From Third World to First The Singapore Story pdfdrive com

primitif
. I protested, “No, primeval, going back to earliest times.” The
interpreter looked coldly at me to say, “Yes, in French primeval is 
primitif.”
I
felt duly chastened.
Valéry Giscard d’Estaing was elected president in May 1974, succeeding
Pompidou. I was in Paris on a private visit but he received me within a few days
of his election. It was a good meeting for over an hour at the Élysée Palace.
Unlike Pompidou, who knew English but insisted on speaking in French,
President Giscard used English. Tall, with a long patrician face, a bald high
dome of a skull, he spoke with a strong French accent, choosing his words
carefully and with great precision.
He was very French in his approach, cerebral, logical and systematic: why
did Singapore develop and not the others, what was missing in the others? I
could only tell him what I thought were three primary reasons: first, stability and
cohesion in society; second, a cultural drive to achieve and a thrifty,
hardworking people always investing in the future, with high savings for a rainy

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day and for the next generation; third, a great reverence for education and
knowledge. He was not satisfied that that was the complete answer.
Giscard’s prime minister, Jacques Chirac, had a totally different set of
interests. He did not spend time on philosophical discussion about what was
happening in Asia but wanted to know what more could be done between France
and Singapore. I tried to interest him not just in Singapore but in the wider
region, using Singapore as the stepping stone. It took another ten years, under a
different president and after several prime ministers, before I convinced the
French government and entrepreneurs that Southeast Asia was a promising part
of the world to invest in.
Raymond Barre succeeded Jacques Chirac as prime minister in August 1976.
Barre, a rotund man of medium height, was a professor of economics and a
sympathetic listener. He favoured the establishment of French joint ventures and
investments abroad. He supported my proposal to develop Singapore into a
technological servicing centre and said that France could cooperate with us in
sales and services in the region. He proposed a five-year Singapore-France
bilateral cooperation agreement on trade, investments, technical assistance and
cultural cooperation with specific set targets. He was practical and systematic in
tackling problems, keen on results. But his French industrialists were not ready
for this enterprise. I spoke to a group of them in the French National Employers’
Federation (CNPF). At the end of an hour’s discussion, their spokesman told the
press that investors were aware of the opportunities in Singapore but many
appeared disinclined to get up and go “as it is too far away and English-
speaking”, adding that France could not be everywhere as it was concentrating
on Africa. Indeed, the French were focused on Francophone Africa. Even in
Asia, they were drawn towards Vietnam, believing it would still be French-
speaking and French-inclined. It was not until the mid-1980s, when a socialist
President Mitterrand and his Gaullist prime minister, Jacques Chirac, both
decided that Africa was not as ready for development as Asia, that my efforts
came to fruition.
In July 1981, on my way to London to attend the wedding of Prince Charles,
I stopped in Paris hoping to meet the newly elected president, François
Mitterrand. But the Quai d’Orsay, the French foreign office, was starchy and did
not approve of a stopover visit. The president was busy, but as he also was going
to the wedding, he would meet me in London at the residence of their
ambassador. To soften the rebuff, Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy gave me lunch.
At my departure from Paris, I was driven at speed through heavy traffic,

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escorted by police outriders from my hotel to Charles de Gaulle Airport. It was a
beautiful summer’s day. The expressways lined with trees and embankments
covered with creepers were a glorious sight. Charles de Gaulle Airport was
modern and efficiently laid out. Then I arrived in Heathrow, all higgledy-
piggledy; a labyrinth of roadways took me from plane to VIP lounge, then out to
scruffy streets with roundabouts and grass verges unkempt and overgrown with
weeds, on to my Knightsbridge hotel. The contrast between Paris and London
was stark.
My mind went back to my first visit to Paris in June 1948 with Choo. It was
a scruffy, down-at-heel, post-occupation city, a poor relation compared to bomb-
scarred but neat and tidy London, a city of confident people, proud of their
record of standing up to the Nazis and saving mankind from tyranny. I
remembered also the chaos in Paris in May 1958 just before Charles de Gaulle
came back as president to form the Fifth Republic. Through his culture minister,
Malraux, he cleaned up Paris, scrubbed the soot from the buildings and made it a
city of lights. They restored French pride and injected fresh hope, while London
muddled on as the British economy stumbled from one crisis to the next. I
believed there were advantages in revolutionary change as against Britain’s slow
and gradual constitutional evolution. The British held endless meetings over new
airports around London including Stansted and Gatwick, all leading to nothing,
as planning authorities were stymied by local interests determined to preserve
their amenities at the price of the nation’s progress. Even after the Thatcher
years, Heathrow still stands as an ancient monument to symbolise a lack of dare
and dash.
Of the French leaders I met, the most perceptive in assessing political trends
and the nature of different societies was President Mitterrand. He talked about
the threat posed by the aggressive intervention of Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
He conceded the Soviets had had successes in Vietnam and the Middle East,