From Third World to First The Singapore Story pdfdrive com

partnership with the United States which had brought them prosperity and the
good life. There was a danger that a younger generation of leaders, having no
experience of the last war, might think differently, especially if they revived
their myth that they were descendants of the sun goddess.
Li Peng thought I had underestimated the Japanese danger. China had to be
vigilant over the resurrection of the Japanese military. Despite Japan’s self-
imposed ceiling of 1 per cent of GNP, its military expenditure was some US$26–
27 billion more than China’s. There were some Japanese leaders who wanted to
reverse the verdict of history that Japan had committed aggression against China,
Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. He cited two examples: the way they
wrote their textbooks and visits to the Yasukuni shrine by top Japanese leaders.
(The Yasukuni shrine honours soldiers who died in war.) Japan’s economic
success had created the wherewithal to make it a major political and military
power. At least some Japanese leaders were thinking along those lines. His
concern at a possible revival of Japanese militarism was real. At the same time,
China “was consistently on guard” against danger from the Soviet Union.
Two years later, on 11 August 1990, Premier Li Peng visited Singapore. He
had just reestablished Sino-Indonesian diplomatic relations in Jakarta. We met
with only note-takers and an interpreter. I had said on many past occasions that
Singapore would be the last country in Asean to establish diplomatic relations
with China. Now that Indonesia had restored diplomatic relations, I wanted to
resolve this before I stepped down as prime minister in November that year. Li
Peng noted that during my long years as prime minister, relations between
Singapore and China had developed well. He too would like to settle this matter
before I stepped down. Hence he invited me to visit China in mid-October.
I then referred to the issue that had bogged down discussions at the official
level on the agreement to exchange embassies – our troops training in Taiwan. I
did not see a final date for our training there. Singapore was deeply indebted to
Taiwan, in particular to the late President Chiang Ching-kuo who had enabled us

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to break out of our limited space for military training. We could not forget our
debt. We paid only for what we consumed or used and had not paid a single
extra dollar. It was a special relationship. We felt close to each other because we
were both non-communists and shared the same language, culture and ancestry.
Li expressed understanding of our position, that Singapore was prosperous but
not big. Finally he said China would not insist on a specific time-frame for
Singapore training in Taiwan to end.
After that meeting, a thorny issue over which negotiations had been stalled
for many months was on its way to resolution. Unlike in 1976, I was no longer
concerned that a Chinese embassy in Singapore could pose problems for our
security. Our domestic conditions had changed. We had solved some basic
problems in Chinese education. All our schools had converted to a national
system with English as their medium of instruction. Nanyang University no
longer taught in Chinese and its graduates could easily find employment. We
had stopped breeding successive generations of disadvantaged graduates.
At a full delegation meeting after our discussion, Li referred to Tiananmen as
the “turmoil in China last summer”. Some countries had imposed sanctions that
caused China some difficulties but also hurt themselves. The Japanese had eased
their sanctions after the G7 meeting. I said that, unlike the Western media,
Singapore did not consider Tiananmen to be the end of the world, but it was a
great pity that China had lost out in public relations. Li said, “The Chinese
government lost total control of the situation.” As premier, he “could not even
go into the streets. This chaos lasted for 48 days.”
Li Peng is not a man for lighthearted jests. That day he surprised everyone
when he said he would like to “crack a joke” on our troop-training in Taiwan:
they could train in China on terms better than in Taiwan. There was a burst of
spontaneous laughter around the table. When that day arrived, I said, peace
would have broken out in Asia.
Two months later I paid my last visit to Beijing as prime minister, to
formalise and establish diplomatic relations on 3 October. After this was done
we discussed the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. Li Peng said Iraq could not be
defeated easily in a blitzkrieg. (When with sophisticated weaponry Desert Storm
tore through Iraq’s defences in a matter of days, it must have come as a surprise
to China’s civil and military leaders.)
He disclosed that a few weeks before our meeting, at Vietnam’s request, its
leaders Nguyen Van Linh (premier), Do Muoi (party secretary) and Pham Van
Dong (the senior leader and former prime minister who had visited Singapore in

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1978) had held talks in Chengdu, Sichuan province, with General Secretary
Jiang Zemin and him. They had agreed that Vietnam would unconditionally
withdraw from Cambodia under UN supervision, and that a national security
council would govern Cambodia until the elections. China was now ready to
improve relations with Vietnam.
In October 1990, I met President Jiang Zemin. He received me warmly,
quoting from Confucius’