Lee Kuan Yew and Singapore: A knife-edge path along a broken ridge
Lee Kuan Yew and Singapore: A knife-edge path along a broken ridge
A formula for economic prosperity and stability - but at what cost?
Imagine, if you will, the expected prognosis for a small, poor-city state with the following issues:
a complete lack of natural resources;
a looming communist threat backed by major regional and world powers;
a demographically, linguistically, and culturally diverse population lunging at each other’s throats in a tense atmosphere, a powder-keg for race riots ready to explode at any moment;
influential newspapers controlled by foreign powers deliberately stirring up unrest at every turn;
both of your much larger neighbors cutting off trade, and the closer neighbor (who you are quasi-militarily occupied by) threatening to cut off your critically important supply of water; and
the superpower who set up your city-state and guaranteed security is leaving.
Imagine further that your citizens are uneducated and backward immigrants who settled the land for the purposes of cheap manual labor, and they are deeply set in their ways with strong loyalties and attachments to their various homelands. And all of this in hot (87-91°F average highs year-round), humid (over 80% year round), swamp-like conditions that strongly discourages even tourism to the city-state.
Now imagine that same city-state today where all of those issues have been resolved (other than the weather) fifty years later and it is a shining success story (materially, at least) with the third highest GDP per capita in the world at $91,000 in 2017 (5th highest today), the world's highest percentage of millionaires, with one out of every six households having at least one million US dollars in disposable wealth (excluding property, businesses, and luxury goods, which if included would increase the number of millionaires), and crowned the world’s most expensive city multiple years in a row.
Well, such is the case with Singapore:
And Singapore owes its success primarily to one man: Lee Kuan Yew, who served as the first prime minister of Singapore between 1959 and 1990.
How did he pull it off? What was it about the man’s philosophy, consummated with an unrelenting and vigorous drive, that arguably single-handedly produced such a miraculous economic transformation? To what extent does it further the argument that only a dictator who strengthens the middle class can counter leftism, made in this Substack article about Pyotr Stolypin? And is there a downside, perhaps a massive downside, to this economic success? This is what this article will explore.
Much of the information contained herein is based on one of Lee’s autobiographies, “From Third World to First, The Singapore Story: 1965-2000”, although some is from other sources where identified. The book’s format is unusual in that it was not written chronologically but rather by subject: “Building An Army from Scratch”, “Britain Pulls Out”, “Creating a Financial Center”, “Winning Over the Unions”, “Nurturing and Attracting Talent”, “Managing the Media”, “Up and Downs with Malaysia” are a sample of the topics covered in this dense 700 page book.
Let’s begin with some historical background about Singapore itself.
Historical Background
The British governor Stamford Raffles arrived in Singapore on 28 January 1819 and soon recognized the island as a natural choice for a new port. Below is a modern-day map; one can see how critical the Strait of Malacca is for trade, which is the shortest sea-born route from India to the South China Sea; further south is the Sunda Strait next to Jakarta but its narrowness, shallowness, and lack of accurate charting make it unsuitable for many modern, large ships.
In 1824, a treaty with the owner of the island, the Sultan of Johor, led to the entire island becoming a British possession. Prior to Raffles' arrival, there were only about a thousand people living on the island, mostly indigenous Malays along with a handful of Chinese. By 1860 the population had swelled to over 80,000, more than half being Chinese, mostly laborers. The growth of the Singapore population is reflected below:
The Chinese have comprised more than 70% of the Singapore population, and Muslim Malayas about 15% of the population since 1900:
After World War I, the British built the large Singapore Naval Base as part of their anti-Japanese Singapore strategy. Costing $60 million and not fully completed in 1938, it was nonetheless the largest dry dock in the world, the third-largest floating dock, and had enough fuel tanks to support the entire British navy for six months. However, the British Home Fleet was stationed in Europe and the British could not afford to build a second fleet to protect their interests in Asia, leaving it open to Japanese invasion, who took over the island in 1942 and then massacred 25,000-50,000 of its Chinese residents in what was called “Sook Ching”.
Lee Kuan Yew’s Background
Lee was born in 1923 in Singapore to English-educated third-generation Straits Chinese. Lee’s first language was English and he also learned Malay; he had a Buddhist background although he also described himself as agnostic, and he would later state Singapore was a Confucian society. He performed well in school, and was almost rounded up and executed during “Sook Ching” but managed to barely avoid it. He ended up working for the Japanese occupation force as an English specialist in their propaganda department. Per Wikipedia:
The rapid Japanese victory in the Malaya-Singapore campaign had a major impact on Lee: “In 70 days of surprises, upsets and stupidities, British colonial society was shattered, and with it all the assumptions of the Englishman's superiority." In a radio broadcast made in 1961, Lee said he "emerged [from the war] determined that no one—neither Japanese nor British—had the right to push and kick us around... (and) that we could govern ourselves." It also influenced his perceptions of raw power and the effectiveness of harsh punishment in deterring crime.
After the war he got married, pursued higher education in Great Britain where he excelled, became an attorney and then returned to Singapore in 1950. There he made a name for himself representing nearly fifty trade unions and associations against the British authorities on a pro bono basis, and successfully defended the left-wing University Socialist Club against charges of sedition. He co-founded the leftist People’s Action Party (PAP) in 1954 with the goal of securing self-governance from Britain, which contained a significant communist element until he purged them from the party after they attempted an internal coup in 1957.
The PAP eventually won the 1959 Singapore general election, split permanently from and expelled the far-leftist element within the party, and secured self-rule from Britain in 1963. As part of securing self-rule, Singapore merged with Malaysia. The reasons for the merger was it served to reduce Britain’s footprint in Singapore; the PAP also hoped it would reduce Singapore unemployment, which was very high, with the introduction of a common market; and the Malays could hopefully reduce the communist threat, which was large due to the Chinese population’s ethnic affinity for communist China.
However, the merger was not successful. There were constant tensions between Singapore and Malaysia, primarily because Malaysia was comprised of roughly 70% Muslim Malaysians and 23% Chinese (like today), while Singapore was comprised of roughly the opposite: 75% Chinese and 15% Malaysian (like today). Malaysia wanted to stick to its “Malay Malaysia” policies explicitly favoring Malays over Chinese, whereas the PAP wanted a “Malaysian Malaysia” and to remove or weaken those affirmative action programs. Tensions culminated in anti-Chinese race riots in the Kuala Lumpur 13 May incident and in the 1969 race riots in Singapore. However, there were other issues, especially over taxes, use of the Singapore port and transportation of goods and hostility surrounding increased competition.
Lee’s personal qualities added to the tension: he was such an eloquent, popular public figure, able to cross religious and ethnic boundaries, fluent in English, Malay and he was learning Mandarin, that it was increasingly looking like he could become Prime Minister of Malaysia which alarmed the Malay politicians in power. Due to these issues Malaysia’s Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman considered arresting Lee and applying martial law against Singapore, but was dissuaded by British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who still had leverage over Malaysia as he was defending them against attempts by Indonesia to annex the country.
Lee’s sad public speech where he acknowledged Singapore would be kicked out of Malaysia.
Singapore was expelled from Malaysia, and then had to turn its focus to dealing with its myriad problems on its own: issues pertaining to security/defense, high unemployment and poverty, a lack of natural resources, racial issues, communist subversion, recalcitrant unions, a hostile media, balancing capitalism and socialism, and juggling foreign affairs, including securing recognition, funding, diplomatic support, and trade. Let’s briefly delve into each of these, but before doing that, let’s discuss Lee’s philosophy and outlook.
Lee Kuan Yew’s Philosophy
In my previous post on Pyotr Stolypin, which dealt with his attempt to save Tsarism in Russia, I quoted Alexander Solyznhenitsyn, who wrote:
Stolypin saw in his mind the only path, the natural path, though in earthquake conditions it looked improbable: a knife-edge path along a broken ridge. In the past reform had for some reason always signified a weakening and possibly the collapse of the regime, while stern measures to restore order were taken to indicate a renunciation of reform. He saw clearly that the two things must be combined!
Stolypin’s story illustrated the point that only a combination of a strong monarchy plus an expanding, healthy middle class could serve as a bulwark against leftist radicalism. Lee Kuan Yew had a very similar philosophy as he established Singapore; he vigorously promoted the economic middle class, instituted a strong monarchy-in-all-but-name for over 40 years, and with an iron fist crushed the communist element.
A strong monarchy plus a focus on the middle class leads to widespread wealth and social stability, so long as the monarch is strong (Stolypin failed because Nicholas II’s personality was too weak), while an oligarchy with a compliant media seeks to poison society in every conceivable way, but primarily via divide et impera tactics in order to keep populism weak in order to continue their parasitism. This is a government structure argument, not a transvaluation of values argument; any society regardless of its core values has to wrestle with these issues.
However, there were two key difference between Stolypin and Lee: (1) the difference in their backgrounds and (2) their quite different strategies for pursuing their similar objectives:
Background differences: Stolypin was born into the Russian aristocracy; he was a supporter of the Tsar from an early age and ultimately subordinated his decisions to that of the (weak) Tsar, even as he battled the Bolsheviks and tried to uplift the peasantry. On the other hand, Lee came from a poor background, was self-made, rose to power as an anti-colonial leftist who was allied with the communists before experiencing a falling out with them, and he relied on regular elections for his support as he uplifted the peasantry from a position as implied dictator. In other words, both figures shared the same goals - the uplifting of the peasantry via an increase in their material wealth using the same institution - dictatorship - but arrived at from opposite directions.
Strategy differences: Stolypin’s goal was inward-focused autarky. Russia had all the natural resources needed to succeed on its own, it had a large population that only needed to be freed from the shackles of serfdom and communal living; private ownership would incentivize a great increase in domestic production which would in turn create a middle class and lead to social stability. Stolypin was not interested in foreign affairs or external warfare because (to him) all of Russia’s problems could be solved by looking inwards. On the other hand, Lee’s goal was the opposite: Singapore had nothing going for it except a world-class natural port located at a strategic location, and because of Singapore’s extreme racial issues and a host of other problems, he had to be outward/globalist focused - there was no other options other than to remain a poor, divided backwater, subject to the whims of its larger neighbors - and therefore his goal was to make Singapore a critical component of globalist goals.
Lee Kuan Yew’s approach
From Third World to First, The Singapore Story: 1965-2000 is too long and dense to provide detailed analysis issue-by-issue in this post or it will turn into its own book. Instead highlights will be discussed based on the values Lee employed to achieve his desired objectives. While some of the below values are oft-repeated buzzwords that politicians worldwide throw out in speeches to woo voters, almost all of the time they are empty and meaningless words with no follow through. Here, they are tabulated and analyzed because it is how Lee actually governed Singapore.
Lee believed in an open-minded technocracy. In other words, Singapore should learn the latest processes, procedures, and technologies necessary to remain at a cutting-edge competitive level on the world stage. He would travel the world, constantly see what others were doing, and then use the ideas he learned to make upgrades within Singapore itself. Lee even learned to use a computer, emails and the internet himself when he was in his 80s - it’s pretty unusual for an “old dog” to learn new tricks like that; usually neuroplasticity atrophies as one ages and people just get stuck in their ways.
Lee believed that society should be governed by well respected, well educated experts, and that those experts were expected to deliver results on the ground in an efficient manner, both in time and in cost (the tying of expertise to results separates Singapore from so-called “experts” in the west). In return these experts would be properly compensated, with salaries in the public sector commensurate to the private sector so the best are willing to serve and to do it without accepting bribery. As a result, public sector salaries in Singapore are among the highest in the world. He also regularly consulted with experts, especially technocratic experts, across the world in various fields, such as Dutch economist Albert Winsemius.
Lee believed in having a free-market economy with very strong dirigisme characteristics. Essentially, every aspect of a citizen’s life would be controlled, molded and shaped to maximize productivity and competitiveness on the world stage, using a combination of incentives and governmental commands, while also forcing a high level of savings so that citizens would not become a burden either on the government in old age or on future generations by spending more than the government received from tax receipts.
In that vein, Lee strongly believed in the value of formal education, especially technically oriented higher education, and especially learned abroad at the best universities in the world. His three children exemplified this belief and all went on to high achieving careers (his oldest son is the current Singapore Prime Minister; allegations of nepotism have dogged his career as well as that of the other children).
Lee believed strongly in the values of pragmatism, adapting to changing circumstances and dealing with them in the moment in the most level-headed, realistic way possible with a view toward advancing his long-term goals. In line with pragmatism were values of self-confidence and a full defense of his positions using whatever tactics were required. While Lee was not a Christian and Christians were not really represented among his constituencies, he understood that he had to work within a Christian (or post-Christian) framework because the countries he relied on for trade as part of his leap-frog strategy (discussed below) were all Christian. Therefore he was very sensitive to their sensibilities and what was acceptable and what was not, and made pains to mostly stay within those boundaries.
Lee was extremely cognizant of the racial sensitivity of political decisions, but from a pragmatic, not a liberal perspective. Here are a large number of controversial quotes by Lee where he acknowledged differences between races in their abilities and their temperaments. Lee had to take racial issues into his calculations to ensure social stability (see the race riots in Singapore in 1964 and in Kuala Lumpur in 1969), but he was very aware of and commented on the differences in average IQs among races. Lee commented negatively on American’s denial of human biodiversity, especially at Harvard:
“I found many other fresh ideas and picked the brains of other highly intelligent people who were not always right. They were too politically correct. Harvard was determinedly liberal. No scholar was prepared to say or admit that there were any inherent differences between races or cultures or religions. They held that human beings were equal and a society only needed correct economic policies and institutions of government to succeed. They were so bright I found it difficult to believe that they sincerely held these views they felt compelled to espouse.”
These views came, of course, from the western hyper-focus on equality as derived from Christianity, which Lee did not share. He did try to narrow the results gap between groups through education and other initiatives for social stability reasons and to placate the west, but with the specific stated understanding that the gap was not due to societal racism.
Lee strongly believed in the values of meritocracy, seeking to transparently create processes and incentives that would promote the very best of society. In this way Lee was able to offer an alternative to racial and religion identity via a promise of wealth, essentially arguing, “Stop focusing on your differences and focus on making money instead, and in return we will make everyone rich.” And he expressed extreme disagreement with world leaders that turned inward with racial and religious focuses instead of opening up and pursuing wealth via free-market economies (examples he gives include Pakistan, India, Rhodesia, Burma and Sri Lanka).
Lee was sensitive to the rapidly declining birth rates in Singapore (which are among the very lowest in the world). Because women naturally want to “marry up” in social status, they are reluctant to marry someone of lesser educational attainment than their own; but men of equal education generally want to marry younger, with the amount of a woman’s education either being irrelevant or a negative. Lee argued in “The Great Marriage Debate” that highly educated women need to prioritize having children, and that highly educated men should focus more on marrying highly educated women, because Singapore needs smart people for its future and data shows that children of highly educated individuals are much more likely to be highly intelligent themselves. The government of Singapore instituted many policies to try to revert the way-below-replacement birthrates, such as monetary incentives for having children and preferred placement for those children in the best schools, but it has completely failed: Channel NewsAsia reported in January 2011 that the fertility rate of Singaporeans in 2010 were an abysmal 1.02 for Chinese, 1.13 for Indians and 1.65 for Malays. Major cities worldwide, and especially Singapore, are “IQ shredders” where high IQ people move to and fail to procreate. Due to its aging population and not having enough children, Singapore has to constantly import itself new workers. Per Wiki:
By the middle of the 2010s, nearly 40% of the population were estimated to be of foreign origin; although many have become permanent residents, most of them were non-citizens made up of foreign students and workers including dependents. Between 1970 and 1980, the size of the non-resident population in Singapore doubled. The numbers began to increase greatly from 1980 to 2010. Foreigners constituted 28.1% of Singapore's total labour force in 2000, to 34.7% in 2010, which is the highest proportion of foreign workers in Asia. Singapore's non-resident workforce increased 170% from 248,000 in 1990 to 670,000 in 2006.
Lee believed in law and order and transparency, and that investigations into impropriety should be provided no matter how high ranking the target may be. Lee and his son and wife were investigated, for example, for buying real estate at discounted prices, but they were cleared of any impropriety. Lee then appeared before parliament to explain his actions, and donated the difference in price to charity.
Lee believed in a Confucian society, which he saw as a balancing act so that society doesn’t devolve into an extreme version of American-style winner-take-all individualistic capitalism, which hurts society and breeds distrust, greed and fear, while also structuring society so that the best really do enjoy most of the fruits of their labor because otherwise they would not be driven to succeed.
Lee thought that, because of Singapore’s post-independence difficulty in trading with Malaysia and also with Indonesia (given Indonesia was practicing Confrontation at the time), Singapore should leapfrog over its neighbors in order to engage in free trade worldwide and to provide a suitable investing environment, especially with western nations, by providing a law-and-order, stable investing environment where multinational corporations would feel comfortable investing and operating without fear of social unrest. With this approach and by working in a constructive way with the British when they decided to withdraw in 1967 (with the last troops leaving in 1976), which was alarming to Singapore from both a security perspective and because 20% of the population was employed directly or indirectly working for the British, Singapore was able to weather the crisis and emerge from it intact.
A proportional representation of Singapore exports, 2019 Lee created an investor and business-friendly, stable oasis (with no union strikes or racial strife) for multinational corporations to operate freely, and it is why he is held in such high esteem by globohomo apparatchiks, according to Mother Jones:
[Lee] was a member of J.P. Morgan Chase’s “International Council.” In 2009, Barack Obama called him “one of the legendary figures of Asia.” Henry Kissinger later delivered an introduction as LKY accepted a lifetime achievement award from the US-ASEAN Business Council. Margaret Thatcher said he was “never wrong.” Tony Blair noted that LKY was “the smartest leader I think I ever met.” Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize–winning economist, wrote an encomium touting “Singapore’s Lessons for an Unequal America.”
Given Lee’s background in pro-union legal work, Lee knew how to deal with the unions. He ultimately broke them and remolded them into entities that would not impede Singapore’s economic progress or allow them to become a point of hesitation for multinational corporations to invest there. Per Wiki:
Lee also forged a symbiotic and mutually dependent relationship between the People's Action Party with the National Trades Union Congress, whereby the governing political party received certain input from the labour grassroots, whilst the national trade union centre is led by prominent PAP party politicians who usually have ministerial portfolios within the Government. The Government's tight control over trade union activities and industrial relations, ensured near-total industrial peace, that was assessed to be a prerequisite for rapid economic development.
Given the problems with the neighbors and Malaysia constantly threatening to cut off Singapore’s access to its critical water supplies, Lee believed in possessing a high tech, highly motivated military to defend Singapore interests. Singapore was early to receive a lot of second generation, but state of the art for the region, military hardware from Israel and other countries, even though its population at the time was only a couple of million while Malaysia’s was tens of millions.
Lee believed in applying technical innovation to society, but conservatively; in other words he wanted new, potentially disruptive technology to be tested elsewhere first so that the problems could be ironed out before being implemented in Singapore, especially in the financial sector.
Lee believed in maintaining a balanced budget. Singapore does not have a central bank and therefore cannot print their way out of problems; this was a deliberate, consciously chosen decision. Instead the Singapore dollar is pegged to a basket of currencies of its major trading partners. Compare this to Malaysia’s currency; they originally had a fixed 1:1 exchange rate, which got de-pegged in 1971. Now $1 Singapore dollar (SGD) is worth $3.36 Malaysian ringgit (MYR). Such is the result of utilizing central bank printing to try to push problems down the road… Lee had the same warning to America, where he stated in a 2013 interview:
“[The U.S.] has been unable to tackle its exploding debt, he asserts, because presidents do not get “reelected if they give a hard dose of medicine to their people.” In a social-media-fueled era of 24/7 news, furthermore, those who prevail in elections are not necessarily those who are most capable in governing, but those who can present themselves and their ideas “in a polished way”…Instead, he laments conditions in which “to win votes you have to give more and more. And to beat your opponent in the next election, you have to promise to give more away.”
That being said, given the Rothschilds and their allies own the central banks of the world and Singapore uses a basket of those currencies, it is basically like having a second-order central bank, just without the ability to independently print.
Lee also thought Singapore citizens should have a significant percent of their income impounded into savings account for down-payments on housing, for retirement and health care, and that people would otherwise not save enough to carry them into old age. His focus on most people owning their own home was an extremely important issue for him and he spent an inordinate amount of time on it (he wrote, "My primary preoccupation was to give every citizen a stake in the country and its future. I wanted a home-owning society”). Lee thought that Singapore’s soldiers would not be as willing to defend the country if their parents did not own their own home, and that otherwise they would think they were defending wealthy fat cats and not their people. Home ownership was critical for societal stability, for people to have a vested interest in the outcome of society: "I had seen how voters in capital cities always tended to vote against the government of the day and was determined that our householders should become homeowners, otherwise we would not have political stability.” Singapore has one of the highest (the highest?) homeownership rates in the world at 87.9%, a remarkable achievement.
Lee believed in a media being subject to significant government rules and regulations, and he was very sensitive to the ultra-wealthy individuals and foreign governments funding the anti-PAP media within Singapore, and he was strong-handed in breaking them up and limiting their reach.
Lee believed in sustainable environmentalism; cleaning up the extremely polluted rivers and water-ways, increasing the percentage of the water that Singapore produced (via rain capture and desalinization, among other methods), tremendously increasing the amount of greenery throughout the city by sending botanical experts abroad to study other countries and what they did and bring samples of the best back for planting.
Lee believed in an efficient, transparent, fast-working judiciary that would promote foreign investor confidence in Singapore.
He believed in the will of the people, and regularly called for elections to justify the actions he was taking and the direction he and the PAP were leading Singapore, but from an authoritarian perspective with his one party state. Lee stated in an interview:
Why should I be against democracy? The British came here, never gave me democracy, except when they were about to leave. But I cannot run my system based on their rules. I have to amend it to fit my people's position. In multiracial societies, you don't vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion. Supposing I'd run their system here, Malays would vote for Muslims, Indians would vote for Indians, Chinese would vote for Chinese. I would have a constant clash in my Parliament which cannot be resolved because the Chinese majority would always overrule them. So I found a formula that changes that...
Lee stated over and over again that the communists were his most dogged, most difficult to defeat opponents, and he worked very hard to never underestimate them. He used all tactics at his disposal to crush the communists and crush them mercilessly; whether they were hiding in unions, or behind newspapers as writers or financiers, he would imprison them (often without trial for years; in Operation Coldstore, for example, the police rounded up about 100 supposed communists and communist sympathizers and detained them without trial for up to 10 years), he would sue them for libel in the courts, he would spy on them, he would limit their newspaper’s circulation or close their offices, whatever it took to maintain law and order. The PAP kept a British law that, among other things, suspended civil liberties and allowed for indefinite detention without trial which is still an active law today. When challenged by the United States on this in 1978, Lee wrote,
“Singapore was a Confucianist society which placed the interests of the community above those of the individual. My primary responsibility was the well-being of the people. I had to deal with communist subversives, against whom it was not possible to get witnesses to testify in open court. If I followed [the U.S.’s] prescription, Singapore would come to grief.”
Even with the economic prosperity that his policies were bringing to Singapore, Lee said that 30% of the population were hardcore communist sympathizers and it took many years, perhaps decades, to sway them from their beliefs, if they were swayable at all.
In that vein, Lee believed in extreme punishments for criminals. Importing into Singapore small amounts of marijuana earns the death penalty. The caning of U.S. citizen Michael Fay in 1999 for vandalism caused an international incident with America. Bringing in chewing gum can get you a year in prison; feeding pigeons a $500 SGD fine, and also eating or drinking on the metro will cost you $500 SGD. But the benefit is an impeccably clean and both crime and drug-free city….
According to
in what he calls the “The Diversity Trilemma”, “Basically, you can pick two out of the following three: social stability, civil liberties, non-selective immigration. If you want social stability and civil liberties, you have to be picky with immigration. If you want civil liberties and non-selective immigration, you won’t get social stability. And if you want non-selective immigration and social stability, you’ll have to infringe civil liberties.” Lee wanted selective immigration - but lots of it, and selective based on intelligence and not ethnic or religious background - and social stability, so as a result he operated a very aggressive law-and-order society.Lee’s foreign policy with respect to war and economic boycotts was based firmly in Singaporean national interests. He was a strong proponent of U.S. war in Vietnam and against U.S. withdrawal because he was fearful of an ascendant communism in Singapore and surrounding countries; then he semi-supported the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia even after their genocide of 1.5-2 million of their own people (out of a population of 7.8 million) was known throughout the world because he pragmatically believed they were needed to counter Vietnam’s occupation of the country (but Vietnam had stopped the Cambodian genocide; I suppose Lee was so fearful of an expansionist communism that he believed in “better dead than red”); he was against Rhodesia’s existence with (white) minority rule because he wanted (black) majority rule there, which would bolster Lee’s own position (as Singapore was majority Chinese, like Lee), although he did not want to frame the Rhodesia conflict in immigrant vs. indigenous terms:
“Like the peoples in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, I was a settler. If all immigrants were racists, then the world was in for a difficult time. We had two alternative solutions to problems created by migrations that had taken place all around the world: either to accept that all men had equal rights, or to return to the rule of the strong over the weak. For colored peoples of the world to demand retribution for past wrongs was not the answer to survival.”
This was either a naive or a duplicitous answer and Lee was quite wrong on this, given the complete economic collapse, the mass starvation and the low-key white genocide that has taken place in Zimbabwe subsequently. But it served his purposes to add to the legitimacy of his own rule. He applied the same policies to South Africa, where there were no diplomatic relations until 1993 after apartheid ended, but there too today is an ongoing low-key white genocide and total economic collapse.
In choosing how to develop some of the islands off of the Singapore main island, Lee chose to focus on tourism instead of other possible uses such as oil refining. The focus on tourism is why the Singapore airport is so beautiful and why the Marina Bay Sands is such an unusual, attractive design.
The Downsides
Everything in life has a trade-off, though, and Singapore’s is typical for those myopically focused on wealth creation and secular attempts to immanentize the eschaton: the highs of material success leads to spiritual death, atomization and torn-asunder family formation. The downside of Lee’s pro-globalist approach includes:
A population total fertility rate which is one of the lowest in the world (#232 out of #237 countries);
A soulless flattened culture where Singapore feels like a giant shopping mall;
The total control Singapore has on its citizens, micro-managed down to the tiniest detail and which feels like a precursor to globohomo’s “15 minute cities”, degrades the basic humanity where Singaporeans are treated as human widgets;
Despite being a supposedly conservative society, Singapore decriminalized homosexual marriage in 2022 and left the door open for outright legalization with a simple majority vote;
Singapore has the most unhappy people in the world, coming in dead last. One Gallup poll of 148 countries found Singaporeans were the least likely to report “feeling positive emotions”:
One may curiously note that next-door Malaysia, which has struggled compared to Singapore economically with a 2015 nominal GDP per capita of only $12,000, has one of the highest rates of happiness in the world.1 Indeed, the top 10 happiest countries on that list are all quite poor. GDP and wealth figures don’t take into account happiness, communal bonds, or the amount and quality of free time; perhaps, just perhaps, the most important things in life are intangible and unquantifiable.
Indeed, when Stolypin attempted to save Tsarist Russia via farmland privatization and enriching a new middle class, Solzhenitsyn wondered what the drawbacks would be, worrying a decline of communal farms would destroy community ties.2 But Stolypin believed it was the only way to protect the Tsar and avoid a tremendous amount of human suffering, which occurred anyways after the Bolsheviks took power. Perhaps Russia’s progress would have taken different turns if it had succeeded, possibly with greater citizen happiness than Singapore; perhaps autarky and self-sufficiency could have allowed Russia to thrive in a different, more relaxed manner versus the extreme micro-managed control which Singapore is subject to.
Lessons of Singapore for other countries
Lee strongly advised other leaders to open up their countries to free trade and foreign investments; to Lee, that was a prerequisite for a country becoming economically successful. He looked down on any country that turned inward and remained a closed society. As Singapore surpassed its competition and became economically successful, other leaders around the world sat up and took note, and many tried to copy his tactics. But Lee’s advice was somewhat myopic. Acceptance of foreign investment supercharges economic growth in a country but it also makes that country a prisoner to global capitalism’s whims, per
; in other words, lenders and investors can collapse the economy at any moment by withdrawing their capital if they don’t get what they want. And what these investors wanted was to own value-generating assets, i.e. a country’s natural resources and its infrastructure, its banks and its major corporations; to control these without friction meant also purchasing the country’s mass media and educational system and then indoctrinating its citizens into becoming compliant, pliable workers. Singapore had no natural resources, it was at such a strategic location, and Lee was so good at what he was doing, that he never really got on globohomo’s bad side. But many countries did run afoul and their punishment was harsh: economies thrown into chaos, leaders overthrown, revolutions and murder; their rulers should have thought twice before taking in such investment for short-term growth.In China’s case, they learned a tremendous amount from Lee’s experience in Singapore and initiated open market reforms while retaining security control to semi-copy his model. The main difference was that that China has a vast majority Han Chinese population and therefore much less racial conflict (notwithstanding the issues with Tibet or the Uyghurs, which are a very small percent of China’s population). And China, like Singapore, remains under globohomo control.
argues that Saudi Arabia is increasingly using Lee’s approach as well.Conclusion
Oswald Spengler believed that in the period of Civilizational Winter, which he says we are in now, weak ties and complex bureaucracies (fueled by “money”) will be eventually severed in favor of strong ties and absolutism (fueled by “blood”). Perhaps Singaporeans would have been happier killing each other in race-based riots and living in poverty than be dead-last in world happiness ratings while materially well off.
Regardless, Lee knew that the only alternative to endless racial-infighting for a country in Singapore’s situation was the path he chose, regardless of its drawbacks.
Lee brought unprecedented economic success to Singapore using the model that a strong dictator who focuses on uplifting the country’s middle class, in conjunction with strong-armed tactics against leftist political enemies, would translate into long-term political stability and wealth. The downside of a myopic focus on materialism is a dying spirituality and massive unhappiness, along with a completely collapsed birthrate which requires constant infusion of immigrants to keep afloat. Each nation should have the ability to decide for itself how and to what extent it wants to choose materialism vs. spirituality on this spectrum, either extreme or moderate in either direction, but there is no independence for the nations of the world today, just complete debt slavery to the Rothschilds and their allies as owners of the world central banks, and getting rid of their shackles of central bank debt slavery is a proper Shelling point that all of the world should aspire to.
“Feeling positive emotions” is a difficult thing to quantify and measure. Its entirely possible this Gallup study is flawed, but given the similar demographics, language, history and culture of Malaysia and Singapore, and their extreme differences in results, probably indicates that there is some disparity between happiness levels between the countries.
August 1914, p. 705, Solzhenitsyn wrote philosophically: “Perhaps, though, in this self-denial [the communal land system], this harmonization of the will of the individual with that of the commune, this mutual aid and curbing of wild willfulness, there lay something more valuable than harvests and material well-being? Perhaps the people could look forward to something better than the development of private property? Perhaps the commune was not just a system of paternalistic constraints, cramping the freedom of the individual, perhaps it reflected the people’s philosophy of life, its faith? Perhaps there was a paradox here which went beyond the commune, indeed beyond Russia itself: freedom of action and prosperity are necessary if man is to stand up to his full height on this earth, but spiritual greatness dwells in eternal subordination, in awareness of oneself as an insignificant particle.
Thinking this way makes action impossible. Stolypin was always a realist. With him, thought and action were one. No one can ask the people to behave like angels. We have to live with property as we live with all the temptations of this life. And in any case, the commune created a good deal of discord among the peasants.”
Very interesting essay! Thank you. I particularly enjoyed reading Lee's quotes. I don't know if I was more astonished to learn Ashkenazi Jews are far more accomplished than Sephardi Jews or that Singapore is such an unhappy place. I wonder what time of year Gallup conducted the survey?
I visited Singapore briefly back in the 80s - had a Sling at Raffles, of course - and noted the robotic urgency of shopaholics scurrying around. Everybody was sweating and shopping. I prefer Bangkok.
Commuted on NYC subways for school and work for 25 years. Being able to go for a walk at any hour to enjoy the cool evening air without fear of being slugged by a random "diverse person" would provide enough "positive emotions" for me. If cultural boredom is a problem, that's a high quality problem I'd like to have.