The Economist’s Clinical Analysis of Singapore and Lee (II)

choi

(2) Briefing: Lee Kuan Yew | Asia’s City-Statesman; The founder of Singapore, who died on March 23rd, turned the island into an economic success story while curbing democratic freedoms. Economist, May 28, 2015
www.economist.com/news/briefing/ ... nd-economic-success

Quote:

Singapore "as an island of polyglot immigrants, not much shared history. The search for a common heritage may have been why, in the 1990s, Mr Lee’s Singapore championed 'Asian values.' "

"Singapore has had regular, free and fair elections. Indeed, voting is compulsory, though Mr Lee said in 1994 that he was 'not intellectually convinced that one-man, one-vote is the best.'  He said Singapore practised it because the British had left it behind. So he designed a system where clean elections are held, but it has also been almost inconceivable for the PAP to lose power.

“As a police state, however, Singapore is such a success that you rarely see a cop.

"He succeeded in creating a nation of Mandarin speakers who are politer than they used to be and neither jaywalk nor chew gum; but he could not make them have more children. In the early 1980s he dropped his “stop at two” policy and started to encourage larger families among the better-educated. But, three decades later, Singaporean women have as low a fertility rate as any in the world.

"He succeeded in creating a nation of Mandarin speakers who are politer than they used to be and neither jaywalk nor chew gum; but he could not make them have more children. In the early 1980s he dropped his “stop at two” policy and started to encourage larger families among the better-educated. But, three decades later, Singaporean women have as low a fertility rate as any in the world.

"the control and good 'social order' there attracted admirers, too, including Chinese leaders, notably Deng Xiaoping, who was, like Mr Lee, a member of the Hakka Chinese minority. Thus a man who was both a scourge of communists at home and a critic of Western decadence and its wishy-washy idealism was revered as a geopolitical sage in China and the West alike.

choi

Note:
(a) "Few leaders have so embodied and dominated their countries: Fidel Castro, perhaps, and Kim Il Sung, in their day. But both of those signally failed to match Mr Lee’s achievement in propelling Singapore 'From Third World to First' (as the second volume [of Lee's 1999 two-volume memoirs] is called)."

signally (adv): "in a signal manner : notably"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/signally
(b) Lee "was once called by George Brown, a British foreign secretary, 'the best bloody Englishman east of Suez.'”

George Brown, Baron George-Brown
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Brown,_Baron_George-Brown
(1914 – 1985; Labour party; foreign secretary 1966 – 1968, under prime minister Harold Wilson)

(c) "He and his wife, Kwa Geok Choo, both got firsts in law. When Geok Choo first appears in 'The Singapore Story' it is as a student who, horror of horrors, beats young Harry in economics and English exams. * * * Before her death, when she lay bedridden and mute for two years, he maintained a spreadsheet listing the books he read to her: Lewis Carroll, Jane Austen, Shakespeare’s sonnets."
(i) Lee Kuan Yew
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Kuan_Yew
(1923-2015; “Lee graduated from Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University, with a double starred-first-class [qv] honours in law. In 1950, he became a barrister of the Middle Temple [qv; based in London] and practised law until 1959")

Quote:

"Lee and his wife, Kwa Geok Choo, were married [publicly, see (vi)] on Sept 30, 1950. Both Lee and Choo spoke English as their first language. Lee started learning Chinese in 1955 at age 32, before which he was illiterate in Chinese. Lee learned Japanese as an adult and he worked as a Japanese translator during the Japanese occupation of Singapore.

Earlier, Lee "came top in the School Certificate examinations in 1940, gaining the John Anderson scholarship to attend Raffles College (now National University of Singapore). Lee's future wife, KWA Geok Choo 柯玉芝 [1920-2010], was his classmate and the only girl at Raffles Institution at that time. Lee came top amongst all pupils in Singapore and Malaya, winning a scholarship to Raffles College. Kwa, who was a brilliant student herself, was the only one to beat his scores in the English and Economics subjects.

(ii) Raffles College (1928-1949, when it merged with King Edward VII College of Medicine to form National University of Singapore)
(iii) Stamford Raffles
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamford_Raffles
(1781 – 1826; best known for his founding of the city of Singapore in [Feb 6] 1819 [and transferring Singapore to the East India Company, AFTER having paid local chiefs a handsome sum of money])
(iv) Stamford History. Stamford Town Council, Lincolnshire, undated
www.stamfordtowncouncil.co.uk/stamford-history/
("Stamford grew up at a strategic point on the River Welland – where that river could be easily crossed at most times of the year. * * * In these early days the river was forded which gave the growing settlement its name – ‘Stony Ford’ ")

Stamford, Connecticut was named after this Stamford.
(v) Raffles. The Internet Surname Database, undated
www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Raffles

The English surname Raffles means son of Raffle/Raffel; the latter "was developed from the Hebrew male given name 'Refael [also spelled Rafael],' composed of the elements 'rafa,' to heal, and 'el,' God."
(vi) Lee Kuan Yew, The Last Farewell to My Wife. The Star, Oct 10 2010.
www.thestar.com.my/Lifestyle/Fea ... arewell-to-my-wife/
("In October 2003 when she had her first stroke * * * I decided to leave for England in September 1946 to read law * * * In June the next year, 1947, she did win it [Queen's Scholarship: 'read law at Girton College, Cambridge University, where she was a Queen's Scholar from Malaya'  Wikipedia] * * * We married privately in December 1947 at Stratford-upon-Avon. At Cambridge, we both put in our best efforts. She took a first in two years in Law Tripos II. I took a double first, and a starred first for the finals, but in three years [graduating at the same time]. * * * we married officially a second time that September 1950 [in Singapore] to please our parents and friends”)
(vii) Sonnet
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet
(14 lines; section 4 English (Shakespearean) sonnet)

choi

(d) "Influenced by Harold Laski, a British academic whom he had met at the LSE, he [Lee] was in the anti-colonial movement of the 1950s, and in Britain had campaigned for the Labour Party."

Harold Laski
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Laski
(1893-1950; chairman of the British Labour Party during 1945–1946, and was a professor at the London School of Economics from 1926 to 1950; "After 1930 he shifted to a Marxist emphasis on class conflict and the need for a workers' revolution, which he hinted might be violent. Laski's position angered Labour leaders who promised a nonviolent democratic transformation")

(e) "Nobody doubts that if you take me on, I will put on knuckle-dusters"

brass knucklesn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brass_knuckles
(also sometimes called * * * knuckledusters)

(f) "The regional giant, Indonesia, had been engaged in a policy of Konfrontasi—hostility to the Malaysian federation just short of open warfare—to stress that it was only an accident of colonial history that had left British-ruled Malaya and its offshoots separate from the Dutch-ruled East Indies, which became Indonesia. * * *  Abandoned by Britain in 1971 when it withdrew from ‘east of Suez,’ Singapore has always made national defence a high priority, although direct threats to its security have eased. * * * And Indonesia ended Konfrontasi in the mid-1960s."
(i) Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia–Malaysia_confrontation
("also known by its Indonesian/Malay name, Konfrontasi) was a violent conflict from 1963–66 that stemmed from Indonesia's opposition to the creation of Malaysia")
(ii) East of Suez
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_of_Suez
(section 1.2 20th century: In January 1968, a few weeks after the devaluation of the pound [on Nov 19, 1967; see next], Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his Defence Secretary, Denis Healey, announced that British troops would be withdrawn in 1971 from major military bases in South East Asia
(iii) 1967: Wilson Defends 'Pound in Your Pocket.'  BBC, Nov 19, 1967
news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/19/newsid_3208000/3208396.stm
("the pound is now worth $2.40, down from $2.80, a cut of just over 14%. The decision came after weeks of increasingly feverish speculation and a day in which the Bank of England spent £200m trying to shore up the pound from its gold and dollar reserves")

(g) "Among a number of 20th-century luminaries asked by the Wall Street Journal in 1999 to pick the most influential invention of the millennium, he alone * * * chose the air-conditioner. * * * Cherian George, a journalist and scholar, spotted in this a metaphor for Mr Lee’s style of government, and wrote one of the best books about it: 'The air-conditioned nation: Essays on the politics of comfort and control.' Mr Lee made Singapore comfortable, but was careful to control the thermostat."
(i) Cherian George, The air-conditioned nation; Essays on the politics of comfort and control 1990-2000. Landmark Books, 2000.
(ii) Cherian
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherian
("Cherian George, renowned South East Asia Journalism Researcher and University Professor based in Singapore and Hong Kong [providing no link]")
(iii) Bio. Cherian George,com, undated
www.cheriangeorge.net/biocontact.html
(is an associate professor in the journalism department of Hong Kong Baptist University; Until February 2014, he was an Associate Professor [in journalism; he failed to get tenure] at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information 黄金辉传播与信息学院, Nanyang Technological University; "PhD in Communication from Stanford University. He has a Master[']s from Columbia University’s School of Journalism and a BA in Social and Political Sciences from Cambridge University")
(iv) Cherian George, Accidental Histories, Purposeful Futures. July 21, 2009.
cherian.blogspot.com