[lloop9]

Here is a transcript of Charlie Rose (an acclaimed US broadcast journalist) interview wif LKY. Its interesting to see how LKY reads the world politics like the back of his hands. Impressive!

Note: You can access the video interview on Charlie's website: http://www.charlierose.com/
Just search LKY's name & it'll bring up the vid clip.

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CHARLIE ROSE, HOST: Welcome to the broadcast. Tonight Lee Kuan Yew
talks about the new global order.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEE KUAN YEW, FORMER PRIME MINISTER, SINGAPORE: To hold government
position, you must not let your fiscal deficits and your dollar come to
grief. If it comes to grief in the short term and there’s a run on the
dollar for whatever reason, because the deficits are too big and the
financial community and the bankers and all the hedge funds and everybody
come to a conclusion that you’re not going tackle these deficits and they
begin to move their assets out, that’s real trouble.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLIE ROSE: Lee Kuan Yew for the hour next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHARLIE ROSE: Lee Kuan Yew is here. As Singapore’s founding father,
he served as prime minister for more than 30 years until 1990. He now
serves as minister mentor to the current prime minister, his son.

At age 86 he is regarded as an elder statesman on the global stage
whose views are widely sought. He is in the United States for meetings in
New York with people like Henry Kissinger, in Washington with people like
the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke, and the president of the
World Bank Bob Zoellick.

He will also receive a lifetime achievement away from the U.S.-Asian
Business Council.

I am pleased to have him back at this table to get a worldview that he
is highly regarded for understanding the dynamics of the world that we have
come from and the world that we are going to. So, welcome.

LEE KUAN YEW: Thank you.

CHARLIE ROSE: Where are we, do you think, in terms of a world order?
We have gone through in ‘89 and ‘ 90 the collapse of the Soviet Union, the
collapse of the Berlin Wall. Then we had the United States engaged in the
Middle East in a long war that continues. Then we had the global economic
crisis.

So many people say what is going to come out of this?

LEE KUAN YEW: I see in Iraq and Afghanistan as distractions. That is
not going to change the world whatever happens in Iran or Afghanistan,
because the major changes that are taking place is the recovery of China,
and to a lesser extent of India, places occupied three centuries ago before
western colonization blanketed them.

Three centuries ago, they were, between the two of them, 60 percent of
the world GDP, just the population and the production they put out.

China’s again on the growth path. She’s now a member of WTO. She
knows every year she’s growing faster than anybody else and can do that for
another 20, 30 years because there are such an enormous numbers of workers
back in the west and the hinterlands. Eight percent, 9 percent, 10
percent, no trouble at all.

But after that, then they reach a ceiling where their labor is
concerned, and they have to increase productivity.

But by then in 30 years they’ll have an economy not per capita but in
total terms bigger than the USA, which means they got resources to build
up, political, strategic, and other influences.

And in fact, in anticipation of that, people already treat her
differently, because they know that this is going on a big fellow around
the block.

This is a watershed. I mean the world order that we knew was
dominated by the Caucasian peoples, Europe. Technology, sailing ships, and
aircraft conquered the world, industrialization.

CHARLIE ROSE: Globalization.

LEE KUAN YEW: Well, industrialization first, and then globalization.
And America is the extension of Europe with a difference, and that is she’s
more embracing of other races.

The 20th century was the American century. The first half of the 21st
century, a large part of it will still be the American. But I believe the
second half you’ll have to share top places with China and also with India,
make space for them, too.

CHARLIE ROSE: You have said in a speech I read just today that the
relationship between the United States and China, based on what you just
said, has become the most important global geopolitical issue of the
century.

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, of course.

CHARLIE ROSE: How they both handle it.

LEE KUAN YEW: From the Chinese side, in a very pragmatic, almost cold
blooded and clinical fashion. On the American side, there’s been some
vacillation. First China is a strategic adversary, then China is a
strategic partner, then China is a stakeholder, and then China is not
carrying its weight.

CHARLIE ROSE: China wants to be as, in the famous words of Bob
Zoellick, the president of the World Bank, want to be a stake holder.

LEE KUAN YEW: Bob Zoellick coined that phrase.

CHARLIE ROSE: In Singapore, I think.

LEE KUAN YEW: I mean, wherever he was, and the Chinese were
wondering what that meant.

CHARLIE ROSE: They didn’t know what stakeholder meant. They now
know.

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, they looked up the dictionary and didn’t get much
out of it. They discussed it with friends, and I’m one of their friends.

So I said to them, well it means that though you’re not a shareholder
in the company, you have an interest in the company because you sell to the
company, and if the company goes bust, you got no customer.

And if you got no customer, your trade will go down and you have
unemployment. So you have an interest in keeping that company going.

And they have an interest in keeping you going because you are a
good customer. You’re good producer for them -- cheap goods, cheap
products, and good quality.

CHARLIE ROSE: There’s great hope they will become more of a consuming
economy and we’ll become more of a saving economy. You point that out.

LEE KUAN YEW: The Chinese have had 4,000 years or 5,000 year of all
kinds of catastrophes -- earthquakes, floods, famine, invasions, while the
central government failed entirely, and nobody can help you. You got to
help yourself.

Let me tell you this anecdote. I was having my game left shoulder
from golf being massaged by a very superior Chinese master who attended the
region, and they sent him down to try to fix my game shoulder and he fixed
it in three weeks.

So we had a chat, because I’m 25 minutes on the couch, what can I do?

(LAUGHTER)

So there was a flood up the Yangtze River. So I said you’ve opened
up, you get lots relief supplies. And he looked at me puzzled. He said
you don’t understand. The relief supplies will arrive in Shanghai. The
floods will prevent it from reaching the villages.

And each village knows that’s going to happen from time to time, and
up on the little hill they keep the rice, the salt, and all the essentials
safe so that they will survive such a calamity.

And that habit, just like the Japanese have the kit underneath their
beds for earthquakes, that is their habit for surviving. So they keep the
money under their pillow because the banks are not trustworthy, or gold...

CHARLIE ROSE: And the habit will not change, that habit of saving?

LEE KUAN YEW: It will take a long time. It will take one or two
generations of affluence. It may happen in the cities, but it’s not going
to happen in the countryside

CHARLIE ROSE: You say this about America, as well. You talk about
the Chinese as having -- they have patience and they have persistence and
they have discipline and they have organization. But you say America has
something special that will be part of the inevitable competition. It is
its resilience and, more importantly, its creativity.

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, of course. It’s not just American talent that
gets you here. You’re just 300 million people and they have 1,300 million
and very many more able people.

But you are attracting all the adventurous minds from all over the
world and embracing them, and they become part of your team.

Now I don’t see two million Indians and half a million other peoples,
Japanese, Koreans, and others, becoming part of China. I mean, first the
language is so difficult. Secondly, the culture is not embracive. How do
you fit in?

CHARLIE ROSE: What should is the United States do as it looks at the
inevitable growth of China as a dominant player. What would be a wise
foreign policy? Because you have two or three decades before it reaches
the full strength.

LEE KUAN YEW: Even in three decades it won’t reach its full strength.
In three decades its per capita is still about one-third of America.

CHARLIE ROSE: It’s gross domestic product.

LEE KUAN YEW: For it to reach America’s standard of living and
standard of technology will take more than 100 years.

CHARLIE ROSE: So what should the United States do while it has the
position it has now?

LEE KUAN YEW: I think make sure that they feel that they are accepted
at the top table.

CHARLIE ROSE: Make sure that China feels accept at the top table?

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes. There are places waiting for you when you make
it, but you have to play by the rules of the game. And the key really is
whether the next generation -- this generation understands it. They know
that they have no chance competing against the west, America especially, in
technology and especially military technologies. There’s absolutely no
chance. Let me build an aircraft carrier to protect shipping lines while
they carry oil and other materials.

This is the first time where the Chinese are growing but dependent on
the world for resources.

CHARLIE ROSE: But they’ve gone around the world signing up contracts
in Iran and Africa and...

LEE KUAN YEW: Absolutely. But before that it’s all within the
Chinese empire. They don’t have to worry about the rest of the world.
This time they have to worry with the rest of the world because without the
resources, the oil, the nickel, whatever, their growth will stop.

CHARLIE ROSE: Will they be able to create the domestic demand that’s
necessary as they find exports reduced?

LEE KUAN YEW: Slowly. But in the meantime they’re keeping the
economy by an enormous expenditure on infrastructure in the west -- high-
speed roads, high-speed railways, airports, telephone lines, bringing water
from the south up to the north where it’s arid and dry, huge, enormous,
mammoth projects. That keeps it going.

CHARLIE ROSE: Will India have an advantage, some argue, because it’s
a democracy and China is not?

LEE KUAN YEW: Let me put it this way.

(LAUGHTER)

LEE KUAN YEW: (INAUDIBLE) . if India were as well-organized as China,
it will go at a different speed, but it’s going at the speed it is because
it is India. It’s not one nation. It’s many nations. It has 320
different languages and 32 official languages.

So no prime minister in Delhi can at any one time speak in a language
and be understand throughout the country. You can do that in Beijing.

CHARLIE ROSE: So, in the end, do you think the system will change in
Beijing?

LEE KUAN YEW: I think it will have to change as the people get more
organized.

Today it’s 40 percent urban or less than 40 percent urban, and more
than 60 percent rural. When you reach the tipping point and 60 and 70
percent are urban with mobile phones, PDAs, and you can download anything
you want, send any messages you want -- it’s already had its effect.

The Szechuan earthquake -- in the old days nobody would know about
except seismologists that who saw that an earthquake took place. Here
immediately all the Chinese knew the world knew, and they had to go public.
And the prime minister took a plane full of pressmen and went there and
tried to comfort them and assured them that there would be...

CHARLIE ROSE: So you are saying that communication and technology and
the flow of information will have an impact.

LEE KUAN YEW: And the urbanization. If you’re in the countryside
that’s different, you can be isolated. But when you’re together in the
urban center and they’re planning 10 urban centers at 40 million people
each, that’s the plans on the greater scheme of things, 40 million people
in four megacities all with -- you know, you can call a meeting anytime you
want. You can have a riot any time you want.

So it’s a different world. Therefore you have to pay attention to
what people think. And today they’re watching the Internet very carefully,
because they know what the average person in the cities are thinking.

CHARLIE ROSE: What are they afraid of? What is there fear of?

LEE KUAN YEW: They’re not afraid. They just don’t want to lose
control.

CHARLIE ROSE: So they’re afraid of control.

LEE KUAN YEW: No. They’re afraid that they will lose control in the
situation.

In the old days, way back in Mao’s days, everybody is dependent on the
state. The state is the only employer and everybody has what you call a
Huku. A Huku is a residence permit. And if you lose your job because
you’re anti-government or whatever, you’ve had it. There’s no other
employer.

But today there are multiple employers, all...

CHARLIE ROSE: So people have options.

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, absolutely. And that means the government has
lost control over the people. They can be entrepreneurs. They run their
own businesses, shops, whatever it is.

CHARLIE ROSE: But are they moving toward some form, not a western
form, some form of more participation in the political process?

LEE KUAN YEW: They are co-opting all the successful people into the
government system.

(LAUGHTER)

CHARLIE ROSE: That’s a smart policy.

LEE KUAN YEW: Jiang Zemin calls it the three representatives. So
whether you’re an artist or you’re a businessman, whether you’re an
activist, anybody who has got the extra drive to contribute to a greater
China, come and join us.

CHARLIE ROSE: Coming out of the global economic crisis, even though
the United States is the dominant country, it is forced to look to build
and to engage and build coalitions on a whole range of big issues, and
there is never now a guarantee of unanimous support.

It’s hard to put together, for example, sanctions against Iran.

LEE KUAN YEW: Iran is a special case. Iran has oil and gas. The
Chinese desperately need oil and gas. Russia’s playing a game with Iran.
Russia doesn’t need oil and gas, but Russia wants to cut the U.S. down to
size and remind the U.S. you need me to run the world.

With the Chinese they are doing their calculations. I think in
exchange they must know if they buck the word -- once the Russians say, all
right, we agree, I would bet 50/50 the Chinese will also say...

CHARLIE ROSE: So if the Russians say we’ll engage in sanctions, the
Chinese will follow.

LEE KUAN YEW: They would not want to be the odd-man out and be held
responsible.

CHARLIE ROSE: What if the United States finds another partner or
another supplier of energy for Iran?

(LAUGHTER)

LEE KUAN YEW: No, in place of Iran?

CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.

LEE KUAN YEW: Where will you find...

CHARLIE ROSE: Well, in the Middle East. In Saudi Arabia and -- not
possible?

LEE KUAN YEW: No, not possible.

CHARLIE ROSE: But I had a Chinese diplomat say to me that they would
welcome that, that if in fact they did not have a necessity of needing
Iranian oil, they would go along with sanctions, because they don think...

LEE KUAN YEW: They need Iranian oil, they need Arabian oil, they need
Nigerian oil, they need Angolan oil...

CHARLIE ROSE: They need all the oil they can find anywhere.

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, of course.

CHARLIE ROSE: To fuel the economic growth at 8 percent.

LEE KUAN YEW: Absolutely.

CHARLIE ROSE: Tell me about Russia and how you see Russia today?

LEE KUAN YEW: Well, look, I’m doing a little bit of business in
Russia.

CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.

LEE KUAN YEW: I’m also a member of the board of governors of Skolkovo
Business School, invited to join it Medvedev, who is now the president. So
I speak as one who is a semi-Russian colleague.

I would say they would do enormously better if they could get their
system right. Their system is not functioning and not as functional as it
should be because it has gone haywire. They’ve lost control over the
various provinces, and they’re trying to bring it back to the center, but
it’s difficult.

CHARLIE ROSE: What do you think of the relationship between Putin and
Medvedev?

LEE KUAN YEW: Everybody knows that Mr. Medvedev is a very good friend
of Putin and also knows Mr. Putin is a very powerful fellow.

(LAUGHTER)

And Mr. Medvedev is working through very powerful men called
Silovikis, who are all from the FSB.

CHARLIE ROSE: Which is the former KGB.

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes.

Now, Mr. Medvedev is a highly intelligent man. He’s a good friend of
Putin, and he sees no reason why he would want to clash with Putin.

CHARLIE ROSE: And Mr. Putin will return to be president another day?

LEE KUAN YEW: I would say the probabilities are high.

CHARLIE ROSE: but you also said in a speech I read that the
capabilities of Russia are limited, the capabilities are limited.

LEE KUAN YEW: Well, they’ve got enormous nuclear arsenal, but what
else? Their army is a very different army now. The air force -- they’re
building new fighters, but, I mean, their navy -- and their population is
declining -- AIDS, alcohol, drugs, and pessimism.

I mean, every year more Russians die than Russians are born because
people are not optimistic. In America people are optimistic and say I’ll
bring a child into the world.

But when your life is so harsh, and from time to time it gets better
when the oil price goes up, but that’s momentary, you have a different view
of the future, so what’s the point of this?

CHARLIE ROSE: What about Japan -- back to Asia?

LEE KUAN YEW: I think the Japanese need an overhaul.

CHARLIE ROSE: In terms of their political system?

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, and in terms of their acceptance of immigrants.
Their birth rate -- their fertility rate is just slightly higher than ours.
We’re 1.29 and they’re 1.30. They are shrinking.

But we are a small population so we can make it up with numbers from
young bright Indians and young bright Chinese, young bright Malaysians, and
all the people around the world, and some middle easterners. We now have
Ukrainians serving in the army.

(LAUGHTER)

CHARLIE ROSE: Ukrainians in Singapore?

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, of course, Russians too, east Europeans, and
British who married our local girls, and British women who married
Singapore men.

But Japan does not want immigrants, so they’re stuck. Today they have
3.2 working persons to support one adult. In 2055, they’ll have 1.2
persons to support one adult.

CHARLIE ROSE: And immigration has been America’s strength?

LEE KUAN YEW: Absolutely. But mind you, immigration of the highly
intelligent and highly-hard working, very hard working people. If you get
immigration of the fruit pickers, you may not get very far.

(LAUGHTER)

CHARLIE ROSE: I met a Chinese delegation recently who was here in the
last couple weeks, and I said to a very important member of the government,
not at the highest level, but very important, "What are you doing here?"

He said "We’re trying to get highly educated Chinese..."

LEE KUAN YEW: To go back.

CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, of course.

CHARLIE ROSE: To go back. I said, "Well, what do you say to them?"
He says, "I say to them you’ll have opportunity, and I say to them, the
homeland needs you."

LEE KUAN YEW: That doesn’t sell.

CHARLIE ROSE: What sells?

LEE KUAN YEW: What would sell is you can leave anytime you want and
allow your children special education facilities, and all of you can keep
your American green card or passports?

CHARLIE ROSE: And that works.

LEE KUAN YEW: Well, I’m not sure whether it will work, but they will
go back and test the waters, some? But will they go back and stay? Maybe,
because the older generation are emotionally tied up.

But will your children stay? No. The upbringing has been here, and
they go back to China and say, wow, this is a very regimented society.
Papa, I’m going back.

(LAUGHTER)

So there’s no comparison. They are two, and there is chalk (ph) and
cheese (ph) between the two societies, especially for young children who
can see how independent American children are and grow up and become
anything if you want, beatniks if you like.

CHARLIE ROSE: To use an old expression.

(LAUGHTER)

LEE KUAN YEW: Or whatever in China, you come out like sausages.

CHARLIE ROSE: Yes, exactly.

So will the Chinese be able to say -- one of the things that you point
to in terms of this relationship between the competition, you say China and
the United States will have competition, but they must avoid conflict.

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes. No, I think both sides don’t want conflict.

CHARLIE ROSE: They don’t want conflict. China wants to spend time
focusing on its internal development, it’s economic development.

LEE KUAN YEW: China wants time to grow. If there is going to be any
conflict, they’ll postpone it for 50 years.

CHARLIE ROSE: But inevitably at some point, as China grows, it will
want to be the dominant nation in the world, because it will have...

LEE KUAN YEW: But it is not going back to Tsung China or Hun China
where they were the only dominant power in the world. This time they’re
going back to a world where there are several dominant poles that as
inventive and more creative than them.

CHARLIE ROSE: So we’re looking at a multi-polar world.

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, absolutely.

CHARLIE ROSE: We’ll never go back to sort of the kind of thing that
we have between the Soviet Union and the United States.

LEE KUAN YEW: No. There will be the U.S., there will be China, the
Indians are going to be themselves, they’re not going to be everybody’s
lackey. They may not be as big as China in GDP.

CHARLIE ROSE: And you also suggest they have to develop a
manufacturing capacity.

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, of course.

You’re going to have -- Europe will be an economic force. It will not
be a strategic, political, or military force because they can’t get
together on foreign policy.

CHARLIE ROSE: It’s inevitable they can never get together?

LEE KUAN YEW: I’m not saying it’s inevitable, but if you look at
them, they are still 27 different nations. I mean, they won’t accept one
language, although they all use English as a second language.

But you tell them in Brussels you speak French or English or another
language, which is what is actually happening in committees, they
absolutely refuse. How long will that take to disappear? I don’t know.
It may never happen.

CHARLIE ROSE: Take Singapore.

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: You have said that Singapore has to maintain its
relevance.

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: It has to be a place that people want to invest in.

LEE KUAN YEW: It has to be a place that is useful to the world.
Otherwise it wouldn’t exist.

CHARLIE ROSE: And that’s what you had created since the founding of
the modern city-state.

LEE KUAN YEW: We have made ourselves relevant to the world.

CHARLIE ROSE: And how will you maintain your relevancy?

LEE KUAN YEW: But keeping on changing. You cannot maintain your
relevance by just staying put. The world changes. There are shifts in the
geopolitics and the economics of the world. We have to watch it and ride
it. You surf with them. As the surf comes this way you ride the surf.

We are keeping our links with America, with Japan, with Europe. They
brought us to where we are.

CHARLIE ROSE: And you don’t have to choose sides. No other nation
will have to choose sides.

LEE KUAN YEW: We absolutely refuse to choose sides. We will not
choose sides between America and China or between China and India.

CHARLIE ROSE: But I just read today an announcement by your sovereign
wealth fund in Singapore of over $1.3 billion in new investments, none
coming to the United States, going to China, to India, to Brazil, and I’ve
forgotten where else.

LEE KUAN YEW: That’s just $1.3 billion out of $300 billion.

CHARLIE ROSE: But none to the United States, mostly going to all
the...

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, but the United States at the moment is in somewhat
of an unstable state. Is the dollar going to decline? Yes, it is cheap,
but supposing you buy and the deficits grow and Ben Bernanke is unable,
your federal chairman, is unable to draw enough liquidity out of the market
and you have hyperinflation. Wow. You go down and you lost money.

So everybody’s hedging, and it’s a very...

CHARLIE ROSE: They’re hedging by looking at other places, too?

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, but where? You tell me.

CHARLIE ROSE: Tell me where. If not the United States, there’s
nowhere to go now.

LEE KUAN YEW: We go to parts of Euro. We’re not going to -- very
little to Japan, Australia and New Zealand. The RNP, the Chinese Yuan in
highly controlled. They can make you go up or make you go down and you’re
not sure which way it’s going to go.

Whereas in the U.S., you can look at the figures and can read the
federal reports every time they make a decision and you can make your
guess.

CHARLIE ROSE: You also said China and the United States both have to
change their mindsets.

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: What do you mean by that?

LEE KUAN YEW: For the Americans, you have got to cease to think in
terms of the Chinese as they are today. The Chinese as they are today are
people who have been suffering for a very long time, especially under Mao,
and who feel that the world is cruel to them. And therefore they’re very
edgy.

They are -- if you talk to Chinese leaders now, those over 60, they
are with Russian as their second language. In 20, 25 years time, they’re
going to meet a generation who are now in the lower ranks who have been to
America and Britain and Europe and will be English-speaking and have
different models in their minds.

And they will know that they’re not going to be the sole power in the
world. Not ever again, because this is a globalized world, and they know
that they’re dependent on the world for their growth. The resources
that...

CHARLIE ROSE: So they’ve got to be part of the world.

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes. Before, I mean before meaning up to the time when
the British and the others colonialized (ph) them in a partial way,
everything grew within China. Whenever they needed they captured with the
military.

CHARLIE ROSE: Then they found global markets.

LEE KUAN YEW: George H. W. Bush invited them to South America. He
was a U.S. representative before they had ambassadors. And he had a liking
for them. They were good to them.

So he said you sell to us. And they sold, and it succeeded. And they
said this is the way to get out of our poverty.

CHARLIE ROSE: That was your friend Deng Xiaoping that said that?

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes.

Then they got into the world trade center as a member, WTO. I just
met Bob Rubin today, and he and Henry and I, Henry Kissinger and I, told
him that Clinton turned down chi (ph) for this WTO.

So we said to him it’s a great mistake, because if you turn them down,
all they will do is they’ll reverse engineer all your patents and you find
generic products, imitations on the market.

If you bring them in, get them to observe the rules.

CHARLIE ROSE: Well, that’s a big if. You have to get them to observe
the rules.

LEE KUAN YEW: They are going to have to observe the rules, and they
will.

CHARLIE ROSE: And they understand that?

LEE KUAN YEW: Because they’re making patience of their own now.

CHARLIE ROSE: They want to open markets around the world and be a
part of the global economy.

LEE KUAN YEW: No, no. They’re doing research almost in every sector
now, including life sciences.

CHARLIE ROSE: Here’s -- which is something that Singapore got
involved in very much with stem cell. Why did you do that?

LEE KUAN YEW: We figured there were smart fellows around and so many
of them, whatever we do they will do in time and better. But there are
some areas where they will take a very long time to be able to do what
we’re doing, and that’s to change the system from opacity to transparency,
from no protection from copyright to protection of copyright and rule of
law.

There are two rules of law in China, one for the ordinary citizen and
the other for 76 million members of the Communist Party. And the judges
will do what they know what the leaders require to keep the country stable.

So would you -- look, we got all the big Pharma companies in
Singapore.

CHARLIE ROSE: Yes, because you have protection and you have rule of
law and you have protection of patents.

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes. And we’re doing joint research with them on the
effect of these new drugs on various racial types of the population.

CHARLIE ROSE: Can you make an argument that a country who leads in
technology and science, it will go a long way in terms of their place in
the world?

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, of course. That’s why I think the U.S. will still
be a very powerful and considerable inventor and creator of new products.

CHARLIE ROSE: When you look at the U.S. and its relationship and its
concern about oil and its politics in the Middle East, do you think it’s a
distraction? You think that...

LEE KUAN YEW: No, I’m not saying the Middle East is a distraction. I
think trying to make a country out of Afghanistan is a distraction. There
was no country for the last 30, 40 years. There’s just been fighting each
other since the last king was chased out.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

LEE KUAN YEW: How on earth are you going to put these little bits
together? It’s not possible.

CHARLIE ROSE: So therefore you do what?

LEE KUAN YEW: I’m not in expert, but in my simple mind it strikes me
that you won in Iraq, you won in Afghanistan not because you fought the
Taliban, but because you got the Northern Alliance to fight them, and you
provided the Northern Alliance with intelligence and the capabilities to
bomb them and target them. And they captured the south.

CHARLIE ROSE: Yes, but they have governance problems other there,
too.

LEE KUAN YEW: That’s all right. But that’s their problem. Why do
you want to make your problem?

CHARLIE ROSE: So what do you do? Would you pull all the troops out
and let whatever happens to Afghanistan, happens to Afghanistan? It’s not
that threatening to the United States, is that the argument?

LEE KUAN YEW: I don’t know about that, because I think it cannot be
more difficult for the United States to have their troops stuck there. The
Russians are a brutal, ruthless lot of army people, and 120,000 of them
were there, but they had to leave.

CHARLIE ROSE: And we helped that because we supported the Mujahideen.
The Mujahideen had a lot of support from around the world who wanted to see
the Soviet Union take it.

LEE KUAN YEW: But whether or not the Soviets helped to get the
Americans out, I think the Americans and the NATO troops -- the NATO
members are very skeptical of the outcome.

CHARLIE ROSE: Even to the point of not wanting to send their troops
to certain kinds of combat areas.

LEE KUAN YEW: Quite right. Yes, of course, because then you get shot
for nothing.

CHARLIE ROSE: But those who argue if Afghanistan is abandoned --
first of all, the world will say or people will say, look, you left
Afghanistan once before after the Soviets left, and now you’re leaving
again. The United States has to stand for something and it has to show
it’s prepared to stay.

You don’t buy that at all?

LEE KUAN YEW: No.

CHARLIE ROSE: You must have a wonderful conversation with your friend
Henry Kissinger then?

LEE KUAN YEW: No, no.

CHARLIE ROSE: Where do you and Henry Kissinger different on the look
or view of the U.S. role in the world?

LEE KUAN YEW: I don’t think we have any difference.

CHARLIE ROSE: Is that right? How would you define it then?

LEE KUAN YEW: I think the U.S. could be a benign stabilizer of the of
the world order.

CHARLIE ROSE: A benign stabilizer.

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes. Without the U.S., east Asia would have never have
grown. They brought peace and technology and trade and investments, and
east Asia flourished.

LEE KUAN YEW: That’s clear is it happened in east Asia. You’re
talking about Singapore and North -- and South Korea.

LEE KUAN YEW: Absolutely.

CHARLIE ROSE: How do we do that in the Middle East? How do we do
that when you have the kind of conflict that’s taking place?

LEE KUAN YEW: You can’t solve all the problems in the world.

CHARLIE ROSE: Ah.

LEE KUAN YEW: Some problems just have to be resolved by...

CHARLIE ROSE: And so what are your priorities?

LEE KUAN YEW: For Singapore?

CHARLIE ROSE: No, for the United States. What should be the
priorities?

LEE KUAN YEW: I’m not an American. I do not calculate in American
terms. I calculate what Americans are likely to do in relation to what
will happen to me.

CHARLIE ROSE: Well, that’s why they listen to you. That’s why you’re
going to see Mr. Bernanke tomorrow and that’s why you’re going to see Larry
Summers and that why you’re going to see all these American officials.
They want to know how you assess the way the world is working today.

And your central message is you got to engage, you got to make the
Chinese feel like they are a worthy part of the world community, and you
have you to help them join WTO and all the things they want to do.

LEE KUAN YEW: No, they have already joined.

CHARLIE ROSE: I know they have joined, but you have to make sure
they’re treated fairly.

LEE KUAN YEW: You have to make sure that they understand membership
requires certainly obligations, and the obligations start with
responsibility.

CHARLIE ROSE: But you also say with the United States, it has to
realize most problems need an American participation in order to be solved.

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

CHARLIE ROSE: So you and I had a conference once about a whole range
of leaders, and you said to me the man that you most admired of all the
people you ever met was Deng Xiaoping. That’s what you told me.

Deng Xiaoping admired you too because he sent Chinese, 30,000, 40,000
of them, to Singapore to figure out what you were doing. Am I right?

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: What was it you were doing that he wanted to see?

LEE KUAN YEW: He was astonished when he came for the first time in
1978 to tell us to prevent Vietnam from invading Cambodia because they are
doing it on behalf of the Russians.

Then he found a Singapore which was contrary to what he was given in
his brief. He found a prosperous, orderly society, everybody owning their
own homes and with a job.

And so he said "How did you get there?" I said "Well, we educated our
people, and look at all these companies. Americans, Japanese, Europeans,
they bring technology, they train our people, we learn how to do things.

And because we’re cheaper, after a while you become general managers
and company managing directors. And we learn how to do that, and we become
suppliers to them."

So he said "You made use of capitalism to build a more egalitarian
society, everybody owns their own home. I will do the same."

CHARLIE ROSE: And he did?

LEE KUAN YEW: He did. He did. He went back and declared twelve
special economic zones, all the coastal cities, and it succeeded.

CHARLIE ROSE: So he was the greatest man you ever met because he
understood -- because of the results? He changed a nation, and
therefore...

LEE KUAN YEW: No, no. He’s a member of the old guard. He fought in
the Long March. He chased the KMT out across the Yangtze. He led the...

CHARLIE ROSE: He was a victim of the Cultural Revolution.

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes. But he was realistic. He knew the system was not
working. He knew they were going to end up down in a deep hole. And he
decided against all the advice of his fellow old guards that we would
change course.

CHARLIE ROSE: And he had the brains and the power to pull it off.

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes. And when they tried to stop him in 1992 from
going too fast, he went down to Shenzhen (ph) and said "Learn from all
countries in the world. And most of all learn from Singapore. The order
is good and they’re a very prosperous society."

CHARLIE ROSE: You’ve never had a moment where you thought Singapore
was too authoritative did you? Not one moment?

LEE KUAN YEW: My job was to get the place going and get everybody a
decent life and a decent education. And we’re now the best educated people
in the whole of east Asia. Our universities -- we got three, four
universities, fourth one coming up.

CHARLIE ROSE: So the end justifies the means whatever it might be?

LEE KUAN YEW: No. The ends were laudable. Everybody wants the same
ends. Everybody wants good education and good health.

CHARLIE ROSE: A good life and their children to do better than they
did.

LEE KUAN YEW: The means -- I had the consent and support of the
population. If they opposed me and they did not cooperate, it wouldn’t
have worked.

CHARLIE ROSE: You were in control of everything.

LEE KUAN YEW: No.

CHARLIE ROSE: Yes you were, you know that.

(LAUGHTER)

LEE KUAN YEW: The numbers of people opposing me, including the
communists in the very early years, was endless.

CHARLIE ROSE: That brings me to President Obama. What are your
observations about him?

LEE KUAN YEW: He’s a very great and eloquent man who is very
persuasive and is very able and has appointed very able people into his key
positions. And what impressed me most is his appointing people of
different minds.

For instance, on his economic team, there is Summers Paul Volcker, and
they’re both very strong minded people.

CHARLIE ROSE: Larry Summer has much more influence than Paul Volcker.

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, but whatever it is, he has to make the final
judgment.

CHARLIE ROSE: So he wants to listen to smart people who have
different views. That’s one thing you admire.

What would you want to ask him? What would you want to know about
him?

LEE KUAN YEW: Two things. First, that the 21st century will be a
contest for supremacy in the Pacific because that’s where the growth will
be. That’s where the bulk of the economic strength of the globe will come
from.

If you do not hold your ground in the Pacific you cannot be a world
leader. A world leader must hold his ground in the Pacific. That’s number
one.

Number two, to hold ground in the Pacific, you must not let your
fiscal deficits and dollar come to grief. If it comes to grief in the
short term and there’s a run on the dollar for whatever reason, because of
deficits are too big and the world -- the financial community and the
bankers and all the hedge funds and everybody come to a conclusion that
you’re not going tackle these deficits and they begin to move their assets
out, that’s real trouble.

CHARLIE ROSE: And there is a risk of that perception today?

LEE KUAN YEW: Absolutely, yes.

And Ben Bernanke knows that. And he has to somehow or the other clean
up and soak up the liquidity. But if he does it too soon you get into
another recession. But you cannot dig up enormous deficits that allows all
the -- and do nothing about it, where people say this is hopeless.

CHARLIE ROSE: There’s always a Federal Reserve to make more money.
You can’t do that.

LEE KUAN YEW: You just print more money.

CHARLIE ROSE: They will print more money, exactly. There’s the
difference.

So the deficits -- the looming deficit of the United States is what
worries you me most because it will strike at the heart of the U.S. global
leadership.

LEE KUAN YEW: Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, that’s what happened
right. That’s why we’re in this recession, global recession.

CHARLIE ROSE: After Afghanistan and Iraq, questions were raised about
America’s credibility, its respect in the world. It went down, correct or
not? You never bought it?

LEE KUAN YEW: It didn’t go down. I think people were roughed up by
saying you’re either with me or you’re against me, and we don’t need you.
We’ll go it alone.

You do need them. You cannot go it alone. And all that ruffled
everybody up. That was not necessary. But it’s happened and it’s water
under the bridge.

CHARLIE ROSE: And President Obama took care of that in terms of how
he’s reached out.

LEE KUAN YEW: That’s all right. But now he has to prove by his
actions that he can really implement this new policy of togetherness.

CHARLIE ROSE: That’s one thing, but it seems to me you are saying
that the most important question people have about America, a, is the
leadership.

And the most important thing they have about America’s leadership is
its economic leadership. Can to take care of its own house, because China
is growing by 8 percent in the second half of 2009, and it looks better and
better as it goes out.

LEE KUAN YEW: No, no, the Chinese economy is nothing compared to the
American economy once you’re stabilized.

But what the world wants to know, or what the thinking part of the
banking and financial world wants to know, is that the Americans and
administration and the Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, have the
will to take tough measures to put this right, even if it’s not going to be
done overnight but it’s moving in that direction and its going to put it
right.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK, how do they do that?

LEE KUAN YEW: You’ve created all these needs. You take health care.
It’s not going to be done at the same price, surely. You’re covering 40
million extra people. So where’s the money coming from? If the world sees
you’re not making any provisions for that, you’re not letting it go.

And the world says this looks as if the elected leaders have lost
their will to confront the people with the truth.

CHARLIE ROSE: Is it more the Congress than the president?

LEE KUAN YEW: Both. Both, I would say.

CHARLIE ROSE: Are you confident that the United States will do
something about its deficit, which is at $1.3 trillion for the last...

LEE KUAN YEW: Well, if I’m not confident, and I have no hope in that,
I won’t be here, simple as that.

CHARLIE ROSE: "Be here" meaning?

LEE KUAN YEW: Being in America and wanting to understand what you’re
doing and what’s going to come out of this, of your policies.

So I meet people who were in the administration and are in the
administration to understand the thinking and the feel and the gut feeling
of what’s happening.

CHARLIE ROSE: What’s the most important change and significant change
in your way of thinking about the world over the last 20 years?

LEE KUAN YEW: That the impossible can happen. I never thought the
Soviet Union would implode so easily, and I never thought the Chinese would
abandon the communist system and move into the free market so readily. It
was unthinkable 20 years ago.

Both have happened. The world has changed.

CHARLIE ROSE: And it’s not clear exactly how it’s all going to...

LEE KUAN YEW: No, it is not clear when it will happen, but that it
will happen now in the long term, 50 to 100 years, yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: And the center of gravity is shifting to Asia.

LEE KUAN YEW: It must be, because the population is there. The
talent pool of 1.3 million people plus the Japanese, the Koreans and the
Vietnamese and the others, it can match Europe and America.

But the talent pool was inert. It did not have science and
technology, did not care about science and technology.

But now everything that you do, Asia’s doing. You’re going into stem
cell search, we are going into stem cell research. Tiny Singapore has to
go there in order to get into a field where the Chinese cannot compete with
us.

And the Chinese are in it in a very big way. They’re watching you,
and whatever you do, they said, yes, we will do that. They are far behind,
but given time, they’ll catch up.

CHARLIE ROSE: They’re enormously curious.

LEE KUAN YEW: They are.

CHARLIE ROSE: Enormously curious.

LEE KUAN YEW: Not just curious, they are enormously ambitious to
catch up.

CHARLIE ROSE: For good reasons and for good ends?

(LAUGHTER)

LEE KUAN YEW: That you must ask them. But I think the reason is they
have to -- they have a sense of frustration that they were down for so
long. Let’s make it now. Here’s our chance.

CHARLIE ROSE: And the United States has to encourage them?

LEE KUAN YEW: No, you don’t have to encourage them. You just have to
understand that they are -- look, they don’t want to be an honorary member
of the west, unlike Russia. They’re quite happy to be Chinese and to
remain as such.

So when you tell them you ought to do this or you ought to do that,
they say yes, thank you. And in the back of their minds, we have lasted
5,000 years. Have you?

(LAUGHTER)

The Beijing Olympics if you watch it, what was the message?

CHARLIE ROSE: We’re back.

LEE KUAN YEW: No -- 5,000 years, and don’t forget, we invented all
these things, and we’re going to go ahead in the next 5,000 years. It’s
the only country where a language has survived 5,000 years, the only
country by the present generation shares the same basic thinking as the
past. And they’re very proud of it.

You read Hu Jintao’s speech on the 60th anniversary, translated on the
web -- what is it? We have 5,000 years of civilization. We’re going to
get there.

And it’s a rousing speech. It may take us a long time, we have to
work very hard. We will do it. So you don’t have to encourage them.

What you have to get them to understand is with it goes
responsibility. Hungry Africans, hungry, sick other people. This is a
global problem. You can’t just take copper and gold and take it. You have
to have a responsibility for the people’s whose copper and gold you’re
mining. It goes with the job, and they will have to learn that.

I think they are already beginning to learn that, so they’re giving
something back.

CHARLIE ROSE: It’s a pleasure to talk to you again, as always.

LEE KUAN YEW: You’re very kind. Thank you.

END


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[artemov]

LKY read the world politics like the back of his hand?

How many of his predictions actually came true?
How much money did he lose in China?
How many of his "visionary" policies in tiny Singapore turned out to cause more problems (for the common people that is)?

Talk is cheap and hindsight is always 100% accurate.

[seePyou]

artemov wrote:

LKY read the world politics like the back of his hand?

How many of his predictions actually came true?
How much money did he lose in China?
How many of his "visionary" policies in tiny Singapore turned out to cause more problems (for the common people that is)?

Talk is cheap and hindsight is always 100% accurate.

Mr/Ms Artemov

1. He is not God
2. He is not Warren Buffet. Even Warren Buffet was once a bankrupt
3. What are problems? Define them?

4. I think you are a whinge-bag frog in a well without intelligible to say, ears covered and just out to punch the air with myopic preconceptions about this world.

[artemov]

seePyou wrote:

Mr/Ms Artemov

1. He is not God
2. He is not Warren Buffet. Even Warren Buffet was once a bankrupt
3. What are problems? Define them?

4. I think you are a whinge-bag frog in a well without intelligible to say, ears covered and just out to punch the air with myopic preconceptions about this world.

Wow, you hardly know me and you are making this kind of vicious attack on me.

Pray tell how do you arrive at these conclusions about me?

It really says more about you than about me.

[CI]

I agree with LKY's general trend of thinking. No arguments about it but what gets me is this line:

Quote:

LEE KUAN YEW: Absolutely. But mind you, immigration of the highly
intelligent and highly-hard working, very hard working people. If you get
immigration of the fruit pickers, you may not get very far.

1) Have Singapore already currently imported too many fruit pickers?

2) Are our forefathers counted as fruit pickers?

[artemov]

seePyou wrote:

Mr/Ms Artemov

1. He is not God
2. He is not Warren Buffet. Even Warren Buffet was once a bankrupt
3. What are problems? Define them?

4. I think you are a whinge-bag frog in a well without intelligible to say, ears covered and just out to punch the air with myopic preconceptions about this world.

1. I am an atheist, so I don't believe in God either. We are one on this bro.

2. I thought they are better than Warren Buffet when it comes to investment returns?

3. This is a toughie, so let's see. According to dictionary.com, a problem is
(i) any question or matter involving doubt, uncertainty, or difficulty.
(ii) a question proposed for solution or discussion.
(iii) Mathematics. a statement requiring a solution, usually by means of a mathematical operation or geometric construction.

4. Hmm ... I can't answer this one cos I am an involved party.

[googol]

[suntag881]

seePyou wrote:

Mr/Ms Artemov
2. He is not Warren Buffet. Even Warren Buffet was once a bankrupt

Buffett has never been a bankrupt. Please.

[Rogue]

After scanning through...

It's actually mostly hindsight or basically the necessity for an elder politician to know about world's current affairs. Two important thing that highlighted lack of foresight is the Soviet Union decay and China's capitalistic push, in the past. Obviously in the present is the investment debacle(not discussed in the interview), where his daughter-in-law is heading it... Foresight part, probably the push for education, particularly meaningful in the early years but now... it's all imported.

Also Charlie Rose threaded carefully with the "You control everything" and he did another taichi back to his communist fighting days. Then the immediate change of topic.

Fundamentally a bunch of nothing. But he's still a man of power that's still recognized by powerful people worldwide.

[Rogue]

As for the Warren Buffet comments, he did not have access to an entire country GDP for his whims. He's only a private citizen just like you and me.

[NTB2DO]

seePyou wrote:

3. What are problems? Define them?

Hehe let me try this.. How about creating a climate--citing Charlie Rose's word:"..too authoritative.."--whereby his citizens gradually and ultimately become apathetic/aversed to politics (--esp one which is not in agreement with his govt..), so much so that they encounter such "great difficulties" in recruiting people to join them that they have to resort to using alluring high salaries to entice their desired candidates to go into politics? (Assuming that their high-salary-"justification" is indeed true, ie.)

[cannotliao]

how many teams he have feeding him with info and doing preparation everyday?

[NTB2DO]

Quote:

CHARLIE ROSE: But I just read today an announcement by your sovereign
wealth fund in Singapore of over $1.3 billion in new investments, none
coming to the United States, going to China, to India, to Brazil, and I’ve
forgotten where else.

LEE KUAN YEW: That’s just $1.3 billion out of $300 billion.

CHARLIE ROSE: But none to the United States, mostly going to all
the...

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, but the United States at the moment is in somewhat
of an unstable state. Is the dollar going to decline? Yes, it is cheap,
but supposing you buy and the deficits grow and Ben Bernanke is unable,
your federal chairman, is unable to draw enough liquidity out of the market
and you have hyperinflation. Wow. You go down and you lost money.

So everybody’s hedging, and it’s a very...

CHARLIE ROSE: They’re hedging by looking at other places, too?

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes, but where? You tell me.

CHARLIE ROSE: Tell me where. If not the United States, there’s
nowhere to go now.

LEE KUAN YEW: We go to parts of Euro. We’re not going to -- very
little to Japan, Australia and New Zealand. The RNP, the Chinese Yuan in
highly controlled. They can make you go up or make you go down and you’re
not sure which way it’s going to go.

Whereas in the U.S., you can look at the figures and can read the
federal reports every time they make a decision and you can make your
guess.

Alamak was Mr Rose trying to act blurrr or what? Didn't he know that our sovereign Funds had already, merely months ago, lost an estimated more than 3 x US$1.3b (or $4b) by investing in his country's ailing bank?!! Surely he would expect Singapore to smarten up after receiving such expensive lesson from US, wouldn't he?

http://www.smh.com.au/business/world...0516-b6e6.html

Quote:

Singapore fund may book $6b loss on bank stake
May 16, 2009

Temasek Holdings sold its 3.8 per cent stake in Bank of America at a loss that may total $US4.6 billion ($6.1 billion), as the Singapore state-owned fund shifts bets from Wall Street to emerging markets.

[NTB2DO]

Quote:

LEE KUAN YEW: Yes. And when they tried to stop him in 1992 from
going too fast, he went down to Shenzhen (ph) and said "Learn from all
countries in the world. And most of all learn from Singapore. The order
is good and they’re a very prosperous society."

Can understand why (the communist) Chinese leader was so impressed with Singapore..

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/09/we...-progress.html

Quote:

.."The talk about Singapore says a lot about what Deng wants," said a Chinese economist. "He would like to free up the economy, but he wants tight political control." Clean and Orderly

Singapore not only has very few street protests; it has a cleanliness and orderliness that critics find dreary and antiseptic but that Mr. Deng regards as inspiring. There is no pornography, no extreme poverty, little corruption and not much spitting or littering in public. Bubble gum is prohibited, and critical foreign publications are sometimes banned.

"Of course old Deng likes Singapore," said a young Chinese Government official. "It's run by Chinese, it's efficient, it's rich, and no one jabbers about human rights."

[Tuakong]

All I can say is that his good old friend, Dr M is pulling his hair......It seems that LKY is still respected as a global statesman, respected by world leaders....and Dr M is plonking away at his blog like an angry, bitter old man.....

I still have enormous respect for LKY, his wife and daughter......no one is perfect.