From Third World to First The Singapore Story pdfdrive com

Foreign
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that many of the social problems in the United States were the result of
the erosion of the moral underpinnings of society and the diminution of personal
responsibility. Some American liberal intellectuals had developed the theory that
their society had advanced to a stage where everyone would be better off if they
were allowed to do their own thing. This encouraged Americans to abandon a
moral or ethical basis for society.
During the Cold War, this interview would have passed unnoticed as an
intellectual discourse. Without the solidarity forged out of our common
opposition to communism, my views brought into the open the deep differences
between American and Asian attitudes to crime and punishment, and the role of
government.
Some Americans believe that I formed these opinions only after China
became economically buoyant following its open-door policies. In fact they
arose from my experiences in the early 1950s when I discovered the cultural gulf
between the Chinese-educated and the English-educated in Singapore. A people
steeped in Chinese values had more discipline, were more courteous, and
respectful to elders. The result was a more orderly society. When these values
were diluted by an English education, the result was less vigour and discipline
and more casual behaviour. Worse, the English-educated generally lacked self-
confidence because they were not speaking their own native language. The
dramatic confrontations between the communist-led Chinese middle school
students and my own government brought home these substantial differences in
culture and ideals, represented in two different value systems.

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American liberal academics began to criticise us for our attitudes to the
Western press circulating in Singapore. We were not following their pattern for
development and progress, that as a country developed its free-market economy
and enjoyed prosperity, it should become more like America, democratic and
free, with no restrictions on the press. Because we do not comply with their
norms, American liberals will not accept that our government, which
Singaporeans have repeatedly voted for, can be good.
No critic has been able to fault the Singapore government for corruption,
nepotism or immorality. For many years in the 1990s, business risk-assessment
organisations such as Political and Economic Risk Consultancy based in Hong
Kong have rated Singapore as the least corrupt country in Asia; Transparency
International based in Berlin rated Singapore as the seventh least corrupt in the
world, ahead of Britain, Germany and the United States. Singapore was and is
different from the banana republics that they usually label “authoritarian”. To
show their disapproval the American press describes Singapore as “antiseptically
clean”. A Singapore that is efficient is called “soullessly efficient”.
Harvard political science professor, Samuel Huntington, in an address in
Taipei in August 1995, contrasted the Singapore model with the democratic
model in Taiwan. He quoted a 
New York Times
headline which summed up the
difference between “clean and mean” Singapore and “filthy and free” Taiwan.
He concluded, “The freedom and creativity that President Lee has introduced
here in Taiwan will survive him. The honesty and efficiency that Senior Minister
Lee has brought to Singapore are likely to follow him to his grave. In some
circumstances, authoritarianism may do well in the short term, but experience
clearly shows that only democracy produces good government over the long
haul.”
Americans and Europeans were justifiably triumphant and exultant after their
success in helping to dissolve the Soviet Union by pressing for human rights and
democracy under the Helsinki Accords. But they were unrealistic in hoping to
repeat the process in China. Unlike the Russians, the Chinese did not accept the
cultural norms of the West as superior and to be emulated.
One evening over dinner in Singapore in March 1992, former German
Chancellor Helmut Schmidt asked me whether China could become democratic
and observe human rights like the West. Choo, who sat next to Schmidt, laughed
outright at the idea of 1.2 billion Chinese, 30 per cent of them illiterate, voting
for a president. Schmidt noted this was her spontaneous reaction to the absurdity
of it. I replied that China’s history of over 4,000 years was one of dynastic

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rulers, interspersed with anarchy, foreign conquerors, warlords and dictators.
The Chinese people had never experienced a government based on counting
heads instead of chopping off heads. Any evolution towards representative
government would be gradual. Nearly all Third World countries were former
colonies that, after decades of colonial rule without either elections or
democracy, received democratic constitutions fashioned after those of their
former rulers. But the British, French, Belgian, Portuguese, Dutch and US
democratic institutions had taken 200 years to evolve.
History teaches us that liberal democracy needs economic development,
literacy, a growing middle class and political institutions that support free speech
and human rights. It needs a civic society resting on shared values that make
people with different and conflicting views willing to cooperate with each other.
In a civic society, between the family and state, there are whole series of
institutions to which citizens belong, voluntary associations to promote specific
common interests, religious institutions, trade unions, professional organisations
and other self-help bodies.
Democracy works where the people have that culture of accommodation and
tolerance which makes a minority accept the majority’s right to have its way
until the next election, and wait patiently and peacefully for its turn to become
the government by persuading more voters to support its views. Where
democracy was implanted in a people whose tradition had been to fight to the
bitter end, as in South Korea, it has not worked well. South Koreans battle it out
on the streets regardless of whether they have a military dictator or a
democratically elected president in charge. Brawls in the Legislative Yuan of
Taiwan, plus physical clashes in the streets, are reflections of their different
cultures. People will evolve their own more or less representative forms of
government, suited to their customs and culture.
In 1994, soon after the fall of the Soviet Union, when Americans were in a
confident mood, they tried to bring instant democracy to Haiti by reinstalling an
ousted elected president. Five years later, the Americans quietly slipped out of
Haiti and privately admitted defeat. Writing in the