From Third World to First The Singapore Story pdfdrive com

38. China Beyond Beijing
In the 1980s and ’90s, I visited China almost every year to better understand its
leaders’ motivations and ambitions for China. Because we had started from
antagonistic positions, we needed time and deeper interaction to develop a
relationship of confidence with China. China had been exporting revolution to
turn Singapore into a communist state. When they had a fight with Vietnam on
their hands, they needed better relations with Asean. It was during this period,
from 1978 to 1991, when we worked in our different ways against Vietnam’s
occupation of Cambodia, that our perceptions of each other changed.
On each visit, I would spend over a week touring the provinces,
accompanied by a junior Chinese minister. Travelling with him across China for
some 8–10 days on the same VIP aircraft, spending many hours together, I
gained a better understanding of the thinking and background of their leaders.
His wife would keep Choo company.
On one such visit in 1980, I found China a very different country. My
daughter Wei Ling was agreeably surprised. She had been sightseeing in Beijing
and had noticed the more relaxed mood of Chinese people she met, now that
Mao had died and the Gang of Four had been removed. Both officials and 
lao
baixing
(the 100 surnames, Chinese for hoi polloi) were freer and more at ease
when speaking to her. I still remember some of the spectacular sights we visited
including Chengde, the summer capital of Qing Emperor Qian Long, and the
Yangtze River’s Three Gorges. The trip down the Yangtze from Chongqing
(formerly Chungking, Chiang Kai-shek’s World War II capital in Sichuan) to
Yichang at the exit of the gorges took one and a half days. To look up and see,
high up on the perpendicular surface of sheer rock, huge Chinese characters
carved thousands of years ago to commemorate events and ideas was to be awed.
It resonated with the history of a people struggling against immense odds. Even
more startling was the sight of human beings working as beasts of burden,
towing barges and small ships as they had done from time immemorial. Whole
rows of men with ropes on their shoulders and backs pulled boats upstream for

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miles. It was as if time had stood still and the machines used in the rest of the
world had missed them.
On that trip the vice-minister for foreign affairs, Han Nianlong, and his wife
accompanied us. Both were able, well-informed and good company. Ten years
my senior, he had a lively temperament and a nimble mind to match. He was a
small man, well-groomed with good taste in Western clothes, often sporting a
waistcoat. He understood English and had a keen sense of humour. He added to
my education and enjoyment of my second visit. He had been in charge of the
Vietnam conflict. In him the Vietnamese faced a formidable opponent. He had
detailed knowledge of everything that concerned Vietnam and Cambodia. China
was going to pin Vietnam down and exhaust it in the coming years, however
long it might take. He was absolutely confident that the Vietnamese would, as
President Ronald Reagan would say, “cry uncle”. We spent several hours talking
over meals on that ship. They had simple tastes in food, and after days of rich