MM Lee says centre of gravity in global affairs shifting to China, India

SINGAPORE : Singapore's Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew said the centre of gravity in global affairs is shifting to the East, particularly to China and India.

Mr Lee said this has resulted in a permanent change in world consumption and is already large enough to have shifted fundamentals in the world economy.

He added that China's key to success lies in its need to educate and change the mindset of the people.

In an interview with Channel NewsAsia’s Chief Editor Debra Soon, Mr Lee shared his insights on the Chinese leadership today, how China has changed and its impact and influence on the world. In 1978, two years after breaking up the leftist Gang of Four, China's paramount leader Deng Xiaoping embarked on economic reforms and set China on a historic journey forward.

It was the same year Deng visited Singapore and met the then prime minister Lee. And 30 years on, MM Lee has met every Chinese top leader since Mao Zedong.

When asked if he thought the West is open to accepting China as a modern nation, Mr Lee said: "I don't see what the choice is. Whether you want to accept or (not) is not dependant on whether you like or don't like China.

"The question is - will China make the grade? If (China) doesn't get tangled up in any conflict with America, Japan, Russia or India, and has no intention of getting tangled up with any conflicts, unless it's over Taiwan, then she is going to grow.

" It is this growth - the demand for commodities such as food, consumption, cars, travel - that has become a "durable trend", and resulted in the rise in food and oil prices.

Mr Lee rejected the idea that China could implode, should wealth be distributed unevenly between the provinces. He added that China has a stable system of political succession in place.

He said: "It's a very entrenched system of rotating talented people at the top, so that nobody develops a warlord attachment to any single province. As long as the centre remains strong, that will not happen, because they knew what happened during the warlord years. "

Now, the army is rotated, the police force chiefs are rotated, the party officials and the government officials are rotated. So you (don't have a) fixed permanent group at the top. It's always a changing combination of many different groups from different parts of the country."

- CNA /ls