10-11-2007

MYANMAR'S GENERALS CAN'T SURVIVE

Lee Kuan Yew, the founding prime minister of Singapore and the "grand old man of Asia" at 84, is now minister mentor in Singapore. Last week he talked with UCLA professor and columnist Tom Plate and Jeffrey Cole of the Annenberg Center of the University of Southern California.

By Lee Kuan Yew

Global Viewpoint: Is it plausible to ask China to work behind the scenes, as it did at the six-party talks involving North Korea, to help move Myanmar out of the Middle Ages and into the real world?

Lee Kuan Yew: I’m not sure the Chinese have got that power. And in Myanmar, these are rather dumb generals when it comes to the economy.

How they can so mismanage the economy and reach this stage when the country has so many natural resources?

It’s stupid. So, I’m not sure the Chinese, they’ve tried and, in fact, we have tried to talk them out of isolation. I tried through a general called Khin Nyunt. He’s the most intelligent of the lot. I sold him the idea, or at least he bought the idea, that the way for them to go forward was to get out of uniform and do it like Suharto (in Indonesia): form a party, Golkar, and then take over as a civilian party. But halfway through, Suharto fell.

So, it ended up as the wrong advice, (the Myanmar generals) backtracked. Then they chucked Kyin Nyunt out.

Meanwhile, I had advised several of our hoteliers to set up hotels there. They have sunk in millions of dollars there, and now their hotels are empty. But, you know, you’ve got really economically dumb people in charge. Why they believe they can keep their country cut off from the world like this indefinitely, I cannot understand. And you know, you need medicines; they smuggle (them) in from Thailand. It doesn’t make sense.

I do not believe that they can survive indefinitely. Look, the day they decided to close down the government in Yangon and go into this Pyinmana, or whatever the place is called where there’s nothing and they are putting up expensive buildings for themselves and a golf course — and the top general had a lavish wedding for his daughter, which was then out on YouTube. The daughter was like a Christmas tree! Flaunting these excesses must push a hungry and impoverished people to revolt.

But what will happen, I don’t know because the army has got to be part of the solution. If the army is dissolved, the country has got nothing to govern itself because they have dismantled all administrative instruments.

GV: You said some years ago that America must get the relationship with China right, because that benefits everybody in Asia. And if it’s not gotten right, it’s going to create problems. Has the U.S. more or less gotten the relationship right?

Lee: I think it’s not bad. Congress is in a fractious mood, looking for excuses for what’s gone wrong, believing China’s exchange rate offers unfair advantage. Yes, the Chinese should up the value of their yuan — maybe 10 percent, 15 percent — but it’s not going to help you. It’s not going to solve the problem. It might create problems for them if they do it so suddenly. But if they do it gradually, as I think they will, it shouldn’t be a problem.

They’re scared of unemployment, they’re scared of what happened to Japan when the factories relocated. They need their low-end jobs, making shoes, garments, whatever. If these factories move, you have got unemployment — that’s a real problem for them. They’re scared of it as they’re moving up-market. It’s a new game for them and they’re nervous. Their legitimacy depends upon solving the economic problems and not having riots in the cities even as their old state-owned enterprises retrench.

GV: What would you say to Americans who say if China rises, America has to fall?

Lee: No, I do not see a win-lose, zero sum game here. It was the U.S. that brought China into the (World Trade Organization). It was George H.W. Bush that opened the door, invited China to start selling to America. That was carried on by President Clinton. Clinton finally, with his then-Treasury secretary, (Robert) Rubin, got the Chinese into the WTO.

You have got two choices with China. Keep them out — but the U.S. must have done its calculations, because if you keep them out, then you have them as a spoiler. They’re going to do reverse engineering, steal your patents and where is the profit in that? You slow them down, there’s no doubt about that. You slow down their transformation but at the same time, you are not benefiting from that transformation. 

If you go back and remember the 1980s and early ‘90s, you needed that market to grow but you never factored in the speed at which they would grow. That’s scary. That’s happened and I think they know that it’s a difficult transformation for them. It’s not easy.  They have got enormous problems — internal problems, disparity within the cities, between the cities and the countryside. And now with cell phones and satellite TV, they have to change track. Instead of just going helter-skelter for gold . . . now they’re talking about achieving a harmonious society.

GV: Do you still see China continuing in the opening-up direction?

Lee: Their problem now is convincing the world that they’re serious about a “peaceful rise.” These are thinking people. You’re not dealing with ideologues. I don’t know if you’ve been seeing this or heard of this series that they (the Chinese) produced called the “Rise of the Great Nations.”  It was quite I would say a bold decision to tell the Chinese people this is the way the European nations, the Russians and Japanese became great. Absolutely no ideology and they had a team of historians, their own historians. To get the program going, they went to each country, interviewed the leaders and historians of those countries. 

You should watch the one on Britain because I think that gives you an idea of how far they have gone in telling their people this is what made Britain great. I was quite surprised. The theme was (doing away with) the divine right of kings, a Britain that was challenged by the barons who brought the king down to Runnymede and then they had the Magna Carta, and suddenly your “divine right” is based on Parliament and we (the barons) are in Parliament. 

That gave the space for the barons to grow and the middle class eventually emerged.  When the king got too uppity, Charles the First got beheaded.

Now this series was produced in a communist state, you know. In other words, if you want to be a great nation, so, if the leader goes against the people's interests, you may have to behead him! They also said that because there was growing confidence between the people and the leaders, the country grew.

It is in fact a lesson to support their gradual opening up and their idea of how they can do it without conflict — the “peaceful rise.” They have worked out this scheme, this theory, this doctrine to assure America and the world that they’re going to play by the rules.

GV: Do you think they’ll be able to do that fast enough to accommodate the middle class who want clean air and so much else?

Lee: I cannot say what they will do. I go there once in a year, I spend one week. I get reports, but I’m not a China-watcher. I have got many other things to watch, I’m a Singapore-watcher! My guess is they’re going to move pragmatically one step at a time and the first thing they are trying to do at this moment is to get the succession to the next Standing Committee right. He’ll have his team and the next five years will be his policy. 

I think the policy will be let’s grow, let’s have more equality in the country and keep the country as one. Let’s have no trouble abroad, let’s make quite sure that Taiwan doesn’t do stupid things which will force the mainland to act. Let’s have a successful Olympics and then we are into a new age, one step at a time.

The first problem is blue skies for the Olympics and the way to do that is the way they did it in 1999 when I went there for the 50th anniversary and I found blue skies. I asked our ambassador about this: He said they stopped all factories for the last two weeks. I think they’re going to do that, maybe the last four weeks before and the cars will be cut down by half, odd and even numbers and so on. 

But to go and clean up properly will take umpteen years, retrofit coalmines and so on.  That’s a very costly and slow business. They are engaging us in Singapore, and we’re going to do an EcoCity with them, choosing the site now. They have agreed. They’ve offered us several sites and we’re choosing one where there can be sustainable growth. 

What we’ve done in Singapore, we recycle water, you keep your air clean, you do this, you do that, higher costs, more social discipline, more engineering, sewers, recycling water, etc. and so on. It’s a slow process, but they want to learn how it can be done.  That’s important.

GV: Since you’ve been a friend of America over decades, what are two or three things that you worry about in America?

Lee: I think the next 10 years you have got to extricate yourself from these problems in the Middle East. It may take you five years to get it stabilized and then after that, you gradually have more time and energy to think about the other big problems in the world.  This is sucking up too much of your resources.

To solve this, you have got to tackle the two-state problem in Israel because as long as that’s festering away, you’re giving your enemies in the Muslim world an endless provocation from which they can get new recruits for crazy adventures to try and knock you down to blow themselves up and blow the world up. How you’re going to do that, I don’t know.

GV: What about inside America itself? Do you see any indices that worry you?

Lee:  For the next 10, 15, 20 years what you have will keep you going as the most enterprising, innovative economy with leading-edge technology, both in the civilian and military field. You have got that already. You will lose that gradually over 30, 40, 50 years unless you are able to keep on attracting talent. And that’s the final contest, because what you have done, the Chinese and other nations are going to adopt parts of it to fit their circumstances.

They are also going around looking for talented people and wanting to build up their innovative enterprising economies, and finally this is now an age where you will not have military contests between great nations because you will destroy each other. But you will have economic and technological contests between the great powers. I see that as the main arena of competition by 2040, 2050.

But long-term for America, if you ask me, say, project another 100 years, 150 years into the 22nd century, say, 2150, whether you stay on top depends upon the kind of society you will be. If the present trends continue, you’ll have a Hispanic element in your society that’s about 30, 40 percent. So, the question is do you make the Hispanics Anglo-Saxons in culture, or do they make you more Latin American in culture?

I mean, if they came in drips and drabs and you scatter them across America, then you will change their culture, but if they come in large numbers, like Miami, and they stay together, or in California, then their culture will continue and they may well affect the Anglo-Saxon culture around them. That’s the real test. 

But on the other (Chinese) side, you can be quite sure that their numbers are so great, the Chinese Hans, they can take any number of new migrants, they will be absorbed. So, long-term, I think the Chinese have figured this out. Then, if they just stay with “peaceful rise” and they just contest for first position economically and technologically, they cannot lose. If they are not number one, they will be number two. If they are not number two, they are number three. They have figured that out.

GV: China has not given up hope in terms of trying to control the content on the Internet. But is this new technology going to overwhelm efforts to control it?

Lee: Right, it is not possible (to control it). Look, you are going to have a PDA that is also running video and you can have your servers blocked. But if you’ve got a 3G phone, you use another server, and so then you are through. No, it’s not only going to happen, it’s already happening. Otherwise, how do you get all these pictures of the monks in Myanmar or Yangon or Mandalay coming out? It’s all on cell phones. 

Global Viewpoint, DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES (Oct. 11, 2007)