Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore
Notes on LKY's 'From Third World to First'
Lee Kuan Yew’s (often referred to by his initials ‘LKY’) memoirs were recommended to me as being relevant to the project of this blog. Lee was the prime minister of Singapore from 1959, through its 1965 expulsion from Malaysia (itself newly independent from the British Empire in 1957), through to his resignation in 1990. During that time, Singaporean development accelerated from a level similar to the poorest countries on earth today1 to a level comparable with New Zealand and other Western nations. That rise has since continued, and today it’s one of the wealthiest countries on Earth.
Many small states have become rich exploiting a key natural resource. We’re familiar with the success of small petrostates like Qatar, UAE, Norway, and Brunei. Nauru was briefly the richest country on the planet during the boom years of its phosphate trade (though mismanagement and corruption squandered that wealth). Without much thought, I put Singapore into this category, thanks to its strategic location by one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes through the Straits of Malacca.
Yet, this raises the question: Why the likes of Suez and Panama are not similarly endowed? Indeed, if a large number of ships passing nearby is all that’s required for success, why are Indonesia and Malaysia not similarly developed?
In fact, only a small proportion of Singapore’s economy is associated with its port, with much of its wealth built on its success in manufacturing and services - a key banking and data centre hub in East Asia, high tourist numbers, a huge professional services industry, the world’s top-rated airline, all while exporting almost $200b in semiconductor and other high-tech exports each year.
None of these developments were inevitable. How did a tiny island covered in swamps, lacking natural resources, an inadequate water supply, plagued by ethnic strife, and surrounded by often hostile neighbours, become such a powerhouse?
Lee Kuan Yew’s memoirs are divided into three sections. The first covers internal Singapore politics, the second, by far the largest, discusses foreign relations, while the third is comprised of a few short chapters discussing his family and the difficulties of succession.
The book tends to discuss high-level policy, rather than discuss the practicalities of delivery - which was largely left to others. LKY clearly had an excellent ability to select highly capable people, and delegated responsibility and authority together to a degree nowadays virtually unknown in the West2. A ruthless pragmatism is evident throughout. Loyal supporters are quickly discarded for non-performance. Long-held plans are quickly adapted or abandoned should they not prove useful.
Unfortunately, even major policy decisions are often covered in little more than a single sentence, enabling few lessons to be drawn without further research into the context.
Everybody says, “But of course [Singapore is successful]. Everybody knows that Singapore is a very well endowed place. Geographically favoured by the gods. Good infrastructure, communication [by] sea, land, air. Good banking system. Skilled workers. Oh, just a natural course of events.” It wasn’t you know. We made it so!
Lee Kuan Yew, 1971 National Day Speech
It’s clear that LKY views the most critical element as a sense of group cohesion. Loyalty to Singapore, not ethnicity. ‘Asabiyyah’ is deliberately fostered, with a core and reinforced message that Singapore is vulnerable - our geography is such that we can take nothing for granted - we must band together and make sacrifices in order to secure our future. It’s a message that clearly resonated, and allowed LKY’s government to push through a host of reforms, including the liberalisation of labour laws to improve Singaporean competitiveness, cutting public sector salaries during his first term (later, these were pegged to the overall success of the Singapore economy, incentivising performance), social engineering campaigns, and restrictions on freedom of assembly, including crackdowns on communist movements.
Singapore today is a high-trust society, with some of the world’s lowest crime rates3. Meanwhile, Singapore’s market liberalisations have been a self-evident success. Prudent fiscal management has allowed Singapore to weather storms like the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis or the GFC with relatively minor impacts (though public debt to GDP has ballooned in recent years, particularly post-covid).
Housing
Providing social housing was a key plank of LKY’s platform, and has grown to become a core function of the state. The approach benefits from economies of scale, and a streamlined planning process. Today, a whopping 78% of Singaporeans live in some form of subsidised housing, probably helping mitigate the ever-present challenge of emigration - especially for a nation reliant entirely upon its human capital.
The result of the scheme are housing costs much cheaper than in the likes of Taiwan, or South Korea, with individuals in the lowest income bracket paying as little as $26/month. The housing security this provides has likely contributed to enabling young people to take economic risks, hence Singapore’s high rates of entrepreneurship.
The scheme is not without its flaws. The scheme’s generosity requires boundaries in order to keep a lid on costs, and is only eligible to Singaporean Citizens. However, the subsidies are so distortionary of the private rental market for all but the most up-market dwellings that lower-income migrant workers are effectively completely priced out of housing and are instead forced to live in the likes of communal guest houses.
Even for citizens, the types of housing provided tend to be relatively modest. A one-bedroom apartment might be all a young married couple requires, but a downstream impact has been delayed family formation, and fewer children overall (Singaporeans now have only one child on average)4. Upgrading beyond a 2-bedroom apartment means moving out of a subsidised rental, and is unlikely to be practical until later into one’s career when having children is no longer an option.
Democracy
Lee’s government was frequently accused of being anti-democratic. His memoirs present a somewhat mixed case. For example, one thing critics point to is restrictions of the freedom of the press. Lee justifies this by pointing to the fact that many publications so restricted were front organisations for hostile foreign states5. He also discusses his victories in various libel cases (many won in the US and other foreign jurisdictions) against publications slandering his government. I appreciate the case being made here that ‘papers are free to publish anything they like, as long as it’s the truth’, but acknowledge this is only one side of the argument. I’d need to look at archived primary materials to come to a considered conclusion about the ‘legitimacy’ or otherwise of these policies.
While some criticisms of Lee’s government as anti-democratic are clearly overblown (e.g. accusations of genuine electoral fraud do not seem credible), one area I find less ambiguous is the electoral incentives Lee used to encourage voters to support his party’s candidates, such as the prioritisation of state housing funding to constituencies based on the proportion of votes received for the government. Lee makes a weak moral case in his memoirs about rewarding those who invest in the Singaporean project, however the normalisation of such policies will do little in the long run but entrench the one party rule, and hence the brittleness of the state. When course correction is required, the electorate is unlikely to provide it.
Foreign Relations
Singapore has a long history of being dismissed on account of its geography. When Singapore was ejected from the Federation of Malaysia in 1965 (footnote), most observers held little hope that the tiny island nation would be able to last. Even LKY himself harboured significant doubts, as we can see in the footage of him breaking down in tears during the public announcement.
There’s a certain irony in the fact that now that Singapore is successful, the country continues to be dismissed on account of its same geography. Perhaps part of the motivation here in convincing ourselves that it was always going to be successful is in avoiding the uncomfortable mirror it otherwise could hold up to our own societies.
LKY’s worldview is never explicitly stated, but one quickly pieces together that he viewed the world as a sort of realpolitik ‘great game’ of nation-states variously cooperating and competing for power and prosperity. Other leaders are analysed and described in terms of their abilities to play this game within their national and international context. Are they capable of seeing the world clearly instead of through ideological lenses? Do they have the ability and will to do ‘what must be done'? If he ever made moral judgements of other leaders, these aren’t stated in the book, and one suspects he never let them on in person either.
Charismatic, and perceived to be solely interested in advancing the interests of Singapore, he was able to enter into the confidences of a great many world leaders. Lee’s memoirs are therefore able to give us a full review of the prospects and personalities of each nation in the broader Asia-Pacific region from India to New Zealand and Japan.
Lee tracks the declining influence of the UK and the degeneration of the Commonwealth as a mechanism for cooperation, Indonesia growing in both confidence and corruption under Suharto, the reasons behind broad ASEAN support for the Vietnam War, and the subsequent actions of regional leaders against the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, Malaysia’s transition into a modern-day powerhouse, and so much else of momentous importance to today’s geopolitical landscape.
Each of the foreign relations chapters provide fascinating insights into the leadership of his contemporaries, often pivotal in the history of their nations and the world, and is worthy of its own review. Frankly, his memoirs are consequently worth reading for these alone.
China
LKY spends almost as much time in his memoirs talking about China as he does about Singapore. As a majority Chinese nation in South East Asia, China loomed as large for Singapore in the second half of the 20th Century as it does for all of us now.
Throughout the post-civil war Mao era, the CCP was a major sponsor of underground ethnic-Chinese terrorist groups throughout Southeast Asia, including the supply of weapons and other military equipment, while broadcasting Maoist propaganda throughout the region via shortwave radio. Ethnic tensions between Chinese minorities and the majorities were already running hot, with frequent race riots, and Tensions boiled over in 1968, when local communist groups attempted to overthrow the Malaysian government in a violent insurgency that claimed hundreds of lives and sparked numerous race riots, some of which spilled over into Singapore.
As a majority ethnically Chinese nation with a significant Malay minority, the Singaporean government was obviously alarmed by these developments and moved swiftly to suppress communist activity on the island, such as banning publications of communist materials, preventing Singaporeans who emigrated to China from returning, and limiting the activities of local communist-aligned organisations.
The common threat from China was a decisive factor in easing the considerable tensions between nations in the region, leading to the creation of the ASEAN partnership in 1967, and its strengthening over the following decades.
Tensions between China and the region began to thaw after Nixon’s fateful visit in 1972 split them from the Soviets. Diplomatic relations between ASEAN nations and China were slowly reestablished, though LKY was careful to ensure that Singapore, as the only majority ethnic-Chinese nation, was seen to be the last to do so.
LKY visited China with his family in 1976, in what turned out to be the final year of the Mao era. His descriptions are of a nation still wallowing in the self-imposed stagnation of communism and the cultural revolution. His trip was one of carefully managed set-pieces and party slogans more reminisent of a visit to North Korea than to the increasingly open and prosperous China of subsequent decades. Everywhere Lee went, cracks in the stage production revealed grinding poverty, institutional dysfunction, and corruption. Officials had become only nominally loyal to the cause, mechanically denouncing the ‘capitalist roader’ [Xiaoping], and it became clear to Lee that the system as constituted could not survive the death of the increasingly sickly Mao Zedong. He talks of revisiting his earlier policy barring Singaporeans that left for communist China from returning, stating that life in Maoist China was so evidently miserable that these individuals would likely have become Singapore’s most loyal citizens.
“Deng Xiaoping is a great man. He fought a great revolution. He saw the product of that revolution turn sour. He was fortunate enough to live long enough and have the courage to say ‘No! We change course! Let’s learn, let’s stop trying to do everything ourselves…’”
-1980 Election Rally Speech
Xiaoping’s reforms are beyond the scope of this essay, but suffice it to say they had a marked impact on Chinese society and the economy:
Tiananmen
Lee suggests that Deng would perhaps be remembered as one of the greatest statesmen of the 20th Century, were it not for the events of June 4th 1989 in Tiananmen Square. Lee recounts his shock, and that of his fellow Singaporeans, to the events of that watershed day, then presents an account of the events made to him by the Chinese Government. I’ve subsequently been able to corroborate the facts presented below, but one should note that it forms part of a narrative crafted to paint the government in the best possible light.
It’s easy to forget that the Tiananmen Massacre was the culmination of extended student-led demonstrations that began almost two months prior in Mid-April. Although the government was somewhat divided on how to respond, apparently Deng himself was apparently initially supportive and keen to use the momentum to help fuel further planned reforms. However by Mid-May, the protestors began a hunger strike in the lead-up to a state visit from Gorbechev, causing governmental opinion to harden against what was increasingly seen as a ‘tiny minority of radicals’ trying to provoke conflict. Martial law was declared on 20th May.
Tensions continued to rise, and trust in good faith dissolved entirely as the ordinary actions of individuals operating in a confused environment with unclear objectives began to create misunderstandings and reactions of increasing import. A police jeep was involved in an accident which killed three pedestrians, and military equipment was found aboard by protestors before the area could be cordoned off. Suspicions of military infiltration into the protest movement began to rise, while some leaders deliberately sought to make martyrs of the movement in order to spark a general uprising. Protestors seized bus loads of military equipment transported on busses. The military responded by introducing armoured personal carriers on June 2nd. The order was given by Deng to ‘use any necessary methods to clear the square’.
The situation was rapidly spiralling out of control. Protestors began to throw rocks at military police. Warning shots were fired in response, though largely ignored by the crowd until, whether by ill-discipline or malice, shots were fired into the crowd. The crowd fell back, but the spell had been broken, and from here on things were only to become more bloody and indescriminate. Protestors attacked a convoy of army trucks nearby, destroying over 100, and seizing large amounts of heavy weaponry. The Chinese Army responded with tanks and overwhelming lethal force, and the rest is history.
Placing oneself at a distance from what *ought* to have occurred, one is seized with a sense of almost inevitable tragedy, at least given this narrative framing. Events unfolded chaotically, seemingly outside the control of any individual. The student’s cause was just, even sympathised with, but the state could never tolerate armed insurrection. Nobody wanted the final outcome, yet it was the natural consequence of the events once in motion. Perhaps within another generation of openness and reform, it might have ended differently.
As it was, televised images of the massacre were seared in our collective consciousness. Meanwhile, the decision to supress mention of the event within China has set up a permanent rift in the information landscape of China and the rest of the world, requiring the creation of the Great Firewall and an ever expanding censorship regime, and ultimately preventing either from ever truly coming to terms with what happened.
In Review
I was disappointed to read so little detail about the politics and operations of Singapore in LKY’s memoirs, though they do provide a useful reference guide for most of the key decisions of the era for further reading.
Where the book shines is in providing a completely unique perspective on international relations during a pivotal period of human history. No other leader has the same combination of perceptiveness, pragmatism, and sheer longevity to share half the insight into world politics as Lee Kuan Yew. His perspective is surprisingly modern, his views often prescient, his memoirs - highly recommended.
Political division goes viral, but discussions about making incremental improvements to the public service never do. It’s my view we need less of the former, and more of the later. So, if you’ve enjoyed reading this blog, please consider sharing these posts with others who might be interested.
More precisely, Singapore's inflation-adjusted GDP per capita in 1965 was $517, placing it not far above the level of Somalia today.
Indeed, Westminster-style systems are deliberately designed to separate the two. Ministers are held responsible (by the public, the press, the PM) for delivering the agenda they were voted in on, but have little authority to carry it out. They usually bring with them a small team of special advisors, but they are typically given no authority to hire, fire, or even direct staff within the ministry they are supposedly in charge of. The ministry is instead controlled by a chief executive appointed by a separate branch of the civil service. Throughout Canada/UK/NZ/Aus, a similar system is used at the local Council level, though the mechanisms differ slightly from country to country.
This ‘technocratic’ approach has its benefits and drawbacks (brilliantly explored by the classic British comedy series ‘Yes Minister’). On the one hand, by removing most ‘operational’ power from elected members, we avoid a potential disaster in the case of the election of unqualified or otherwise unsuitable individuals being elected to power. On the other without complementary systems to ensure bereaucratic ‘skin-in-the-game’ and consequences for failure that elections would otherwise provide, opportunities for renewal are more limited.
Singapore has among the highest police numbers per capita in the world, with sweeping powers of survellience, and severe penalties upon conviction. It’s commonly noted the certainty of being caught/convicted is typically more of a deterrent than the severity of the punishment, though the prevalence of serial recidivism shows there is obviously a more complex relationship between the two. Being caught means little if the disincentive is mild relative to the potential payoff for crime in terms of wealth or status. Singapore’s disincentives are clearly very high.
Singapore also has a complicated history of government involvement in family planning, encouraging smaller families during the 70s, including providing subsidies for sterilisation and reducing healthcare and other subsidies for families having more than two children. These policies were reversed starting in the mid-80s, with the government beginning to providing small cash incentives for each child - though clearly at a level insufficient to overcome the various financial and structural disincentives stacked against family creation.
Incidentally, we should ban Tiktok (or force it to sell its Western operations) for precisely this reason. The app is effectively controlled by the CCP, who have a track record of promoting subjects and material supporting their interests while undermining ours.