progress – or, at least, supposedly inevitable progress – towards the better life for everybody to make it possible for all those in South and Southeast Asia who want – this is crucial – who want and are prepared to pay the price of what they want, to join the world community of “haves”.

  As leader of a multiracial society, Lee was acutely aware of the political problems that would arise if the different races progressed at different rates. Lee sought a deep understanding of the problem, turning to anthropology and sociology for answers to difficult questions, such as why the Malays in Singapore were less predisposed to the pursuit of material wealth than the other races here. He believed that the problem of the Malays falling behind economically could only be addressed if such thorny issues were faced head on, as he did in a speech to the Southeast Asia Business Committee Meeting Dinner, at Hotel Singapura on May 12, 1968.

  The difference between the Malays and the Chinese

  This is Southeast Asia. It is tropical and equatorial, and before the air-conditioner, it was only a half-working day. This has had its effect upon the habits of successive generations. One of the habits is not to put something by. People do not save for the winter, because there is no winter. So capital accumulation is slow.

  Is it coincidence that throughout East Africa, small shopkeepers and merchants are nearly all Indians?

  When the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, British, French and Americans moved into this region they later brought in people who knew how to save for the winter. So the Indians went with the British into Burma. The Indians came with the British into Singapore and Malaya. The Dutch made use of the Chinese as tax collectors. And the Chinese were encouraged to come to Singapore and Malaya. The Spaniards, after two successive massacres of the Chinese, still brought them back to the Philippines.

  Is it coincidence that throughout East Africa, small shopkeepers and merchants are nearly all Indians? And throughout West Africa they are Lebanese. They ran the little banking and retail businesses. They knew who was a good risk and was sure to bring in the harvest. They knew who was not a good risk because the chances were his harvests would never come to fruition, or he would not bring them in to discharge the immediate credits he sought.

  Singapore’s 3 mil lion people (1997) is 77.7 per cent Chinese, 14.1 per cent Malay, 7.1 per cent Indian and 1.1 per cent other races.

  We have in Singapore a fair sample of the various types in Northeast, South and Southeast Asia, and of the wider world beyond. To the untutored eye we were just so many Chinese, Indians and Malays. But not to a Singaporean. The Chinese could be classified distinctly in the past, though less so now – Hokkiens, who were the majority of the labourers and the small shopkeepers; the rice merchants are Teochews because they have organised the rice wholesale trade in Bangkok, and Teochews also do the textile wholesale and retail trade. The Cantonese are goldsmiths; and the Hakkas the jewellers, [and own] pawnshops and Chinese medicine shops. The Hainanese originally ran coffee shops but now are in charge of the whole of the catering business. So with the Indians. The Tamils are small shopkeepers and labourers. The Malayalees, with a high level of education and inadequate opportunities, voted in the communist state government in Kerala. They are clerks and artisans in Singapore. The Punjabis, the Sikhs are a remarkable people. There are only about 10,000 in Singapore. But if you watch a passing out parade of our officer cadets, you might think that Singapore comprised about 15 to 20 per cent of Sikhs, because the people with turbans are distinctive. Anthropologists say it is a myth that created warrior and non-warrior castes in India. But whatever it is, they seem to jump, run and charge better. They were brought in as burly watchmen. They turned to money-lending and lent at keen rates of interest. They educated their children to be high court judges, surgeons and to fill the other professions.

  If we do not correct this imbalance, then, in another 10 to 20 years, we will have a Harlem, something not to be proud of.

  We have Singapore Malays. To those not from this part of the world, they are all Malays. But Singaporeans know that there is a big difference between a Rhio or a Johor Malay, or a Sumatran, and between a Menangkabau and an Achinese or a Batak, all from Sumatra, a Boyanese or Javanese. We know that the Boyanese are the most thrifty of the Malay groups.

  However, there has been a great deal of intermarriages within the ethnic groups. Hokkiens marry Hakkas, Teochews, Cantonese, Hainanese; the Tamils marry Malayalees, Bengalis or Punjabis. There is much less of those who marry across ethnic groups. But all groups have in common that desire to make good. They are migrants who have left their past behind them. They are determined to make good, and have a passion for education and learning. There is a zealous striving which did not exist in the original societies from whence they sprang.

  One of the problems which has worried me is the uneven rate of development within the community, because the Chinese, Indians, Ceylonese and Eurasians progress at a faster rate than our Malays. If we do not correct this imbalance, then, in another 10 to 20 years, we will have a Harlem, something not to be proud of.

  So from politics I have had to go to anthropology and sociology to seek the reasons for this. I am not sure whether this is the final explanation. This is my tentative reading on the subject: that cultural-ethnic factors have a decisive influence on performance. Let me quote a paragraph from a treatise by Mr Bryan Parkinson, a Fellow attached to the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies in the University of Hull, in the January 1967 issue of Modern Asian Studies, page 30, published by Cambridge University Press.

  “The degree and pace of economic development experienced by any society are the consequences of two influences: the influence of man’s environment on man and of man on his environment. Even though man’s ultimate economic potential may be determined by his environment, the present stage of his economic development depends not insignificantly upon his ability and willingness to transform his environment and perhaps more important, upon the strides made in that direction by his forebears. In some instances, an unfavourable economic environment can be converted into one which produces continuing economic development; in other circumstances, a rather more favourable environment may sustain very little economic development.”

  “Singapore Chinese on the whole considered the acquisition of wealth to be one of the most important aims in life, and almost an end in itself; they were indefatigable workers and keen businessmen.”

  On page 33:

  “Drawing upon some of the observations made, the evidence suggests, first, that there is a tendency among the rural Malays to resist change, and secondly, that there are some understandable reasons for it.

  “… For instance, there is still considerable opposition to the government’s appeal for the planting of more than one rice crop per year, even though rice-fields lie fallow for about six months per year under the present system. A reason sometimes given by the farmers for their reluctance to plant a three-month variety of rice in an off season is that its yield is very much lower than the yield of the six-month variety, but the work entailed in growing the six-month variety remains roughly similar to the work entailed in growing the three-month variety …”

  Further on the same page:

  “However, it is the women who seem to be most opposed to changing the location of the seed-bed, and the ones that I spoke to said that, in any event, the old way was more agreeable since planting seedlings on an up-country dry land had become a social occasion which was enjoyed by the entire village.
”

  In a footnote he explained, “Buat kerja chara dulu.” That means, work in the old way. The footnote adds that planting rice in seed-beds in up-country land is an occasion for a picnic.

  In case this was a bias of one particular sociologist I turned to several others. Let me quote Judith Djamour, a sociologist and wife of a professor of anthropology, University of London, who did research on the Malays in Singapore in the late 1940s and in the early 1950s. In Malay kinship and marriage in Singapore, London School of Economics, Monographs on Social Anthropology, page 10:

  “Singapore Malays and Chinese certainly appear to have different cultural values. Singapore Chinese on the whole considered the acquisition of wealth to be one of the most important aims in life, and almost an end in itself; they were indefatigable workers and keen businessmen. Singapore Malays, on the other hand, attached great importance to easy and graceful living.”

  And by way of example, on page 11 she recited this anecdote:

  “I had a neighbour whose husband was a lorry driver earning $120/– a month. One day she told me cheerfully that she was very happy because her husband had found another job, driving a small van for $80/– a month. It was a better job because it meant shorter hours than driving the lorry and was less tiring. It also meant that her husband came home earlier in the evenings and could have more leisure; this was much better than working until 9 or 10 p.m. on most evenings and earning $120/– per month. What was the use of earning a larger salary if one could not rest and have some leisure? she asked. Moreover, driving the van dirtied his clothes less than driving the lorry and she would not have as much washing to do.”

  In case we tend to think this unreasonable or irrational, Bryan Parkinson goes on to explain on page 43 of the first article I cited:

  “Neither one is necessarily superior to the other, it is simply that the maximising postulates of the Chinese are more likely to lead to economic development in the Western sense than are the maximising postulates of the Malays.”

  And in case “maximising postulates” is too complicated a phrase, may I just go back to a short sentence on page 42:

  “This desire to succeed is no more absent from rural Malay society than it is from any other, but to the Malay success means something different from what it does, for example, to the Malaysian Chinese. The Chinese seem to regard success as being the improvement of their economic position even if this requires some fundamental change or innovation. The Malays seem to regard success as doing what their forebears have approved and practised, but doing it as well as they can. Wealth and economic advancement are desired by the Malays, but not at the expense of renouncing utterly the traditions and traditional occupations of their forebears to which they have grown accustomed. …”

  And he ends by saying this:

  “That is not to say that all Chinese succeed. But succeed or fail, the main point is that they are not content to accept, or to follow unquestioningly, a financially unrewarding occupation if it is in their power to change that occupation. It is the fact that so many of them are trying to improve their economic lot, trying to master their economic environment, and are willing to take risks and to innovate, that enables many of them to succeed. And it is upon this type of creative individual that economic growth under capitalism, rightly or wrongly, depends.

  “... There is nothing irrational about Malay values, and to criticise them in terms of other values is reprehensible. But if the values of the Malays remain basically unaltered, and there is no reason in Malay terms to explain why they should alter, then it is likely that economic advance for them will remain relatively slow.”

  “There is nothing irrational about Malay values, and to criticise them in terms of other values is reprehensible.”

  This poses an extremely delicate problem. We tried over the last nine years systematically to provide free education from primary school right up to university for any Singapore citizen who is a Malay. This is something we don’t give to the majority ethnic group – the Chinese. They pay fees from secondary school onwards. We don’t find it necessary to do it for the other ethnic minorities, because broadly speaking, they are making similar progress as the Chinese. All are achievement-orientated, striving, acquisitive communities.

  The reluctant conclusion that we have come to after a decade of the free education policy is that learning does not begin in school. It starts in the home with the parents and the other members of the family. Certainly the adoption of values comes more from the home, the mother, than the teacher. This means change will be a slow process. It can be accelerated in some cases by our judicious intermingling of the communities so that, thrown into the more multiracial milieu we have in our new housing estates, Malay children are becoming more competitive and more striving.

  Culture to Lee was a vital factor in a society’s success. It embodied the society’s values and shared memories and was reflected in its religion and language. But rapid socioeconomic change had blunted the ability of an older generation to transmit these values to the young. Lee raised the alarm about this in a speech at a Chinese New Year reception at the Istana on February 15, 1984.

  It’s not just about firing crackers and New Year food

  Language is related to, but not synonymous with, culture. Culture has been defined (by Webster’s) as the ideas, customs, skills, arts, etc. of a given people in a given period. In anthropology it means all knowledge that is acquired by man by virtue of his membership of society. A culture incorporates all the shared knowledge, expectations and beliefs of a group. Language gives access to the literature which expresses a culture, but language is not culture. English is the language of Britain, America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Jamaica, Barbados, and the English-speaking Caribbean countries. Their cultures are all different from the British, especially those of the Caribbean. …

  Nor have the English language and British culture stayed immutable. Their culture is not as dynamic as before the war. The people are less achievement-orientated because they have become dependent in the welfare state. This loss of dynamism is also reflected in their language. British English has not developed as vigorously as American English. It is American television features, not British, which dominate world markets.

  The Japanese people successfully adopted Western science and technology because they were supple and pragmatic about their language and culture.

  Language and culture must both change to enable a people to solve new problems. Indeed the strength of the language and culture of a people depends on their suppleness to help the people adjust to changed conditions. For example, Japanese language and culture of a century ago since the Meiji Restoration of 1868 have been considerably developed and adjusted to meet new needs. The Japanese people successfully adopted Western science and technology because they were supple and pragmatic about their language and culture. They borrowed new Western institutions and ideas. They introduced universal education, created a two-chamber Parliament, introduced legal codes, and revamped their army and navy on German and British models. They freely adopted Western words, adding vigour to the Japanese language. Similarly, after defeat in World War II, during and after the American occupation of Japan, American words, ideas, and social organisations were adapted and adopted by the Japanese. They learned of productivity and quality control from the Americans and improved on them, just as they had copied and improved on many Chinese innovations like the abacus.

  The strongest and most durable of value systems or culture is religion. Christians, through translations of the Bible into hundreds of languages, from Hebrew and Greek to Latin, English, French, German, Spanish, Chinese, etc., have spread their faith through all continents. And it is the same faith, whatever the language they pray in. It proves how the content, the ideas that the language carries endure despite changing the medium or language which carries the ideas.

  I do not expect Singapore to become a purely English-speaking society. The majority of the older generation can
not speak English. They still use dialects, although they now understand Mandarin, through TV. Next, the majority of the younger generation speak Mandarin and will continue to use it if we succeed in creating a supportive Mandarin-speaking environment. Further, a small proportion of the young Chinese, perhaps as much as 10 per cent, may not be able to master English. They will master Mandarin because it is closer to the dialect their parents speak at home. So others have to speak Mandarin to them. And there will also be some Malays who cannot master English and will have to be addressed in Malay. …

  The threat to our culture comes from the fundamental social and economic changes that have taken place. Our women are all educated and have equal job opportunities. This has increased family incomes. This has also given financial independence to wives. Fortunately, the older generation had successfully transmitted their values to the present generation, or there would have been a large increase in the number of divorces. That divorces have not shot up is a tribute to the way traditional marriage values have survived.