Culture is destinty by Zareed zakaria interview with Lee Kuan Yew

1. Culture Is Destiny
A CONVERSATION WITH
LEE KUAN YEW
FAREED ZAKARIA
Singapore, 1994
The magazine Foreign Affairs
Vol. 73, No. 2 (Mar. - Apr., 1994), pp. 109-126
Published by: Council on Foreign Relations
SungKungHoe University – MAINS program
A course “Political change and Civil Society in Asia”
Student: Burenjargal Bombish (Rune)
2015-06-22

2. “Had Lee lived in another time and another place, he might have attained
the world stature of a Churchill, a Disraeli, or a Gladstone”.
By Richard Nixon
The 37th President of the United States The Senator from California The 36th Vice President of the US.
PREAMBLE

3. Lee Kuan Yew (1923-2015)
 The first Prime Minister of Singapore.
 The longest-serving prime minister in world history.
- 1959-1990 for 31 years.
- 1990-2011, Senior minister & Minister Mentor for 21 years
52 years for ministerial positions.
 The founding father of the independent city - state of Singapore in 1965.
 Transitioned from the "third world to the first world in a single generation“.
 Implemented a tight political control over the country - “Soft” authoritarian regime.
PREAMBLE

4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFVDnmjHhAw

5. Attractive:
 Free, Easy and Open relationship between people.
 Tiny peace of Communism: Argument about good and bad society, Accountability of public
officials and None of the secrecy and terror.
Unacceptable:
 Breakdown of civil society: Misbehavior in public: guns, drugs, violent crime, and vagrancy.
1. IS USA VIABLE MODEL?
INTERVIEW
 Westerners have abandoned an ethical basis for society, believing that all problems are solvable by a good
government.

6. Look after yourself, cultivate yourself, do
everything to make yourself useful
Look after the family
Look after your country
All is peaceful under heaven
2. THEN, ANY ASIAN MODEL?
The government could
provide the support to
make up for the family
The government does not
try to provide for a
person what the family
best provides.
WEST
EAST
INTERVIEW
Chinese aphorism about the family
as a building brick of society.
The tested norm = Family unit = Building brick of society
WE START WITH SELF-RELIANCE

7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgDV4maiGLE
“If I were an American, starts off with basics, working on the individual, looking
at within the context of his/her family, friends and society”
I would put order in society,
would educate rigorously.”

8. Our success focuses were:
 Used family to push the economic growth.
 We were fortunate we had this cultural backdrop, the belief in saving, hard work,
family devoutness, loyalty in the extended family, and most of all the respect for
scholarship and learning.
 From the West and later Japan, knew where we were and where we had to go – “Let
us hasten”.
 But, soon, all of us will get to the stage of Japan. Where do we go next? That will be a
new situation.
 In the East, historically, the extended family was survival raft for the individuals.
3. THE GOVERNMENT ABILITY TO
ECONOMIC GROWTH?
INTERVIEW

9.  East Asian economic success of cultural factors: Value in learning, Scholarship,
Hard work, Thrift and deferment of present enjoyment for future gain– This is
less universal application.
 The World Bank Report makes the hopeful assumption that all men are
equal, that people all over the world re the same. They are not. Genetics and
history interact /Neurological development and cultural values.
 What happened in the West over 200 years or more is happening here in
about 50 years or less. So there are bound to be dislocations and malfunction.
 Rise of religion (Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong and Singapore). Period of
country’s stress makes new sects crop up and new religions proliferate.
4. THE CULTURE OF SUCCESS?
INTERVIEW

10.  We have left the past behind and there is an underlying unease that there will
be nothing left of us which is part of the old. It is not something Americans can
solve for them.
 Not Westernized. Modernized, yes: Science and technology and the change in
the life styles they bring.
 The system of government in China, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam will change. But it
will not end up like the American or British.
 It is better that if we gave every man over 40s who has a family two votes
because he is likely to be more careful and serious than capricious young people
under 30. At 60 they should go back to one vote.
4. THE CULTURE OF SUCCESS?
INTERVIEW

11. INTERVIEW
5. MULTICULTURAL SCHISMS?

 Choice of English language made possible the country Chinese into English period
of 30 years.
 You can not have too many distinct components and be one nation.
 If you want complete separateness then you should not come to live in the host
country.
 One has to find a middle path between uniformity and a certain freedom to be
somewhat different.
 If a Muslim girl insists on coming to school with her headdress on and is prepared
to put up with discomfort, we should be prepared to put up with the strangeness.

12.  No
 Reason of long lasting growth in East Asia is - East Asia have learned some powerful lessons about
of destructiveness of war.
 China is a vast, disparate country; there is no alternative to strong central power.
 It is better that Japan carry on its current policy, leaving security to the Americans and concentrating
on the economics and politics.
 Japan knows that they would face a nuclear power in China and in Russia so they would avoid a
preemptive strike then a balance will be established. The Japanese have a cultural trait, whatever
they do they carry it to the nth degree.
 In next 20-30 years, through UN, the major powers (US, Western Europe, Japan, China and Russian
Republic) will have to agree among themselves how to manage peace and stability, how to create a
system that is both viable and fair.
6. IS EUROPE’S PAST ASIA’S FUTURE?
Producer of wealth as well as war?
INTERVIEW

13.  America has been unusual in the history of the world, being the sole
possessor of power – the nuclear weapon – and the only government in
the world unaffected by war damage whilst the others were ruins.
 But America set out to put her defeated enemies on their feet.
 If we did not have the good points of the West to guide us,
we would have been a backward economy with a
backward society. But we do not want all of the West.
7. VIVE LA DIFFERENCE
Politician VS Intellectual
INTERVIEW

14. The dominant theme throughout our conversation was CULTURE.
 If Confucianism explains the economic boom in East Asia today,
does it not also explain the region’s stagnation for four centuries?
 Culture being complex, one finds in them what one wants.
 Cultures change. Attributes Lee sees in Eastern cultures were once
part of the West.
 “Wealth accumulates and men decay” Oliver Goldsmith in 1770.
Lee is trying to stave off this “Decay” through culture.
 Modern and Western are not separable. The west has left a mark
“the rest,” and it is not simply a legacy of technology and material
products.
8. A CODA ON CULTURE
by Fareed Zakaria

15.  Put the government’s responsibility in weak over citizen’s
lives. Instead promoted that individuals should solve his/her
problems – Infringement of Social Contract
 The sentiment “all men are NOT equal” – His intention of
a different treatment to people by age and family
background.
9. The Presenter’s Critics

16. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8rPofi-AUw

17. THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION 
ANY COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS?