Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀), Singapore’s founding father and minister mentor, warned the US on Thursday that it risked losing global leadership if it did not remain engaged in Asia to balance China’s military and economic might. US President Barack Obama should make sure that America stayed engaged not just in China but in the whole of East Asia and India.
In a keynote address to a US-Asean Business Council’s 25th anniversary meeting, Lee also said that “unlike US-Soviet relations during the Cold War, there is no bitter, irreconcilable ideological conflict between the US and a China that has enthusiastically embraced the market” and that competition between the two countries was inevitable, while conflict was not.
Lee met Obama in Washington on October 29.
It was probably Lee’s call on America which “sparked controversy” among Chinese internet users (引起的中国网民争议), according to Singapore’s Morning News. On an advance briefing for the press in Singapore on Friday, ahead of state chairman Hu Jintao‘s visit next week, Chinese assistant foreign minister Hu Zhengyue (胡正跃) said that Lee, as a statesman, had expressed his views on international affairs, and that it was natural that all kinds of comments appeared on newspapers. Beijing didn’t wish to get involved in the discussion.
Lee seems to be treading a fine line between authoritarian harmony (a concept of his own, neither totalitarian, nor democratic), and a need he sees for a strategic balance between America and China which would leave sufficient space for all other regional stakeholders, including ASEAN.
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