A Conversation with the Future PM of Singapore: Lee Hsien Loong

Asia Media, June 15, 2004

A Candid Conversation with the Future Prime Minister of the Republic of Singapore: Lee Hsien Loong
Tom Plate discusses social, economic, and political issues with current deputy prime minister Lee Hsien Loong

By Tom Plate
Pacific Perspectives Columnist

Sometime very soon, Singapore, the phenomenally successful little city state in Southeast Asia, is about to undergo its third peaceful handover of power at the very top in scarcely more than a dozen years. Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, the legendary political founder of modern Singapore, stepped down in 1990. Now successor Goh Chok Tong is but weeks away from making way for his successor: the Cambridge and Harvard educated Lee Hsien Loong, currently deputy prime minister.

I recently called on the heir apparent (and son of Lee Kuan Yew) at the Treasury Building in Singapore. He strode into the meeting room in an exceptionally good mood. I had interviewed him two years ago; the intervening time seems to have mellowed him, made him more cheerful and pleasantly thoughtful. Interviews with officials at this level are not always so enjoyable or relaxing. This one was exceptionally so. (Sara Plummer, UCLA'04, transcribed and edited the interview which has been reviewed for accuracy by Singapore officials.)

Plate: Do I have to stick to the same prepared questions I submitted last week?

DPM Lee: (laughing) No! Ask anything you want!

Plate: Thank you! So here’s the first question. What’s the number one thing on your mind right now?

DPM Lee: Right now? Babies! We have quite a serious problem because our birth rate has become very very low. The rate has been coming down for some years and we are trying to see what we can do to bring it up.

Plate: Well, this is quite your fault! (mockingly) You chose to educate your women…

DPM Lee: That’s irreversible. But it’s not just a matter of education. You look at America. Your women are already educated but compared to other developed countries, your birth rates are high. You have women professionals and senior executives who take time out to have babies. Ours are not doing that. They say, “I have a lifestyle, I have a life… I enjoy my time. Having a baby is a big responsibility, if I have a kid I have to look after him or her for a long time. Life is uncertain, and do I want to make this decision?”

That is our issue. We have some ideas on what we can change but we don’t know whether anything that we do will really, fundamentally turn around a long term trend. Of course, Europe has had some success - France, the Scandinavian countries have managed. But Italy has not managed. So there are some things you can do. But in the European case there is the whole welfare state structure behind it, putting billions of dollars towards it. I don’t know whether we can afford that.

Plate: Is more immigration into Singapore some kind of an answer?

DPM LEE: Immigration is part of the answer but it can’t be the whole answer. You have to reproduce some, and there has to be a balance. Otherwise it’s new generation that comes in from scratch. Right now we are bringing in some 30,000 permanent residents annually. And last year we only produced 37,000 babies. There is a limit to how much further we can go.

Plate: As you say, the trend may be irreversible. Some of your most amazingly successful professionals are women.

DPM Lee: I’m not sure this trend is totally irreversible. Part of it is the economy. The last few years’ economy performed poorly so that people controlled their fertility; and as the economy improves it will come back some. But it will still be very low.

Plate: The economy is getting better right?

DPM Lee: The economy is getting better, yes, but righting the birthrate will take some time.

Plate: Right, it takes at least nine months longer.

DPM: (laughs)

Plate: How come the economy is better?

DPM Lee: Well, the external conditions are better. The US has picked up. The region is not doing so badly. In our case, we had SARS last year, so this is a bounce back from SARS, partly. But it’s also a matter of confidence. A lot of it has to do with mood. If you feel better, you begin to make things better.

Plate: You know, it’s funny you said that. I thought you delivered a very good speech some months ago on National Day. You know how important it is for leaders to stay away from public pessimism. Compare Reagan’s “Sunshine in America” with Carter’s “malaise.”

DPM: But you have to follow up after that….

Plate: Luck is important to a successful follow up…

DPM: It’s partly luck, it’s partly also that we’ve been debating some fairly fundamental changes to our economy policies, structural ones. So it’s not just a cyclical change. We’ve been bringing our taxes down. Gone quite far. And shifting to consumption taxes, rather than direct income taxes. We’ve changed our state pension scheme so that the burden is less on people. We’ve changed our housing policies so that it is more in proportion to needs.

Plate: I’ve often said that if the faculty of a first rate public policy school were actually to be given control of a country to manage, you might come up with something like Singapore.

DPM: (laughs) Well that’s partly true, but if it’s not informed with real experiences, as you go along, you might go farther and farther out of kilter. And beyond finding sensible and rational solutions, we have to have people buying into them and supporting you. That is really the tough part. If the unions don’t support you and voters don’t agree, then you have a serious problem. Anybody can tell you that you need to balance your budget and the way to do it is to raise taxes but in California if you need to do that, you need to get someone like Arnold Schwarzneggar.

Plate: It’s true. Many public policy schools don’t understand that. You can have the best theoretical public policies on the drawing boards but if you can’t convince constituents, people won’t buy into it and ….

DPM: And it won’t work!

Plate: Besides the media, what else do you do to achieve understanding and consensus?

DPM: Well, the last exercise we did was last year. It was an Economic Review Committee. We spent more than a year working on it. We had a main committee and dozens of subcommittees and working groups. It covered the whole range: manufacturing, services, entrepreneurship, business costs, new growth areas. By the time we had finished we must have involved a couple of thousand people, discussed and thrashed some ideas, and floated others. Out of all this you need to sit down and decide a dozen key things you should do. … When we wanted to implement, we spent a lot of time talking to our grass roots, to the unions. When we changed the pension arrangements last year, the unions had thirty four dialogues with their own groups. Of course, we had discussed it with the union leaders beforehand but when the details were announced , they had to reach out to the members and make sure they understood how these would affect them. It was quite a major job to tell people who used to get 40% of their salary in their pension fund that now we are going to offer only 33%. And as you get older we are going to push it down to 27% to help you stay employed. If people do not understand you can get quite an explosive reaction.

Plate: Leadership really can’t work without followship…You cannot have followship if the leaders are trying to lead you in ways you don’t understand.

DPM: We have to have policies that can be boiled down to simple messages. Then they will get it. If you have a complex proposal three pages long, it won’t be understood, much less carried out.

Plate: What often does worry me about Singapore is whether the internal debate can be vigorous enough. Can you really hash and thrash things out? How can this be?

DPM: First of all, we have a lot of discussion amongst the MPs. We have a couple of opposition MPs. More importantly we have a good number of MPs who are independent people with their own standing. They make up there own minds. When they ask a question in Parliament we have to take them very seriously because they are not just asking for themselves, but reflecting the views of a group of people. Furthermore they probably have a point which you have to think about and address. It’s also the discussions we have with people on the ground and through many forums. There is vigorous debate, although it doesn’t come out the way that it would with nine democratic candidates at an American Presidential election.

Plate: That’s good!

DPM: (laughing) I don’t think there are any important issues which are excluded from debate. If the ground were unhappy, we would know it straight away.

Plate: Going back to this fascinating low birthrate question again … do you look at other countries for suggestions?

DPM: Yes we do, around the world. We’ve been to Europe. We are going to look at some of the Asian countries. I think Hong Kong has a problem even more serious than ours. Their average births per mother is less than one. But I suppose in their case, just turn on the tap and everyday pour in a few hundred more from China and they’re okay. That’s the answer in Hong Kong because they are part of China.

Plate: That’s the answer for Japan if they would accept it

DPM: But where’s the Japanese tap connected to?

Plate: Right, where’s the tap?

DPM: They have no solution. They know they need more immigration but it is just not acceptable to the population. Some Koreans might want to immigrate to Japan, but the culture doesn’t offer them status. I think there would be a lot of difficulty.

Plate: Tell us more about the unintended consequences of liberating women?

DPM: You have no choice but to do it. How can you not? You have half the population uneducated and their potential wasted. Economically and intellectually it is just unthinkable. It cannot be done. It would be a totally different kind of society.

Plate: You say that America has done a pretty good job?

DPM: Well, I don’t know whether you’ve done a job of it; but it so happened that your trends are so contrary to all the other developing countries. Contrary to Europe. Contrary to Japan. And somehow, it’s not just your immigration… it’s your social norms, your employers’ attitudes, and the personal values of your women. They feel it is part of them, they want to have children, otherwise they aren’t quite whole, they haven’t fulfilled their aspirations. And if they just did a business career, that’s not quite it.

Plate: One thing in America is employee leave…

DPM: Well, in America your mandated number of days of leave is actually quite few but employer attitudes are very hospitable and so employees get a lot of flexibility. Even the American multinational corporations here tend to be very reasonable. If someone wants to take four months off, arrangements can be worked out. So they have become used to making these adaptations… single mothers as well as married women.

Plate: Can Singapore corporations move in that direction?

DPM: I think we can, but it takes time. There’s a mind set issue, for the employers as well as the employees. Also, there is a certain trade off between bringing up a family and having a career. You can spend all of your time bringing up a family or all of your time having a career or somewhere in between. People have to be prepared to find something in between. The father too has to be prepared to make some adjustments and chip in. If you say I am not prepared to compromise, I must become a Senior Counsel or CEO and family comes second, something will suffer.

Plate: American men on the whole are the most henpecked men in the world, you know!

DPM: I wouldn’t dare to agree!

Plate: So birthrate is a significant problem for you?

DPM: That is a big problem. We were at 1.25 last year for the population as a whole and Chinese Singaporeans were at 1.19. So we are almost at the lowest.

Plate: All that relates to making Singapore more dynamic and making it increasingly hospitable to non-Singaporeans. How are you doing with that?

DPM: We have always maintained a very open door. You come with skills or talent, we are happy to accommodate you. The difficulty is that, once having brought people here, we have to get them to decide to anchor here, have a family here, take up citizenship and remain here. That’s more of a challenge because we’re talking about people of very high caliber. They have many options besides Singapore.

Plate: Could a degree of additional dynamism of Singapore be possible with a reopening or rewarming with Malaysia?

DPM: It will help certainly. Good relations with Malaysia will definitely be good for us. So far relations oscillate between getting warmer and colder but they stay within certain limits.

Plate: You mean, these are neighbors whether they like it or not!

DPM: You’re right, sort of like former partners!

Plate: You talked about the women’s issue. What about the generation gap issue in Singapore?

DPM: Younger generations are growing up in a different environment, very well educated, very talented, with many skills. Question is, have they got all of the exposure they need to cope with a new world, because Singapore is a very orderly environment in which to grow up in. The government works, the policemen are honest, people stop at traffic lights.

Plate: Yes, it’s quite bizarre! I’m originally from New York, as you know, so an orderly environment is quite an alien, if delightful, experience.

DPM: Exactly (laughs) … so are we equipping our young people to cope with different kinds of political and social environments?

Plate: I have maybe sixty to eight students in my UCLA classes, and some of them are always from Singapore. In my teaching style, I try to involve students very directly in discussion, even asking them to help me work through a point or a problem….The Singapore students exceptionally, it seems to me, are quite taken aback when asked to help. They’re not used to being asked to help a professor!

DPM: (laughs) That is something we are trying to change, too. We are trying to open up our school system and we’ve made some fundamental changes in the secondary schools, and we are in the process of doing more. We want them to have a wider range of options and not just follow the standard academic form. We’ve started a sports school, which is a secondary school where you also train seriously for professional/semiprofessional sports. We are going to start an art school, where music, dance and drama are highlighted. … We are going to start a math/sciences school, and we’ve got many interesting programs started in many secondary schools.

So instead of doing only “O” levels and “A” levels, which is a lot of exams, you have a through train, you can go from 7th straight through to 12th grade. In the end, you have a wider range of things you can do and have time to explore new things and new projects in ways you couldn’t do if you just take exams.

We are also trying to open universities, make admissions more flexible and contents more flexible. So we have many changes underway. It will take some time to work through them. The key thing is the quality of the teachers and the lecturers. We have some good young teachers and academics coming in and over the years we have managed to improve our student/teacher ratios so the burden on each of the teachers is not quite so heavy. And they have more time to deal with each student class. They can take more questions and encourage discussions. Whereas when there are 45 students in a class you really don’t have time to ask, “Would anyone like to put their hand up and make a contribution?”

Plate: Are your young people now being exposed to teachers versed exclusively in the Singapore style or do you send some abroad?

DPM: We send some of them abroad. They go to Britain. They go to America. They go on scholarships. The numbers are not quite enough. But our young people are not squashed up. I judge by my children’s generation. They complain ceaselessly about how they have their own views and how their teachers don’t understand what they are talking about! So they are not that browbeaten!

Plate: How old are your children?

DPM: 23, 21, 17 and 14.

Plate: Well, 17 and 14 are very interesting ages, to say the least, in America! Sometimes I do say in the States: On reflection, I think I would have preferred to raise my child in Singapore, at least the Singapore of two or there decades ago. My understanding was that in the Singapore of the 70’s, where a father saying no held much merit. I wish I could have raised my daughter then! Does father’s word still hold the same merit?

DPM: It’s a new generation now. I don’t think there are the same authoritarian relationships. We are ALL live in the same world. There is global advertising. They are on the Internet. They know what is happening, or at least they think they do. You have to raise your children differently.

Plate: I know you are super tough on drugs so I guess that’s not a serious problem.

DPM: Drugs are not a problem, not a general problem. We have to keep holding the line. There is always some segment which is difficult. Teenage pregnancy is not a serious problem either.

Plate: With your low birth rate, though, maybe you should encourage that!!!

DPM: (laughs) I think I’ll stick with my current problems!

Plate: Understood!

DPM: It’s a bell curve. We have to accept that at the tail end of the bell curve you have people that drop out or want to drop out and you have to manage that. We have a large proportion in schools now but those at the tail end are a challenge for the teachers. You have to find ways to make contact with them and make sure they stay engaged. If not, they will drop out, and hang out with gangsters. Not in big numbers but it happens in every society.

Plate: So, you have a little of that here?

DPM: A little, yes.

Plate: The outsourcing issue has become an issue in America… I suggest in my columns or in lectures reeducation over protectionism. Is Singapore’s education prepared for that?

DPM: It’s not just the education system. You’re talking about people at an impressionable age. You give them what they need to grow up and do battle in the world. But what do you do with people who are already working and may lose their jobs? How to ensure that they learn new skills? We have set up a Workforce Development Agency to do this. I think they have their work cut out for them. I am talking about people in their late 30s, early forties. They are not young but they have 20 more years left to work before they retire. We’ve put a lot of emphasis on retraining them, giving them skills so that even if they can’t pass an exam they get some working skills which you can apply in a new job. We have some successes, but I think it is going to continue to be a challenge.

Plate: Does Singapore have jobs that have been outsourced?

DPM: Oh yes. Maybe not so many of the white collar jobs, though that will come. But the blue collar jobs have been a continuing process. Our manufacturing sector has been growing, but all of the jobs that we create are offset by the jobs which move elsewhere. It’s happening everywhere, in China too. Factories are moving from Shanghai up river, inland.

Plate: Am I being unrealistic, saying protectionism is not the way to go?

DPM: You’re right; you have to say that. America is the leader of the free world, and the largest economy in the whole world. Do you want a system based on trade or do you want one based on raw power? I don’t think you want one based on raw power. It is very bad when Congress passes legislation that says no jobs should be given to corporations who outsourced, then the US Trade Representative goes to India, the Indians protest against the hypocrisy, and the USTR has to say, “but it’s your fault, it’s because your so protectionist that I’ve had to do this.” I think that is a very poor show.

Plate: What do we do with foreign companiesy’s that locate to America and create jobs… Do we give them a bonus?

DPM: (Laughter) Some of your states do that. … But it’s election year politics. I hope it stays within bounds. Bush is holding the line. Kerry has not gone rabid yet.

Plate: We’ll have to see on this issue. The problem with Kerry is that sometimes his stances on issue are more complex than the Pope’s sometimes, whereas Bush avoids nuances and subtleties to the extent possible.

DPM: That may be in favor of President Bush. People know where he stands, and so they can decide whether to trust him or not.

Plate: Are you as pessimistic about Iraq as the rest of the world? Does that look like as big of a mess to you as it does to us?

DPM: I think it is a very difficult situation for you to solve. You knew it would be that way but decided to go in and deal with it when you got to that point. Now you are here.

Plate: Of course the Japanese sent troops in…Is this a Rubicon for them? Does this worry you?

DPM: They’ve been wanting to do this for a long time. I think they sent some to Kuwait too. It is an inevitable step that will happen at some point. It is the war generation that felt the need to maintain a pacifist posture, but the new generation want to move forward. America used to stop them but they are not doing so anymore. Now they have to deal with Iraq and they asked for Japanese troops. It is a different world. China is in a different position now so there are not the same concerns that might have been raised a generation ago. But China will still have grave qualms about Japan. You probably have to wait until the next change of Chinese leaders to get past this.

Plate: If you are member of the truly older ethnic Chinese throughout the region… it would seem to be it is very difficult to accept..

DPM: The people who have lived through the war will never accept. It is impossible and they are still there … But the next generation will be different. How they will work on their bilateral relationship, I don’t know. There will be room for economic cooperation but history cannot be erased overnight either. There is deep suspicion and a desire to keep the Japanese down and contrite.

Plate: The Japanese evolution doesn’t have the feel of a joint co prosperity buildup but more the feel to me of Koizumi coming in and trying to make Japan into a more normal nation.

DPM: I don’t really want to talk about whether they are becoming a more normal nation. But the prime minister’s visiting the war memorial shrine every year is just an unnecessary aggravation.

Plate: You don’t accept that this is something the PM has to do for internal political affairs…

DPM: It’s not whether we accept it or not. It’s how it is seen throughout the region and whether that is helpful to Japan? It riles everyone up … It doesn’t necessarily rile me up … but he’s made his calculations.

Plate: Well, China has made its own calculations. Do you see mostly good in this new Chinese government?

DPM: Oh yes, they are capable people, but they’ve got big problems. I think they recognize that. There is a certain hubris in their society right now because they are changing so fast. They believe they are going to continue at this pace. But they have some very big problems to overcome.

Plate: Do you see the rise of large middle class in China starting to change their internal politics?

DPM: It will have an impact. They are well informed, in contact with the outside world. Their Internet use has growing phenomenally, and they will have interests that will have to be accommodated. It doesn’t mean they will all get one vote each. But they cannot run the country and ignore these middle class interests at the same time. AndAt that’s why when Jianng Zemin came up with “The Three Represents,” you may think it’s just a new Communist slogan, but it’s really a profound change. All of a sudden the enemy of the proletariat (the capitalists) can join the Communist Party. He’s managed to turn the Marxist formulation inside out.

Plate: It’s as if the Pope were to say you don’t have to be Catholic to be part of the Church.

DPM: That’s right! … But he is being pragmatic. He’s trying to find a way forward without losing control.

Plate: As I understand it, you have told them, don’t try to control Internet…. It’s not technically possible.

DPM: It is not for us to tell them. I think they are still ambivalent about it. They want to use it for its economic value but they are still worried about the political impact. They are still trying to control inflow, blocking websites from abroad, and going about it more intelligently than we’d thought possible. But they can’t stop the flow totally. Even internally within China, stuff will be generated and will circulate.

Plate: In the recent round of elections, look at unintended consequences in Taiwan (more trouble with the mainland), South Korea (an impeachment effort), Sri Lanka (the strengthening of the anti negotiation party), India (a seemingly competent government voted out that was trying to ramp back on the Hindu nationalism of its own party)…In some ways, elections can be more of a discomfort than an asset, no?

DPM: You are sounding like a Singaporean! There is no magic solution in elections. You will have quite a time in Iraq trying to make elections have outcomes that are more or less acceptable…but what to do? You have to try.

Plate: And globalisation is making more of these economies more like market economies and more transparent… this will change political policies, no?

DPM: Look at Japan. Their economy is a western style economy but their policies are not quite western style. The forms are there but the power structures, the coalitions, they are quite un-American. Or the Philippines model. You had them as a colony for a hundred years to grow a Western style democracy and still the society is not like America either.

Plate: I’d be worried about Indonesia.

DPM: It’s a big factor in our lives. It’s gone through ups and downs since 1997 … but for the last four years things are heading in a more stable direction. We don’t really know how the elections will work out, but probably the winners will be nationalist and secular, not religious fundamentalist. If you look at the way the election game works, chances are that secular parties are the dominant players. But as far as Indonesian society is concerned, the drift toward a more politicized Islam or a more conservative Islam will have some impact down the road.

Plate: We all saw the horror of Madrid- the retaliation: This is what you will get for playing nice with America. If I were the head of major company, with assurances to come to Singapore and develop a business…yet Singapore has been closely allied with America in the fight against the terrorists extremists. Safe to come to Singapore?

DPM: You will be targeted wherever you are in the world. There is no place that is safe to run to. You could be in America on the day of 911. You could be in Middle East. You could be in Europe. Nowhere is safe. They will come look for you wherever you are. If you are in Singapore, what you will have going for you is, first, a population which is firmly supportive of peace and good sense, including the Muslim population. That’s a key requirement, because if the population is polarized you have a problem. Secondly, we take our security very seriously. If you drive around town you’ll see the police and fortifications that we have deployed. It all adds up to so many percentage points of GDP spent. But it’s absolutely necessary. Thirdly, the problem is being tackled in Southeast Asia. What governments have done against the JI terrorist group has had a substantial effect. In Malaysia they’ve picked up most of the members. In Singapore we’ve broken up most of their network. A few of the people are still running around. So the battle goes on and we are not losing.

Plate: But, still, isn’t Singapore more of a target?

DPM: Just because we stand with America and we are still at war with terrorism doesn’t mean we are more of a target. Look at Bali. Indonesia was not part of the coalition…

Plate: Everyone knows that one obvious terrorist target would be the large commercial ships that come through the Singapore harbour as a trans-shipment stopover. I’m sure this question won’t give the terrorists any ideas they don’t alreadyalways have. A successful attack on such a ship could prove devastating…What is the government doing about that security issue?

DPM: We’re working at it with other countries. It requires a multi-national response. It is not something any single country can do. We need to have intelligence and be able to preempt something that would happen.

Plate: Do you have enough boats bobbing around, and under the water, and so on?

DPM: (laughs) We are doing quite a lot. We take that threat very seriously.
People are thinking very seriously about how we can work together on port security, on sharing intelligence. We are working together.

Plate: So the international cooperation on this issue has seriously improved?

DPM: I am not sure about dramatic improvements. Whenever you get intelligence agencies together it’s always a question of how much you share but we’ve shared enough to have some successes.

Plate: Do you have a view on the North Korean situation?

DPM: I think that some sort of solution can in principle be worked out. Some guarantee of security in exchange for some restrictions on the North Korea nuclear program. How to do that? This depends on how much pressure you can bring to bear and how much the other countries are prepared to cooperate with the U.S. in order to bring pressure to bear on North Korea.

Date Posted: 6/15/2004


Read Tom Plate's 2007 interview with PM Lee Hsien Loong.