Lee Kuan Yew’s passing
is an epochal moment not just for Singapore but for all Asia. I pay homage to
the man who created an economic miracle from a tiny unpromising island and
changed the lives of millions, including mine.
His achievement needs to
be viewed not just as the creation of the third richest country in the world from
a third-world country in a few decades with no natural resources, not even its
own water supply. Instead they should also be viewed in the context of the
history of post-colonial Asia, and how Singapore bettered the lives of people
from across the whole continent.
When Lee Kuan Yew was cutting
his teeth in Malaya’s independence movement, Asia was a continent of poverty struggling
to unshackle itself from its colonial legacy. At a time when Asia’s countless
millions were mired in a cesspool of ethnic violence, socialism, corruption and
nepotism, Lee's Singapore was a shining beacon of meritocracy and opportunity,
offering hope to individuals from all strata of Asian societies.
Japan may have been the
first Asian country to show the continent that economic and military
superiority wasn’t the white man's preserve, but it always was and remains
a closed society. There have been other economic miracles such as Taiwan and
South Korea, but it was Singapore’s unique location and history as an English-speaking
Commonwealth nation that enabled it to become a cosmopolitan, pan-Asian success
story.
Singapore’s economic
miracle has offered opportunities across both race and class. It allows masses
of poor but talented skilled workers from India and China to enjoy first world
living standards for the first time. Entrepreneurs, billionaires and
international corporations are offered a low-taxing, business-friendly
environment to invest and create jobs, attracting the best expatriates from
around the world. Even the unskilled labourers of Asia are given an opportunity
to improve their lot, with waves of Bangladeshi labourers and Filipino maids
finding relatively safe, well-paying opportunities, occasional instances of
abuse and recent riots notwithstanding.
Needless to say,
Singapore is far from perfect, and western criticisms of Lee Kuan Yew and his
authoritarian rule are valid. But it’s important to understand that in the
context of post-colonial Asia, they were largely irrelevant to most Asians
until my generation. Freedom of speech, democracy and free debate are very
distant, theoretical concepts for people struggling to feed themselves and their
families. They are truly first world problems which Singapore has now started
to address.
While Lee Kuan Yew was
famously dismissive of public opinion, it is he who enabled his people to first
get to the level where they had the luxury of complaining about political
freedoms, when their grandparents would have been content with achieving basic
living standards.
True democracy has not
had many success stories in Asia. Lee Kuan Yew’s authoritarian multiracial
capitalism was a far superior proposition to anything else Asia had to offer.
The Chinese escaped the
horrors of the Cultural Revolution and the economic devastation wrought by
Maoism in their ancestral homeland while enjoying far better social and
political freedoms. Singapore was a promised land for Indian emigrants escaping
the wasteland of Nehruvian socialism and a faux democracy that veiled a
corrupt, nepotistic, almost feudal system of government. Few ordinary middle
class Indian emigrants lamented their lost vote in India’s democracy. Every new
rape horror story coming out from India puts Singapore’s safe streets into
stark relief, where parents scarcely worry about their daughters going out at
night.
Even the native Malays
have better opportunities despite not enjoying the affirmative action that
Malaysia provides. While the Gulf States like the UAE offered similar if not
better economic prosperity to immigrants particularly from the Indian
subcontinent, their human rights record has been incomparably worse.
Lee successfully married
the best strands of western economic liberalism with the Chinese tendency to
respect authority, along with so-called “Asian values” which emphasise a
certain respect for hierarchy in society. He did create a nanny state, but it
is not patronising to suggest a good nanny is what a poor post-colonial,
ethnically diverse society needed in 1965.
Lee Kuan Yew showed the
world there is no limit to human ingenuity if it can be harnessed through the
fertile environment of a free market and social stability. The only saddening
aspect of Singapore’s success is it brings into question the effectiveness of
free western societies. Western societies have so far chosen to prove Lee Kuan Yew's criticisms of democracy right. Their complacent welfare states have failed to tackle huge intergenerational wealth
transfers through rising public debt, with economic growth smothered by high
taxes, archaic labour laws and red tape.
In Australia, at a time
when a conservative government is raising taxes and running the white flag on
bringing the budget to surplus, Lee Kuan Yew’s infamous warning remains as pertinent
as ever: unless we reform, we risk becoming the white trash of Asia.
