One Man's View of the World

by Lee Kuan Yew

China becoming dominant in the future will not change the basic fact that Chinese is an extremely difficult language to learn.

But America needs to be nurturing not just top scientists, academics, professionals and businessmen. It also needs a constant flow from the bottom because the middle talent will form the bulk of workers in any economy.

is this group that America might be failing through a neglect of basic and technical education. In

Part of the problem has to do with education being a state responsibility, not a federal responsibility.

Americans fundamentally believe that tomorrow will be a sunny day. That explains their propensity to spend, borrow, and spend some more.

But I probably would not want to live in America permanently. If I had to be a refugee, like the former South Vietnamese prime minister, Cao Ky, who went to California, I would probably choose Britain, which I consider a less stressful society.

If Iran gets the bomb, you have a very volatile situation in the Middle East, because the Saudis will buy the Pakistani bomb, the Egyptians will get one. And the bomb assures mutual destruction. It works only with rational people. I’m not sure in the Middle East there is enough of the rational to hold back the impetuous.

Not because they were Republicans, but because they were more alive to what is required of a big power – to play their role in foreign policy.

Taiwan is an emotional, national issue. It is part of China. It is a province that they first lost to the Dutch, then the Portuguese, then the Japanese. And they have always considered that a national disgrace, and they want it back. But

No. Our prosperity comes from linkages with the world.

The incongruity would break the system down eventually. For this reason, the euro was destined to flounder, with its demise written into its DNA.

I am not convinced, therefore, that the euro can be saved,

fiscal integration because of the loss of sovereignty

that it obviously implied. In the end, their choice to go ahead with the euro anyway reflected a misplaced belief that Europe was somehow special enough to overcome the contradictions. It was a political decision.

Under that system, when one country experiences a slowdown, it can roll out remedial monetary policies because it is free from the shackles of a common currency.

In countries that fell behind economically, governments were under electoral pressure to maintain or even increase public spending, even though tax receipts decreased. Budget deficits had to be financed through loans from the money markets.

Greeks eventually became the most extreme example of this decline, going further and further into the red. To be fair, the community as a whole also has to bear some responsibility, since there were rules under the Stability and Growth Pact that allowed for sanctions on governments that ran repeated deficits. But

The obvious solution is for the Europeans to accept fiscal integration. The European Central Bank becomes the Federal Reserve, and instead of different finance ministers, you have one to supervise the budgets of all the eurozone

Will electorates willingly hand over a significant part of their nations’ budgetary powers to a central authority and trust that authority to make decisions on taxing and spending that are fair to each nation and at the same time beneficial to the eurozone as a whole?

remote possibility and I frankly do not see it happening.

at what exchange

great danger of bank runs occurring, as rumours prompt ordinary people to withdraw their savings in euros, in the fear that overnight those savings might be forcibly converted into a new and probably much devalued currency.

partial break-up.

two-tiered or three-tiered Europe, with each tier going at a different speed.

core Europe, relatively homogeneous when it comes to economic competitiveness, that can hold together despite great centrifugal forces.

such core would clearly be led by Germany, the most hardworking of the lot, and consist of Belgium, t...

The intentions were entirely noble. Having gone through two world wars which destroyed almost everything, the governments and peoples of Europe wanted a quiet, peaceful life for everyone with the burden shared equally. The people who fought and paid the price in blood were not the elites as much as the proletariat. There was a strong feeling of indebtedness towards the lower classes. So, when there was a move by politicians calling for fairness and for social welfare policies that looked after the unemployed, the sick and the old, widespread support was secured fairly effortlessly.

The most pernicious effect of the welfare state, however, lies not in its inflexibility or its unaffordable nature but in the negative effect it has on the individual’s motivation to strive.

the principle that work makes the individual and society better off, and underpinned by the belief that overly generous benefits tend to become a debilitating constraint on drive and an inadvertent suppressor of incentives.

I made sure that Singapore would not go down the same path on welfare and labour laws.

In other words, individuals take responsibility for their own lives, with some government help.

The Europeans have chosen to go down the path of welfare and labour protection due to the unique historical circumstances they were in. Nobody can deny that their choices have resulted in kinder societies, with less of an underclass and a smaller gap between winners and losers when compared to America. But it has come at a price. If they were to forgo these policies, their GDPs would probably grow 1 to 3 per cent faster each year. For some time, life will remain comfortable for many Europeans because they have reserves built up from the good years. But whether they like it or not, the comfortable and cosseted post-war world they have created for themselves will eventually be done in by external forces. A new social contract will have to be negotiated.

The scale of problems, the diversity of interests and the complexity of governance are therefore vastly different in Scandinavia.

Norway and Denmark have relatively homogeneous populations,

You are willing to work hard not just for yourself but for your tribe-mate, because you feel, almost, that you are helping a relative as opposed to, say, a group of layabouts from some strange region of the world.

Integration, then, became a central mission for European leaders. It represented their best hope for enduring peace. It was the clearest way for the countries to build on their similarities, set aside their differences and bind the fates of their nations closer to each other so that they would never again have to suffer such horrible consequences that were, arguably, of their own making.

They produce some of the best machinery in the world, and the best cars – Mercedes, Volkswagen, BMW, Porsche. The Germans will continue to do well because it is in the nature of their society. They nearly conquered the whole of Europe.

The population is declining, the economy is dependent on gas and oil and there is no real social economy. Pessimism reigns as seen in the high level of alcohol consumption and the fact that the women are not bearing enough children.

But as the women travelled and interacted with people from other parts of the world, and as they tasted the freedom of working and being economically independent, attitudes changed dramatically and irreversibly.

significant number of Japanese employers have refused to move with the times.

Japanese race must be kept pure

Government incentives to have children have only had a very limited effect wherever they are implemented, because the problem is not money but changed lifestyles and aspirations.

It depends on what sort of economy America will have. If the US cannot afford the alliance, then it is going to tail off. If that happens, then Japan has got to submit to China. They become a client state.

Well, it cannot fight China. It has got to listen to China. If there is a collision between a Japanese ship and a

Not counter. Self-defence. How can it counter China? Three bombs can annihilate Japan. Three bombs cannot annihilate China.

To say that the Kim family has built a personality cult would be a grave understatement.

Far from being a socialist heaven-on-earth, North Korea is one of the worst-run countries in the world,

failing even in the most basic of tasks, such as ensuring that the population is fed.

To believe armaments are all that matter in war is to make the same mistake as the Japanese in the Second World War.

But American industrial production capabilities were such that they could rebuild the fleet and more. It did not take them a long time to get back on their feet and punish Japan.