Hi friends,

My interview with Professor Tan Kong Yam is out now.

Professor Tan is Emeritus Professor of Economics at Nanyang Technological University and NTUC Endowed Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

From 1985, when Deng Xiaoping invited Dr Goh Keng Swee to advise China on its economic development strategy, Tan served as Goh's chief assistant.

Fluent in Mandarin, he sat close enough to Deng to take his own notes through the Sichuan accent, and travelled with the Singapore delegation through Beijing, Shanghai, and the coastal cities as the architecture of China's Special Economic Zones was being drawn.

He went on to serve as chief economist of the Singapore government from 1999 to 2002, as a senior economist at the World Bank's Beijing office from 2002 to 2005, and as a member of the World Bank expert group advising the State Council on China's Eleventh Five-Year Plan.

So if you want an informed understanding of China’s economic rise and Singapore’s small but pivotal role in it - this is the conversation for you

This podcast is brought to you by The S Rajaratnam School of International Studies.
You can find out more about them here.

In the meantime- if there was only one essay from Professor Tan I could recommend to you, it would be this essay on what China under Xi Jinping looks like.

If you want more grounded analysis on geopolitics, economics and security from the RSIS researchers - subscribe to their newsletter here.

Prof Tan, thank you so much for coming on. I want you to take me back to the first few days when you went with Dr Goh to China for the first time.

Tan Kong Yam 00:01:18

Thank you.

When Deng started the reform, he wanted to get someone experienced in developing a country in the market economy, as well as in industrialisation. So he invited Dr Goh, because that is someone who actually had all this experience. And they took the trip very seriously. They put our whole delegation in the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse — the villa next to the one where Nixon and Kissinger had stayed. They gave us that villa. So it was a very significant event for them, and Deng gave us a lot of faith in that sense.

When we arrived at the Great Hall, where Deng met us, Deng asked Dr Goh, “How old are you now?” Dr Goh said, “I’m 67.” Then Deng asked, “What are you doing now?” Dr Goh said, “Oh, I just retired.” Deng laughed. He said, “I’m 81, and I just started work.” So everybody was laughing at that point.

I noticed that a lot of the senior government officials — Vice Premier Gu Mu, Foreign Minister Wu Xueqian — were very respectful in front of Deng. They were taking notes, like primary school children taking notes. This gave me a very serious observation. Because the reform was so traumatic, and involved so much change, Deng’s charisma and his seniority were able to carry it through. Otherwise, there would have been a lot of resistance overall.

Their key point was that they wanted to learn from the Singapore experience: how to attract foreign investment, and how to have different rules and regulations for different parts of the country. And don’t forget one thing — the whole country was under central planning. Deng’s idea was to carve out a separate zone that would develop under different regulations. So our advice was about how to carve that out: develop a separate part of Chinese territory as a market economy, let it grow, let it expand, and then show that the experiment can actually be successful. That was the most important thing.

Later I discovered that a lot of the revolutionaries who were with Mao and Deng in the early period were very against it, because it went against their early ideology of having a revolution and building socialism. And now you are encouraging capitalists from Hong Kong to come and exploit the workers. So a lot of them cried, and a lot of them were very resistant to this policy. But to the credit of Deng, he was able to carry it through.

Later we met Zhao Ziyang in Zhongnanhai, we met Wan Li, we met Gu Mu. Those people were very keen on reform, and they were the ones who were interested in absorbing some of the lessons. It was much later that I discovered that some of the key people — Chen Yun, Yao Yilin, Wang Zhen, Li Xiannian — refused to see us, because they saw us as bringing capitalism to China. So there was a very serious tension, and it was to the credit of Deng that he was able to push against some of this resistance.

Gradually, as the fruits of success came in, more factories came into Shenzhen. People got jobs. Even though the pay was not so high, they started to have income, they sent remittances to their poor villages, and that is where more and more people were convinced that this can work.

The other point that I observed was this. The Chinese were poor, but they had a lot of nationalistic self-confidence, and cultural, civilisational confidence. For example, their Red Flag car is the official car. The quality was not good in 1985. Dr Goh was the official guest of Deng Xiaoping, so he got a Red Flag. I was the assistant carrying his bag — I got a Mercedes. Later we exchanged notes. Dr Goh asked me, “How was your car?” I said, “Mine was not so bad.” Then he told me that his car was a bit warm. But this shows the cultural confidence. They insisted that the guest of honour is given the official car, even though their technology was quite weak at that point.

And then, when we were in Zhongnanhai — when we met Zhao Ziyang — the ceiling, the carving, was very beautiful, and it reminded me of the carving in the Forbidden City. Zhongnanhai was an extension of the Forbidden City. And I found that the curtains were very thick and very heavy, symbolising the intrigue on the Chinese high political side.

During that period, we had very limited information. So I was doing some background research for Dr Goh, and I was able to find a book. It was a Japanese book, translated into English. And to my surprise, the Japanese had gone through all the newspaper clippings of all the various officials in China, and compiled a list of who had worked with whom. That was the most comprehensive information on China at that point, when no information on who was in what position was available. Dr Goh was very pleased, because that was a book that allowed us to identify some key individuals. Most of us were there for the first time.

Some of the senior people who went along were not so fluent in Chinese, so I played some role. Because I was fluent in Chinese, I was able to sit closer to Deng and take notes independently. Deng’s Sichuan accent was very strong. It was not easy to decipher what he said.

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Tan Kong Yam 00:08:55

Another observation that is quite important was Lao Zhang. Lao Zhang was a director at the Special Economic Zone Office in Beijing. The Chinese were poorly paid and very poor. They didn’t have foreign exchange at that point, so Lao Zhang was smoking local, poor-quality cigarettes. As I got to know him, I bought the foreign cigarettes — at that time it was called 555. High-quality foreign cigarettes that needed US dollars. So I passed them to him, and he was so grateful, because it was the first time he had smoked expensive foreign cigarettes. And he was able to tell me some of the detailed information about the policymakers, and so that helped us to understand, and to give better advice overall.

Don’t forget, at that point everybody was wearing blue and green, and they read the newspapers posted along the road. Nobody had money to buy their own newspaper. It was a very different China.

Keith 00:10:06

What was Dr Goh’s assessment then, when he looked at this country, this nation that was just beginning its reconstruction journey?

Tan Kong Yam 00:10:16

I think Dr Goh had studied history very well. The fact that he accepted this so early on, when China was very weak, was an indication that he understood the long historical path and the decline over that period. And he must have thought long and hard that once Deng decided to drop the iron rice bowl, central planning, and Maoist ideology, the potential of the Chinese people — its hardworking civilisation, its emphasis on education — would give it a very strong possibility of being able to master science, technology, and industrial upgrading. The potential is there. So I think he judged correctly. The country has enormous potential to utilise its labour and its emphasis on education, and eventually to build up the infrastructure.

The key thing is to open up to attract investment, technology, and education, and to be able to get the people to work hard and upgrade. And he sensed that the ingredients for dynamic economic growth exist. He was willing to accept the job. At that time, they were very poor. We didn’t ask for any payment, except the local hospitality. But he saw it as a challenge, and also as a chance to see how a country that had gone down for 100 years now restructures its incentive system and its economic policy.

Nobody — including Dr Goh, and including Deng himself — expected that the take-off would be so fast, and at such high speed, for such a long period of time.

Keith 00:12:31

When we think about Chinese political leaders today, a lot of us think of technocrats: people who are really smart, people with engineering or economics backgrounds. And there is this kind of assumption that this is a scholarly class that was there from the start. But China was coming out of a period of revolution, where a lot of the political leaders back then were of a different build. Can you speak a little more about some of the leaders that you encountered, be it in Shanghai or Guangzhou? What were they like, and what was the policy agenda, or the way they carried themselves as officials?

Tan Kong Yam 00:13:05

After we met Deng and Wan Li in Beijing, Deng sent us to Shanghai. Shanghai, as you are aware, was the industrial centre at that point. In a way, communism crushed the industrialist spirit. Some of them left, but some of them stayed on. And the one that I remember very vividly was Rong Yiren. Rong Yiren was a major, well-known capitalist, a very successful industrialist before the revolution took over China. He was rehabilitated by Deng, and he hosted dinner for us. Around the table were all these [bushy-bearded], very powerful older industrialists, who were the great businessmen in Shanghai before the revolution took over. They were the big guys when Li Ka-shing was a nobody.

When the dessert came, it was half-rotten bananas. They all scrambled to get the half-rotten banana. I was shocked. It shows that the Maoist revolution, and the discrimination against major industrialists, had broken their spirit, and they became no longer forceful individuals. Deng, to his credit, was able to rehabilitate some of these people, and eventually some of them — not they themselves, but their children and grandchildren — became the key people who eventually drive China’s development today. They themselves missed out.

And I have a good sense of this, because when I recall the trip in Shanghai — I look like a local, and I speak the regular Mandarin — after Rong Yiren hosted the dinner, I was able to run away on my own, going around the whole Shanghai old city. It was a very drab city. Some of the people and houses were so poor that you could look into the place and see old people sleeping on the bed.

But one thing that was very, very significant to me was this. I met some Anhui labourers. They were working on a road at night. And the most important incident I observed in Shanghai was a boy. I walked around and I saw a boy studying English under the street light. The house was cramped, the lighting was poor, and I was impressed, because I went to talk to him. He was studying English. That to me was very significant, because this shows that there is an underlying urge to improve, in emphasising education, in absorbing Western technology and language.

I remember at that point, I reflected back. As an economist: how do you create dynamic growth? Firstly, you need a top leader who is determined to push the nation forward. And that was effectively what I saw when we met Deng in Beijing. Then you need the ingredients for dynamic economic growth: hardworking people who build infrastructure, like those Anhui labourers building the road at night. And then you need people who emphasise education, absorbing foreign technology, and learning English as a major ingredient in dynamic economic growth.

So at that point, it suddenly struck me, as an economist, that some of the necessary ingredients were there. It is just like trying to make a cake. You’ve got flour, you’ve got eggs, you’ve got sugar. You just need it to be built up properly. And the most important thing was incentive. Mao destroyed incentive, because he had the iron rice bowl.

During that period, I think a lot of early foreign visitors laughed, because when they went to China and went to a shop and asked the salesgirl to bring down the souvenirs or other things, the salesgirl would say — they didn’t want to bother to do all this, because they had an iron rice bowl. There was a joke that the only two words in Chinese that early Westerners who went to China learned was [méiyǒu — “we don’t have it”]. What was needed was to effectively incentivise people to work hard. And that was, in some way, a turning point.

And I think we from Singapore gave him some confidence. Because, as you might be aware, Deng visited Singapore before he started the reform. In November 1978, Deng’s reform publication from the Third Plenum came out. Three months before that, he visited Singapore, and he was brought around by the then minister. And Deng went to visit Jurong. He asked, “What is Singapore’s oil refinery capacity?” When he heard it, he was shocked. It was three times larger than China’s.

Then he asked to visit some of the ordinary people’s houses. They brought him to a three-room HDB flat. He was surprised that the place was quite big compared with the homes of senior Chinese government officials then. And then he went to the kitchen. He was curious. He saw a refrigerator. He said, “Can I open it?” They said, “Okay, open.” They found vegetables, they found meat, they found Coca-Cola, and they found fruit. He was surprised.

So before he left, he met Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Keng Swee in the Cabinet room, and he asked, “How do you manage to achieve this?” Lee Kuan Yew said, “It’s very simple. We don’t have an iron rice bowl. You work more, you get more. You work less, you get less. You don’t work — that is your problem.” That was an inspiration to him.

Years later, when I was teaching some students in China, they told me that that trip had such a major impact on Deng Xiaoping that he redrafted the Third Plenum document that promulgated Deng’s reform in November 1978. He redrafted a few sections of it after the trip to Singapore. And that document — November 1978 — laid the foundations for China’s reform. So in that sense, Singapore’s experience was relevant and impactful.

Keith 00:20:36

As a young Singaporean, you don’t really appreciate how some of these path dependencies played out. Just listening to you recount that iconic visit in 1978, it inspires a lot of confidence — that even as a small country, we can make big differences. What kind of advice did he give to the Chinese leaders? He saw the huge potential, he saw that there were the ingredients, as you’ve put it. But tactically, what did he suggest to them that a big country could do that a small country could never endeavour?

Tan Kong Yam 00:21:08

After the first trip, we submitted internal reports. Subsequently, there was advice and discussion, including notes to Gu Mu, and everything.

I think the key thing is this. The fact that Singapore, with a group of relatively less educated migrants, was able to develop the place, industrialise, and gradually upgrade — and some of these were ethnic Chinese migrants from poor provinces — gave them some confidence and inspiration.

I remember Gu Mu visited Singapore later. He was the main person in charge of the Special Economic Zones. Dr Goh and I went with him. He went around Kreta Ayer. Kreta Ayer was a very poor constituency earlier. So in some way, I suspect it came to his mind that these poor Chinese migrants can make it. China, with a lot more resources, a bigger market, and more well-educated people — or intellectuals who could become potentially more educated — should be able to do quite well too, as long as their incentive system is right.

So they gradually discovered that the Maoist ideology — rigid communism, rigid central planning, without flexibility for the market or the private sector — was like a strong rope that tied the hands and legs of this potential basketball player. And once they released that rope, the basketball player started to play and improve. But nobody expected that he would turn out to be Yao Ming.

Keith 00:23:16

Talk to me a little more about the Special Economic Zones — the formation and development of them. They were seen as very crucial in the opening of China’s market reforms. What role did we play in it?

Tan Kong Yam 00:23:28

I think Deng was a smart person. He realised that the whole of China was under central planning and he couldn’t change the structure. So he needed to carve out a small area that could do the experiment. So he identified these four areas. Shenzhen, basically attracting Hong Kong capital. Zhuhai, attracting Macau capital. Xiamen, attracting Taiwan capital. And the Shantou area, attracting overseas Chinese — the qiao — who were in Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore.

That, I think, was the right strategy. Because when we were in China, we discovered that the roads were bad, the regulations were weak, the infrastructure was poor, and the electricity supply was unreliable. There was no joint venture regulation. No US, European, Japanese, or Korean companies wanted to invest. So if you look at the FDI inflow into China from 1979 up to almost 1991 or 1992, the bulk of investment was very low, and it was all from overseas Chinese.

Overseas Chinese were less sensitive to political risks, less worried about weak regulations and everything. And a lot of them were running small businesses, labour-intensive factories. So they relocated to China. And that first maybe eight to ten years allowed China to gain capital, to gain FDI, to have factory jobs. And all this started to have some impact on the economy. And then, later, they entered the WTO. And that’s where the Western — US, European, Japanese — capital and money started to come in.

So the overseas Chinese played a very, very important role in the early days, in giving it the initial push. This is like China. China is a car that has a flat battery. It cannot move. The overseas Chinese give it the first push. Then the thing starts rolling. And that came later.

So Deng was smart in identifying this first push, and that’s the reason why, if you look carefully, he drew a circle in Shenzhen. Initially, it’s quite small. Then he gained more confidence, more capital coming, and he expanded the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone bigger and bigger.

And then, as the Special Economic Zone prospered and developed — initially, if you went to China during these early days, the officials in Shanghai looked down on all this. But over time, as Shenzhen started to develop, more investment came in, and they became more prosperous, the Shanghai officials had to eat humble pie and go down to Shenzhen to learn from them. And that’s where it spread to become Pudong. After Shenzhen, the Special Economic Zone was successful, they opened up 14 coastal cities, and then the whole coastal region became like a special economic zone. And then eventually the growth spread inland, to central and western China. And that’s how the Chinese economy took off in the last 40 years.

Keith 00:27:24

I would like to talk a little about Fuzhou, which is a relatively important part of China’s political history. And Singapore’s role, through Dr Goh, was quite crucial in helping Fuzhou develop. Help me understand a bit of what actually happened behind the scenes.

Tan Kong Yam 00:27:43

Taiwan and China issues were very tense during that period. You remember, even in the early period, when Lee Teng-hui went to visit the US, there was a lot of tension between Taiwan and Fujian. And Fuzhou was on the front line, because Fuzhou was across the Taiwan Strait. And nobody wanted to invest in Fuzhou, because the political risk was too high.

So there was a young man, mid-40s, who was the mayor of Fuzhou. He had a lot of problems getting investment and improving his position in the party, because a mayor’s job in China is to develop the city, and that means he has to attract investment, create jobs, and generate tax revenue.

When Dr Goh visited Fuzhou, this young man came all the way to the hotel to brief Dr Goh. He was very humble. And eventually Dr Goh and some officials in Singapore were able to identify Liem Sioe Liong, Mochtar Riady, and Sam Goi, who were willing to invest in Fuzhou. Why? Because it was their hometown. Even though the risk was very high, these people were willing to invest in Fuzhou. And Fuzhou started to have some investment, and eventually the mayor got some credit for the development.

So years and years later, in 2012, Xi Jinping was Vice-President and on his way to becoming one of the senior leaders. He visited Singapore. He had a long discussion with Lee Kuan Yew on development strategy, and he was supposed to leave for South Africa on an official visit the next morning. But he insisted, late at night, on visiting and paying his respects to Liem Sioe Liong. Liem Sioe Liong was the man who helped to lead the investment in Fuzhou.

But a lot of the officials discouraged him from doing that, because it was the middle of the night, and the next morning he had to go to South Africa on a long trip. And Liem Sioe Liong was really a bit senile. He couldn’t recognise people at that age. He was very weak and senile. He couldn’t recognise people. But Xi Jinping insisted on paying his respects, on thanking him. So I think he is a bit of a traditional person, who remembers old friends.

Keith 00:30:40

Just given your understanding of the small role that we played in China’s economic history — how does one try to understand Xi Jinping’s view of the world?

Tan Kong Yam 00:30:50

I think, to understand China today, and especially Xi Jinping, you need to look at the background of the Politburo Standing Committee. At the moment, the top seven of them in the Politburo Standing Committee — the most important people in China today, the ones who run the country — you notice that five of them were born in the 1950s, and their formative period was the Cultural Revolution. Xi Jinping, Zhao Leji, Cai Qi, Wang Huning, and Li Xi.

Xi Jinping tells people internally that he suffered a lot during the Cultural Revolution, but he was proud of the fact that he survived. And one of the things that he felt very proud of was 十里山路不换肩 — he told people that means: I’m able to carry a weight of 50 kilos and walk for ten miles in terms of distance, and never need to shift it to another shoulder. A kind of ability to withstand hardship.

And this explains the policy. You notice Chinese policy: delay gratification. They focus on production. They focus on building up industrial capacity. They do not want to spend too much resources on high consumption. They always worry about problems, prepare for contingencies, emphasise food security, energy security, oil storage, uncertainty — a little bit like the early generation of leaders in Singapore, like Lee Kuan Yew and Dr Goh.

So this, in a way, is a generation that has a certain experience, and it is reflected in some of the existing policy. And this explains also why the consumption-focused policy is there, but not as strong as the production-focused policy on expanding EVs, semiconductors, and others. They explicitly rejected giving vouchers to the people to stimulate the economy.

Let me venture to predict the future. The present Politburo Standing Committee people, including Xi Jinping, were born in the 50s. In another ten to fifteen years, the new leaders will be people who were born in the 60s and 70s. Those who were born in the 60s and 70s — as they gradually take over, their formative period is not the harsh Cultural Revolution period, but a gradual period where China started to grow to become a stronger economy. And their worldview, I would predict, will be different.

The harsher authoritarianism, in the next ten or fifteen years, will become a softer authoritarianism. It will still be authoritarianism, but the Chinese leaders will become softer in terms of social policy, in terms of support for consumption and people’s welfare. They will be softer, and they will be more confident on external relations, because they will have grown up in a period when China was stronger rather than weak, and they will not remember the century of humiliation too much. They will be less paranoid about external threats, more relaxed, and more confident about China’s relative power. And I think there will be policy that focuses more on consumer welfare, subsidy, and support for consumption, rather than purely driving resources towards production.

Let’s see whether I turn out to be correct or not.

Keith 00:35:17

As you look to the future, I think it might be interesting to revisit a moment in history. In 1989, the Tiananmen incident happened. And that was a moment of reckoning, I think, for a lot of people — Chinese political elites, but even at the grassroots level, Chinese citizens. One of the big questions that was being grappled with then was: what is the best system going forward? Similar to what you’ve pointed out — the soft authoritarianism versus hard authoritarianism in the coming years. What should that new system be? In the past, it was a question of capitalism versus communism. That was one of the central debates in 1989. What were the kind of conclusions they took away after that moment of soul-searching in 1989?

Tan Kong Yam 00:36:03

Yes, I think that was a critical turning point. 1989 was a very significant shock to the system, because Deng’s reform was moving along, but there was inflation, there were all kinds of unhappiness. And so this anger and unhappiness — particularly inflation, and some of the increasing instances of corruption — created anger among the population, and of course the student movement was a combination of that.

So eventually we all know that Deng stood on a harsher policy measure, as opposed to Zhao Ziyang, who preferred a more conciliatory position towards the students. Deng prevailed, because he controlled the military, and that’s why there was the suppression then.

Reform went backwards. Zhou Xiaochuan told me that the reformists like him were very dejected, because the world thought that China had closed the window again. Foreign investment pulled out. There was a lot of thinking that maybe China would go backwards. And from 1989 to 1991, that was the case. Chinese policy became less reformist.

Interestingly, Singapore was one of the few countries that continued to engage China and never isolated China during that critical period, when the West condemned China and a lot of investment pulled out.

And then, in 1991, two years after Tiananmen, when China was still being condemned, Deng sent his favourite daughter, Deng Rong, to Singapore. The idea was to learn from Singapore how the CPF institution was able to create a pool of savings to help Singaporeans buy public housing.

So I told her this story, which is a genuine story mentioned by Lee Kuan Yew. One day Lee Kuan Yew was driving in a car along a street. He saw people burning tyres, throwing stones, and everything, because the unemployment rate was 25%, and there were a lot of angry people. Then he suddenly saw someone on the fourth floor of an apartment rushing down to take up his battered old motorcycle and bring it up. He suddenly had an inspiration.

He said: this guy owns a small property. A small, battered old motorcycle. He was afraid of the riot, because the riot might destroy his property. Then he said: suppose I give every Singaporean a small HDB flat. That means everybody has a property. Everybody is worried about the riot, because the riot will destroy his property. If everybody is afraid of the riot, there will be no riot, and there will be stability, and then foreign investment will come, wages will go up, and then I use the wages to force them to do some saving, and use the money to build the HDB flat, and everybody has a stake in the stability of the system.

And that’s how Dr Goh and Lee Kuan Yew came up with this idea of the CPF for saving, channelled to the HDB to build the apartments and then sell them to them.

So I told this story to Deng’s daughter, and I said: you go back and tell your father. There is no point quarrelling about capitalism, socialism. The reason why Singapore is stable and able to develop was that we convert everybody from a proletariat to an asset-owning class, and all of them have a stake in the stability of the country. There is no point quarrelling about socialism, capitalism, all kinds of ideology. The most important thing is to try to develop the country and ensure that every individual and household has an asset, which is a small apartment.

She took down the notes. I don’t know how much that might have affected things. But in 1992, in the Nanxun, Deng went down south. Eventually, his slogan was: don’t talk about capitalism and socialism — develop the economy. And that was a turning point after the Tiananmen riot. And China eventually moved on beyond the 1989 tragedy, and the development became unstoppable.

Whether our Singapore experience of Lee Kuan Yew and the HDB made any difference, I don’t know, because I don’t know what she told her father. But at the end of the day, that saved China. Because had the 1989 Tiananmen reversed China’s reform, it would have gone backwards. Because 1992 gave the reform a further push, the momentum of reform was unstoppable. And even after he died in 1997, the train had left the station. And that’s why we have China today.

Keith 00:42:14

Before we even get to China today: in 1991, you were in a room with Lee Kuan Yew. He made this famous prediction that China was going to be a peer competitor to the US. And at that point, China’s GDP was only $384 billion, which was about 6.2% of the US GDP of close to $6 trillion. As a matter of percentage, China’s economy was still very small.

When LKY was making that statement, was it obvious to someone like you, who was there at the start? Or did you feel that it was a bit of a stretch?

Tan Kong Yam 00:42:50

In 1995 — 30 years ago — the Pakistan Prime Minister, then Nawaz Sharif, invited Lee Kuan Yew to advise Pakistan on some development strategy. So I was one of the small group of people who went with him. He gave a public speech and, not surprisingly, there were a lot of questions about China and Deng’s reform.

But later, in maybe a five-person discussion — an internal, closed-door prediction — he said that one day China would be a serious competitor to the US, and that the US–China dynamic, which was very cordial, would become more conflictual, with greater tension. We were all surprised. Don’t forget, this is 1995, when China was making shoes, textiles, and cotton underwear. They couldn’t even make silk underwear at that point. And here is this man predicting — when the relationship was very cordial — that the two countries would be in serious tension.

So we asked him why. He gave two reasons.

He said, firstly, China is a big country with a lot of talent. When the revolution came, and over time, a lot of the talent did not leave. The historically capable people in North China and Central China did not migrate to the US or Southeast Asia. So these talents and capable people, he predicted, would eventually absorb Western technology, improve their engineering skills, and borrow technical knowledge. And this group of smart people is big in China in volume, and over time they will become more capable. The next generation will do a master’s or PhD in engineering or technical subjects, sometimes overseas, sometimes domestically. And eventually this group of capable people, after absorbing foreign knowledge and technology, would be able to produce better and better high-end products. Not just shoes and textiles: they will move, like Japan, to cars and others, and eventually go to very high-end technical expertise and scientific progress. And that would start to threaten the US.

It’s like climbing a ladder. They have many more capable people who can climb up the ladder, and as they climb further and further up the ladder, they will start to hit on the US and European talent, and they will compete with them, and at that point the US will get worried. So in his own way, he predicted that somebody like Liang Wenfeng of DeepSeek would appear in China.

The second reason he gave was this. He said: market. Why is the US such a major competitive force? Because it’s a continental economy. That’s why the US was able to nurture Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors. He said China is poor, but eventually the income will gradually rise. There will be more domestic demand. The market will become bigger and bigger. So, like a big, big pond, it will start to nurture big fish.

And he predicted that the domestic market in China will become bigger and bigger as income increases. And because a big continental economy and a big market naturally have internal competition — you have Ford, Chrysler, and they will compete against each other — he said there will be big companies in China domestically that will compete ferociously against each other in new products. And this Darwinian process of competition will result in tiger eating tiger. And some of the tigers will become very ferocious tigers, who eat up the others and strengthen themselves. And eventually they will come out to the international market. And this ferocious tiger, after surviving the Darwinian competition within the domestic Chinese economy, will be very ferocious. And they will start taking over markets globally.

In summary, he was talking about BYD.

By giving these two examples and projecting into the future, he actually foresaw the tension 30 years later. He had a remarkable insight into this. Even though he is no longer around today, what he predicted is happening now. So now that I recall what he has done, it’s quite an impressive assessment. It shows his deep insight and his ability to predict based on a certain assessment of the trend.

Keith 00:48:57

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I spoke to Professor Kishore Mahbubani, and one of the things that he consistently shares is that the founding generation of leaders were extremely great statesmen — that they were able to understand geopolitics at the very fundamental level. What do you think that generation of Singaporean leaders, be it Dr Goh or Mr Lee, understood about China that was fundamentally different, and right, where the Western world did not understand?

Tan Kong Yam 00:49:44

I think they got a deeper understanding of the history. If you look back at Chinese history, one of the things that they fear most was chaos — luan. Because it’s a big country, and there have been periods of chaos and instability. And so Chinese leaders have internalised this understanding of their history, and discovered that the most important thing is peace and stability, rather than falling into a state of chaos and an inability to develop.

So they focus — you notice — their priority is stability and development. They are not so interested in all this ideology of liberalism, individualism, and others. Their focus is to make sure that the country is stable and that they have resources to develop the place. History has taught them that stability under an authoritarian system actually is preferable to chaotic checks and balances, individualism, or liberalism as a form of political and economic organisation.

So there is this consensus, and I think Mr Lee and Dr Goh understood that history and that mindset. They felt that an authoritarian, unifying communist party that focuses on development — rather than a multi-party democratic checking system, or liberalism — that China could better develop the economy through a more centralised authoritarian party, as long as the party doesn’t strangle some of the private sector dynamism, as well as focusing on allowing individuals to flourish.

So their system is that everybody should recognise that the party and the central government is supreme. The private sector can develop and flourish, with big incentives, but nobody should think themselves bigger than the party and the emperor, and take over the emperor.

And that was the lesson that Jack Ma learned. This is a lesson that all the business people have learned. I have a lot of students who are businessmen and who did very well. And I think that is a clear understanding: you do your development, you contribute to jobs, you contribute to foreign exchange, you contribute to export, but you should never think that you can take over the leadership of the country or the party.

So at the moment, you can see that the country flourished because of the early generation of very poor people. I have 1,500 students who are senior government officials at different levels, and they are the ones running the country, doing all the planning. But I have another 5,000 former EMBA students from the private sector. And quite a few of them are multimillionaires in Shenzhen. They are usually in their 40s and early 50s. They told me that when they were little kids, they walked to school. Some of them had only one meal a day. One of them told me he took off his shoes when he walked to school, and put them on only when he arrived at the school, so that the shoes could last longer.

These are the people that built China. And they are still around today, in their 40s and 50s. This is the reason why I think China is still quite production-oriented. These are the people who drive China.

In 20 years’ time, as the Xi Jinping generation passes from the scene, and some of these students of mine pass from the scene, their children, or younger people, might create a China that — as I said — is softer in its authoritarianism, a bit more relaxed, a bit more focused on consumption and private welfare. A softer China might emerge. The Communist Party will still be there, but the policy would be less harsh, and China would be softer, and probably less insecure.

Keith 00:55:19

From your sharing just now, the common thread seems to be that China wants to go its own way. The way it sees itself vis-à-vis the West is that you can absorb technology, you can learn, you can even leverage access to Western capital to build up your technology and your own economy, but you will choose to go your own way and embark on your own cultural, civilisational renaissance. And the Singaporean leaders understood that at a very core level — that you have to learn how to manage China rather than change China.

The follow-on question I had was more of policy. How did that insight translate into the way the Singapore government, during your time or even now, manages its relationship with China?

Tan Kong Yam 00:56:15

I would say that globally, Modi is in some way following the same way: we have a great civilisation in India, we will carve out our own path. And that is a message that China’s development has gradually sent to some of the Global South.

I think in dealing with China, the Singapore leaders have some special insight, partly because they studied Chinese history, and partly because they had a closer network with the Chinese leaders. So we have some advantage in terms of understanding their mindset, especially in the early days, where they needed us to understand the West.

So that is the way things have worked out. But further down the road, we should have no illusion about the new dynamics. I have 1,500 students who studied under me in the mayor programme. But you can see the dynamic changing. In the early days, Singapore was a model. They came and studied how the airport is managed, how the industrial estate is managed. But now their airports are bigger, their technology is stronger. And once in a while, my students will tell me, “You know, teacher, we learned a lot from Singapore. But now I’m a mayor of a third-tier city — I’m running 5.5 million people.” He’s hinting that his city is bigger than the whole of Singapore.

So I have become a lot more humble when I deal with the Chinese officials. And I think ASEAN and Singapore eventually are learning that. But we have a certain unique insight that is probably still very useful.

In fact, there is something that I have noticed over the last few years. There’s a danger that China becomes overly confident. They become a bit cocky, because they are so successful. “Hey, our EVs are taking over the whole world.” Some of my students are multimillionaires. They have tech companies that are very big in Shenzhen. And then some of them are pharmaceutical companies that are very strong globally. There is a danger that China overshoots, becomes too confident, too cocky, and it might alienate a lot of other Asian countries and eventually create some tensions, which I think they need to be careful about. There’s a danger of overshooting.

So in some way, Singapore could play a role by advising them to be more moderate, so that they do not overestimate themselves. Don’t forget that the US is still very strong. The military is very strong, the US dollar is still very strong, the technology is still very high-end. And in terms of major innovation, despite what Trump has done, the US is still able to capture a large part of the global talent.

And I think there is a danger that China overshoots because of their recent success. You can begin to see that sometimes their companies have insufficient focus on the interests of the ASEAN countries. For example, a lot of the textile and garment over-expansion and export has created a lot of disruption in Indonesia, causing factories to close down, and unemployment. And that is something that I think the government should probably pay some attention to — to make sure that their dumping does not actually create hardship for some of the poorer people within ASEAN. So these are some of the things that they might need to be more conscious of.

Keith 01:01:02

There’s this idea of involution, right? Where, to a certain extent, the way you escape involution within China is to go out into the global markets, especially Southeast Asia, for example, where you have a greater consumer preference for value and lower costs. One of the unintended effects is that you create a lot of local negative externalities, and a lot of them lose their jobs, like what you’ve pointed out. In navigating that reality, where does Singapore fit in? Do we face the same challenges, or the same threats, that some of our Southeast Asian neighbours do, even though we’re quite different in our economic development stage?

Tan Kong Yam 01:01:39

[Recording gap — answer begins mid-sentence] … having a negative effect on some of the local textile and garment factories. Overall, at the moment, China and the US, China and ASEAN, are still relatively more complementary.

I remember in the early days, when China was industrialising, in the 90s and 2000s, there was very, very serious pressure on ASEAN, because ASEAN was starting to develop shoes, textiles, and garment factories in Indonesia and Malaysia, and consumer electronics and others in Thailand. And then China came up with all these labour-intensive exports that are very competitive and cost-effective, and took over some of the market share in the US.

So that was a period where you would visit Indonesia, visit Malaysia, visit Thailand, and there’s a fear of China, because everybody is climbing up the ladder of industrialisation. The US and Japan are on top. ASEAN is at the early, middle level: shoes, garments, consumer electronics, and all this. And China is moving up very rapidly in the same type of product. So when you climb up the ladder, the ASEAN countries individually are not so big, so they take over some of the things that Japan and Korea didn’t want to do. But China is such a big panda bear that when it came into climbing the ladder, it squeezed out the others.

And for a while, the ASEAN countries — I look at Indonesian data — actually de-industrialised. They didn’t do as much manufacturing. They moved into coffee, palm oil, and commodities.

So fortunately, now China is increasingly going to the middle and upper level. So ASEAN and China now are much more complementary, even though there’s some competitiveness. Chinese factories relocate here, and they increasingly see ASEAN as a major market.

And this is the reason why there is something that is very significant if we look at the Chinese deployment of their capital. In the past, they generated a lot of US dollars, and they put them in US Treasury bills and bonds. Now they are moving into investing in fixed assets in ASEAN. Instead of buying US Treasury bills and bonds, they invest in ports in Indonesia. They build highways in Malaysia. They put money into infrastructure in Thailand. And so they spread out their risks.

And their hope is that they help ASEAN to improve their infrastructure. You get better roads in Indonesia, better ports in Indonesia. Then some of the factories relocate here. And over time, Indonesia will develop. There will be more middle class, lower-upper middle class coming up. And they can become a market. And they hope that as the US and Europe get protectionist, the ASEAN market, which is 600 to 700 million, will become a potential source of demand. Their exports will be able to be sustained, and then their capital in some way will be less susceptible to potential tension with the US.

And so they see this whole zone as integrated in some way, and ASEAN will provide an important locomotive effect for China, and China will also provide a way where their industry can help ASEAN to develop. And so this is a period where I think they will increasingly see ASEAN as a complementary zone of development. And of course different ASEAN countries take different positions, but the overall likely complementary mentality is likely to increasingly improve overall.

So I foresee a situation where the negative side of the ASEAN–China relationship would continue to be there, but the dynamic is toward greater complementarity and co-development in some way. As long as the Chinese government makes sure that some of their — you see, the Chinese private sector are different from the government. Sometimes they do all kinds of funny things that could undermine ASEAN.

Keith 01:07:07

So as long as the Chinese government is able to kind of regulate all of that.

Tan Kong Yam 01:07:10

Yes. If they go too far, I think the Chinese government will probably come in, because it has foreign policy consequences.

Keith 01:07:18

There’s so much to talk about, but I want to wrap up with this last question for this conversation. The last question I have for you is that if you look at China and Southeast Asia, there seems to be, as you’ve pointed out, a convergence, or a push towards greater complementarity and integration. Where does Singapore fit in in this new model? In the past, we have primarily engaged China at an economic level, through being a capital allocator, as a foreign direct investor. Will that role change? How will that role evolve as we go forward?

Tan Kong Yam 01:07:51

I was chief economist before. We have gone through quite some metamorphosis and transformed ourselves, and Singapore is quite a flexible place.

I would foresee that in the next ten or fifteen years — as long as US–China tension doesn’t explode, that’s an important precondition; as long as US–China tension remains contained and doesn’t explode into a serious conflict — then we are in good business.

And that’s the reason why I focus so much of my attention on the recent visit of Trump to Beijing. The recent Trump–Xi summit is an indication that they will actually continue to compete, but they will make sure that it doesn’t explode out of bounds. One way of saying it is that the two big countries will always compete. But as long as they compete without being explosive — like a kettle, the water in a kettle; as long as the kettle doesn’t explode — the relationship will always have tensions and competition, but they do not go out of bounds. Then I think ASEAN is in good business, and Singapore is in good business.

Because Singapore has carved out a niche as a regional hub for ASEAN. You see a lot of logistics go through here: airport, seaport, transport, financing of capital, One Belt One Road projects, clean energy development. And even in legal disputes, we are a trusted centre. And of course, the financial logistics, and project financing. And Singapore played its important role.

Through this role, we help Indonesia to create jobs. We help Malaysia to improve its infrastructure. We help Thailand to develop. They are our hinterland. If our hinterland is prosperous, Indonesian young people get jobs. They are not likely to become radicalised. If Thailand and Malaysia are more stable, they will become better neighbours. And we play this role: it helps us, it helps them.

As I said, the most important thing is that US–China tension doesn’t create a point where ASEAN is forced to make a hard choice and it becomes very conflictual. As long as that overarching framework has competition but doesn’t explode into an uncontrollable situation — then I think we would be able, under this broader, less conflictual geopolitical environment, to carve a niche that helps our neighbours, and our neighbours help us, and then link with China here, and then a lot of US investment also comes in. And that will allow us to play a very important role that is mutually beneficial, and we can continue to prosper, because we have built up such a reputation in finance, in clean energy financing, in project financing, in confidence, in legal disputes, and others.

So in some way, that would be a role that Singapore continues to play, but at a higher level. And China, the US, and ASEAN will see Singapore playing this role as very constructive. And if all these three groups — China, the US, and the rest of ASEAN — see Singapore playing a constructive role, our economic and geopolitical survival is well.

Keith 01:12:23

With that, Prof Tan, thank you so much for coming on.

Tan Kong Yam 01:12:25

Thank you so much for your excellent questions.

Keith 01:12:30

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In collaboration with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, brings together the region’s leading experts on strategic affairs.

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Together, we will bring four interviews on the structural forces at play, and what they mean for Singapore’s long-term future.

Who is in the series

Our featured guests are people with deep institutional experience. Many were in the room when the decisions that shaped this region were taken. They advise governments and boards in private, and they are worth listening to in public.

They are here to help you understand Singapore’s history better, so that you have a clearer sense of where it is going.

The conversations

Every episode comes with the full video, the audio, and a complete transcript.

Episode 01 · Professor Tan Kong Yam on The Evolution of Singapore’s Unique Relationship with China

Prof Tan Kong Yam recounts what he saw from inside the room as Dr Goh Keng Swee’s chief assistant when Deng Xiaoping brought him in to advise on China’s reform in 1985. In this episode - Prof Tan explains the unique relationship Singapore held with China and how he think governance in China will evolve.

Watch · Read the transcript ·

About the partnership

The National Security Studies Programme at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies is 10 years old this year. It was launched in April 2016 to study key episodes in Singapore’s national security history and draw out what they mean for today.

This series marks the 10th anniversary ; as an effort to generate greater awareness in the public about the geopolitical, economic and technological developments affecting Singapore.

The Front Row Podcast is a long-form video podcast hosted by Keith Yap, with senior policymakers, academics, and business leaders on geopolitics, economics, governance, and technology.

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I’m Keith, a podcaster and aspiring nerd.

I run The Front Row Podcast -an interview show featuring the leading thinkers in Singapore, Southeast Asia and the wide world beyond.

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• Kishore Mahbubani, Singaporean Diplomat

• Ong Ye Kung, Singapore’s Minister For Health

• Wang Gungwu, Chairman of the East Asian Institute and NUS University Professor

• George Yeo, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs for Singapore

• Taimur Baig, Chief Economist of DBS

• Chua Beng Huat, Professor Emeritus in NUS Department of Sociology

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James Liang is the co-founder and executive chairman of Trip.com Group, the online travel company he helped launch in 1999 as Ctrip and built into one of the world's largest travel platforms, listed on Nasdaq and operating in more than forty countries.

A gifted student who entered Fudan University at fifteen before taking a master's in computer science at the Georgia Institute of Technology, he served as Trip.com's chief executive from 2000 to 2006, and then made an unusual move: he stepped back at the height of the company's success to pursue a PhD in economics at Stanford.

This move made him one of Asia’s most prominent voices on demography and innovation. Now a research professor of economics at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management and a co-founder of the Yuwa Population Research Institute, Liang has published in journals including Nature and The Quarterly Journal of Economics, and has written widely on population, education, and entrepreneurship. His books include The Demographics of Innovation and, most recently, Innovationism: A New Philosophy for the Age of AI.

This conversation matters because Liang makes the case that population and youth are the true drivers of the innovation race — that ageing societies risk surrendering their dynamism and, ultimately, their control over AI.

Keith 00:00:53

Today I have the incredible privilege and pleasure of speaking with one of Asia’s finest entrepreneurs.

He founded Trip.com and is its current chairman. He has written a fascinating new book called Innovationism: A New Philosophy for the Age of AI, in which he explores what it takes for countries to raise their fertility rates and unlock the next engine of economic growth. With that, please welcome Professor James Liang.

James Liang 00:01:25

Thank you for the kind introduction. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Keith 00:01:29

James, I want to start in the 1990s, when you were thinking about starting Trip.com. What were those early conversations like when you were toying with the idea of starting your own company?

James Liang 00:01:43

That was an exciting time, because the internet was really changing everything — first in the US, and then it began to have a huge impact on the Chinese economy. But the Chinese economy was quite different from the US, because it was still developing very fast and lacked some of the infrastructure, like payment and logistics. We took that into consideration when we chose to build an online travel business, because travel was the one e-commerce subsector most likely to work around infrastructure problems such as payment and logistics bottlenecks.

Keith 00:02:21

Why is that? It isn’t obvious to me why going into travel lets you overcome those bottlenecks. What’s the insight there?

James Liang 00:02:31

Traditionally, if you buy something over the internet, you need logistics — delivery — and you need online payment, like a credit card. If you already have credit card infrastructure, it’s very easy to put that online. That’s what the US did. But in China there weren’t many credit cards at all.

With travel, you don’t need that. You can work around it. If you book a hotel, you can pay at the hotel and collect the commission from the hotel. Nothing needs to be delivered. Air tickets were a bit harder, because you still had to deliver a physical ticket — there were no e-tickets yet. But the e-ticket was coming; within two or three years it became widespread in China too. With an e-ticket, you don’t need delivery either. You still need payment, which is a bit harder than for hotels. But overall, travel was much easier to transact in China with the existing infrastructure.

Keith 00:03:41

When people think of the first wave of tech entrepreneurs in China, they think of founders like yourself, alongside legends like Jack Ma and perhaps Lei Jun. Many of you were the entrepreneurs who really carved the way for China’s technological development and dominance. But when we take ourselves back to the 1990s and early 2000s, what was the picture like? Were people actually supportive of someone like you going out to start a company, or were they much more risk-averse then?

James Liang 00:04:13

This was the first big wave of entrepreneurship — the first PC internet revolution. Even in the US there was a big push for entrepreneurship, a much bigger wave than before the internet. Later it was called a bubble. It was crazy — so much money, so much VC activity in the stock market, and so much talent going into the industry. It was a bubble, but at the end of it you had created hugely successful companies like Amazon.

The same thing happened in China. There were a lot of VCs and a lot of young people going into different internet sectors. For online travel alone, I can name five or six similar competitors who also got VC funding. It was an exciting time — the first taste of success for young entrepreneurs in their twenties.

Keith 00:05:24

In Kai-Fu Lee’s book, he talks about the idea of the gladiator economy — that competition in China is like gladiators fighting for survival, and there is no shame in copying. It’s normal to copy. Whenever a good feature comes out, the next day you see all your competitors doing the same thing. As you’ve mentioned, Trip.com had many competitors then. What was the unique insight that separated you from the rest, who didn’t survive?

James Liang 00:06:01

For UI features — if your product is mostly UI-oriented, like a messaging system or a social media platform — yes, competitors copy each other fiercely. But for the travel business, the critical success factor is service. Service means how good your own service people are, and how well connected you are to your suppliers’ service systems, like the hotels and the airlines. That’s not something you can copy easily, because the trust is built up over time with your employees and your suppliers. The connections, how responsive they are, how you manage their response time and service level — that takes a long time to build.

So from the very beginning, we valued customer experience, and we put our resources behind providing the best service. For example, our phones are picked up within about 15 seconds, because we have a lot of service staff. First, you need good IT call-centre software; then you need a lot of good service people, well managed. That takes a long time to build. Today we have about 30,000 call-centre agents around the world. We quickly became one of the largest call centres — not just in the travel industry, but in almost any industry. Later, traditional companies like the airlines and the banks started to emulate us: they wanted to provide Ctrip-level service to their customers. So we really pioneered providing the best service, and that’s not easily copyable.

Keith 00:07:59

That’s interesting, because when people think about how technology companies differentiate themselves, most think about the technology or the UI/UX. Very few attribute it to customer service. I recently listened to an interview your CEO, Jane Sun, did on DBS CEO Tan Su Shan’s podcast. She talked about how, during COVID, Trip.com refunded all the merchants and all the payments made on the platform, and actually secured a loan just to do that. That speaks to the level of service quality you’ve had since day one.

James Liang 00:08:42

Yes, that has been the logic of our value creation as a company.

Keith 00:08:49

What drove you to that insight — that you should be obsessed with customer service quality — when others were focusing on something else?

James Liang 00:09:03

I look at it from an economic perspective. The value of time is about efficiency. When we started, we focused on travellers who were relatively high-income, whose time is more valuable. Your service agents are relatively lower-paid, and with the help of the system you’re effectively trading their less-expensive time to save the more-expensive time of your customers. That’s why we valued service: we’d go the extra mile to save our valuable customers a bit of time.

That positioning has stayed with us. We always wanted to take care of the high-end customer; compared with our competitors, we’ve always been at the high end of the market. As more and more people moved up economically and became good travellers, even without lowering our price, more people entered that segment. That’s been our growth story — we focus on high-end customers, and they’re the ones who value service.

Keith 00:10:35

Trip.com listed on Nasdaq in 2003, just four years after founding, and it was profitable within three years. It’s interesting, because when we look at Singaporean companies at a similar stage, we’re often told that once you hit a certain ceiling — Singapore’s a small market — you internationalise. China is almost the opposite: you have a billion people, so the incentive is to stay in the home market and dominate there. But Trip.com had this internationalisation aspect very early on, which wasn’t common in those days. Very few tech companies were doing that as aggressively as you were. What drove the insight that Ctrip had to be bigger than being China’s best travel service provider?

James Liang 00:11:28

We started our globalisation effort about fifteen years ago. For the first ten years, we mostly focused on China. Of course, I was absent for a number of years pursuing my PhD as a second career. When I came back around 2012 — about fifteen years ago — the first priority was to catch up with our competitors in leveraging the mobile internet revolution. So the biggest priority was mobile.

After we dominated the mobile space, the next big question was whether to move into other sectors — travel-adjacent but not travel, like food delivery, or ride-hailing like Uber. That was one option. The other option was to stay focused on travel and expand internationally. That’s very natural, too, because Chinese people are going abroad. Not many foreigners come to China, but within Asia there was an opportunity to expand, because Asians travel to the same kinds of hotels and resorts as Chinese travellers.

So we could go global rather than diversify. A lot of my friends at other companies wanted to diversify — food delivery, e-commerce, becoming a conglomerate, a one-stop super-app for everything. But we thought travel is one industry that is critical to being a global company, because people travel around the world. As they get wealthier, they have more money and more inspiration to travel. And the global travel industry shares the same supply chain, inventory, flights, and hotels. So I think we made the right strategic decision: to go global rather than to diversify within China.

Keith 00:13:36

You made a very interesting point — that you stepped back as CEO in 2006 after seven years, by which point Trip.com was quite dominant and already profitable. That’s an unusual thing to do. Today, in the age of AI, you see a lot of PhDs going into entrepreneurship, but you don’t see many entrepreneurs going off to do a PhD. You took the second route, which is very uncommon by historical standards — you’re one of the few. Talk me through that process. Why, when you could have gone further with the business, did you step back to do a PhD?

James Liang 00:14:19

Partly because I was very young. I went to college at fifteen — I was in a young genius programme — so I finished college at about twenty, my master’s at twenty-one, and got my first job. I felt I had the appetite for a bit more schooling. The other reason is that I came from a technical background, but as I became CEO I grew more interested in the humanities — psychology, how the economy runs, the mechanisms of government, and so on. I wanted to learn social science, and I explored a variety of subjects. It ended up being economics. That was a fascinating period; I was really excited about learning new things.

Fortunately, I was still young — in my thirties — so I was able to get into a top PhD programme. Stanford’s programme usually takes people in their twenties; occasionally people in their thirties, but almost never people in their forties, because you have to get through the qualifying exams, the maths, a very tough programme. Fortunately I was thirty-six rather than forty. Because I’d become successful early and wanted a second career, and because I could get into the programme, all these things came together so that I could pursue a full second career as an academic.

That completely switched my path. I became a professor, totally immersed in research, writing papers, publishing successfully in top journals — almost becoming a full-time professor. Until our company went through a difficult period, and the board asked me to come back and run the company again. So the unique thing is that I became successful very young, still had an appetite for learning, and Stanford was wise enough to take an unusual PhD student in his late thirties.

Keith 00:16:54

When people think about someone with a PhD running a company, they usually think about technical insights or contributions. So with someone like Dario Amodei at Anthropic, it’s because he’s such a good computer scientist that he can contribute to the fundamental technology. In your case, you’d already made your success and then went into academia. My question is: why did the board come to you and say, “We need to pull you out of school to run the company again”? Why couldn’t it be someone else?

James Liang 00:17:33

The situation was, you could call it, an emergency. The mobile internet came too fast, and the company wasn’t innovating as quickly as its competitors, so we were losing market share. We almost became a loss-making company, our stock was performing badly, and we were in a very risky position as a viable company. That’s why I had to come back.

A founder is in a unique position to lead innovation in this kind of situation. If you’re not a founder, you always worry about short-term versus long-term, about your credibility with the board and with your team. It’s very hard for a non-founder to make controversial, long-term strategic decisions. For example, when I came back, in the first year I invested heavily in the product and in marketing. We became loss-making — we had our first loss-making quarter — but the stock market responded very well, because they believed that, as a founder, I was making the right investments. That’s a unique contribution a founder can make.

Keith 00:19:07

In that first loss-making quarter, you came in and invested heavily in upgrading and innovation. What gave you the confidence? Coming out of academia, you’d been out of the business for a while, and now you were going back in and making these big bets. What kept you confident?

James Liang 00:19:29

Having a background in social science, particularly economics, helps a little with managing a company. First, you’re more rational — you run the company like a rational statistician. You always want evidence. Don’t just give me your views; I want the statistical data to support it. That’s my management style.

Second, from a macro perspective, an economics background gives you more insightful macro predictions. For example, from my population and demographic research, I predicted that China would do very well and compete not just as a low-cost-labour economy but as an innovative one. Twenty years ago, I was already analysing this data and holding a very different view from other economists. That shaped how we planned our expansion in China and around the world. I also had a lot of insight into the travel industry, because it’s going to consume more and more of people’s time — as people get wealthy, they spend more time and money on it. So these macro projections also helped me run the company. But overall, being a founder was the biggest unique advantage, and that’s why the board asked me back.

Keith 00:21:15

Looking back at some of what you did after you came back, you were doing things others weren’t — you were an innovator. I’ll give you an example. I read the paper from 2014 where you implemented working from home. It was one of the earliest work-from-home experiments in a modern work setting, six or seven years before COVID, before “WFH” was even a term. That’s a very unusual way to run a company in 2014. What was the insight or intuition that made you say, “Let’s try this”?

James Liang 00:22:06

We wanted to be evidence-based. If you’re not a founder, this idea probably wouldn’t go very far, because people think the office is where work should happen. Even as founder and chairman, if you want to convince your management, you still want data and evidence. So we ran an experiment. It got published in a very good journal, because it was a unique experiment run on an actual, real-world company.

Back in 2014 — about thirteen years ago — we looked at our call-centre staff first. With the technology available then — not as good as today’s, but a combination of phones, the internet, and the PC — you could replicate the working environment from home. That saved a lot of commuting time for our staff in Shanghai, sometimes half an hour each way, so they’d save a few hours a week. That’s a huge benefit; they could spend that time with family, or on more work. Some young people actually worked more, because there were fewer distractions at home. Overall productivity was flat, but employees were much more satisfied, and turnover was much lower. So it was a big win for the company, not just for the employee — and for society, too.

Keith 00:24:06

Innovation is a by-product of many experiments, of trial and error. That’s the common thread, whether in your book or in the company: you have to keep experimenting and building your innovation capabilities. But in a big tech company, a bureaucratic inertia sets in after a while — there’s a standard operating procedure, a way things are done, and an instinct not to rock the boat. How do you fight that inertia even as Trip.com kept growing and expanding?

James Liang 00:24:49

As a founder, it’s fine — that’s another reason being a founder is important. You can run three experiments, fail two of them, and as long as one works, that’s okay. Sometimes you can fail all three. I’ve run a lot of failed experiments and failed innovations.

But I also encourage our management, even at the first-line manager level, to experiment and try new things. As long as you try it at a small scale, analyse it, and understand the risk and the benefit, we can study whether to scale it to the company level. So we really encourage many small experiments from the bottom up. Then, at the executive level, you only need to look at which experiments succeeded and should be replicated or raised to a higher level of the organisation.

Keith 00:25:57

I want to zoom out and talk about national innovation capabilities. You have this framework of innovationism. It takes the lessons you learned from Trip.com and maps them onto nations — how they can become more innovative. It rests on the idea that human civilisation is built on two things: the accumulation of ideas, and the accumulation of people. I’d like you to elaborate on innovationism, and on the formula you’ve derived from it.

James Liang 00:26:37

The formula tries to analyse the factors that make a country more innovative. The countries I study have to have all the other infrastructural factors first. They can’t be at subsistence level — they have to be at least middle-income, so they have enough resources not just to feed themselves but also to think creatively, experiment with new technologies, and put resources into R&D.

Once you have those basics, it comes down to how many talented people you have, and how well those talents can exchange ideas — both domestically and with the rest of the world. Domestic exchange is usually much more intense, because communication at home is friction-free and more frequent. So if you have a large domestic community of researchers, innovators, and entrepreneurs, your innovation capacity will be very high. But you also need to communicate internationally. If you cut yourself off from the rest of the world, as China did a few hundred years ago, you’ll stagnate.

So the formula depends on how big your population is, how young it is, how easily your domestic society can communicate and collaborate internally, and how open you are internationally. China is very well connected internally. But some other places aren’t — think of Europe as one “country”: it’s not very connected, because each nation has its own language, laws, and culture. All four factors go into the formula.

Keith 00:28:52

How would you weight those four factors? Which is the most important?

James Liang 00:28:57

It’s not a weighting; it’s not additive. It tries to measure the number of connections you can have. So it’s population size times population capability — by which I mean how young and how educated your population is — times the intensity of internal exchange, meaning how well connected you are domestically, times how well connected you are internationally.

Keith 00:29:31

I ask because you’re one of the more learned minds on demography — not only from your scholarship, but because you have access to real-life travel data, which is itself a derivative of population data. You understand people’s consumer preferences and how they’ve evolved as populations change. And demography is destiny. I spoke to Manoj Pradhan, an economist who has also studied demographics, and his key thesis was that an ageing population’s greatest effect is to create a much more inflationary environment. In your book, your articulation of an ageing population is that it hurts a country’s innovative capabilities the most. Why is that?

James Liang 00:30:29

First, if you look at the most successful entrepreneurs and scientists, they usually create their companies or make their breakthroughs in their thirties. Entrepreneurship declines quite steeply after forty or fifty. That’s reasonable: at thirty you still have the energy and the risk-taking mentality, and your family is just forming, so you don’t yet have the heavy responsibilities or the preference for stability that come with a big family.

The other factor is that if a society has a much larger cohort of older people than younger people, you get an inverted pyramid. In any company or government, promotion is more or less based on seniority. So in a top-heavy organisation, your promotion slows down, and you don’t control important resources or decision-making power. Even in a large organisation, as the age structure gets older, you not only have fewer young people, but those fewer young people are less innovative or entrepreneurial, because they don’t have the leverage or the decision-making power in an ageing economy.

Keith 00:32:18

In your view, the East Asian countries — Singapore, China, South Korea, Japan — have all experienced this demographic decline and are becoming super-aged societies. Singapore itself is a super-aged society. What, in your view, is the cause? Why are we ageing faster than even other countries?

James Liang 00:32:41

There’s a big overall trend: when people have more career and entertainment choices — especially women — they spend more time on entertainment and career, and less time and money on having many children. That’s the general trend. But East Asian countries have even fewer children than Western countries like America because of the very competitive exam and school-filtering system. We try to filter students at a very young age — ten, fifteen — into elite primary schools, elite high schools, elite colleges, versus the average schools.

The competition this creates is an arms race, a zero-sum, wasteful competition. It’s a burden on parents — time, extra tutoring, the financial cost — and it means the children don’t have a very happy childhood. That really dampens people’s desire to have more children. Parents don’t want their kids to go through it, and they don’t want to go through the painful parenting experience themselves. So they don’t have many children.

Keith 00:34:25

So the educational experience has a huge downstream effect. Children who grow up in a stressful environment say, “I don’t want that for my own child,” and as a result they decide to have fewer.

James Liang 00:34:34

Exactly. People want to talk about this exam-oriented system. Of course it has a good side — people study harder. But they say it hurts innovation capability: it saps their energy, and they’re less likely to really enjoy a subject, which isn’t good for innovation. That’s a small marginal effect, though. The big effect, as we discussed, is the miserable parenting and studying experience. So people don’t want more children, and they don’t want their children to go through the same thing.

Keith 00:35:21

I want to ask how you hope to reverse that trend through your work. You’ve established that to be innovative, a country needs a strong and young population. In your work — at Trip.com, or through your institutions and think tanks — how are you thinking about getting the fertility rate up again?

James Liang 00:35:49

There are three levels: the national government level, the business level, and the individual level. The most important is the government level. Especially with AI, society overall has more resources — time and money — to give to every family. But the squeeze is on young people. Starting a career is getting harder, because entry-level positions are being squeezed and training periods are getting longer. At the same time, young people need to start a family, maybe start a company — everything is squeezed into around age thirty.

But people now live to a hundred, and there are plenty of resources. It’s not that we don’t have enough people to work — we don’t have enough jobs. So at the societal level, there’s definitely more resource; it’s just that the young have too much on their plate. The government should reallocate resources to young people — give them money. All out-of-pocket expenses for children should be reimbursed, in my view. If you’re raising two or three children, you should be paid as though it were a full-time job.

So you’re talking about reallocating a few per cent of GDP — around five per cent — from other sectors to the young. People think five per cent is a huge number, far higher than what governments actually spend. Singapore probably spends less than one per cent, even with such a rich economy. Some of the most generous economies, like the Scandinavian countries, spend two to three per cent — not nearly five. Do you really need five per cent to reimburse out-of-pocket expenses? Five per cent is just one year of growth — one year of China’s economic growth. If you reallocate five per cent from other sectors — from building freeways, from other infrastructure — or just sacrifice one year of growth to reallocate to young people, you’d solve this huge problem. It’s the most critical problem facing many economies, and humanity as a whole. So it’s really worth spending a few per cent of your GDP.

Keith 00:38:35

What’s the bottleneck? In all your conversations with policymakers and leaders, at your level of influence, what’s the main thing preventing them from thinking, “I know this is a wicked problem — maybe I should compromise on growth by five per cent”? What stops them?

James Liang 00:38:55

For small economies like Singapore, it does make sense to allocate five per cent. I think Singapore actually does that to some degree — maybe not five per cent, maybe three — giving money to would-be scientists and entrepreneurs to fund their innovation. But where do these people come from? They come from other countries. So immigration is an easier, more cost-effective way to tackle the population problem.

But big countries can’t do that, and at a global level you can’t either. So at some point I’d think even large economies like India or China should consider an education tax: if someone is educated in India or China and then goes to work for Singapore, they should pay back the cost of the education they received, which was usually subsidised by their local government. That kind of cherry-picking strategy works for small economies, but not for big ones.

Keith 00:40:10

In Singapore, even immigration has to be handled very delicately, because it’s a small ecosystem. Too much rejection of foreigners who become Singaporeans affects the body politic, so there’s a trade-off in a more pro-immigration policy. Why is it hard for countries to say, “We want to encourage higher birth rates among our own citizens — we should give them more money,” for example?

James Liang 00:40:44

In general, the economics community still under-appreciates the size, youthfulness, and demographic factors that drive innovation. It’s not fully appreciated yet, though it’s starting to gain recognition. That’s why Japan and Korea have massively increased their child subsidies, and they did raise their fertility rates in recent years because of it. China is still behind — it has only just reversed the one-child and two-child policies to become a pro-fertility policy, but hasn’t yet put much investment into baby bonuses and other benefits. China can definitely afford it, though; its production capacity is so strong that it would be easy to use that capacity to fund family subsidy programmes. But I think it’s coming.

Keith 00:41:49

At a smaller level, at Trip.com or in your own work, how are you incentivising companies or your own employees to have children?

James Liang 00:42:00

There are certain things businesses can do. You can create family-friendly products — as we do with family-friendly travel, where parents can take their children on a good holiday. On top of that, flexible working arrangements can really help young couples balance career and family. Working from home, for example: if you save a few hours by not commuting, you have more time with your family. We’re also experimenting with letting people take unpaid leave, without needing to give a reason, for up to two months. You work a little less and earn a little less, but you have more choice in balancing career and family.

In the long run — at the government or business level — if we really think about it, we should reduce the forty-hour working week. We keep asking where all the jobs will come from; unemployment will be a big issue. Yet we haven’t changed the forty-hour week in a hundred years, despite all the productivity gains. So this is an opportunity, and I think it will really happen: the hours in the working week will be reduced.

Keith 00:43:41

How do you see that reduction playing out? How many hours do you think we’ll move to?

James Liang 00:43:48

We’re running an experiment where we let people take an extra two months of vacation during the year. People with small children will probably take a four-day working week instead of five, which works out to about two months a year. Others just want to take more vacation — a longer period to relax, or to do other things for a month — then come back refreshed, and probably more productive. We’ll see. That’s the experiment we’re running right now.

Keith 00:44:24

Look forward to it.

James Liang 00:44:27

It’ll be a nine-month experiment. We’ll have a control group and an experiment group, and we’ll compare performance, employee satisfaction, promotion, fertility, and a lot of other factors at the end.

Keith 00:44:46

I want to ask about something we’ve been trying in Singapore. The government here has been very aware of the fertility problem for about forty years, ever since the birth rate started to decline. We’ve tried cash incentives, tax breaks, national campaigns — even, as recently as this year, an idea floated for a national matchmaking service. Almost none of it has substantially moved the needle. What are we missing?

James Liang 00:45:24

The baby bonus — giving people extra money — is the easiest and fastest, most effective way. But to move the needle you need five per cent, not just one. That’s a question of quantity: how much you actually spend on it.

At the business level, these things are only just being appreciated. The research is only now coming out, and there’s a lot you can do — basically offering people more flexibility in their careers, over a year or over a longer period. A ten-year tenure track for women professors, for instance, should be extended if they have more children, so they can manage their flexibility over the course of their tenure while taking family into consideration.

At the individual level, there’s education, which is the toughest, because you’re talking about changing the whole filtering and admissions system. You want to push admission as late as possible. People now get longer and longer training and degrees — a lot go on to master’s degrees, and almost everyone goes to college. If almost everyone goes to college, why filter at ten or fifteen? Just let them have a good time and finish college, and filter at the end. You should pretty much get rid of the elite undergraduate programmes, because they’re standardised anyway. The reason they filter so early is that high-quality college and high school education used to be scarce — but it’s not scarce anymore, especially with AI. So you should make college education universal, and then filter at the end of college. That would relieve most of the pressure — not all of it, but most.

Keith 00:47:59

In Singapore, like in China, we have this filtering — the PSLE, the Primary School Leaving Examination, then your O-Level and A-Level examinations, then university. In China you have the Gaokao. You’re saying we should do away with all that and just —

James Liang 00:48:19

You can have a GRE — essentially a general test you take any time you want. In China, the Gaokao would become like a GRE. You could take it in your first, second, or third year of college, in every subject. Depending on your score, you’d go to a different elite graduate school or not. You don’t need to filter early, because some people develop later, and early filtering creates a lot of stress. You always want to do the test as late as possible. It’s like testing your employees — you want to test them right now, not on how they performed ten years ago.

Keith 00:49:03

The pushback I hear from people in the policymaking space is that you’re just moving the stress to one point — now you’re pushing all of it to the end, rather than distributing it across primary and secondary school.

James Liang 00:49:19

People will respond differently. Tiger parents, or self-motivated kids, will still put pressure on themselves early. But people who are late developers, or who have a different perspective on their children’s values, can have a more flexible education — which is very possible now, especially with AI being a better tutor than any human tutor.

Keith 00:49:59

You’ve spoken about the baby bonus, about giving cash, and about reforming the education system. What else should we be looking at? What other dimensions should we consider to improve a country’s fertility rate?

James Liang 00:50:16

I’ve talked about education reform, the baby bonus, and flexible work arrangements. The last thing is more philosophical: making people aware of the benefit, the meaning, and the joy of having a large family. That’s almost been forgotten, especially in China, because they themselves are one-child products of the one-child policy.

It’s hard, because the cost, uncertainty, and risk are all front-loaded. You experience the hardship when the children are very young. The first year, the first child, is very difficult. The second and third children are much easier. And people now live much longer — sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, rather than forty or fifty. So you have a whole second half of life, from your fifties onwards, and whether you have a big family makes a huge difference. Life is much more rewarding and fulfilling if you have children and a big family, and they in turn have their children, rather than having no children from fifty onwards. You put up the investment and cost when you’re young, around thirty, but you reap the benefit for a much longer period. People don’t realise that, and they don’t realise the regret. When you reach forty or fifty, you regret not having children — your perspective changes as you get older. Men can still have children at forty or fifty, but if a woman, or her husband, comes to regret it, they’ll face a difficult problem. So these things need to be communicated to young people directly and openly, based on research and data.

I think that, with AI and with longer training and internships, we should return to what the old Chinese saying advises — 先成家后立业, first start a family, then build your career. You still have a long way to go after forty or fifty — plenty of time to pursue a career, or to travel with your family. But having children is best done in your twenties and thirties. So you should probably prioritise it a little more, given the full picture of your lifespan — on the condition that the government gives you enough money and support. If you don’t have support and you’re broke, you can’t have a family. But with government support, you should really think about having a family first, and a career second.

Keith 00:53:56

In the book, you have many case studies — the US, China, Japan, Europe. You take a deep dive into these geographies and explore their innovation capabilities. When you look across all of them, what are the unique advantages that each country — say the US and China — has that lets them stay at the forefront of innovation?

James Liang 00:54:36

Thirty years ago, it wasn’t appreciated that big economies — big populations — have such an advantage. You could have Japan or Finland, with a small or medium population but very successful multinationals like Sony or Nokia. But manufacturing companies are easier to replicate, and you can export your products because the standard is objective — if you have better fuel efficiency, you’ll sell.

For the information age, the latest rounds of innovation — internet, software, AI — are a digital revolution. First, they’re even easier to replicate. But on the other hand, users participate in the innovation. Take a search engine: the more people use it, the better the search results, because the long-tail searches get solved. It’s the same with AI algorithms — the more data going into training, the more successful. That’s why US and Chinese companies dominate, and few Japanese or European companies do: the sheer size of the user base is a big advantage for innovation, as is the sheer size of the talent pool.

China is so successful in many fields because it can explore all possible paths. It’s the only country that can operate in all the subsectors and become a leader in many of them, because it has a huge research population — the number of R&D people in China is probably two or three times that of the US. That’s why I’ve predicted China would continue to do well, until, about twenty years from now, it hits a speed bump, when the current fertility collapse catches up with it — twenty years later, when today’s children grow up.

Keith 00:56:55

But you sit at the intersection of the US and China. You built a Chinese company, listed it on a US exchange, and were educated in China until you went to Stanford. So you have a unique vantage point on East and West. Where do you see the US–China rivalry playing out in terms of technology? Will it fundamentally be a zero-sum competition, as much of the Western media posits — or will the dynamic be different?

James Liang 00:57:26

If you think about who’s going to be number one, then of course it’s a zero-sum game — there’s only one number one. But economically, it’s not zero-sum: innovation benefits everybody who can use it. Chinese innovation will benefit US consumers, innovators, and the economy as a whole, and vice versa. If you view it that way, it’s a competition, but not a war. War is more of a zero-sum game.

But if you’re talking about national security, then of course you want to be number one, and from that perspective it’s more likely zero-sum. Yet even in a zero-sum game, what’s the best strategy for the US or China? You still want to be open to all the Chinese innovators, and China wants to be open to the US and the rest of the world. If the US cuts off Chinese scientists from coming to the US, it will hurt China — but it will hurt the US more, because China is almost the same size, or bigger. If you’re a very small economy, you can be crushed by being cut off. But if your rival is almost as big as you, cutting it off hurts you too. So even if they view it as a zero-sum game, they shouldn’t cut each other off. They should still collaborate — and that’s a good thing for the world.

Keith 00:59:06

You’ve spoken a lot about the salience of big countries. Through your book and your work, I’ve come to truly appreciate the importance of having a big country — the many benefits of a large population. In Singapore we’re very small, so we’re very aware of this constraint; we have a domestic market of just five million people, which is hardly a city in China. So if I flip that lens and look at your innovation-capacity formula: clearly Singapore doesn’t have the size, but our internal linkage and external exchange are quite strong, because we’re —

James Liang 00:59:50

Yes — very open and connected to the rest of the world.

Keith 00:59:53

We’re developed, we’re open to trade, and we’re open to foreign investment and to investing in other countries. So on internal and external exchange, we’ve got that sorted — at least our infrastructure is right. That leaves population capability as the one variable we really need to focus on. That’s how we survive, I suppose. How would you define population capability, and how should governments — especially small countries like ours — improve it?

James Liang 01:00:34

When I say population capability, people assume education is the most important factor. But my view is that, beyond a certain point, more time in education is actually counterproductive. For a middle-income country like Singapore, once you reach a college admission ratio of sixty or eighty per cent — where most young people already go to college — putting extra resources into education isn’t going to help much.

It’s more a question of quantity, or of youthfulness. If you have more children per family, you have a bigger cohort of young people and a more vibrant, youthful culture, which helps innovation at the cultural level too. You’ll have a younger economy overall, with less burden to support the old — so a healthier economy, with more resources going into innovation. You definitely don’t want everyone coming from abroad, using immigration to solve the problem. Of course Singapore could solve it through immigration. But most Singaporeans want a bigger family — the reason they don’t have their ideal family size is that they worry about financial costs and careers. So giving young people enough support to have more children would definitely help both innovation and the overall economy.

Keith 01:02:37

I want to ask about AI. We haven’t touched on it for a reason: I think innovationism is a philosophy that’s relevant regardless of AI, so I’ve pushed this to the end. But now, in this age of AI specifically, why is innovationism ever more important?

James Liang 01:03:06

Because you’re running out of things for humans to do — that’s why AI makes this so pressing. What should we spend our time and resources on? What are the most rewarding and most meaningful activities humans can find? It really comes down to two things: having children, and innovation.

The essence of humanity — the difference between humans and other animals — is innovation. We innovate, we inherit, we build our knowledge, and we have more and more people. That sets us far apart from animals, which have no innovation or accumulation of knowledge. But the difference between AI and humans is that humans have been tested over hundreds of millions of years by evolution. Having children — genetic innovation — has been a very successful mechanism for replenishing our genetics, adapting to new environments, and passing our knowledge down through generations. So these are the two essences.

That’s why I say in the book that the most meaningful activities for humans are innovation and having children. There’s also a risk-control argument. If we let AI take over innovation, we’re out of control — innovation is inherently risky and involves ethical judgement. Wanting to have more children is a human thing that AI will probably never understand. AI might even think that replacing humans is not such a bad thing. Having enough children is also a risk-control matter: if we don’t have enough population, the combined brainpower of humanity becomes far less numerous and powerful than the silicon brain cells, the chips — and then we’ll inevitably hand over control to AI. That’s not a scenario we want. We want to remain the masters, not the slaves, of AI — even if the AI may love us. But who knows?

Keith 01:06:09

A sceptic might say the AI hype train is moving too fast — that people are exaggerating the significance and impact it will have on the economy in the long run. You’ve been through multiple revolutions, including China’s digital revolution. Fundamentally and personally, how is this revolution different from the previous ones you’ve participated in?

James Liang 01:06:44

This is not just an economic shock; it’s a philosophical shock. It shocked me that combining a bunch of neurons — silicon chips, the GPUs they call neurons — can do amazing things, pretty much replicating what the brain does. When you think about it, it’s not surprising: the brain is also just a bunch of neurons. By that analogy, AI is technically capable of doing anything the brain can do.

It’s already replacing a lot. It’s showing up in the data in a big way — entry-level programming jobs, which we considered very good jobs, are going away. In a twenty- to thirty-year time frame, human-like robots will do more of the service-level jobs. That won’t happen in the next few years, but over ten or twenty years it will. So this is different: it’s replacing everything a human can do. It’s not just replacing the muscles; it’s replacing the brain. And it’s happening very fast.

For white-collar jobs, it’s actually hurting young people, entry-level workers, and recent graduates trying to find jobs. That will be very bad news for fertility, too. So governments and economists should really think about measures to tackle this once-in-the-universe transition. Otherwise it will be very chaotic and problematic. But overall, as I said, society has more resources that can go around, because it’s an age of abundance. We can definitely afford to reallocate resources and money from other sectors to the young.

Keith 01:09:02

To wrap up, I have one final question. We’ve talked a lot about the things that affect young people. If you had one piece of advice for someone young today, who’s leaving university and entering the working world, what would it be?

James Liang 01:09:23

I give this advice in the book: pursue a rich life, with a variety of experiences. Ultimately you want to be a successful innovator, but to be one you need rich experience. So try different things, learn different subjects. Having a large family helps, too. Travel to different places. Live a rich life, and don’t be afraid of trying new things. There will be some hardship — you’ll have to work very hard when you’re young — but that’s all part of the experience, part of the journey.

Keith 01:10:03

I’d be remiss not to ask: you’re the founder of Trip.com, so if there were one place everyone had to visit in their lifetime, what would it be?

James Liang 01:10:12

One destination? These days I really recommend travelling to China — even the western part, which has the highest mountains but also very good infrastructure and easy access to the most magnificent scenery. Travelling in such a different, fast-growing country gives you fresh perspective and fresh insight, whatever you do.

Keith 01:10:36

With that, Professor James Liang, thank you so much for coming on. And everyone, do get a copy of his book — I’ve benefited richly from reading it, and I hope you will too.

Thank you for listening to today’s episode. If you’re watching on YouTube, please consider subscribing and turning on notifications for whenever new episodes are out. If you’re on Spotify or Apple, it would help us greatly if you could leave a five-star review on those platforms. Once again, thank you for tuning in to The Front Row Podcast.

Will Durant spent his life making history accessible.

Across the 11 volumes of The Story of Civilization, written with his wife Ariel over 4 decades, he turned 6,000 years of human record into prose that ordinary people actually wanted to read.

Durant is the epitome of a rule I try to live by: take your work seriously, and yourself much less so.

And, if there was one book I could recommend for us who live in the age of cognitive convenience - it would be his last book- Fallen Leaves.

It was his last. Durant died in 1981 at the age of 96, and in his final years he had been quietly working on this slim volume of reflections on life’s biggest questions: love, religion, morality, ageing, war, politics, art, and death.

The manuscript then sat among his papers for 32 years before Simon & Schuster published it in 2014.

I put Fallen Leaves alongside Lee Kuan Yew’s Hard Truths as must reads for us millennials and Gen-Zs.

Lee gave those interviews at 87, long past needing anyone’s approval or political support, and it shows.

Both books are the work of a man in the twilight of his years, looking back over the whole of it, with a single intention: to pass on the best insights of a lifetime to the generations coming after him.

The best books are written by such men and women.

They have nothing left to gain or lose, and all they want to do is desperately transmit their best ideas to the next generation.

Why history, and why now

We live in an age of information customised to our palates, available at the tip of our tongue or fingertips, depending on which app you use.

When you have knowledge in abundance, wisdom is scarce.

Durant felt this half a century before we started doomscrolling.

“We of this generation give too much time to news about the transient present, too little to the living past. We are choked with news, and starved of history.”

Choked and starved at once.

His question gnaws at me- without history, how do you sift the large from the small, or see the currents running under all that surface movement?

He makes the case for the remedy in a single passage:

“Other studies may tell us how we might behave, or how we should behave; history tells us how we have behaved for six thousand years. One who knows that record is in large measure protected in advance against the delusions and disillusionments of his times.”

Epistemic humility

The biggest lesson I took from Durant is to carry a healthy dose of epistemic humility.

Don’t presume to know it all.
Don’t entertain illusions of grandeur.

However successful you become, the sands of time will prevail and you will eventually be forgotten.

Take Lee Kuan Yew.

He is the iconoclast of Singapore, the founding father who willed this country into existence.

It has been 11 years since he passed, and he has already faded from public consciousness.

There is scarcely any serious engagement with him or his ideas in our day to day beyond the occasional anniversary retrospective.

Let me try to drive this point home.

Consider the great men who tried to cheat this fate outright.

Qin Shi Huang unified China in 221 BC and titled himself First Emperor, on the expectation that his dynasty would last 10,000 generations.

Then he set about trying to live forever.

He despatched the court sorcerer Xu Fu across the eastern seas with a fleet of ships and thousands of boys and girls to find the elixir of life.

Xu Fu never returned.

Meanwhile the emperor’s own alchemists prescribed him pills of mercury, the substance they were certain held the secret of immortality. He died on tour in 210 BC, aged 49, most likely poisoned by his own medicine.

His ministers, too frightened to announce the death, hid his decomposing body in a carriage and surrounded it with carts of rotting fish to mask the smell.

The dynasty built for 10,000 generations collapsed within 4 years.

Now, Psalm 39:5 reads like a plain statement of fact:

“You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Everyone is but a breath, even those who seem secure.”

Resisting Cynicism

It’s easy to get cynical now.

Why bother at all?

Durant looks squarely at this brevity, this cosmic insignificance, and comes away grateful for it.

Across chapters that range from his views on sex to the Vietnam War, he comes across the same way every time: pragmatic, yet empathetic.

His chapter on war shows the temperament best.

Watching the present violence in the Middle East and Europe from afar, aghast, the natural wish is for a world finally rid of war.

Durant would call that wish ahistorical.

He describes war grimly as “the Darwinism of states” and traces its causes to things that do not go away.

Human nature, scaled up: “the state is the soul of man enlarged under the microscope of history,” with all our acquisitiveness and lust for power enlarged along with it.

Populations that multiply faster than their food supply. Industrial economies with an insatiable appetite for raw materials and foreign markets. The tools have evolved from Stone Age flints to guided rockets; the drivers have barely moved.

For all that, Durant does not despair.

He simply has no patience for vague pacifism or appeals to “the conscience of mankind,” because international morality awaits international order, and order requires enforceable law.

His proposals are practical, like everything else in the book.

Peace must be planned and organised as realistically as war: permanent international commissions assigned to defuse the specific triggers of conflict, from food shortages to population pressure to unequal access to markets.

In the long run, he concludes, war ends only when nations yield their sovereignty to some superstate.

A global superstate sounds unrealistic.

So does a world without war.

His gentlest proposal is the one I 100% agree with : broader education, impartial history, and travel, so that we might “love our country without betraying mankind.”

Cultivating the garden

The change I notice in myself since reading Durant is simple: I no longer assume I know best.

Before I jump to a conclusion about the news of the week, I look at the record.

Has this happened before?

How did it go?

Almost always the answer is yes, and the outcome is instructive.

The habit takes 5 minutes and it has saved me from repeating a great deal of confident nonsense out loud.

On a side note, I have to acknowledge my intellectual idol, Dr. Goh.

A lifelong student of history, he believed that the lessons of the past held the key to shaping the future. In Singapore's formative years, he was relentless in applying those lessons to help lay the foundations of our growth story.

The other change is a moderated ambition.

I still believe I can change the world.

But, only in a small way in hopefully the right direction.

It frees you from the emperor’s problem and gives your attention back to the work itself.

Durant’s commentary on the transition to middle-age is telling.

He watches the fever of romantic love and physical passion cool into the familiar routines of marriage and prose, and observes that most people settle into a “moderate peace.”

Meaning, he suggests, lives in the practical, everyday, domestic tasks.

He echoes Voltaire’s Candide: we must cultivate our garden.

That is where the last book of a 96-year-old historian leaves you.

You are but a breath, even if you seem secure.

Tend your garden anyway.

Push the world an inch in the right direction.

Take the work seriously, and yourself not so much.

For anyone remotely interested in history and philosophy, whose attention span is getting cooked by social media, please I beg of you to read Fallen Leaves.

You won’t regret it.

The following is a transcript of the my podcast interview with Robert Wu, an expert China-insider and CEO of BigOne Lab.

Enjoy!

Robert Wu is the CEO of BigOne Lab, China’s leading alternative data and research company, backed by S&P Global and used by institutional investors and corporations around the world to track what is actually happening on the ground in China’s economy and tech sector. He is also the founder and co-editor of Baiguan, a data-driven newsletter on Chinese business and markets, and writes China Translated, a personal newsletter offering a practitioner’s review of the events shaping China’s economy, society, and technology sector.

Wu’s career path into China-watching was unconventional: before BigOne Lab, he worked across sourcing, travel, and corporate restructuring in Myanmar, Switzerland, and Hong Kong. He later joined BigOne Lab as an employee and partner before taking it over in a buyout and becoming its CEO. He also writes for the opinion section of The New York Times.

Through Baiguan, Wu has organised on-the-ground tours for foreign investors into China’s robotics and manufacturing sectors, giving institutional clients direct exposure to the country’s AI, EV, and advanced manufacturing ecosystems. His work sits at the intersection of data and narrative: translating the granular, often-overlooked detail of China’s industrial policy and technology development for an international audience that, in his own words, still has a shockingly low level of understanding of the country driving the most consequential geopolitical shift of the century.

In this conversation, Wu draws on years of on-the-ground research to unpack why the US-China tech rivalry is structurally locked in rather than easing, why China’s EV industry is the template for understanding its semiconductor and AI ambitions, and what the real bottlenecks are in robotics, chips, and AI monetisation as China’s next phase of growth takes shape.

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Robert, thank you once again for coming onto the podcast. It’s been about a month or so since Donald Trump visited China and met with President Xi Jinping. This was hyped, or touted, as a period of détente for the US and China in their ongoing geopolitical rivalry. A month on, if we look back, how should we understand its developments with regards to the technology competition between the US and China? Do we see an opening up of trade, especially in critical technologies, or will we see more of the same as the past year?

Robert Wu 00:31

Thank you for inviting me.

You mentioned the good word, détente. To me, it’s the same as saying there will be no further escalation. There would be, at least in the foreseeable future, no worse situation than what was before, so everything was kind of frozen in place.

But on the other hand, I also don’t think there’s going to be any material improvement in terms of the relationship between the two sides, in terms of the tech competition and the control programmes already in place. I don’t think any of that has moved in any meaningful way, and I don’t think anyone is expecting it to.

China has been doubling down on developing its own technology, its own tech stack. Maybe two years ago, people were talking about the US restricting Nvidia chips to China and how China would deal with that. Now you’ve got something in reverse: Beijing itself doesn’t want China to import these high-end chips anymore. That’s not to suggest that Chinese chips have caught up to the global standard. They’re definitely not there yet. But it’s a way for Beijing to say we really need self-sufficiency in these most crucial sectors, and we need to preserve this new market that’s been created by the export controls.

A few years ago there was really no market for Chinese domestic high-end chipmakers, because why bother? You had the best GPUs and CPUs in the US. No user wanted to pay extra for a lower-quality product. But because of the controls, a real domestic market for indigenous chipmakers was created, and I think Beijing doesn’t want that to end.

We’re actually enjoying a sweet moment right now, a sweet period where there’s a real market pushing everyone to develop, and you don’t want this to end too soon. You want to come out of it with a self-sufficient industry. So I think it’s just more of the same, and even more so. Doubling down, assuming there’s no turning back, until China reaches a standard equivalent to US technology across the board. Only then would I imagine any kind of real détente.

Keith 04:15

The US tech export controls on chips have backfired to a certain extent.

Robert Wu 04:21

This kind of policy definitely caused some short-term pain, and by short term I mean two to three years, even four or five. So not exactly short term, more medium term. But in the end, it set in motion some big historical changes that, in the long term, five to ten years and beyond, are deeply detrimental to the US.

If I were a US policymaker, I wouldn’t have done this. I would have tried to get all the Chinese companies hooked on our technology, because American standard-setting power, the technology standards themselves, are what’s valuable. What the export controls did was force China to create its own standard, and everything will now develop along that standard. I think it’s backfiring, and it will be remembered as a backfiring policy.

Keith 05:25

There’s this bifurcation of the two technological ecosystems happening in real time. Maybe at a more fundamental level, in the past it was at the level of the internet, consumer internet applications. We think about social media, for example, where there’s a clear Chinese version of the ecosystem and a more international version. I suppose we’re seeing that happen at the same time with chips.

Robert Wu 05:52

The fundamental models of social media, e-commerce, and so on are similar, the same even. They’re just separated from each other. I think the best example is actually EVs.

The automobile sector is a very important sector. Every respectable industrial power needs a strong automobile industry. China wanted that too. For decades China wanted to build a domestic automobile industry, but it never succeeded, until EVs. Before EVs, China was trying to follow the West in traditional internal combustion engine cars, and it never delivered a globally competitive ICE brand. No one remembers that.

Then the thinking shifted: why compete in this old game? Why not create our own technology path? Which, at the time, was EVs. It was a totally new thing. Everyone had the same baseline. The traditional powers like Germany and Japan didn’t really have an advantage there. Everyone started at the same time, so China developed independently. The bottleneck then was the same for everyone: better batteries, better smart-driving systems.

I think a similar thing is happening right now in the semiconductor world. Before we talk about the bottleneck in China, we have to talk about the bottleneck of the whole world. The entire semiconductor industry, the entire AI industry, is bottlenecked. All this crazy bull market in memory, in optics, in interconnects, is precisely a bottleneck trade.

Modern-day AI isn’t really restricted by the quality of the chips anymore. We’re not talking about needing better chips with smaller nodes. We’re already nearing the physical constraints of how small you can make a transistor. You cannot build something half the size of an atom. So the entire industry, worldwide, is trying to figure out how to piece all these chips together, how to have a massive array of chips that can talk to each other so fast they function as a single piece of silicon. That’s where the whole industry is moving. And that’s a totally new thing. It’s not about chipmaking anymore.

If the question is when China will be able to make a chip as good as TSMC can, that could be forever, or at least a very long time, long enough to discourage anyone. It’s the same as fifteen years ago, when people asked when China could have a globally competitive car. That seemed like it would take almost a lifetime. But if the problem isn’t the chips themselves, but the systems, how chips talk to each other through optics, from chip to memory, then it’s a new technological pathway where everyone has a similar baseline. I think that’s where Chinese industry is moving too.

If you look at Huawei, they recently announced a concept they call logic folding, or die-stacking at scale, which is really about overcoming the limitations on transistor size by folding and stacking chips together. And if you look at the DeepSeek model, the recent V4, a lot of the innovation is about achieving a global standard of performance with a minimal level of memory cost, so that inference can be done at a fraction of what it costs US models, helping China bypass its disadvantage in memory technology like HBM4.

All these bottlenecks, shared by both the Chinese market and the global market, also create opportunities for invention and innovation that wouldn’t otherwise exist. It’s a new game, forced by the constraints of the export controls in the first place, and China is choosing not to play the old game but to open a new one and play there. I think that’s happening very fast right now.

Keith 11:34

The use of the EV analogy is quite instructive, because it creates a new paradigm shift. You create a whole new category and you’re able to capture the market because you’re one of the early movers, one of the creators of the new market itself. If you reflect on the lessons of EV development within China, it was clear to observers and analysts that China didn’t just pick winners. It was a much more sophisticated play in terms of creating an ecosystem. If you look at this idea of developing an ecosystem, what would that actually look like in your view?

Robert Wu 12:20

Yeah, EVs are a great example. It’s a masterclass in industrial policy, and a very important aspect of it is timing.

When people think about industrial policy in China, when people think about EVs in China, they tend to think it’s just subsidies. People in Europe say we have to ban these Chinese EVs because they’re all subsidised, it’s unfair, and so on. That doesn’t really make sense. You can’t subsidise an industry into being globally competitive. If subsidy were the answer, whoever subsidised the most would have the most competitive industry. Europe subsidises plenty of industries too. Why can’t they subsidise their own automobile industry into competitiveness? It’s just not how things work.

Are there subsidies? Definitely, at the central and local government level, in tax credits and so on, and they’re a great way to jump-start a whole new industry, to do a greenfield development that requires a huge amount of fixed-asset investment. In that regard, they’re helpful. But that’s definitely not the only part of the industrial policy.

There were several important decisions Chinese regulators made in the development of EVs in China. The first was introducing a foreign competitor, and a very strong one, Tesla, into China, and allowing Tesla to operate as a hundred per cent wholly owned subsidiary, which was a major exception to the historical rule. Historically China only allowed joint ventures. But in Tesla’s case they made a special exception, and it mattered because at the time Tesla was so much better than any other Chinese EV, far better than BYD, far better than anyone else. It was simply the best out there.

If you’re a government in the mindset of subsidising and protecting your indigenous industry, you wouldn’t normally introduce such a strong competitor, because of the risk that this player kills everyone else. But they did it, for two reasons. First, they wanted to create an environment where some companies had to die. At the time there were maybe a hundred or more EV brands across China. Every local government wanted a piece, because automobiles are great for local GDP and local employment, so there were countless brands you’ve never heard of and will never hear of, soaking up billions in investment and subsidies. Most of them had to die, and the only way to kill them was through very strong competition, a real game of survival. I call it a hunger game. The ones you remember today, BYD, Nio, Xiaopeng, are the winners out of maybe a hundred losers. When Tesla came into China, it set this hunger game in motion. You don’t just allow companies to rise; you also allow a lot of companies to die. That’s very important.

The second lesson is that by introducing this very strong player, Tesla also helped build a complete ecosystem of suppliers underneath it. A lot of companies became big by supplying to Tesla: components makers, chip makers, auto glass makers, powertrain makers, and most importantly battery makers. By doing that, all these suppliers also gained knowledge of what a high global standard for an EV actually requires. That helped set up a whole supply chain in China, and the same supply chain went on to supply many of the domestic leaders as well. You can’t stop that. It’s not about technological theft or anything like that, it’s just natural. If your factory is in China, you’re going to want to rely on local suppliers, otherwise what’s the point of having a factory in China at all?

So if you come in with one strong player, you end up helping build a whole ecosystem, and that ecosystem benefits everyone. I think that’s also masterful: not just supporting one brand or two or three, but supporting a whole ecosystem through external pressure. It can’t just be summarised as subsidies. It’s a whole package.

Keith 18:16

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Patrick McGee wrote the book Apple in China, where he details a similar dynamic, the entrance of Apple into China via Foxconn. Like what you’ve described, that’s created an ecosystem of consumer electronics manufacturers and subcontractors which, when we look at Chinese brands emerging in the consumer space today, you can trace back to that. Is that a similar dynamic at play?

Robert Wu 19:03

Yes, definitely. I’d say that’s the real technology transfer. A lot of people, when they criticise China, say China is forcing Western companies to transfer technology. I think that’s quite a naive view of how technology actually works. People imagine technology like an email, a file you can attach and send to someone, and it’s transferred. It’s never like that.

When you want to build something, you need know-how, you need talent, you need operational knowledge. It’s a myriad of large and small things, knowledge you can really only gather by working through it yourself. That’s the most important part of technology. I call it process power. How do you understand the process? Maybe there are ten thousand steps. How do you know why each step is needed, how much of it you need to do, which steps aren’t needed? All of that knowledge is subtle and complicated, and it’s only really possible to acquire by actually working through it, by working with the best people, supplying to them, letting them be your clients, co-developing the product together. It’s natural, and it has to happen. Otherwise Tesla wouldn’t have built such a strong manufacturing base in China, and neither would Apple. Their success came from this. It’s mutually beneficial. There’s no way to earn that much profit without giving something back in terms of process knowledge.

Keith 21:03

That was actually one of the central insights I took from McGee’s book. He talks about how Terry Gou, through Foxconn, was very smart in offering very competitive, almost no-margin prices, so he could pick up what you’d call the tacit, processed knowledge that would let him earn a better margin once he started selling to other manufacturers. He saw the discounted prices he was offering Apple as a kind of tuition.

If we look at the Chinese tech scene on the flip side, there’s a phenomenon the government has now acknowledged as a problem, what’s known in Chinese as involution, 内卷. There’s been an anti-involution campaign going on too, an effort to consolidate players so you don’t have cut-throat competition throughout the economy. We see that in a few sectors, even in food delivery and e-commerce operations. How effective has it been?

Robert Wu 22:30

I wouldn’t say it’s been super effective so far, because it’s fighting against a huge structural bias towards overcompetition, towards involution. Chinese people work incredibly hard. Local governments, Chinese companies, everyone wants to be the best, and if something’s good, a lot of people rush in and cut each other’s prices, squeezing out the margins. That’s just part of our cultural DNA. There’s both a structural and a political inertia here.

What’s important is that about a year or two ago, Beijing finally made an explicit commitment: we are not fine with this. We understand this is what we’ve been like for decades, but it isn’t good, and we have to label it clearly as something that isn’t good. That overcapacity, overproduction, producing too much and competing too much, is not good. That’s an important message in itself, because up to that point the assumption had always been that to compete is good, to produce is good, and to not have enough product is bad. So that’s already a historic pivot, and it’s not realistic to expect such a pivot to play out within one or two years.

If you look at the specifics, things are edging up. It’s not changed overnight, but it’s getting better. If you look at the PPI, the producer price index, it’s been edging up for the last few quarters, which means that across many industries people are raising prices rather than undercutting each other. In sectors like food delivery, which we track closely at Baiguan, we’re starting to see a lowering of subsidies and an increase in restaurant margins recently as well.

So it’s not a huge change overnight. It’s like a glacier, moving slowly, gradually, but surely. The direction is very clear. There’s now a consensus, society-wide and politically, that involution isn’t good, that there needs to be balance. We’ve changed, and we’ve moved, but it’s not a drastic, revolutionary, overnight change. Definitely not.

Keith 25:57

Where do you see Chinese tech companies playing in this increasingly global market? How are they positioned against, say, their US counterparts?

Robert Wu 26:07

One relatable historical experience is the Japanese example. Over the last few decades Japanese companies have been very global. If you look at the annual reports of many Japanese companies, most of their revenue comes from overseas markets, because the domestic market is only so large.

I think China is moving in that direction, with more and more big and small companies deriving most of their revenue from a global base. The big change from before is this: China has always been very export-oriented, a big exporter, but for many decades it was an exporter of low-margin products, supplying the true leaders of the industry, the ones with real pricing power. A lot of iPhones are made in China, many Apple components also come from China, but it’s the American company, Apple, that captures the majority of the profit from the whole ecosystem, because Apple has the brand power, the design power, the soft power, and that translates into formidable pricing power.

Until recently, that’s what China’s foreign revenue looked like. Only recently have we started to see Chinese companies gain real pricing power in their own fields. A good example is Pop Mart. Pop Mart isn’t exporting to other companies, it’s talking directly to foreign consumers, selling a high-margin product. You can imagine the manufacturing cost of a toy from a Chinese factory is really low, but it can totally justify a high margin because people want it, people like it. That’s the gap many people haven’t realised yet, that you’re going to see more and more companies like Pop Mart, in consumer goods, in manufacturing, and in technology too.

People like to imagine Chinese companies as underselling each other, selling cheap goods and cheap services, but in future it could be either cheap or expensive, just definitely higher quality. That’s where the real competitiveness comes from. Specifically in tech, if you look at the big internet firms, the cloud service providers, and the AI companies, I think there’s huge potential growth for the new AI companies in China. Many of them are global from day one. I’m talking about companies like Minimax, Zhipu, and DeepSeek. From very early on they’ve been globally known, their products globally used, and essentially they’re selling tokens. Underlying those tokens isn’t just their algorithms, it’s also the electricity, the power. China has notoriously cheap electricity. People talk about China essentially exporting cheap power in the form of tokens to the rest of the world. That’s going to be a huge difference, because historically, technology products, cloud services, internet products, China has been very big domestically but not so much internationally. Tencent, WeChat, aren’t really popular outside China. Nor is Alipay. TikTok is the exception, not the rule. Most big Chinese internet players are strong domestically but weak internationally.

AI could be different. AI is a field where Chinese companies can be global from day one, and they are global from day one. Many of these companies, Minimax for example, have most of their revenue from outside China. That’s their own choice from day one, and it shows real competitiveness. People like it. If you go on OpenRouter, where all these AI APIs sit, you’ll see a growing share of API calls coming from Chinese models. That’s a big trend we’re observing.

Keith 31:30

If we look at the AI dimension, which I’m glad you brought up, it’s become an increasingly sensitive area, especially given rising geopolitical tensions between the US and China. You have, for example, the Manus case, the legislated unwinding of that deal. Many Chinese companies do look to sell overseas, but at the same time, in bigger markets like the US, there’s increasing scepticism about using Chinese AI service providers. That speaks to a breakdown of trust at a very fundamental level between the US and China. In that more fraught geopolitical landscape, how do Chinese AI companies stay nimble while remaining commercially viable?

Robert Wu 32:23

Counterintuitively, what I understand from recent conversations is that a lot of US companies are also adopting Chinese models. One thing about Chinese AI is that they always have an open-source version and a closed-source version. Most AI companies in China run on this open-plus-closed model. Their open-source models are being widely adopted, in China and in US companies, to save costs.

Maybe a year or two ago people had concerns and scepticism about Chinese models. What I understand now is that people don’t refer to them as Chinese models any more, they just call them open-source models. The thing is, the only viable open-source models right now are Chinese models, so people are using a kind of euphemism for Chinese models. That, in itself, shows the dominance and the quality of Chinese models. Even the open-source versions are already being widely adopted.

I think this open-source-plus-closed-source strategy is very helpful for Chinese companies. The open-source version is something you give away for free, share with the community, which serves as a kind of marketing and branding effort. Even without people paying for your services, they can use your branded free service and implement it locally in a safe environment for themselves. If you put out a very good open-source model, that’s a huge branding boost for yourself, and people looking to subscribe to your closed-source models will naturally come from the people who already use your open-source models. So Chinese companies are doing very innovative things in how they develop, and they’re different from how Anthropic and OpenAI develop, both of which are very closed-source. Each approach has different advantages and different weaknesses.

Keith 34:59

In that case, when you have an open-source model, the challenge is always how you monetise it well, because it’s one thing to showcase technological superiority, but from what I hear, even from friends working in the Chinese tech space, it’s actually very hard to convert a customer, because some users are happy with the open-source model and feel there’s no real incentive to go further down that customer journey. How are tech entrepreneurs, especially in the AI space, thinking about paths to monetise and expand?

Robert Wu 35:35

Companies are starting to pay much closer attention to financials and monetisation now. The reason they have the patience and the nerve to do this is that this is what Chinese companies, especially internet companies, have been accustomed to for more than a decade. It’s almost like the early internet playbook: you give a lot of free services to users in China, make it really cheap, even free, get people used to your services through subsidies, and then figure out how to monetise. It takes time to find the right price points and the right difference between your open-source and closed-source offerings.

I think right now, because of the importance of the AI industry, there’s a lot of support coming from capital markets and from the state, so companies will have enough time to figure it out. I wouldn’t be very worried about that. As long as they can survive and keep iterating, there should be a bright future, at least for some of them.

Keith 36:50

The adjacent question would be the geopolitical constraints. The Manus case study, which I referenced earlier, suggests there’s a clampdown on how a company can rebrand or reposition itself as an international company. There was one very clear example where the founders found themselves on the wrong side of the regulators. What are the implications of that for Chinese tech founders thinking about rebranding their companies as more international?

Robert Wu 37:23

What the Manus team did has been an unspoken rule for a while. It’s not just Manus, there are many companies I know of. It’s not even rebranding, it’s more like remaking yourself, a conscious choice not to be seen as a Chinese company, but as something else, washing yourself into a different identity. That’s something that’s been happening quietly, and everyone knows it happens.

The Manus case was special for two reasons. First, they only made that decision later in their life cycle. If a company decides from the start to go overseas and become an overseas company, that’s actually still fine. But Manus had been developing in China for a while, and only later decided to move away. Second, they were very vocal about the deal when Meta made the acquisition. A lot of entrepreneurs and VCs in China remember all the PR articles and interviews where Manus and their investors talked it up, held it up as a huge success story, without any apparent concern for the political implications. That’s special too, because most companies who do this kind of thing do it quietly. Manus was just too successful, and they had to brag about it. That, in effect, forced Beijing’s hand. Beijing had probably known about this kind of thing for a while but hadn’t done much to stop it. This very public deal forced a response. Beijing had to make a statement that this isn’t acceptable, that it has to be covered under regulations, that you can’t use this as a loophole.

Is it a clampdown? I don’t think so. I think it’s more a reiteration and tightening of the existing regulatory regime. If you’re a Chinese company and a foreign company wants to acquire you, there are certain regulations you have to go through, and that’s all fine. What was different about Manus is that, having rebranded itself as something other than a Chinese company, it appeared not to need to go through those regulations and approvals at all. Beijing is saying you can’t do that and assume it’s fine.

The reaction from the Chinese tech and VC industry has been pretty normal, I’d say. People weren’t shocked. The combination of Manus bragging about the deal so publicly, and doing it so obviously, trying to wash themselves into something else, made Beijing’s reaction feel natural to most people. People weren’t scared, because they figured Beijing had to do something about it. The end result is that if you don’t want to be a Chinese company and you want to do a startup, you should just do it from day one, leave the country and start up there. If you want to be in China and enjoy the benefits of the Chinese ecosystem, you have to be a Chinese company. You have to make that decision at the very beginning. I think that’s the real lesson, and it’s actually a lesson many people already knew, even before the Manus case. Manus just made it a very clear one, so now everyone knows. That’s just my two cents on this.

Keith 41:46

If you want full access to the transcripts of every episode, head over to ykeith.com and you’ll get full and free access to each one. Now, back to the show.

At the grassroots level, you’ve also been organising tours for foreign investors to go into China and better understand the local market and the local ecosystem. One of the things you’ve focused on in recent months is helping others understand AI and robotics in China, and the advancements there. Could you share some learnings you think are pertinent to those of us who are foreigners investing in or observing China from overseas, and give us a sense of the developments that aren’t being talked about today but will be crucial in the development of AI robotics?

Robert Wu 42:36

In April we organised a tour to cover the robotics industry, mostly in Shanghai and the areas close to it. We had almost twenty people from all over the world join. We visited large and small robotics companies, and there were several interesting takeaways, both from our participants and from me personally.

In terms of movement, the bodies, China is very advanced. The robots you see can not only dance, they can do kung fu, they can run. But the thing is, they’re still very stupid at this moment. Their brains are very small. A lot of the movement is pre-programmed, or even teleoperated. If you look at the Spring Festival Gala in China, where you see all these Unitree robots doing sophisticated movements and manoeuvres, a lot of that is teleoperated. It’s a great testament to the hardware, but the software is very lacking, and the main reason is the lack of data to train on.

If you think about large language models, they have the whole internet, the entire written history of humanity, to train on. If you look at autonomous driving, Tesla has an existing fleet of millions of cars rolling on the roads every day, collecting data. But if you look at robots, how many robots are operating every day? Maybe ten thousand at most, in motion. And they’re doing something far more complicated than autonomous driving. So you have a far more complicated data environment, but a much lower level of existing equipment to collect that data. Data becomes the bottleneck.

We’re starting to see companies, even startups, working specifically on the data side, what’s called teleoperated data, or imitation data. You have real people using simulation devices to control the robots, teaching them what to do, repeatedly. We actually visited one of these data collection centres at a major robotics company, and you have around twenty people sitting at their stations. One person is controlling a robot to fold clothes, folding it, unfolding it, over and over. Another is teaching a robot to open and close a wardrobe door, opening it, closing it, again and again. It’s quite remarkable, all these people doing mechanical, repetitive work, and the robots learning to do it after them. It’s manual data collection, and there are companies in China specifically working on this now.

There’s only a limited amount of real-world data you can collect this way, unless you have ten million robots out there working every day, and right now you only have a few hundred. So you also have what we call simulation companies, creating simulated data, recreating virtual worlds for robots to react to, generating massive amounts of synthetic data to train on as well. That’s a very important field that I don’t think many outsiders pay enough attention to, because when you think about robots you think about flashy performances. That’s the obvious part. The real bottleneck right now is the data: how do you collect it, and synthesise it, to build a bigger, better, stronger brain. That’s really where the front line is at the moment.

Keith 47:17

When your visitors come and look at the manufacturing capabilities within China, what do they see that gives them a different paradigm on how manufacturing really plays out there?

Robert Wu 47:33

This time we visited a software company in China, a tech unicorn that serves only the manufacturing sector. It helps factory owners and managers manage their processes, their manufacturing lines, and many other details in their factories, all through their phones, through an app, a mini-program, very internet-based, with a system for every worker.

You only get this kind of startup, this kind of AI company, in China, because China has a huge manufacturing sector to support its existence. In the US you’d have startups in many other fields, but in China you have this whole ecosystem of manufacturing partners, and that’s something that really amazed some of our participants, looking at the growth trajectory of these companies and the specific niche they fill, a niche that’s large enough simply because China’s manufacturing sector is so vast.

On this last tour we went to AI and robotics companies, which is actually softer, more office visits, watching robots, at best visiting some data collection centres. But in future we’re going to organise manufacturing tours, taking people to manufacturing bases in China, the Pearl River Delta, the Yangtze River Delta. We want to show people some of the average factories, not the best ones, the average ones. What I understand is that many average factories in China are already what we call dark factories, lights off, very few people, all automatic, all robotic, even mid-sized factories. That’s something we’ll be very interested to watch. It’s a very interesting thing about China, that it will always be a manufacturing power. It’s going to be the world’s factory for a long time, and it’ll be very interesting to follow.

Keith 50:26

As we head into the last question, I want to quickly plug Robert’s work. I think you’re doing great work, I’ll link the Substack and the tours in the bio so people can check it out. Reading your work, it’s clear to me that you don’t just understand China at a very fundamental and intimate level, you’re able to communicate that to the outside world, so we have a clearer understanding of where China is headed. I’ll link that in the bio.

My last question: given this age of fragmentation and competition we’re living in, if you were to give one piece of advice to a young person today, what would it be?

Robert Wu 51:07

Do something you love. I know this sounds like a cliché, but it’s becoming more and more existential. Because now, AI can do almost anything you can think of, but it doesn’t have one thing: a motive. AI doesn’t have a motive. It’s just a tool, a very powerful tool, one that has the potential to replace a lot of people, but it can’t replace creativity, and it can’t replace motive, knowing what you actually want to do.

That’s a bigger problem in China. Most kids, growing up, aren’t given much chance to develop what they actually want to do. It’s all exams, all memorisation. But now that’s getting more and more serious, because if you just take exams and memorise things, you’ll never outcompete AI. AI will remember things faster, better, and more comprehensively than you ever could. But if you know what you want to do, if you love what you want to do, AI becomes your weapon. It becomes the workhorse for you. So finding what you love is becoming more and more important, and for many people that’s still considered a luxury. But you have to make the room for that luxury. That’s just my very simple, humble piece of advice.

Keith 52:40

With that piece of advice, Robert, thank you once again for coming on.

Thank you for listening to today’s episode. If you are watching this on YouTube, please consider subscribing and turning on notifications for whenever new episodes are out. If you’re on Spotify or Apple, it would help us greatly if you could leave a five-star review on those platforms. Once again, thank you for tuning in to The Front Row Podcast.

Robert Wu 52:43

Thank you. Thank you for inviting me again.

Lee Kuan Yew refused to write his memoirs.

The reason was characteristically unsentimental: people write them, he said, just to settle scores.

It took a small team of journalists to persuade him that explaining the reasoning behind his decisions had genuine value.

So they worked with him on The Man and His Ideas — and I recently published an interview with one of LKY’s key collaborators.

Warren Fernandez was a young journalist then, who would later become Editor-in-Chief of The Straits Times. He recounts that once LKY decided to write, he committed entirely — or as the Gen-Zs would put it -he locked in.

Two examples have stayed with me since that conversation.

1. He sought feedback relentlessly. Each time Warren sent him his notes, a revised version would come back swiftly. “Is this better? Does it work now?” he would ask — version after version, until Warren lost count. He never seemed to tire of it. The caricature of the fearsome leader impervious to outside opinion quietly dissolved. Bear in mind: Warren was a young journalist then, not the seasoned veteran you see today.

2. In his seventies, he taught himself to use the PC so he could get feedback faster and work more efficiently. In a separate conversation, Ambassador Chan told me that watching LKY painstakingly master the computer compelled her to pick it up as well. Her reasoning was simple: if the founding father of Singapore could muster the time and will to adopt a new technology, what excuse did she have?

What drove all of this?

LKY’s answer, when Warren asked him directly, was almost brusque in its clarity: “I want it to be read. No use if I write it and people don’t read it. I want them to read it, especially the young, and understand how we got here.”

His deepest worry was not support for the PAP or even the survival of any political arrangement.

It was something more fundamental: that younger Singaporeans would lose the instinct for what made Singapore tick.

The fragility of a small, multiracial city-state.

The need for a constant refresh of our value proposition to the world.

How easy seemingly settled arrangements can unravel.

He wrote because he believed that certain kinds of understanding cannot be transmitted through headlines, speeches, TV appearances, or policy papers.

They require the sustained encounter that only serious reading — and serious writing — can create.

The best and most important ideas travel through the written word. And to receive them, one has to be capable of reading.

Which begs the question: do we still read?

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The Curious Case of Singapore

I need to start from where I was born and raised- Singapore.

The 2023 OECD PIAAC survey — the most comprehensive assessment of adult skills across developed economies — found that Singapore’s adult literacy proficiency sits below the OECD average overall.

Older cohorts fare particularly badly: Singaporeans aged 55 to 65 rank 27th out of 31 countries assessed, and literacy skills decline sharply after 35.

The headline reads as damning — evidence, it seems, that we could be entering a post-literate society.

But let us look more carefully.

First, Singapore’s 15-year-olds ranked first in the world for reading in the PISA 2022 assessment.

Young Singaporean adults aged 16 to 24 rank fifth globally in literacy in the same PIAAC survey that shows the overall adult population lagging. [1]

Singapore is also above the OECD average in numeracy and converging on it in adaptive problem-solving.

Taken together, this does not reflect a society in cognitive decline.

The more accurate thesis is that the headline average is driven by a generational gap, not a contemporary collapse.

The first generation of Singaporeans came of age before the country had built its world-class education system, competing in an OECD cohort drawn largely from wealthier societies with longer traditions of mass literacy.

Of course they trailed.

The more meaningful signal is the trajectory: as each successive, better-educated cohort enters the workforce, Singapore’s aggregate scores improve.

The mainstream interpretation — that social media is responsible for the adult literacy decline — while persuasive, on its own is not particularly useful.

The same variable cannot explain divergent performance across age groups within the same country at the same moment.

If smartphones were the culprit, we would expect the sharpest drop-off among the young, who are most exposed.

Instead, young Singaporeans are among the most literate populations on the planet.

None of this is cause for complacency.

The same PIAAC data suggests a measurable atrophy effect — younger adult cohorts might experience literacy decline as they age.

The takeaway is simple : Skills, once built, must be exercised to be retained.

Don’t Fall Into The Trap of Doom & Gloom

There is a well-established genre of cultural commentary that treats declining reading figures as evidence of civilisational decline.

Cultural Capital

The dawn of the post-literate society

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book because there would be no one who wanted to read one…

Read more

10 months ago · 21045 likes · 1314 comments · James Marriott

The concerns are genuine: in America, reading for pleasure has dropped sharply over two decades; in the UK, more than a third of adults say they have given up reading entirely; universities report students who cannot parse a paragraph of Dickens.

(But even in the UK - its reported more children and teenagers are enjoying reading for first time in 5 years)

As Neil Postman observed long before the smartphone — channelling Huxley — the real threat was never that books would be banned, but that there would be no reason to ban them, because no one would want to read one.

Before we declare an age of intellectual darkness, though, consider what access to knowledge actually looks like today.

We have public libraries stocked with books our great-grandparents could only have dreamed of. In Singapore, these spaces are beautiful, generously resourced, and offer borrowing limits that would astonish earlier generations — literary abundance at a public level.

Beyond the library, personal intelligence is now on tap: an LLM can summarise and extract the key arguments from any article in seconds.

A lecture that would once have required a plane ticket, an institutional affiliation, and a conference fee can be watched online or transcribed with ninety percent accuracy in three minutes, for free.

Great ideas, concepts and lessons are now accessible to anyone with a working laptop.

The cost of accessing insight has collapsed.

For all the criticisms of social media, it has also opened new routes to material worth engaging with — intellectually and for leisure.

The post-literacy panic, in short, is a category error.

It conflates a decline in a specific mode of reading with a decline in human intelligence or curiosity itself.

The democratisation of knowledge is accelerating, not reversing.

But — and this is the crucial caveat — the form of attention we are cultivating at scale is real cause for concern. It’s not because we are getting dumber.

But, because we are systematically exercising one cognitive muscle while allowing another to atrophy.

Two Kinds of Reading

Daniel Kahneman’s most enduring contribution to popular thought is the distinction between two modes of cognition.

System 1 is fast, instinctive, and associative — it pattern-matches, skims, and reacts. System 2 is slow, deliberate, and effortful — it analyses, reasons, and holds complexity.

Both are necessary.

The error is letting System 1 colonise territory that only System 2 can handle.

The same distinction maps onto reading.

Type 1 reading is scanning, skimming, processing for relevance — staying current, extracting signal from noise. This is where many of us operate comfortably in - skimming newsletters, scrolling our newsfeeds and reading articles on our smartphones.

Type 2 reading is slow, sustained, and unhurried: reading not to extract information but to construct a comprehensive worldview - working through a difficult argument until it lands, re-drawing your mental map of the world. And- this endeavour is both cognitively demanding and time-consuming.

The neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf argues that the goal for every digital native should be a biliterate brain — one that moves between these modes the way a truly bilingual person moves between languages: effortlessly, with full fluency in each, neither cannibalising the other. [2]

Her developmental research reveals something uncomfortable: this capacity does not emerge naturally in a digital environment.

It requires active cultivation, almost in opposition to the default tendencies of screen-based reading.

Her blueprint for children makes explicit what most of us assume will happen on its own.

In early school years, print must be primary — because physical books build what Wolf calls cognitive patience: the neurological expectation that understanding takes time, that some ideas require the reader to slow down and dwell.

Digital tools are introduced simultaneously, but for different purposes — coding, creation, design — so that children develop facility with screens without letting screen-reading habits pre-empt the development of deep reading circuits.

And when children eventually read complex material on screens, they must be explicitly taught counterskills: how to resist the skimming instinct, how to read for meaning rather than speed.

It is tempting to dismiss this as advice for children — to assume that in adulthood it is too late. It is not. The biliterate brain is an achievement, not a given, but it remains achievable at any age.

Why Physical Books Still Matter

“Therefore I feel that we of this generation give too much time to news about the transient present, too little to the living past. We are choked with news, and starved of history. We know a thousand items about the day or yesterday, we learn the events and troubles and heartbreaks of a hundred peoples, the policies and pretensions of a dozen capitals, the victories and defeats of causes, armies, and athletic teams — but how, without history, can we understand these events, discriminate their significance, sift out the large from the small, see the basic currents underlying surface movements and changes, and foresee the result sufficiently to guard against fatal error or the souring of unreasonable hopes?”

— Fallen Leaves by Will Durant

There is a version of the digital optimist argument that dismisses physical books as sentimental fetish objects.

If the goal is absorbing ideas, why not read on a Kindle, or let AI summarise? Wolf’s research gives a more rigorous answer.

Physical books offer what digital formats largely cannot: spatial and temporal permanence.

The weight of pages, the ability to sense where you are in a text, to flip back and feel the distance between a paragraph and its premise — these are cognitive scaffolding.

They communicate to the brain that reading takes time and sustained effort, that some ideas require the reader to dwell rather than swipe.

Books teach, literally, that some things are worth lingering over.

That lesson, it turns out, is best absorbed in the medium that embodies it.

What We Read And Why

A good way to start reading more to be shown — concretely, by people you recognise — what a life shaped by books actually looks like.

That is the best case I can make for Warren’s anthology, What We Read and Why, which he published together with World Scientific. (You can buy it here)

The book gathers short, personal essays from Singaporeans across every imaginable station in life: ambassadors and senior ministers, academics and students, retirees and young children.

What struck me was not which books people chose, but the quality of intimacy they brought to the subject. Ask people about their cars, their smartphones, their trinkets — you get a ho-hum answer. Ask them about books, and something shifts. The language becomes more personal, more specific, more emotionally unguarded. There is an anthropological curiosity here: the book is the one object that, across vastly different lives, carries the same weight of private memory.

The essays I found most affecting came from children aged nine to twelve — shot through with a carefree curiosity that most adults have trained themselves out of.

(One child even jokingly wrote about her dismay that her parents had started encouraging her to watch television instead of read.)

As a young dad, these perspectives were the most instructive part of the book. The families that produced voracious young readers were not, by and large, the ones running structured enrichment programmes or drilling comprehension exercises. They were the ones who treated their children’s appetite for books the way other parents treat appetites for sport or music: as something to be indulged, resourced, and shared.

The Real Obstacle: Hyperbolic Discounting

The deeper barrier to Type 2 reading is not the smartphone.

It is human psychology.

Hyperbolic discounting is the tendency to overweight immediate rewards relative to future ones — even when we know, rationally, that the future payoff is larger. [3]

We choose the dopamine hit of a short video over the slow accumulation of insight from a book not because we are irrational, but because our reward systems are tuned for immediacy. The book’s return is real but deferred. The scroll’s return is trivial but now.

This is why willpower is the wrong prescription.

The right intervention is environmental and motivational: change the conditions, and encounter — concretely — what deep reading has done for people you respect.

SM Lee Hsien Loong’s contribution to the anthology did this for me.

Citing Kissinger, he wrote something I had long suspected but never seen stated so plainly: the convictions that leaders form before reaching high office are the intellectual capital they draw on for the rest of their tenure.

In office, there is almost no time for reflection — the urgent perpetually crowds out the important.

Leaders who do not read, who do not build those reserves before and during their ascent, find themselves operating on increasingly stale assumptions without the capacity to recognize the staleness.

Reading, he wrote, gives him the chance to step back from immediate preoccupations and reach for something more distant and enduring. Without it, intellectual reserves run down. Leaders become stale and jaded — locked into path dependency, unable to bring fresh thinking to standing problems.

Here was a serving prime minister managing a city-state in one of the most consequential periods in geopolitical history, who still carves out time to read.

What legitimate excuse do I have?

His essay also clarified something I had not quite articulated before: the only reliable defence against intellectual path dependency is a deliberate reading practice that includes material written by domain experts — so that your convictions are stress-tested rather than merely reinforced — and material outside your immediate domain of work, so that you can bring novel solutions to persistent problems.

You Need a Forcing Function

The podcast is what keeps me reading. Knowing I have to interview someone whose work I respect in a matter of weeks is a forcing function I could not manufacture by willpower alone.

The preparation — reading properly, thinking carefully about what to ask — taps into my kiasu Singaporean instinct: I do not want to paiseh in front of my esteemed guest.[4]

Remove the podcast, and I am not sure if I would be reading as much.

The broader point is that we all need mechanisms that convert good intentions into reliable habits.

Here are three that I think works well:

1. Sign up to present a book at work, or participate in a book club regularly. The social accountability of having to say something interesting to colleagues concentrates the mind considerably.

2. Start a podcast and explicitly try to interview people whose work you want to understand deeply. The preparation required to make a good interview will make you a cracked reader. That’s what I did but I must warn you this is way tougher than it appears.

3. Buy books for friends as gifts — and mean it. If you are going to hand someone a book and tell them it is worth their time, you had better have a good reason. That obligation forces you to read with enough attention to actually recommend. It also, conveniently, starts conversations.

With that — wherever you are — I hope you discover the great joy of reading in this digital age.

Footnotes

[1]Two different OECD surveys are cited here and they measure different populations. PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) assesses 15-year-olds across participating countries. PIAAC (Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies) assesses adults aged 16–65. Singapore performs exceptionally on PISA and well among younger PIAAC cohorts, with the aggregate PIAAC score dragged down by older generations who received less formal education. The contrast is not contradictory — it is generational.

[2]Maryanne Wolf’s case for the biliterate brain is made most accessibly in Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World (2018). Wolf is a cognitive neuroscientist at UCLA whose earlier book Proust and the Squid (2007) remains the definitive account of how the human brain learns to read — a process she describes as one of the most remarkable feats of neurological repurposing in evolution, since the brain has no reading circuit at birth and must construct one from scratch.

[3]Hyperbolic discounting was formalised as a concept by the economist David Laibson and draws on earlier work by Richard Thaler on present bias. The “hyperbolic” refers to the shape of the discount curve: rather than discounting future rewards at a constant rate (exponential discounting, the rational model), humans discount the near future steeply and the far future relatively mildly. A reward available now is worth far more than the same reward available in an hour; but the difference between a reward in a year versus a year and an hour barely registers.

[4]Two Singlish terms for non-Singaporean readers. Kiasu (from Hokkien: 怕輸, “afraid to lose”) describes the competitive, loss-averse anxiety — about falling behind, missing out, or being outperformed — that is a widely acknowledged feature of Singaporean culture and a genuine motivational force.
Paiseh (from Hokkien: 歹勢, roughly “awkward” or “embarrassing”) is used to describe the social discomfort of being caught underprepared or having caused inconvenience.

Warren Fernandez is a journalist, editor, and public intellectual whose career spans more than three decades at the centre of Singapore’s media landscape.

He served as Editor-in-Chief of the Straits Times — Singapore’s flagship English daily — and is perhaps best known beyond journalism as one of the principal collaborators on several of Lee Kuan Yew’s landmark books, including The Man and His Ideas and The Singapore Story.

His close working relationship with Mr. Lee gave him an unusually intimate vantage point on Singapore’s founding generation and the ideas that shaped the nation’s development.

More recently, Fernandez joined the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), where he is now engaged in research on world order and the shifting dynamics of great power competition — work he describes as the foundation for his next book.

He is also the author of What We Read and Why, an anthology in which leaders, educators, and young people reflect on their relationship with books and reading, making the case for literacy as both a life skill and a civic responsibility.

In this conversation, Fernandez draws together threads from an exceptionally varied career: the craft of communicating ideas, the media’s role in a small state, the mechanics of world order, and why the capacity to read carefully and think critically has never mattered more.

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Keith 00:00:00

Today I am joined by Warren Fernandez. He’s best known for being the former chief editor at the Straits Times, but he’s also known as one of the key collaborators on many of Mr. Lee Kuan Yew’s books, including The Man and His Ideas and The Singapore Story. He recently put together this book, What We Read and Why. It’s an ode to reading. In today’s conversation, we hope to explore how reading can actually help make a better society.

If you enjoy this show, please double-check that you’re subscribed. Every subscription matters and really helps us grow this show to serve you. Thank you so much for the support. Now back to the show.

You helped put together some of Mr. Lee Kuan Yew’s early books, one of which was The Man and His Ideas — based on 13 exclusive interviews held over 30 hours. Take me back to those days. What was it like working on that book?

Warren Fernandez 00:53

It was a very long time ago. The honest answer is I got roped in because Mr. Lee was getting impatient with the project — he felt it was taking too long. I was very young at the time, so I wasn’t involved in the actual interviewing. That was done by the editor at the time, Han Fook Kwang, with Sumiko. They took several rounds of interviews with him over many months, did the transcripts, conceptualised the structure, and started working on the chapters.

Mr. Lee then said, “This is taking too long — we’ve got to hurry this up.” I was called into the editor’s office one day and told I’d be working on this full time to help write the chapters.

It was a bit of an experiment, actually. Initially, Mr. Lee was quite averse to the idea of writing his memoirs. He had this view that he didn’t want people to put him on a pedestal and hold his views up as though they were sacrosanct and good for all time. He said people write their memoirs basically just to settle scores. But we tried to persuade him that there is genuine value in telling the story of how he came to some of the big decisions, and why. So we did the book. It sold very well — better than any of us expected.

I think that convinced him there was value in sharing his story. So he decided to do his own memoirs, The Singapore Story. He gathered his notes and oral histories, drafted the chapters, and sent them to us as he was writing, asking for honest feedback.

I remember being very excited to be involved. How many people get to work on the memoirs of a founding father of their country? It was a huge privilege, but also quite daunting — because it was Lee Kuan Yew, and he was a formidable character. By that stage, I had got to know him. I’d covered many of his big speeches, travelled with him. He knew of me, and I had worked with him quite a bit. What I found was that he was actually quite open to suggestions.

He would send us a draft and we would go back to him and say: this part isn’t clear, you need to make it clearer; this part is a bit dull, cut the detail; tell us more about the personal side, because that’s what people will be interested in. And he would be quite diligent about it. You might send him comments in the morning and sometimes by the next day you’d get a rewritten draft with a note: “Does this work? Is this better? Is that what you had in mind?”

And I found that he was very eager that the book should actually be read. He wasn’t doing it as a vanity project. He wanted to connect with Singaporeans — especially a younger generation — and get them to understand how what we had managed to build was actually possible.

Keith 04:10

What made him such a force of nature on the international stage — something a younger generation like ours might not fully appreciate?

Warren Fernandez 04:20

Leaders and observers around the world appreciated that he spoke his mind. He was very upfront. He told it like it is, and he gave a clear assessment of what was going on in our part of the world — based on his deep understanding, his track record in Singapore, and the people he knew at first hand. That made him someone they sought out, someone they were willing to give time to and listen to.

Travelling with him was also a fascinating experience. You got to go to places you might not otherwise have been. And he was always very anxious to make sure that the journalists accompanying him understood what he was trying to achieve on that trip. He would meet us very often — sometimes over coffee, sometimes over tea, sometimes after dinner — to say: for the next leg of the trip, I’m going to be doing this, articulating these ideas. Please understand the backdrop to what I’m trying to say.

It struck me then — I was only in my twenties — why is he taking the time to do this? Over time it became clear: this was the hallmark of a good communicator. He knew he was working through us, and unless we understood what he was trying to do, we would not be able to help him deliver on that message. To me, that is the mark of someone who is genuinely interested in communicating his ideas — not just putting them out there and hoping for the best.

Keith 05:56

Fascinating to hear what transpires behind the scenes. There’s him as the politician that many people are familiar with, but people may not fully appreciate him as a statesman — and those are often two very different roles.

Warren Fernandez 06:11

And him as a person as well. I used to write the wrap-up reports for something like the National Day Rally — where he’d be speaking almost off the cuff, but from notes. He would bring us in fairly early in the process to say: these are the big ideas, I might be using some anecdotes to tell the story, please understand where it’s coming from.

That was very helpful to us as journalists, because we got the thinking behind what he was going to say. I often think that’s the hallmark of good communication: you’ve got to help people join the dots, see where you’re coming from, understand the backdrop that shaped the thinking.

Keith 06:56

The traditional role of media, as conceptualised in Western circles, is the fourth estate — independent, adversarial. Whereas in Singapore, a different frame was offered by Mr. Lee Kuan Yew: that it is an institution that supports the building of the state. How does that look operationally, as someone who lived it as a journalist?

Warren Fernandez 07:19

I’d say it’s not so different from how big international leaders operate as well, because they often work with journalists they know and trust. You build up that rapport over time. To get access to top leaders, they would tend to work with someone they’re comfortable with — someone on the same wavelength who understands where they’re coming from. That building up of trust is a fundamental part of being a good journalist. You can’t just send an email or a WhatsApp and expect good answers. You need the time to build that relationship. I think that’s no different from anywhere in the world.

Second, I think Mr. Lee’s understanding of the media was that its primary role was to inform the public — help people understand what’s going on — and then to explain the context and background to events and why. He didn’t believe the media should simply repeat or parrot the government line, because then you wouldn’t be very useful or credible. The mission for the media was always: stay connected with the readers you’re trying to serve, be credible in their eyes, and help put things in proper context. If you agree with what the government is doing, say so. If you disagree with aspects of it, say so, and be able to back it up. But don’t say things just to be contrarian or too clever by half. That’s not helpful — not to the media, not to policymakers, and not to voters.

Keith 09:03

Were there examples from your own career where that played out?

Warren Fernandez 09:08

There were often times when we would discuss issues and say: this part doesn’t sound very credible, or this part is going to cause you trouble — you should come out and address it. And very often he would take that advice. He would also get a group of journalists together over lunch and ask: what is on people’s minds? Are they worried about jobs, cost of living, some bilateral issue? Why are they concerned? He would listen. He wouldn’t always agree, but you could tell he was listening.

The interesting thing about him was that he would often cross-check. You would get a sense that he’d taken what you’d said seriously — because he might come back and say: you told me this, but I’ve heard from someone else that it looks quite different. So you knew your part of the bargain was that if you were going to make a point, you’d better be able to back it up.

Keith 10:02

As a journalist, you have to digest information, understand the world, and your value proposition — especially for a national newspaper — is to give people context. How do you prepare yourself for that?

Warren Fernandez 10:20

You want to be as well-read as possible and have a good grounding in what’s going on in the world. But when I was starting out, there was a practice: before any big assignment, you went and read the files. Literally. You walked into the Straits Times library and asked the librarian to bring you the file on health, or education, or whatever subject you were covering. They would bring you a physical file of all the newspaper cuttings on that topic. A good journalist would read through those stories to get up to speed and understand the context.

These days I don’t think anyone does it that way because you can get it off your phone. But the practice still applies: understand where this issue has come from, how it got to be the way it is. If there’s a policy, why was that the policy? The people who created it weren’t dumb — they did it for a reason. If you’re going to change the policy, what has changed in the underlying premises that led to it? And does the change make it better in some way?

Understanding the context in which an issue played out is, I think, a big part of being a good journalist. And often you are moving from one subject to another — one day health, the next education. So the training, the instinct, is to learn quickly, go as deep as you can, and make sure you have the best possible understanding of the subject before you get into it.

Keith 12:00

It’s been almost a decade since Mr. Lee passed, and the world is radically different today than even when he was in politics. What are some of the ideas that have endured?

Warren Fernandez 12:13

The key thing I took away was his sense that you had to take the world as you find it — not the world as you wish it to be. You had to be nimble, adapt to the way you find the world, make yourself useful and relevant, and then you would have a place at the table.

The day we get to a position where we say “this is the Singapore view, this is how it’s always been done” — I think that’s when we get into trouble. That was a key element of how he approached policymaking: very pragmatic, very realistic, almost non-ideological, with a sense that we’ve got to find our way in the world and nobody owes us a living. Given all that’s happening in the world today, that is a principle we should hold on to: be nimble, make yourself useful, be relevant, and adapt to a changing world.

Keith 13:15

You come from a time when social media didn’t exist and journalism was still seen as a very important source of truth. When the Straits Times reported something, that was a credible and legitimate source of information.

Warren Fernandez 13:28

I hope that’s still the case.

Keith 13:46

Now we live in a much more digital age, with many more alternative positions and perspectives. And in this age of social media, the incentive for depth has been significantly reduced. As someone who experienced this transition, what do you think is the biggest downside of being so fully immersed in the digital world?

Warren Fernandez 14:13

I was at the cusp of that transition. When I started, we were still moving from typewriters to word processing. Then it accelerated into the internet age and social media. One of the big challenges when I was editor of the Straits Times was making that transition in the newsroom — getting people to operate across platforms, no longer just thinking about print. My mantra was: how is this going to travel across platforms? Where’s the digital version, the online version, the video version, the podcast version? Getting the mindset to shift from thinking about what comes out tomorrow to what comes out in a few hours — even a few minutes — that was the big challenge.

By the time I left, that process had gone very far down the road. The newsroom had become much more multimedia, much more conscious of the need to operate on a different timescale and engage audiences across all platforms. I was happy with how far we’d come, but I felt the new generation had to take it much further.

And I do see it as a big plus. In the past, if you’re a journalist or editor, you write something, you wait until the next morning when it lands on somebody’s doorstep, and that’s your one contact point. They read it and go to work — you don’t connect again until the next day. Now you can engage with your audience on phones, screens, podcasts — many touchpoints throughout the day, constantly, at their leisure. In that sense, it’s a richer experience for both the producer and the audience.

The key challenge is that there is so much out there. The competition for attention and the challenge of building loyalty and brand affinity have become far more intense. That is what media everywhere in the world is facing.

Keith 16:38

There is an idea that we should try to read deeply into something rather than consume a podcast, watch a YouTube video, or scroll Instagram for news. What do you think is the genuine value of reading — a practice that has perhaps been lost?

Warren Fernandez 17:07

First, I’d say that even someone like Mr. Lee would have valued the medium we’re using right now — a podcast. Don’t forget, in the sixties he went on radio: a long series of radio interviews. He had a sense that you had to master whatever medium was dominant, whatever was the way to connect with your audience. When it was radio, he used radio. When it was TV, he learned to get good at speaking on TV. When he travelled overseas and met politicians or newspaper editors, he was very good at those roundtable discussions — articulating his views, taking questions, winning people over.

I don’t think he would have seen today’s media environment in a different light. You see our politicians, across the spectrum, now very active on social media and podcasts. They’re all learning, in their own way, that you have to connect on whatever platform your audience is on. So I think it’s platform-agnostic. But that doesn’t remove the need to go deep into a subject. It’s wonderful to get information quickly at your fingertips, consume it on a blog or Substack or wherever — that makes things much easier. But it cannot replace the need to slow down, read carefully, think about what you’re reading, and reflect on it. That part, I don’t think, ever goes away.

Keith 18:47

How does reading actually benefit the average citizen?

Warren Fernandez 18:54

If I’m reading for information — a report, a quick update on a subject — I find I can consume a lot of content digitally, whether on my phone, iPad, or screen. But if I really want to reflect on a topic, a physical copy makes a huge difference. You can sit with it, carry it wherever you’re going, write in it, circle things that interest you or that you might want to follow up on. It stays with you.

I find the process of actually interrogating a book very useful — it helps you think through issues and reflect on them. That’s something I was trying to get across in What We Read and Why: this idea of festina lente — hurry, but slowly. It’s not a new idea. It comes from Maryanne Wolf in her book Reader, Come Home. She’s a neuroscientist, and she says: yes, we have the facility to read quickly and efficiently, but we must not lose the ability to read slowly, carefully, deliberately, and thoughtfully. The brain needs to be biliterate — capable of both. Her worry is that we’re doing more of the former and less of the latter, and that this may impede our ability to think deeply.

The implications go beyond literacy. They touch on how we look at policies, how we understand issues, how we distinguish reality from rhetoric, how we spot someone who isn’t quite telling us the whole truth. How we’re not swayed by simple answers to complex problems, or by populists who play on our emotions. This is not just an issue for schools. This is an issue for being a good citizen and a good voter.

Keith 21:01

One of the more interesting data points I came across: Singapore consistently ranks at the top of PISA scores. But at the same time, we also found that adult literacy declines after 35. That paints a rather disconcerting picture.

Warren Fernandez 21:32

Let’s tease that apart so we get a good handle on it. The OECD study looks at adult literacy across age groups — 16 to about 65. Singapore’s average score is below the international average. When we all saw that finding, the reaction was: how did this happen?

But if you drill down, the picture is more nuanced. We have very high scores for younger cohorts — 16 to 20, 20 to 30. They score above the international average. The older cohorts, above 35, start to fall. And they pull the whole national average down.

The really worrying thing is the gap between those two groups. We have very capable readers at younger ages, and people who fall well behind at older ages. The gap in Singapore is much higher than elsewhere — roughly twice the OECD average. So it reflects generational differences: the educational opportunities available to young people today compared to those who came up earlier.

But it also reflects something Maryanne Wolf identified: the less you use your mental capacities, the more they atrophy. Use it or lose it. That muscle, if you don’t exercise it, will weaken over time. I think both factors are coming into the mix here.

And it complicates matters further, because there is a correlation between declining literacy and declining civic participation, declining employability, and therefore fewer socioeconomic opportunities and less confidence to participate. Those have implications for us as a wider society.

Keith 23:48

Is this something we should reflect on within our education system — whether, as we grow older, we no longer see learning or reading as something worth pursuing for its own sake?

Warren Fernandez 24:05

It’s not that after 35 you suddenly start getting dumber. It’s that if you let yourself get lazy and stop exercising that muscle, you will get weaker. It’s a bit like studying a second language in school — I’m as guilty of this as anyone. My Mandarin is not what it used to be because I don’t use it as much. The same applies to your ability to process information: unless you’re actively doing it, you will find it harder to interpret and reflect on what you’re reading.

So it really is use it or lose it. And that’s why you want to inculcate reading as something you do throughout your life. The way to do it is to make it a pleasure. The last thing we want is to make reading a chore — something you do to pass an exam or tick a box. The more we can get people to enjoy reading and see it as one of the great joys in life, something that will enrich them — that, to me, is the real challenge: how to make people genuinely enjoy reading.

Keith 25:24

When we talk about leisure and reading, is there an ideal we should strive for as Singaporeans?

Warren Fernandez 25:32

The shift I was trying to make with the book was to take reading in a much broader sense. It starts with words on the page, but reading goes far beyond that. You learn to read people, to read situations, to read the room. And that comes from what you take in, reflect on, and your ability to read in that wider sense.

For me, reading is not just a leisure pursuit — it’s a life skill. Almost a civic duty. If we frame it that way, I think we have a greater chance of people seeing the genuine value of it.

I’ll give you an example. Two very different countries — the UK and China — have both decided this is a national priority. In China, Xi Jinping has come out and said reading is a matter of national priority: public officials will promote it, there will be big public events, it is part of national culture. It’s mandated.

In the UK, they’re taking a very different approach: we want this to be part of your identity. Their catchphrase is essentially — if you’re interested in a subject, go deep, read about it, make it fun, make it something you do because you want to, not because you have to.

It’ll be interesting to see how the two approaches play out. My own instinct is that making reading a pleasure — something you do because you value the benefits you derive — is more likely to succeed.

Keith 27:32

On that note, if we were to implement a national reading movement in Singapore today, how would you approach it?

Warren Fernandez 27:44

I certainly wouldn’t want it to become a project that a young person feels compelled to do just to tick a box, take a test, and get certified. That would kill the love of reading.

You really want to give people opportunities to discover the joy of reading. That’s the approach I took with the book. I could have written something that analysed the data and advocated the value of reading — but I thought: that’s not going to resonate with many people. So I fell back on my old journalistic instinct: show, don’t tell. If you want to explain something, show people what it’s like. That is far more powerful than simply telling them.

What could be more effective than talking to people who do read and asking them: what do you read, and why? A very simple question. From their answers you derive a sense of why they do it — to get information, to understand people, to go to places they can’t get to, to travel through different times, to meet people they’d never otherwise encounter, to feel how other people feel going through experiences you might not face yourself. They read to share, to give, and ultimately to live. Those are the six categories I’ve grouped the essays into.

A reading movement that takes that approach — showing rather than telling, letting people discover their own way in — would be far more likely to succeed. Start with a manga or a graphic novel. Maybe that leads to the Hardy Boys or Harry Potter. It doesn’t matter. Let them discover it in their own way, find pleasure in it, and they will grow into other areas naturally. I wouldn’t push a line and say you must read this, in this form, at this time. I think that would fail.

Keith 29:46

Let a thousand flowers bloom. And to a certain extent, I think that’s what the point of silent reading was in school — you had thirty minutes, and as long as you had reading material, anything went.

One could make the argument that with a machine in your pocket, an AI model can extract, retrieve, summarise, and synthesise information on demand. There’s a case to be made that you don’t need to read per se. And the now-convicted Sam Bankman-Fried was famously dismissive of reading — saying every book can be condensed into a blog post. How would you make the case that reading is still a fundamentally valuable exercise, even for information retrieval?

Warren Fernandez 30:51

It is the best of times and worst of times for reading. You’re right — information is infinitely available. Whether it’s ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or whatever you choose to use, you can call up information very quickly, interact with it, ask follow-up questions. And the more actively you do that, the more useful the tool becomes.

But if you are passive — if you just say, summarise it for me, tell me what I should think — you lose the ability to form your own thoughts, to connect what you’re reading to other experiences you’ve had. That’s where the real loss comes. And increasingly, there is a very real risk that we become lazy and outsource our thinking. Then when the time comes to make a genuine judgment call, when you need to come to a view, when you need to make a decision — you can’t, because you haven’t done the practice.

That is what we’ve got to guard against. It is about reading, but ultimately it is about honing your ability to think critically and developing the capacity to make judgments — which is what we all have to do, as a professional, as a leader, as a voter, as a parent. You want to hone those essential life skills.

Keith 32:15

When people think about reading, there is often a very self-improvement lens to it — especially in my peer group. I read to get a certain outcome, and the faster I can reach that endpoint, the better. But one of the interesting framings you’ve made is that reading actually helps you better fulfil your civic duty. That’s something I haven’t seen many people champion.

Warren Fernandez 32:48

There’s nothing wrong with self-help books — if that’s what takes your interest, start there. But there’s also a kind of self-help in learning to understand people. If you’re in a relationship and want to understand the other person better, I think reading will help — you encounter many of those situations through the books you read, especially good novels.

If you’re a parent with a child who is struggling with growing up, reading to them helps. And letting them read themselves will also help them understand that other people growing up have had similar challenges. It builds empathy. It helps them understand the world around them. It helps them separate what’s real from what’s rhetorical, what’s true from what’s false.

That makes you a much more rounded individual. And that is self-improvement — not in a narrow functional sense, but in a more holistic one.

Keith 34:00

If you want full access to the transcripts of every episode, just head over to ykeith.com and you’ll get full and free access to each transcript. Now back to the show.

One of the earliest essays in What We Read and Why was by Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who wrote about why he reads — treating it as a form of cognitive discipline. I found his book recommendations very insightful, though quite demanding. When you’re talking to top leaders in policy, business, and education, what is their approach to reading? Is there something the rest of us can learn from them?

Warren Fernandez 34:49

It varies greatly. For Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong, I was very glad he agreed to write the piece — and he was very fast about it. I think he saw the value in it immediately.

For me, to see him say that he made time to read even while running the country was remarkable. We all say we’re too busy. He was far busier than any of us, and yet he said: this is important, I have to set time for it. And not just in his own subject — he read outside it. He was constantly learning, constantly staying up to speed.

The takeaway from that essay is simply this: we all say we’re too busy, but actually we’re not. It’s just a matter of deciding that this is important, and therefore devoting time to it. You see that in many of the other contributors as well — CEOs, top leaders across many spheres — saying: I have to prioritise this, the same way I prioritise nutrition, exercise, or time with my family. Those things shape who I am. So the easy answer that “I don’t have time” becomes far less convincing when you see other people making that same time and finding genuine value in it.

But the other thing that came through was not just purposeful reading, but reading for pleasure. Many contributors said: yes, I may have started reading for a practical reason, but over time the more I did it, the more I derived real pleasure from it. Pleasure in the sense that it reveals something you hadn’t considered, takes you into a world beyond your normal circle, lets you time travel, lets you visit places you might never get to. I found that across the essays, and I’d certainly experienced it in my own life.

Keith 36:57

There were also quite a few young people featured in the book, which is not that common.

Warren Fernandez 37:03

I wanted a very wide spectrum. Not just politicians or business leaders — I wanted teachers, parents, professionals, and young people: some in school, some in polytechnic, some in university. I consciously went out and looked for them. The more I asked, the more people said: you should talk to this person. And sometimes it was pure chance. I sat down at one dinner next to a couple who mentioned they had children who’d started a reading movement. I said: really? I’m writing a book about reading — can I meet them?

What I found was that the myth that young people don’t read is simply not true. They do read, but in a different way. They read across platforms. They’re very comfortable in the digital space. And if you can get them to a subject they’re genuinely interested in, they will go very deep.

The hard part is figuring out what that subject is. I call it the water cooler principle. If you walk up to a water cooler and everyone’s talking about a film, and you start talking about climate change, you won’t get much resonance. But if you can tap into what’s on people’s minds, what drives them, what they’re passionate about — you can get into the conversation. And from there, you can open it up. But first you’ve got to get on the same wavelength.

Keith 38:54

As a journalist, as someone who has spent a long time in the world of ideas — give me a short masterclass on how we should read today.

Warren Fernandez 39:08

Start with wherever you are. Start with what interests you, because that will build up the facility, the instinct, the desire to read. The more you do it, the more it comes naturally. It’s like public speaking — the more you do it, the less frightening it becomes. Practice makes perfect. So: begin where you are.

Then try to read as widely as you can — different genres, different authors. Go with what sticks. The instinct to say “I’ve explored this a lot, let me try something different” will emerge quite naturally.

I’d also distinguish between functional reading and exploratory reading. Very often you need to understand something quickly — say, AI. You read for efficiency. But you should also make time to say: I’ve never read anything about kitefoiling, or architecture, or whatever is quite off-beat for you. Freshen the mind. One of my predecessors once told me: every now and again, pick up a magazine on a subject you have no interest in, because it will spark new ideas. It’s like going to a place that’s new and unfamiliar.

So keep the knife edge sharp, constantly refresh your thinking — and often, read something that challenges your own view. That will frequently surprise you and make you want to keep going.

Keith 41:00

Daniel Kahneman talks about Type 1 and Type 2 thinking. I feel like your type of functional reading and exploratory reading is quite similar — Type 1 reading optimises for fast absorption, and Type 2 is—

Warren Fernandez 41:15

It’s like — I can read magazines and articles quite comfortably on my iPad, but I find it hard to read a book on an iPad. Sometimes I listen to an audiobook first just to gauge: do I like this author, do I like the direction of the book, should I invest more time in it? That helps me sift through which books I really want to buy and keep.

When I find a book I genuinely want to invest in, I go for the physical copy. I sit down, make time for it — try to set aside a good hour or so. And I mark my books heavily. I normally start by signing my name and writing the date so I remember when I began reading it. Then I circle things, highlight things, write my thoughts in the margins. When I come back to the book, it carries a record of that reading.

At the end, one of my practices is to sit down and ask: what do I take away from this? I’ll scribble things down at the back, because writing helps you remember. And when you return to the book, you can see what you were thinking at that point in time. Sometimes you reread a book and find you think quite differently about it — which is also interesting.

Keith 42:46

In this coming age of great power rivalry and geopolitics, these things can seem very distant or abstract to many people. What has reading got to do with it?

Warren Fernandez 42:59

So much is happening in the world geopolitically, and it’s changing very rapidly. The technological space is also changing very rapidly. Unless we are able to read and understand where things are coming from — and how we’ve arrived at today — we’re not going to be able to figure out where we are going.

Churchill had a wonderful phrase: the further backwards you can look, the further forwards you can see. I think that’s very true. Understanding geopolitics without being able to situate it in political, historical, and cultural context means you cannot find your way forward.

That’s one of the things I’m now working on in my new role at RSIS — trying to understand today through the lens of where things have come from. If you look at what’s happening in the world today, the world order is changing. We all lament that the so-called rules-based order is no longer being underwritten by the Americans. But even that world order, which we grew up with and took for granted, was a bit of an aberration. It was always going to end. It couldn’t go on indefinitely. That structure came about post-World War II, and the world has changed fundamentally since then. China today is very different from the China of twenty or thirty years ago. Technology is different. So world orders come and go.

In the grand sweep of history, things ebb and flow. That’s normal. We should see this change not as so unusual. And the more history you read, the more you realise there were previous periods of world order — even of globalisation — which suddenly shifted, and people adapted.

One of the books I mentioned in What We Read and Why was Henry Kissinger’s World Order. He looks at moments in history when world order shifted: what happened, why, how people responded. He examines different conceptions of world order. The American understanding is very different from the European one. Europeans went through the Thirty Years’ War and shaped the Westphalian system, then Napoleon came along and they had to build a concert of powers to uphold it. The Chinese conception of world order is entirely different — Zhongguo, the middle country, with other states in the periphery approximating their cultural hierarchy. The Japanese, Indian, Iranian conceptions are also very different.

To assume there can only be one perspective on how the world should be ordered borders on being naive and arrogant.

At RSIS, we’re trying to figure out what comes next. Over recent months we’ve been fortunate to have some leading thinkers in this space — Professor Hal Brands from Johns Hopkins, Professor Barry Buzan, who literally wrote the textbooks I read as a student, and Sir Robin Niblett, Distinguished Fellow at Chatham House. I’ve had the privilege of moderating all of these sessions, and I always ask: so what comes next? To hear their articulations of where things might go is quite fascinating — because it is genuinely open. It can go in many different paths.

We are in uncharted waters. There are no maps, no signposts. Even the stars don’t quite signal what they once did. When you set out on a journey with no charts, the danger of ending up somewhere you didn’t intend to go — or don’t want to be — is very high. So this is an unusual period where it is important for us to start thinking seriously about what comes next, what the possibilities are, and what we can do now to nudge things in the direction of peace and harmony rather than the alternative — which is quite possible if we are not careful.

Keith 48:01

I have to ask — so what comes next?

Warren Fernandez 48:04

That’s the subject of a book I’m trying to work on next. I’m gathering inputs, trying to understand the driving forces — civilisational, cultural, historical — and the different perspectives various societies and civilisations have about what they want from a world order.

But I’m also trying to understand the technological forces at play, because technology does shape world order. Gunpowder led to a certain order. Nuclear weapons led to another. Drones change the nature of warfare and security. AI will change it further. The technological underpinnings of world order are a factor that has to be taken into the picture.

Exactly where things will land, I think, is a fool’s errand to predict. But one thing I learned when I was at Shell was scenario planning. The value of scenario planning is that you don’t try to predict the future. You paint alternative possibilities of what the future might look like. If it goes this way, these are some possible responses. If it goes that way, with this set of assumptions, these are some things you might need to do.

A book which looks at it through that scenario-planning lens — I think that would be quite useful.

Keith 49:37

If Singapore is to thrive in a world that will be far messier — what do you think our new value propositions should be? What are your preliminary sketches?

Warren Fernandez 49:50

I think we have considerable credibility as a country, built on what we’ve managed to do over the decades. We have sufficient convening power: when we bring people together, when we put forward ideas, they do listen. You’ve seen the role we’ve played in furthering trade liberalisation, in upholding freedom of navigation. I think we can continue to have agency.

We don’t just sit back and doom scroll. I think the more we can say: let’s get like-minded people together, let’s work towards a framework that makes sense for a coalition of the willing, and push that agenda. I call this the Shinzo Abe playbook. He single-handedly saved the Trans-Pacific Partnership when the Americans pulled out. He got leaders together and said: let’s not let this die. They reshaped it, and others came back. I think the middle powers can and should get together.

Some people call this the Canadian version — Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke about this in a famous speech in Davos. So in that sense, we all become Canadian: the middle powers band together.

That may well be the best possible outcome for now. The question is whether it’s the best possible outcome for the world. A world order that doesn’t include the US and China, or where they are not actively engaged, is not inherently more stable. It may be the best we can do. But when you think about the big challenges — climate change, the governance of AI, making sure it doesn’t harm us — you need both the US and China at the table. A world order that excludes them, to me, doesn’t sound very stable or optimised.

Keith 52:09

It seems to me it’s probably still going to be very much shaped by the US and China. And I’ve heard scholars like Prof. Danny Quah talk about the idea of middle powers or organisations like ASEAN operating as swing states in this age of great power rivalry — sometimes aligning closely to one power, sometimes not, with multiple configurations. It feels like Doctor Strange’s multiverse theory: there are multiple versions of how the world could play out, possibly infinite possibilities.

Warren Fernandez 52:49

I call it the GX world. Some people say G1, G2, G20, G7 — I call it GX, because the X is variable. Groups form and shift. It’s a coalition of the willing on a specific issue: fluid, in many ways fragmented, transactional, but not necessarily more stable.

People talk about a multipolar world as though that is inherently a more stable way of operating. Not necessarily. History has shown us multipolarity leading to very large clashes. It may well be the state of the world we’re heading into, but we should try to find an operating model that is somehow stable — and, more importantly, one that helps us address the big challenges of the day.

Keith 53:48

What are the big challenges right now that you think not enough people are paying attention to?

Warren Fernandez 53:54

Climate change and the climate crisis is something we are not addressing adequately, because of gridlock. The two big players are either disinterested or not engaging on it enough. We could be going much further to tackle that issue, and we should.

AI is the other. And I’ve just written a piece in the Business Times this week on what I call the three imbalances.

If you look at economic imbalances within societies, globalisation created many positives, but the benefits were not shared broadly across the population. Some people won, some people lost. That built up resentment in communities that felt they got the raw end of the deal — because of tax cuts for the wealthy, the benefits accruing to the top one per cent. Societies will have to figure out how to allocate resources in a way that everyone feels they have a proper stake.

Second, trade imbalances. This has been discussed for a very long time — Martin Wolf and others have written about it. The savings glut, the financial crisis, imbalances in trade: when a few countries run massive surpluses and others run massive deficits, the politics will eventually catch up with the economics. You’re seeing it play out now. Donald Trump’s response is tariffs. But tariffs won’t solve the trade imbalance, and they won’t solve the economic imbalance either.

Third, what I call the strategic or fiscal imbalance. As a result of globalisation, countries benefited from the peace dividend and spent that money on social programmes — and took their eye off the ball in terms of maintaining their own security, outsourcing that to the US. Now they’re realising that if the US pulls back, they’re in a very difficult position. And undoing that quickly is a major challenge: the money is hard to find, many countries have debt close to or exceeding GDP, and when your fiscal position is strained you don’t have what I call the fiscal firepower to make strategic bets. And it’s not just money that’s short — it’s people. The men and women to serve on the front line. The mindset has changed. You’ve lost the industrial capacity to produce the missiles and munitions. Money, munitions, and men — all in short supply.

Which explains why you see countries doing everything possible not to upset the current US administration. They know they have to buy time to undo these imbalances.

My sense is that we pushed these imbalances aside all this while because globalisation seemed to be working. But at some point, we were always going to have to address them. Donald Trump is a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. He reflects a deep sense in the US that they have not had the full benefit of globalisation. When you travel to the US, you see it: massive underinvestment in infrastructure, in public services, in airports, in trains. Flying from a US airport to Europe — or coming to Changi Airport — is like going from third world to first. The sense in the US is: why are we spending all this money on forever wars when we need to invest in our own public schools and infrastructure? I think it’s perfectly understandable why they feel that way. So that imbalance has to be addressed. Donald Trump is reflecting those sentiments — but his solutions aren’t necessarily the best options.

Keith 58:29

Typically at the end of a conversation I ask my guest to give advice to the audience. But I’m sure you’ll just say “read more.” So instead, tell me the three books you’d recommend every Singaporean should read.

Warren Fernandez 58:44

World Order by Henry Kissinger. He wrote this in 2014, and even then he was signalling that the world order was due for a rethink. He talks about revisiting the Westphalian system and adapting it to contemporary realities. He goes into far more detail than I did earlier about the different conceptions of world order, all of which are worth revisiting as we think about what comes next. That’s the first.

The second is a book by one of my favourite authors, Donna Tartt — The Goldfinch. It won the Pulitzer Prize and was made into a film, but the book is much better. It’s about a young boy visiting a museum when a bomb goes off. His mother is killed. In his panic he picks up a painting and steals it. He spends the rest of his life guilt-ridden, running from his past, eventually ending up in Amsterdam in a grand plot twist I shan’t give away. It’s a stunning account of a young man growing up with a sense of guilt and finding his way in the world. A plot twist worthy of a Netflix series — though as I say, the book is much better than the film that was made.

Third is what I’ve just finished reading: Ian McEwan’s What We Can Know. One of my favourite authors. It’s set in the 22nd century, with a researcher looking back at our time. There’s a lot about the impact of climate change on the geography of the country — parts of the UK are completely inundated. To get from where the narrator is to Oxford, he has to take a boat, and a funicular to reach the library because it’s all underwater. It’s darkly comic in that way. But there’s real angst: his students are asking him, what were those people thinking? They saw the warnings. Why didn’t they act? There’s also a mystery — he’s researching a lost love poem, trying to track it down, and it turns into a murder mystery when he uncovers a letter and realises someone killed to conceal certain facts. I won’t give the ending away, but it’s well worth a read. I would recommend it to anyone.

Keith 01:02:04

With that, Warren, thank you so much for coming on.

Warren Fernandez 01:02:06

Thank you, Keith. Enjoyed myself. Thank you.

Keith 01:02:07

Thank you for listening to today’s episode. If you are watching this on YouTube, please consider subscribing and turning on notifications for whenever new episodes are out. If you’re on Spotify or Apple, it would help us greatly if you could leave a five-star review on those platforms. Once again, thank you for tuning in to The Front Row Podcast.

Quick note: I have migrated to Substack because its just easier to host things here and hopefully, it forces me to write more.

I just published an interview with my one of my favourite economists of the 21st century- Ha-Joon Chang.

Full Transcript can be found here:

Keith's Newsletter

Ha-Joon Chang On Why We Need To Rethink Our Current Economic Order

Read more

2 months ago · Keith Yap

I’ll be honest — getting Ha-Joon Chang on the show was one I’d wanted for a long time.

There are economists who are technically brilliant but impossible to read. There are others who are accessible but not very insightful.

Prof Chang is the rare third thing: someone who has done the serious scholarly work — decades of it — and can then sit across from you and explain why the global economy is organised the way it is, in language that doesn’t require a PhD to follow.

In a field that often prizes jargon and mistakes it for rigour, Prof Chang has an uncanny ability to communicate profound insights simply.

His mission, as I read it, is essentially one of myth-busting.

Here are three myths he has busted:

• The myth that unadulterated free markets are the natural and superior state of economic organisation.

• The myth that the countries preaching liberalisation got rich by following their own advice.

• The myth that financialised capitalism — where corporations exist primarily to return cash to short-term shareholders rather than to build things — is a sign of a healthy economy rather than a symptom of a broken one.

He does this not with polemic but with data, with history, and stories. This has made his books a joy to read.

Oh- by the way, I am giving a copy of his book - 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism to a lucky subscriber.

To boost your chances, you can do (any/all) of the following:

• Reply this email with a 5 star rating of my podcast on Spotify/Apple or wherever you get your podcast

• Reply this email with why you want a copy of this book!

• Write about a learning you had from any of my podcast episodes on your favourite social platform (tag me!)

Also, since I have you here…

If you want something accessible, fun and light - please read Edible Economics!

The premise is disarmingly simple: each chapter uses a different food to illuminate an economic concept.

For example, I loved how he used coconuts as a way to dispel the myth of the lazy tropics - where tropical countries are poor because the ‘natives’ lie beneath a coconut tree and wait for coconuts to fall, rather than trying to actively grow or, better still, make things.

(I will not spoil the book here)

Without further ado, my three takeaways from this week’s episode.

1. The West Was Never a Finished Story

The big idea from this conversation is that we are living at the end of ideological monotony.

For most of the post-war period, there was a dominant model: the assumption — often unspoken, but deeply embedded — that the American way of organising an economy was simply the correct one.

Free markets, limited government, unrestricted capital flows.

But as Ha-Joon Chang argued, that story becomes much less convincing once you look at the evidence.

Neoliberalism promised faster growth and delivered the opposite.

World per capita growth fell from roughly 2.8% annually during the mixed-economy era to 1.4% under neoliberalism.

Sub-Saharan Africa's average income in 2020 was only 6% higher than what it was in 1980.

And if we look at the countries who truly succeeded in development in the 20th century - they reveal a truth about economic development: active industrial policy often achieved rapid development by combining markets with strong state direction.

The lesson is not that markets do not matter.

It is that markets alone rarely explain development.

This is not to diminish what America built.

To become the world’s preeminent superpower in under two centuries is a remarkable civilisational achievement.

But remarkable is not the same as optimal.

The more useful distinction is between admiration and assumption.

We are not at the end of American power. We are at the end of American exceptionalism as an unchallenged premise.

2. Singapore Understood This Early

Chang’s comments on industrial policy brought me back to Ooi Kee Beng’s intellectual biography of Dr Goh Keng Swee, In Lieu of Ideology — a book I’d recommend to anyone trying to understand how Singapore actually works.

(See my interview with him here if you’d like)

Dr Goh understood something that mainstream economics took decades to fully absorb: an open and integrated global market is an opportunity for states to fast-track development.

But this does not mean a government should step aside.

It means the state has to be deliberate about how it shapes the economy — courting investors, building institutions, and concentrating effort where the returns are highest.

Here is an excerpt from Prof Ooi’s book- that explains why Dr Goh saw manufacturing as the leading industry that Singapore ought to take a bet on-

In short, industry would modernise and enrich. The general raising of the technological level of the countries, the spread of modern systems of production and management, all these, in the calculations of the planners, would not only generate economic growth but also help to bring about a rapid transformation of social attitudes, more consistent with the needs of modernising societies

Selection was only the beginning.

Singapore via EDB (the Economic Development Board) had to help make those industries viable through infrastructure, coordination, incentives, and institution-building.

That logic is closely aligned with what Prof Chang calls effective industrial policy: targeted sectors, coordinated support, and public inputs that no single firm can provide alone.

Dan Wang calls China - an engineering state because he has come to understand that modern China is unusually focused on solving problems through engineering, industrial capacity, infrastructure, and technical expertise.

My only rejoinder is that Singapore got there first (albeit on a much smaller scale)

3. Wealth Is Not the Same as Health

The U.S. spends far more on healthcare than peer countries, but it does not convert that spending into better outcomes. In 2024, the U.S. spent 17.2% of GDP on health, compared with an OECD average of 9.3%.

Yet U.S. life expectancy was 79.0 years, while comparable wealthy OECD countries averaged 82.7 years.

Singapore is the sharper contrast here.

Singapore’s health expenditure is about 4.5-5% of our GDP and yet our life expectancy is 83.9 years.

To make a crude comparison, we spend about 1/3 of what the US spent on its healthcare and on average we outlive them by 5 years!

The broader point in my view is not that money does not matter.

It is that beyond a certain level, how wealth is organized matters more than how much wealth exists. Who benefits, how resources are distributed, and what institutions convert spending into outcomes all matter enormously.

And that is really what Prof Chang is inviting us to consider when we engage in the world of economics.

Til the next one,
Keith

Ha-Joon Chang is a South Korean economist and one of the most widely read critics of neoliberal orthodoxy working today.

He is currently a professor of economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

He is best known for his book 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism, published in 2010, which challenged the foundational claims of free-market economics with rigorous historical and empirical argument.

His earlier work, Kicking Away the Ladder, demonstrated how today's rich countries used protectionism and industrial policy to develop — before turning around and telling developing nations to liberalise.

Chang's research spans developmental economics, the history of economic thought, and the political economy of globalisation.

He has been a vocal proponent of what he calls "non-mainstream" economics: not a single doctrinal school, but a pluralist approach that draws on institutional, Keynesian, and developmentalist traditions to analyse how economies actually grow and change.

In this conversation, Chang offers a sweeping critique of neoliberalism's track record on growth and inequality, a dispassionate assessment of Donald Trump's industrial policy ambitions, and a pointed analysis of the AI boom as a speculative bubble shaped by concentrated wealth rather than genuine demand.

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Trailer
1:08 Introduction
1:54 Growing Up in South Korea's Economic Miracle
4:36 Why Ha-Joon Chang Is Not "Heterodox"
4:58 The Gwangju Massacre and the Limits of Neoclassical Economics
10:45 How the Neoliberal Turn Happened
18:32 The Real Cost of the Free-Market Experiment
25:20 Why Singapore Works
29:58 Trump's Industrial Policy: Will It Work?
37:50 The Three Elements of Good Industrial Policy
40:54 The Right Lessons From China
44:44 How Bad Is Inequality in the US?
53:18 The AI Bubble
58:36 AI as Public Infrastructure
1:00:48 How to Build a More Just World
1:06:14 Closing

This is the 86th episode Of The Front Row Podcast

See below for the full transcript :

Keith 00:01:08

Today I have the privilege of speaking with Professor Ha-Joon Chang. He is best known for his work on developmental economics and his critique of neoliberal economics. I read his book, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, and I’m surprised that a book written in 2010 still holds so much weight in 2026.

To thank you all for your support, I’ve decided to gift a copy of this book to a lucky subscriber. All you have to do is sign up for my newsletter at ykeith.com, and I’ll notify the winner through the newsletter.

With that, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Professor Ha-Joon Chang.

Before we start, I’d like for you to share with us what got you interested in the world of economics.

Ha-Joon Chang 00:01:54

I was born in 1963 and grew up — I don’t remember much before the age of six or seven — basically in the 1970s, when South Korea was growing at ten, twelve percent per year. New industries were springing up, people were moving into modern apartments. It was a time of great achievement, but also of huge social upheaval.

As usually happens in developing countries at the early stage of economic development, you had people moving from the countryside into the cities, illegal settlements growing, and developers hiring thugs to beat up residents with police complicity. It was a very harsh time, even as living standards were rising.

At the time, most Korean industries were in labour-intensive sectors working on paper-thin margins. Some factories would refuse to have a canteen so they wouldn’t have to give workers an extra toilet break.

It was a period of enormous economic and social change, and I just wanted to understand it. When you’re fourteen or fifteen, you don’t know how to do that. My father was working at the Ministry of Finance at the time — he didn’t push me in any direction — but he said, “Have you heard of something called economics? This might be useful in helping you understand what’s going on.”

So I went to university and realised this was what I wanted to study: to understand how my country had evolved, why some other countries were not doing as well, and why so many developing countries are structurally held back by the global system against their will to develop. I never looked back.

Keith 00:04:36

You are quite a heterodox economist. A lot of people who look at your work say you’re someone who isn’t really mainstream. I’d like for you to give me a sense of when that moment of disillusionment with mainstream economics — neoliberal economics — first emerged, even as a young academic.

Ha-Joon Chang 00:04:58

I actually don’t use the word “heterodox” myself if I can avoid it. What is heterodox depends on your point of view. If you’re a member of the Greek or Russian Orthodox Church, the guy in Rome is the heterodox one. I try to say “mainstream” and “non-mainstream” rather than “orthodox” and “heterodox,” because orthodox and heterodox imply a doctrinal position. Mainstream and non-mainstream is simply a description of who is more dominant.

I became interested in these so-called heterodox ideas as soon as I started studying economics. As I said, there was a huge social upheaval going on. A couple of years before I entered university, there was a second military coup. We had the first coup by General Park in 1961 — he imprisoned and tortured many people, but his army never shot civilians. The second military government, which took power after General Park was assassinated by the head of his secret police, committed a massacre in my father’s hometown of Gwangju. They killed thousands of people. This story was later written as a novel by Han Kang, the Korean Nobel Literature Prize winner — the English title is The Human Acts.

So many of my friends were deeply upset and wanted to understand what was happening. And then you entered the classroom and there were professors talking about marginal utility, general equilibrium, and regression analysis. I just couldn’t take it seriously.

What these teachers were saying was essentially: things might get out of whack for a while, but they’ll always return to equilibrium. Whatever exists, exists because it has to. But step outside the classroom and there were plainclothes policemen on the university campus. I just couldn’t take that seriously.

More fundamentally, studying economics, I realised you need a more dynamic approach. Neoclassical economics, however much people have tried to make it long-term oriented, has limits — because it starts from the assumption that we do not question the underlying distribution of power, income, and wealth. It then tries to make society better using something called the Pareto improvement: you cannot call a social change an improvement unless it makes someone better off without making anyone worse off.

That’s a noble ethical principle, but if you take that attitude, there are very few changes you can make — especially in the early stages of development, when you really need to change things like the distribution of land through land reform, when you need to redistribute power so that more forward-looking capitalists can take the lead. In that kind of situation, neoclassical economics becomes very weak.

It also has no real theory of production. All it says is that there is a relationship between different combinations of inputs and outputs — that production happens when you combine abstract quanta called capital and labour, and something comes out at the end. There’s no story about power struggles on the factory floor, about how people learn skills, about how production organisations develop. It’s a very static theory — very good for looking at static market exchange, information asymmetry, short-term things, but not useful for the long term.

So I wanted to study different things, and here I am.

Keith 00:10:45

There was a time in the post-war era where active state intervention, high taxes, and managed trade were considered perfectly normal — part of every state’s policy toolkit. And then something shifted. There was this huge wave of neoliberalism, and an almost default switch to free-market economics where any form of state intervention became seen as wrong.

Even in Singapore, I recall that when we were negotiating the free trade agreement with the US, the American government was very much against the idea of a sovereign wealth fund actively operating in equities markets. How did that transition actually happen, in your view?

Ha-Joon Chang 00:11:42

To understand the transition, you have to go back to the 1920s and 1930s. Capitalism was spectacularly failing during that period — the Great Depression, mass unemployment, class struggle that produced on the one hand the Russian Revolution, and on the other the rise of fascism. After the Second World War, people recognised that they needed a more equitable society to ensure stability. They needed what was then called a mixed economy, because they understood that the free market on its own doesn’t work.

Many countries nationalised enterprises. Many imposed controls on financial markets. Many started using industrial policy. This was the situation in the rich capitalist economies. At the same time, a wave of decolonisation swept through the 1950s and 60s, and the developing countries that had been forced to operate under free trade and free markets during colonialism realised this was getting them nowhere. They wanted to do things differently.

So for roughly thirty years — between 1945 and 1975 — you had a world where wide-ranging state intervention was accepted as normal, even in capitalist countries. In Britain, until the 1970s, something like 15% of GDP was produced by state-owned enterprises. Countries like France, Finland, Norway, Germany, and Italy all used various forms of industrial policy.

At the foundation of all this was a class compromise: workers would cooperate with capitalists to raise investment and productivity, and capitalists would reward them. During this period, productivity growth and wage growth were almost identical.

But by the 1970s, the weaker parties had become too strong, if I may put it that way. Many trade unions started pushing for further redistribution, and developing countries came together calling for a New International Economic Order. The leading capitalists grew very upset and wanted to turn the clock back — to create a world where they faced no constraints on making money.

People don’t realise this, but during this thirty-year period — sometimes called the golden age of capitalism, or in France, the Trente Glorieuses — the top income tax rate in the United States was 92%. Even until the 1970s it was around 70%. Then Ronald Reagan brought it down to 40%, and his successors brought it down further.

The capitalist interest saw an opportunity in the rise of inflation, the oil shock of the 1970s in the rich countries, and then the third-world debt crisis of the 1980s, and pushed back massively.

The reality, of course, was more complicated. By the 1990s, if not the 1980s, almost all countries had moved in a more free-market direction — but it was a very mixed picture. In the US and UK they went all the way to the right; in many European countries the backbone of the mixed economy was maintained, the welfare state was preserved.

And Singapore — well, you might have free trade and welcome foreign investors, but 90% of the land is owned by the government, 85% of housing is provided by the Housing and Development Board, and over 20% of GDP is produced by government-linked enterprises. It’s a very mixed economy.

So if you look at countries in detail, you see these variations. But overall — especially after the collapse of the Soviet bloc — the idea that free markets, free trade, and free movement of capital would make everyone better off took hold. And of course, we know now that the outcome has been rather disappointing, to put it mildly.

Keith 00:18:32

If you want full access to the transcripts of every episode, just head over to ykeith.com and you’ll get full and free access. Now back to the show.

In this book, and in another book called Kicking Away the Ladder, you showed that rich countries used protectionism and industrial policy to develop — one thinks back to the early 1800s United States, where trade protection was at an all-time high. But now they’ve told everyone else to liberalise. That seems to be the Western establishment mode of thinking.

I’d like for you to share with us what the real cost to the global economy has been — especially to developing countries that took the free-market approach of opening everything up and privatising completely.

Ha-Joon Chang 00:19:21

The biggest lie propagated by neoliberal economists is that neoliberalism saved the world. Their line of argument is that it unleashed entrepreneurial spirit, that countries started growing faster. Yes, it may have increased inequality, but if a country wants to tax and redistribute, it can. If a country stands by while inequality rises, that’s their choice.

But the truth of the matter is that neoliberalism has been spectacularly bad at delivering economic growth. And that was their central promise.

During the period of the mixed economy, the world economy was growing at about 2.7 to 2.8% in per capita terms. In the next forty years of neoliberalism, it has grown at only about 1.4 to 1.5% per year. Growth collapsed, especially in developing countries.

In the 1960s and 70s, per capita income in Latin America was growing at 3.1% per year. In the next forty years, it fell to 0.8%. In sub-Saharan Africa, per capita income was growing at 1.6% during the 60s and 70s. In the next forty years, it grew at just 0.3% per year. That means that by 2020, the average income in sub-Saharan Africa was only 6% higher than what it was in 1980.

The underlying dynamic is simple. It led to a collapse in investment. In order for an economy to grow, you need real investment — but today when people talk about investment, it’s all financial investment, much of it speculative. Investment rates fell across the world — except in China, which is why China has done so much better than other economies.

And what little investment there was went poorly coordinated, because industrial policy had been abolished. You might create a big industrial park, but then there’s no accompanying investment in roads and rails, so you face added costs if you want to export.

The numbers are there if you care to look, but they are not told. Many developing countries, as a result of this kicking away of the ladder — rich countries using the IMF and World Bank in the 1980s and 90s to force these countries not to use the protection, subsidies, and regulation on foreign investment that had made the rich countries themselves wealthy — experienced what is known as premature deindustrialisation.

This concept was developed by my former teacher and later colleague at Cambridge, the Chilean economist Gabriel Palma. Processing enormous amounts of statistical data, he showed that developing countries since the 1980s began experiencing deindustrialisation — a declining share of manufacturing in the economy — well before they had reached the level of development at which this process began in today’s rich countries.

In Brazil, for example, in the mid-1980s the manufacturing sector accounted for 35% of GDP. Today it’s barely 10%. At Brazil’s income level, this shouldn’t be happening — deindustrialisation is what you see when you become very rich and services naturally rise as a share of the economy. But at Brazil’s level of income, it shouldn’t start yet. And this is why Brazil has been struggling to grow. It has basically lost its engine of growth.

Keith 00:25:20

Singapore — I’ve had the chance to speak with some of our early economic architects, and the big lesson I’ve taken away is that they were very embracing of free trade and free capital flows, but very persistent about state intervention — industrial policy, as some would call it. You had civil servants actively scouting for the best land on which to put factories. What we have today — one of the world’s largest petrochemical facilities, even though we don’t produce a single drop of oil — is the result of deliberate industrial policy planning.

Ha-Joon Chang 00:25:58

Absolutely. Singapore is the ultimate example of why you should not be driven by ideology when designing economic policy. When I take new PhD students, I tell them to read about Singapore and ask them to give me one economic theory — it doesn’t matter which: neoclassical, Marxist, developmentalist, Keynesian — one economic theory that can single-handedly explain Singapore’s success. There is no such theory.

Singapore is the outcome of very pragmatic choices, not bound by any ideology or any particular economic theory, which led the country to choose what was best for it.

Singapore was initially developed as a trading port by the British Empire. It would have been foolish to abandon that position as one of the main trading hubs in Asia by adopting protectionist policies. So you adopted free trade.

But with pure free trade, it’s very difficult to develop your own manufacturing capabilities. So you started courting foreign companies to come and set up shop in Singapore. But unlike most other countries, what you did very well was to work with these companies so they could actually develop capabilities locally. Typically what happens — Sri Lanka is a classic example — is that foreign companies come in, local workers assemble high-tech products, but they only earn wages. When wages rise slightly, the companies move on because there’s no reason to stay. Singapore recognised that shouldn’t happen and worked with foreign companies to develop local capabilities.

Subsequently it also recognised that if you leave all productive enterprises to foreigners, you lose economic sovereignty. So you started creating state-owned enterprises — in semiconductors, steel, ports, and so on. And unlike some who believe state-owned enterprises should not operate according to market principles, Singapore made sure these enterprises respected commercial principles and became internationally competitive.

So you ended up with, from any mainstream economic point of view, a very peculiar mix. One that shouldn’t work in theory. How can you have an economy where 90% of the land is owned by the government and over 20% of GDP is produced by government-linked enterprises, alongside free trade and all the things free-market economists advocate?

Keith 00:29:58

There is this comeback of industrial policy, most clearly illustrated by President Trump, who is imposing tariffs and talking about bringing jobs back to America. On the surface, reindustrialisation sounds sensible. I have two questions. First: what are the core elements of successful industrial policy? What does it take to industrialise successfully? And second: is what President Trump is doing actually economically sound in terms of reshoring manufacturing to the US?

Ha-Joon Chang 00:30:36

What Donald Trump is trying to do is essentially give protection from superior foreign competitors and subsidies to help American enterprises raise productivity behind the wall of protection. At the most abstract level, this is the very principle behind the economic success of nineteenth-century Britain, then the US, then Japan, South Korea, and so on — known as the infant industry argument.

Interestingly, the argument was invented by the very first Treasury Secretary of the United States, Alexander Hamilton, who argued that American manufacturing industries are like children — industries in their infancy. We need to nurture and protect them until they can grow up and compete with better-established firms from Britain and Europe, just as we protect and nurture our children until they can compete in the adult labour market. Country after country used this principle to raise their economies from a poor agrarian base to a highly industrialised status.

So Trump is essentially trying to apply this not to infants but to geriatric industries. It’s like trying to give a second chance to your 45-year-old son who has run the family business into the ground. The hope is that you protect these enterprises and then they’ll invest and grow.

It’s not going to work. Period. For two reasons.

First, American corporations do not invest. If you look at the data produced by the American economist Bill Lazonick — sometimes working with my Korean friend Professor Chang Sup Shin at the National University of Singapore — American corporations have given away 90 to 95% of their profits to short-term shareholders in the form of dividends and stock buybacks over the last thirty years.

We learn in economics textbooks that the stock market is a way of aggregating household savings and channelling that money to productive enterprises. It used to work like that. Not anymore. With financialisation, these companies are not just not investing — they are borrowing money and selling assets to give money to shareholders. During the 2010s, General Electric distributed 313% of its profit to shareholders. There’s no money to invest.

So unless Donald Trump can force the American companies receiving this protection and these subsidies to stop doing stock buybacks — if not stop paying dividends — and instead invest that money to raise productivity and ultimately international competitiveness, this is not going to work.

Second, even if he could do that, he needs a proper industrial policy. The current approach is essentially random. You shouldn’t protect every sector equally — that’s absurd. You should target certain sectors, concentrate support there, and make sure the targeted sectors are coordinated with each other. These are exactly the kinds of policies Singapore, Korea, and China have been very good at. What Trump has is not industrial policy. It’s just saying: we’re going to protect you, see what you can do. You cannot do it that way.

Trump instinctively knows that American companies are not going to invest, so he’s been twisting the arms of Korea, Japan, and some European countries to invest in the United States. Korea has promised $200 billion, Japan has promised $550 billion over the next ten years. So he’s succeeded to an extent. But the problem is that the United States is so big it cannot be rebuilt with other people’s money.

Back in 1950, the US produced 60% of world manufacturing output. Today, even though we think China produces everything, it still produces only about 30%. The US has fallen to 16 or 17%. Even if Japan, Germany, and South Korea were to relocate one-third of their respective manufacturing production to the United States, my back-of-envelope calculation suggests this would raise the US share from 17% to just above 20%. He cannot rebuild the American manufacturing sector with other people’s money. The money has to come from within — but the companies within are not interested.

Keith 00:37:50

So a good industrial policy, in your view, involves a few targeted sectors and good coordination within those sectors. What else does a policymaker need to think about to implement good industrial policy?

Ha-Joon Chang 00:38:03

You have to design an incentive system. You cannot do it like central planning, but you have to push companies not to become lazy but to raise productivity — which requires investment in R&D and worker training.

Around these sectors, the government also needs to provide collective inputs that individual enterprises, however large, would find impossible to supply on their own: infrastructure, skilled workers, a good education system, a worker training system, export marketing services — things like that.

And then of course you need to find a way to mobilise long-term finance, whether through government-owned development banks or through reforming the stock market so that long-term capital is rewarded. Some countries, for example, have tenure voting, where if you hold a share for longer you get more votes. It’s very marginal at the moment, but you could intensify the system — give higher dividends to long-term shareholders. In the United States, the average period of shareholding is less than one year. You cannot expect people who own shares for less than a year to be committed to the long-term future of a company. This is why they want instant gratification — give us the money, give us more money than you earn, borrow, sell your assets. Companies have turned into ATMs.

So: targeting, providing collective inputs, and mobilising long-term finance in different ways. These are the three most important elements of industrial policy.

Keith 00:40:54

Earlier you mentioned China, which represents a very significant paradigm shift. There’s this term in popular culture now — “China-maxxing” — where people look at China’s industrial policies and technological progress over just the past ten years with a kind of awe, and in some cases see it as something to emulate. From your perspective as someone who has studied development and industrial policy, what are the right lessons to draw from the Chinese experience — bearing in mind that it’s still a very unique economy that may differ from a smaller, mid-sized economy like ours?

Ha-Joon Chang 00:41:32

At one level, China is so unique that the only country that could possibly emulate it is India — we’re talking about countries with 1.4 billion people and vast territory.

But at another level, what China has been doing is exactly what other economically successful countries have done: making sure that infant industries are protected and promoted, and only then opening those sectors to foreign competition. That principle is there.

If you look at history, all countries have done it differently. Singapore is the most unusual case, but even within East Asia: Taiwan relied very heavily on state-owned enterprises, as did Singapore. Japan had hardly any. Korea had a few — somewhere around the international average.

Japan and Korea had very strict regulation on foreign direct investment. If you wanted to invest directly in Japan or Korea, many sectors were closed off; even in open sectors you couldn’t hold a majority share; you had to sign up to local content programmes; you had to agree to technology transfer arrangements over time. Singapore didn’t formally have those restrictions, at least not in the same way.

China actually didn’t have as many formal restrictions as Japan or Korea — not because it didn’t want them, but because it had such a huge internal market that it had enormous bargaining power. It didn’t need to do it formally. It could simply say: well, if you want to come here, it’s not a requirement, but it would be very nice if you did these things. And foreign enterprises would comply because who can resist the temptation of 1.4 billion people with rapidly growing incomes?

So all these countries have done it differently, and in that sense it’s not unusual that China has done it in its own unique way — because every other country has also done it in its own unique way.

Keith 00:44:44

In the very free-market world that I think we live in — especially in the US and UK — if you take the more free-market orthodoxy to its logical conclusion, you naturally get increasing concentration of power, resources, and capital among the business elites. Can you talk about how serious the inequality problem really is? Because one might argue: yes, there’s some inequality, but we’ve driven huge technological and economic progress. The average consumer today has far more access to goods and services than previous generations. So why should one concern themselves too much with this issue?

Ha-Joon Chang 00:45:34

When people look at the United States, they get overawed and think it’s a great country. It may have a higher per capita income than most other countries — Switzerland and Norway are higher, but the US is above most. Yet the quality of life that this income actually delivers is visibly lower than in other comparable rich economies, partly because the income is so badly distributed.

Look at real indicators of quality of life, not just the money. The fact that the US has $80,000 per capita income doesn’t mean everyone has $80,000. There are families struggling with $50,000 in household income.

Take life expectancy — probably the most fundamental indicator of human welfare, since your life chances are what matter most. Life expectancy at birth in the United States is 78 years. The average for rich countries is 84 years. Americans on average live six years less than people in comparable parts of Europe — a life expectancy you’d find in Central European countries like Poland and the Czech Republic, countries with less than $30,000 per capita income. So if this income level delivers six years fewer of life, there is clearly a serious problem.

18% of Americans live in poverty. The rate is 6% in Denmark, 8% in France. Of course, this is relative poverty — poor by the standards of others in the same country — and these Americans are not poor by the standards of poorer countries in Asia and Africa. But still.

Every social indicator you look at — social mobility, homicide rate, incarceration rate — the US performs very badly. It spends something like 18% of GDP on healthcare, and yet has the worst health record in the rich world, where the average spending on healthcare is ten to eleven percent of GDP.

At a low level of income — the kind I grew up with — economic growth and higher incomes are a matter of life and death. If your economy grows one or two percentage points faster, fewer people literally die. People can eat another bowl of rice. They can heat or cool their homes a little more. They can go to the hospital or at least the pharmacy to get medicine. They don’t have to watch their children die at age one or two. At that level of income, faster growth absolutely matters.

But there’s no evidence that beyond a certain income level — I’d say around $20,000 to $25,000 per capita — there is any correlation between income and people’s welfare or life satisfaction. So why are we so fascinated by a country that, with $80,000 per capita income, fails to take care of its own people? What is the point of that high income when people are unhealthy and unhappy?

And this is why we have Donald Trump. American voters — especially in the so-called Rust Belt areas, which once had very high standards of living and healthy communities built around world-class enterprises — have seen all of that disappear. These people are desperate. In the US, you cannot even go to a hospital if you don’t have a job, because health insurance is tied to employment rather than citizenship.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk and others like him are working very hard to become trillionaires. And these voters are saying: enough. We want a better life. And along comes someone like Trump who says: the way to get it is to kick out immigrants, give more money to the rich, be nasty to our allies, make them invest in America, and keep their exports out.

The US as it is today is exactly the consequence of neoliberal policies that created this huge inequality. America was always more unequal than European countries, but it was not this unequal before.

Keith 00:53:18

Looking at the way AI is developing now — in the US especially — you have this huge boom where AI is absorbing an enormous share of capital. The Magnificent Seven are concentrating more and more capital even within the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq. Is this a sign of unsustainable wealth concentration? What’s your read?

Ha-Joon Chang 00:53:54

I think at the moment it’s a huge bubble, caused partly by this inequality. Because what you have to bear in mind is that, unlike democracy, the market is one dollar, one vote. It will do whatever the people with the most money want to do.

This is why, during the pandemic, when literally millions of people were dying because they lacked basic things like plastic covering and face masks, Bezos and Musk were having a private space race. How crazy is that? But that’s the market for you.

The AI boom, at the moment, is basically a repetition of that pattern. Simply because these individuals with literally trillions of dollars at their disposal somehow decided this is the future.

This bubble is likely to burst. I don’t know when, but it will — because they are building data centres and developing programmes well ahead of actual demand. It’ll end in tears. But the danger is that we might end up destroying what is genuinely useful in AI in the process. The development of AI should have been more regulated and more deliberate, because it is a big public infrastructure — like railways or the air traffic system. It’s not something only one group of people uses, or only a few industries use.

In the same way that many countries have government-owned railways, AI is a sector that could be in public ownership. I say “could” because even with railways, if you regulate well you don’t have to have public ownership — Japan has a state-owned rail company, but most of its rail is privately owned and has an excellent record of punctuality and safety, because the government regulates it very strictly. So I’m not necessarily saying AI should be taken into government ownership. But it needs to be regulated for the benefit of the broader society.

There’s also the question of competition with the Chinese approach to AI. The American approach is, essentially, a hoax. They talk about artificial general intelligence, about the day when machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence. Some say it will destroy humanity. It’s grand talk, very good for massive speculative investment.

The Chinese approach treats AI for what it is and what it should be, in my view: a highly advanced version of an abacus. A calculator. A way to mechanise our mental labour. They are focusing on more practical applications. In my view, in the long run, that approach will win. In the short run, of course, the American approach looks like it’s going to sweep the world because so many tech billionaires are betting on it. A lot of them will end up in tears.

Keith 00:58:36

I really appreciate that perspective, because even the tech CEOs in the US position these tools as utilities — as almost public utilities. So if that’s the case, could you make the argument that you treat them as public utilities in the way you regulate and produce them?

Ha-Joon Chang 00:59:01

You should, yes. Especially because AI can also generate false information. People are already worried about AI’s tendency to hallucinate and to make things up. The World Bank recently produced a major report on industrial policy, and a former student of mine — now a professor in Portugal — had to write to the World Bank because they had made up a reference under his name: an article that didn’t exist, listed as published in a journal that doesn’t exist. The AI had apparently harvested a good quote from him, couldn’t quite find the source — it may have been something he said at a conference — and simply fabricated the reference.

When AI has the potential to spread false information even without anyone actively manipulating it to do so, you need strict regulation. You cannot say it’s just a random occurrence. AI can shake the fundamental fabric of society by making it impossible for people to know what is true and what is not.

Keith 01:00:48

I’d like to end on a more positive note. If you were to share with us — in brief — your prescription for how we can improve the world we live in, to move towards a more just and equitable society, what would it be?

Ha-Joon Chang 01:01:03

Two things. One can talk at the level of philosophy and ethics, and one should also talk about more concrete actions.

At the more philosophical level: we have to stop believing in this simplistic model of the world used by mainstream economists, where everyone is selfish and rational. Human beings are very complex. I have a textbook called Economics: The User’s Guide, published in 2014, in which I devote a whole chapter to exactly this. We have multiple motivations. Self-interest is one of them, but it’s not the only one. We are sometimes altruistic.

A former professor of mine, the Italian economist Ugo Pagano, once told me that the biggest challenge for people who believe in rational, selfish individuals is to explain how a man who wouldn’t even clear the dishes after dinner at home would take a bullet in a war for his comrade. That’s how complex we are. We have to recognise that we have multiple motivations, that we are sometimes rational but only in a limited way, and sometimes not at all.

We have to build a system that rewards the better sides of human beings: honesty, cooperation, solidarity, trust. We have to build institutions that encourage these things.

Unfortunately, the world is moving in the other direction. We are building a system on the premise that everyone is out to enrich themselves, that we cannot trust anyone, that we have to verify and surveil everything. And in doing so, we are creating a world where people think increasingly in individualised ways, making it harder and harder to have a meaningful society.

At the practical level: we have to create mechanisms that encourage long-term commitment — especially for developing countries, but also for countries like the US. Without long-term commitment to machines, technologies, particular forms of organisation, and finance, you cannot develop capabilities.

The problem with those who believe in shareholder capitalism is that they often think: what’s wrong with moving money around all the time? Money is money. If I take money out of General Electric today, and it does well five years later, I can always put my money back in. The world doesn’t work like that. It takes decades to build successful productive enterprises.

Samsung may be one of the leaders in semiconductors today, but it started out as a trading company exporting fish and vegetables to Japan during the colonial period in the 1930s. Then it got into sugar refining, textiles, then basic electronics, before setting up a semiconductor company that lost money for a whole decade — and even then had to be massively subsidised by the government.

If you destroy these enterprises once, you cannot build them back. This is why long-term commitment matters.

Keith 01:06:14

On that note, Prof, thank you so much for coming on. May we encourage more people to think long term.

Kishore Mahbubani is one of Asia's most prominent public intellectuals, a former diplomat, academic, and author whose career spans decades at the intersection of geopolitics, philosophy, and statecraft.

He served as Singapore's Permanent Representative to the United Nations on two occasions and as President of the UN Security Council, before becoming the founding Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, a position he held for over a decade.

He is the author of several widely read books on the shifting global order, most recently Has China Won?, which examines the structural logic of US-China competition and has been read and cited by senior officials on both sides of that contest.

In this conversation — filmed live in front of an audience of young leaders curated with the National Youth Council — Mahbubani ranges across the Iran-Israel war and the misreading of Persian civilisational logic, the structural weaknesses of multilateral institutions and who is actually responsible for them, the enduring miracle of ASEAN in the world's most diverse region, and the iron law of geopolitics that makes the US-China contest essentially mechanical.

He closes with a characteristically optimistic verdict on Singapore's place in history and what the next generation of leaders must understand to navigate the crossfire that is coming.

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Trailer
1:08 Introduction
1:42 Singapore's Sixty Years of Peace
3:05 The MacDonald House Incident
5:00 How Singapore Repaired Relations With Indonesia
7:46 The Iran-Israel War
8:48 How Israel Sold Trump a Quick War
11:27 Why Iran Didn't Surrender
12:26 The Strait of Hormuz as a Weapon
14:38 Gaza and the Two-State Solution
16:00 How Gaza Damaged the West's Standing
18:26 Israel's Military Dominance Won't Last Forever
21:09 How Young Singaporeans Should Read the Crisis
21:42 Don't Get Emotional — Get Rational
23:24 Who Actually Weakened the UN
24:09 The Hypocrisy of Western Complaints About the UN
29:30 How Singapore Can Use Multilateral Platforms
31:56 The Iron Law of US-China Competition
33:57 How China Found Its Weapon
36:02 ASEAN's Imperfections — and Why That's Fine
39:37 ASEAN Outgrew the EU
42:09 Q&A
43:17 The Case for the UN Veto
45:15 Why the UK Should Give Its Seat to India
47:30 Sunrise vs Sunset Organisations — BRICS and the G7
52:15 ASEAN's Limits — and Its Quiet Power
56:02 The Long-Term Fallout From the Iran War
58:20 Is International Law a Sunrise or Sunset Trend?
1:02:46 Singapore's Founding Realist Principle
1:04:32 The Malacca Toll, the UAE, and the GCC
1:09:32 One Piece of Advice for Young Leaders
1:10:04 The Singapore Miracle in World History
1:13:00 Prepare for the Crossfire
1:13:51 Closing


This is the 84th episode Of The Front Row Podcast

Keith 01:08:00

To help us make sense of the coming chaos, we have a man who has helped build Singapore as a trustworthy and reliable partner in the world. He is a diplomat, scholar, and one of the most clear-eyed strategic thinkers Asia has ever produced. Some have called him the muse of the Asian century. This conversation that I'm about to share with you was filmed live in front of an audience of young leaders, curated together with the National Youth Council. We're glad we can share it with you online today.

Kishore 01:42:00

First of all, thank you very much for having me here, and thank you for spending an evening with me. I hope you don't find your time wasted.

On geopolitics and where we are in the world today, one thing I want to emphasise is that many Singaporeans don't understand that the almost sixty years of peace and prosperity Singapore has enjoyed makes this country very unique. In 1965, when Singapore became independent, the British left behind multiracial colonies in every corner of the world. If you travel to South America, you have Guyana — a multiracial colony left behind by the British. You have several in Africa. You had Sri Lanka in South Asia. You had Cyprus in Europe. You have Fiji in the South Pacific.

Go and check every country I've mentioned — every single one has experienced some kind of trauma, either internal or external, as part of its history. The thing that surprises me is that Singaporeans are not even aware of how unique and how remarkable our record is.

A couple of years before we became independent, during Konfrontasi, a bomb went off a few doors away at MacDonald House. That bomb had a very important impact on Singapore's history. As you know, we caught the two Indonesian marines responsible. Singapore, believing in the rule of law, put them on trial and determined they should hang. President Suharto asked for clemency. We said no. The Singapore embassy was burnt. As a result, relations between Singapore and Indonesia started off on a very sour note.

I mention that because the logical consequence of that incident could have been what you see today between India and Pakistan, between Israel and its neighbours, between Japan and China — all those kinds of enduring hostilities. But why didn't relations between Singapore and Indonesia go in that direction?

The answer is that our founding leaders were geniuses. Absolute geniuses. I say this with some confidence because I've actually met many world leaders. I can say with great confidence that our founding leaders were far superior to most world leaders in their ability to make tough decisions for Singapore.

Going back to the MacDonald House incident — we could have had decades of suspicion with Indonesia. But fortunately, we had a very smart ambassador there, Lee Koon Choy. He told Mr Lee Kuan Yew there was a very simple way of resolving this. Follow Javanese tradition: go to the graves of the two marines who were hanged in Singapore, sprinkle flowers, and their souls will rest in peace.

Something as simple as that, brilliantly done at the right time, closed a very painful chapter and allowed us to build and transform that relationship. Today, you live in a world where countries cannot even say sorry to each other or talk to each other. That is why you have this incredible amount of discord in the world.

The reason you have had these exceptional decades is because brilliant minds worked very hard to plant the right seeds for Singapore. Because they planted the right seeds, the right plants emerged. We have deep roots today. There are invisible trees above us that are actually protecting Singapore.

One simple example: when was the last time our region saw a major war? 1979 — that's 47 years ago. Why? Because there is an umbrella called ASEAN that was created, built over decades and decades. That's why you are enjoying the peace.

I mention this because many Singaporeans are not even aware of ASEAN, and those who are aware of it read what The Economist says, what the Financial Times says, and rubbish it. Because the Anglo-Saxon media rubbish ASEAN, Singaporeans rubbish ASEAN. In doing so, they are shooting holes in the umbrella that is protecting them. We must find out what is giving us this peace, and then cherish it, protect it, and nurture it.

Keith 07:46:00

The last time we spoke, about a year ago, the world was surprisingly less turbulent — which is ironic, because at that time I thought Liberation Day and the tariffs represented the worst things could get. Apparently, you can always sink to a new low.

I want to bring us to a current theatre of conflict: the Iran war. As we understand it now, the war is in a fragile pause. Large-scale airstrikes have eased, but the ceasefire is shaky, and in some cases has already been violated. The Strait of Hormuz remains a critical pressure point that Iran is using as leverage. Negotiations remain unresolved.

One of the points you've made in previous interviews is that the US has fundamentally misread Persian civilisational logic. I'd like you to explain what that actually means.

Kishore 08:48:00

On Iran — I call it the Israel war, because the conflict is fundamentally between Iran and Israel. Israel, as is well known, has significant influence on the United States and has been able to bring the US along with it. I hope some of you may have read the article in the Straits Times today by their London correspondent Jonathan Eyal, which is worth reading. For the first time, it argues, public opinion in the United States is turning against Israel. That would be one of the more self-defeating things Israel has done — alienating its strongest constituency.

In this war, both sides have made strategic mistakes. In Israel's case, for example, there is a very detailed New York Times account of a meeting — one nobody has challenged — that took place a few weeks before the conflict started. Prime Minister Netanyahu went to Washington, gave President Trump a briefing, and said this would be quick and easy: decapitate the Iranian leadership, the regime will collapse, we declare victory and go home. That is almost exactly what he said.

He told President Trump they had to move fast because there would be a day when all the top leaders would be gathered in the open at a particular venue. And sure enough, Israeli intelligence performed remarkably. They knew exactly where each nuclear scientist would be, at what hour, so they could eliminate him at the precise time and place. Mossad's performance was extraordinary.

So President Trump believed what Netanyahu said. This would be an easy war — a quick, short engagement, which is what Trump prefers. He does not like long wars. And then he discovered that Iran is not Venezuela.

The reason Iran is not Venezuela is because Iran represents one of the oldest, strongest civilisations in human history — Persian civilisation. The Persians have been fighting wars for three thousand years. They have had many near-death experiences from invading hordes, seen the country destroyed, and revived. It is a very hardened civilisation.

The decapitation strike, rather than weakening Iran, gave it a powerful burst of energy. Iran said: now I will respond. And they responded by closing the Strait of Hormuz — something they had long wanted to do, and which has caused the entire global economy to suffer.

What has helped Iran enormously is that President Trump's main concern is the November midterm elections. If oil prices remain high, if inflation increases, if food prices go up in the US, Republicans under Trump will suffer enormously. The Iranians are sophisticated enough to understand that very well.

Even though the Iranians took a severe military beating — the Israelis and Americans could bomb any part of Iran and Iran couldn't stop them — most countries in that position would have found the temptation to surrender very strong. Iranians didn't surrender. Instead, they were able to retaliate very effectively.

I think both sides have underestimated each other. There is now a recalibration going on as both sides try to understand exactly where they stand. Nobody can tell you what will happen in the next few days, because President Trump will surprise us — and at times will surprise himself. He will do things he would never consider doing today. He is a very difficult man to predict. You could go in either direction: escalation, or a declaration that the war is over. Nobody knows which way it will go.

Keith 14:38:00

It feels like reality is becoming a reality show.

The other thread I thought was worth exploring — partly because of our relationships with both the US and Israel — is the question of Gaza. The World Bank has estimated that Gaza needs approximately $71.4 billion over the next decade to recover from two years of war, and that seems to be the floor, not the ceiling. As the war continues, that bill will only grow.

When I was reading the book on Singapore's fifty years of relations with Israel, former Foreign Minister George Yeo pointed out that Henry Kissinger always argued that grand solutions were not possible, and that one should take small steps that open up possibilities and let history find its course gradually. That was in reference to the two-state solution, which Singapore has consistently advocated for. But the paradox to me is that as time has passed, that solution seems further and further away — almost to the point of structural impossibility. Is that diagnosis too grim?

Kishore 16:00:00

You want me to make the crowd even sadder? Even before we talk about reconstruction, the living conditions of the millions of people in Gaza is absolutely awful. They don't have shelter. Forget schools, forget hospitals — they don't have shelter, and they often have difficulty finding food. They are among the most miserable people on the planet.

What happened in Gaza has damaged the standing of Western countries in the eyes of the rest of the world, because those countries always said they oppose violations of human rights, they oppose genocide. But when Gaza came along, they kept absolutely quiet. That has damaged them enormously.

I want to emphasise that none of this condones the terrible attacks Hamas made on 7 October when they killed so many people. That was wrong. We condemned it. But you still have to respond proportionately and in accordance with international humanitarian law. Most of that law has been violated in Gaza. And the European countries that used to lecture Singapore about human rights kept absolutely quiet — as did many of the leading human rights advocates in the United States. That is the impact Gaza has had.

As for the two-state solution: the current Israeli government no longer believes in it. They are pursuing what amounts to a one-state solution, and that will not work. There is no way to remove five or six million Palestinians. A solution must be found for them.

The tragedy is that none of Israel's friends have given it honest advice about how to manage its future. Israel is today, without question, the most powerful military force in the Middle East — its capabilities are stunning, given a population of only five to seven million citizens. Even Egypt, with a population of eighty to ninety million, would lose a war with Israel tomorrow.

But because they have these capabilities today, they assume they can remain militarily dominant forever. In that belief, they have not studied history. No power remains dominant forever. There are 1.4 to 1.5 billion Muslims in the world who have become very angry. Right now they are weak and cannot exert themselves — but that will change at some point.

It is wiser for Israel to make peace while it is incredibly powerful, when it can secure the best possible terms, rather than to drag this out and wait for a day when things may have changed. As a friend of Israel, I am advising them: stop walking towards a cliff. Turn around and find a peaceful solution.

Keith 21:09:00

If you ask the average Singaporean — and I speak to my friends, my Muslim friends tend to be more aggravated, but even friends who are not particularly religious feel this is a humanitarian crisis at the very least. In that context, as a young Singaporean, many don't even see the possibility of viewing Israelis as partners, for example. What would your advice be to them — how to read the situation without being too emotionally stirred?

Kishore 21:42:00

The one big lesson I learned from Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Keng Swee, and Rajaratnam is this: when it comes to geopolitics, if you have a contest between someone who is rational, cool, and calm, and someone who is emotional, the rational, calm person always wins. So when it comes to geopolitics, do not become emotional. Calculate everything in a very cool, calm, rational fashion.

The world will remain a mess in many parts. We cannot fix all of it. We have to accept what is happening, live with it, try to manage it, and be thoughtful where we can. I am glad Singapore has sent humanitarian supplies to the Palestinians. I think we should send more — that is something concrete we can do.

Beyond that, we are far too small to fix a problem like Israel and Palestine. I find it helpful to have private conversations with Israeli friends and Palestinian friends and share my thinking on how they might find peace. But we cannot become too starkly involved. And that principle applies not just to Israel and Palestine — it applies to any conflict in our region. The Philippines and China, India and Pakistan: those are not our fights. We have to let them figure it out.

Keith 23:24:00

One of your theses is that when Singapore cannot affect change directly, it uses and leverages multilateral institutions. But over the past two or three years, those institutions — the WTO, the World Health Organization, the UN — have only become weaker. There seems to be a structural decline under way.

Where do you think the future of the UN lies? I know you are an optimist, but from the way things appear, it seems increasingly pessimistic for multilateral organisations. I'm happy for you to give us a hopeful note, though.

Kishore 24:09:00

This is a perfect example of Singaporeans having their minds captured by the Anglo-Saxon media. The media rubbishes the UN, so we rubbish the UN too — forgetting that small states survive because of something called the United Nations.

Before 1945, it was perfectly acceptable for a powerful state to conquer its neighbour. The UN Charter changed everything. It said: from now on, any state that invades and occupies a neighbouring state pays the price, with the international community saying no, that is wrong. That fundamental turn in human history has benefited Singapore enormously.

You should also understand why the UN is performing badly. Not because something is wrong with the organisation itself. It's because the great powers want to weaken it. Even at the height of the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union disagreed on everything, they agreed on one thing: the UN must be kept going. But the one criterion both applied when selecting a Secretary-General was that he must be spineless. When an organisation is forced to pick spineless leaders, of course it will be weak. But who made it weak? The great powers made it weak.

One of the most interesting exchanges I personally witnessed was in the mid-1980s. Our then-Foreign Minister Mr Dhanabalan was speaking with US Secretary of State George Shultz. Shultz was complaining: look at the UN, it's so weak, badly managed, wasting money. Dhanabalan said, "I agree with you. The UN is very weak. Why don't we now pick a very dynamic, entrepreneurial person with courage and integrity to run it?" And Shultz blushed. He knew. It was the United States that had been picking these weak Secretaries-General.

It's not like the Catholic Church. When the Catholic Church selects its leader, they look for the strongest individual, someone with high integrity and moral courage — and that person becomes Pope. For the UN, if you have integrity and moral courage, you are disqualified. I mean, this is absurd. The Western countries weaken the UN, then they complain the UN is weak.

And remember: the UN is a voluntary organisation. You don't have to join. You can quit any time. Tell me — how many countries have quit the United Nations? Why hasn't any country walked out? Why hasn't the United States? Clearly there is something very valuable and precious in it. So why are we Singaporeans rubbishing it when it is clearly not in our national interest to do so?

We should expose the hypocrisy: these countries weaken the UN and then protest that it is weak. This is just one area of what I would call a very profitable hobby of mine — collecting examples of Western hypocrisy. If you know of some good ones, please email me. I'll put them in my next book.

Keith 29:30:00

I think you've helpfully distinguished between the diagnosis and the cause. The UN is weak — but the cause is clear. Given what is at stake, though, and given that Singapore is a price-taker when great powers decide who leads these institutions, I'd like you to show us how Singapore can actually use these platforms to help create a better world.

Kishore 30:21:00

We should be like Dhanabalan. He said directly to George Shultz: why don't you pick a strong Secretary-General? We should be able to say that clearly and directly to the Americans, to the Russians, to everyone, because those are simply the facts.

At the end of the day, the nature of world history did change in 1945. Yes, countries have been invaded since then — Vietnam invaded Cambodia, the US invaded Iraq. International law has been broken. But just as in domestic law — in Singapore, murder is banned, yet murders still happen — what matters is how violations are handled. And the fact is, most countries overall still respect the principles of the UN Charter. That is something we should celebrate.

Keith 31:30:00

So it goes back to your earlier point about ASEAN — that sometimes you don't appreciate how good things are until you see how bad things can become. Even then, we tend to underappreciate the value these institutions bring. Do you see an off-ramp coming, or do you think this is just a pause and things will get worse in the near and medium term?

Kishore 31:56:00

The US-China relationship is complicated, which is why I wrote an entire book on it — Has China Won? I'm very glad that fairly senior people from both China and the United States have read it and called it a fair and balanced account, because it tries to explain both perspectives.

There is no question that the US-China contest will accelerate over the medium term. That's a given. Because of that iron law of geopolitics — going back 2,000 years — the world's number one power will always push down the world's number one emerging power. It's mechanical. So when you listen to American officials, they are determined to stop China. Determined.

And if they're determined to stop China, what should China do? Say it won't grow? The Chinese can't do that. They have to keep growing their economy, growing their middle class. This contest is locked in.

Nobody anticipated what happened this year. When the United States raised tariffs on China to 145%, the Chinese found a weapon to retaliate with. They cut off the supply of rare earths and magnets. The US discovered very quickly that its economy cannot function without them. And this is an example of Trump being very pragmatic — he said, OK, I can't push them down on this one, I have to compromise. Trump lowered the tariffs. China restored supplies of rare earths and magnets. And so you have a détente — a brief détente, but a very brief one. This is temporary. Both sides will still find ways to gain advantage.

The contest will carry on. If they can avoid the worst-case scenario of a direct war, that is all we need. We should work to ensure they don't go to all-out war. I think that can be prevented.

That is also one reason I wrote Has China Won — because many people fall into a kind of passivity: we can't do anything about it. But if you write something reasonable and people read it, you can actually influence policy. The Trump administration read the book and responded well to it. Don't just say you can't do anything about it.

Keith 36:02:00

I read The ASEAN Miracle. I think the miracle dimension is undeniable. But there are two familiar critiques. First, that ASEAN member economies often compete for the same foreign investment rather than complementing each other — so you don't get the kind of regional development that comes with genuine integration. Second, that ASEAN countries have not really helped develop one another. As Parjit Agarwal from Indonesia has pointed out, only two of the ten ASEAN member states have reached developed status — Singapore and Brunei — with Malaysia catching up.

A less-discussed point, which I think you've raised, is that ASEAN countries tend to be too silent and polite in the face of great-power rivalry, when in fact they should be doing more to de-escalate — because China is a geopolitical reality we have to live with, and if the US wants to leave, it can.

My question is: how do you strengthen ASEAN to be better equipped to maintain competition without confrontation?

Kishore 37:28:00

ASEAN is a very imperfect organisation — incredibly imperfect. But when you measure organisations, who do you compare ASEAN with? The only fair comparison is with other regional organisations among developing countries. And a very simple question: name me one organisation of developing countries doing a better job than ASEAN.

Go to Latin America — Mercosur: Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay. In ASEAN, leaders meet every year and talk to each other. In Mercosur, the leaders of Brazil and Argentina don't talk to each other. What is going on in Africa? The Gulf Cooperation Council? Look at the internal divisions there. South Asia? The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation hasn't met in ten years. And then there's the European Union — which is supposed to be the gold standard for regional cooperation, and in some ways is, because there is zero prospect of war between EU member states. But if you want to meet the most depressed young people in the world, go to Europe. Europe is becoming a wonderful museum for the world. ASEAN is not a museum. ASEAN is growing.

In the decade from 2010 to 2020, these poor developing countries in ASEAN contributed more to global economic growth than the entire European Union. No other region can match ASEAN's growth. So when you try to turn this imperfect body into a perfect one, you'll destroy it. Don't try to make it perfect. Leave it as it is. ASEAN is like a crab — two steps forward, one step back, one step sideways. That's how ASEAN moves. Because if you try to take an imperfect organisation and force it to be perfect, you'll destroy it.

Enjoy the imperfect regional organisation you have — because all of you can sit here tonight without worrying about a bomb coming through those windows. That is because of ASEAN.

And I want to be serious when I say this: every morning I wake up, I worship ASEAN. This organisation has been so brilliant in taking the most diverse region on planet Earth and keeping the peace. There are 700 million people in ASEAN — 250 million Muslims, 150 million Buddhists, 150 million Christians, Mahayana Buddhists, Theravada Buddhists, Chinese, Communists. Tell me one place in the world where you have Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, and Christians all living in peace with each other. So what ASEAN has done — taking this hugely diverse region and delivering peace and prosperity — is an act of miracle.

Do we thank ASEAN for this miracle? No. We join The Economist and we rubbish it. That's what Singaporeans do.

Keith 42:09:00

On that note, I'd like to move to questions. Although we rubbish it, I think we see it for its imperfections — and the Singaporean in us always strives for perfection. They always joke: when you get 90 on the exam, your mum asks, why not 91? Why not 92? It's in that spirit — not rubbishing, but hoping for a better future. And the lesson I take away is: don't try to turn a crab into a tiger.

I'd like to start with the top-voted question from the audience. And if you have questions, please raise your hand so we can get the mic to you.

Audience Member 1 42:46:00

Thank you for the candid conversation. I have a slightly contrary view on the United Nations. First, there's a structural problem with the Security Council veto — the ability to block resolutions. And second, who or what serves as the policeman for the world? Is that the direction of travel you think the UN could move towards to be more effective?

Kishore 43:17:00

Two good questions — one on the veto, one on being the policeman.

On the veto: the politically correct answer is that vetoes are bad. In theory, in any country, we believe every citizen should have one vote. If one citizen could veto the entire country's decisions, we would never allow that. So internationally, we should also say all countries are equal.

But the founders of the UN were much more brilliant than we are. They saw clearly what happened to the UN's predecessor, the League of Nations. Why did the League of Nations die? Because its most powerful member, the United States, left. So the founders asked: how do we anchor the great powers in the UN? Make sure they don't quit? Because if they quit, the UN becomes useless. The founding fathers gave the veto precisely as a mechanism to ground the great powers and keep them inside the tent.

The veto also serves to ensure that the UN does not make decisions to enforce sanctions on the United States, for example. You cannot fight the United States directly — the UN would die. So the veto was a brilliant structural solution.

The only mistake the founders made was that it was designed for the great powers of 1945. This is 2026. Those are no longer the great powers of the world. And that is why I wrote a column — which I was surprised the Financial Times published — arguing it is time for the UK to gracefully hand its seat to India. The reason is straightforward: in the year 2000, the British economy was 3.5 times larger than India's. Today, India is larger than the UK, and by 2050 India will be four times bigger. Strictly speaking, the UK should give up its seat to India. I'm surprised no Indian leader is calling for this — I'm trying to help them out.

So the veto should remain, but it must be transferred to the great powers of today. That is the change that needs to happen.

On the policeman: when the great powers collaborate, the UN does a brilliant job. In the 1990s, after the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a brief period when Russia, the US, and China were getting along reasonably well in the Security Council. Suddenly, all kinds of long-standing conflicts disappeared — including the Cambodian conflict. So when the UN doesn't function, it doesn't mean something is wrong with the UN. It means great-power relations are bad. If tomorrow — improbably — the United States and China fell in love with each other, the UN would come roaring back. Everything would happen at the UN again. It all depends on the great powers.

Keith 47:30:00

This next question is about Singapore joining BRICS, and I want to link it to a broader question about sacred cows. When you become as successful as Singapore has, certain precepts become doctrinal truths. You've argued that Singapore should take a fresh look at BRICS and find ways to participate in it. But Donald Trump — and many American leaders — see BRICS as a rival to US-led institutions. How does one make that shift in a multipolar world? Could we see Singapore embedded in BRICS in the future?

Kishore 48:20:00

In this world, there are sunrise organisations and sunset organisations. It is clearly in Singapore's interest to join sunrise organisations and not sunset ones.

The G7 is a sunset organisation. When it was started, it genuinely represented the most powerful economies in the world — a meeting of peers, where the Europeans could speak to the United States on a level playing field. Today, a G7 meeting is like a meeting of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The Dwarfs have no say. The Europeans have become dwarfs — I'm not exaggerating. They can have no real impact on what G7 does. And the G7's share of global GNP, decade by decade, is going down. They're not growing.

BRICS's share of global GNP is rising. BRICS is clearly a sunrise organisation. It has got lots of challenges — most significantly, its two biggest members, India and China, don't get along very well. That is a problem. But they have found ways of getting along well enough to keep BRICS going.

I'm not advocating that Singapore join BRICS outright — we are too small and it would be complicated — but we can find ways of working with BRICS. There is also the OECD, which represents mostly Western states: there is no reason why Singapore can't join the OECD while also working with BRICS. We should look for multiple options, and do so slowly and carefully.

The critical point is this: the countries of the world are mostly operating peacefully and trying to find peaceful ways of growing and developing. We should increase our connections with as many countries as possible, not focus only on Western countries.

Audience Member 2 50:58:00

Thank you for your sharing. My name is Clarence. I was previously a trade negotiator for ASEAN, so I can relate to the energy of working within that structure.

My question is on ASEAN. Given the Thailand-Cambodia conflict and Trump's positioning as a kind of go-between, do you feel that ASEAN was in any way derelict in the job it should have been doing? My second question: with the US tariffs, we saw ASEAN countries coming together in one sense, but ultimately negotiating individually with the United States. Is that a sign that when the stakes are truly high, each country will defend its own interests without regard for the collective organisation?

Kishore 52:15:00

I am glad you experienced the imperfections of ASEAN as a trade negotiator. It's important to remember that when Singapore first started trade negotiations, our Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Finance was Mr Ng Tong Dao — a very impatient man. He went to Indonesia thinking he could get something done within 24 hours. He realised very quickly that in ASEAN, you wait a few years. The answer will be yes eventually, but don't rush.

You've identified two imperfections, and you're right on both counts. On the Thailand-Cambodia dispute: ASEAN didn't intervene in the latest round. But in the previous dispute, the Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa did go in and try to help Thailand and Cambodia find a resolution. We didn't do that this time around, and I'm glad President Trump intervened. Any leader who pushes for peace is doing the right thing.

But here is the thing about ASEAN's imperfection in that case: if ASEAN had not existed, the war between Thailand and Cambodia could have escalated very quickly — more troops deployed, more soldiers killed. Instead it was brief and restrained. Why? Because there was very strong informal peer pressure from ASEAN countries — private phone calls, quiet appeals to please stop. That peer pressure helped restrain the conflict. Now, can you imagine doing the same with Iran and Israel? There is no such peer pressure. They don't belong to any common organisation. That is the difference.

On ASEAN countries negotiating individually with the United States on tariffs: there is no choice. Our economies are very different. We cannot agree on one common package to present to Washington because our needs are different. It is actually good that all of us are finding our own solutions, as long as those solutions don't damage our neighbours — and they don't, because all of us are simply trying to get the best possible deal from the United States.

But please also remember: take the long view. We have had administrations in the past that paid less attention to ASEAN and ASEAN relations went down. Then they were replaced by administrations that valued ASEAN — like Barack Obama, who grew up as a child in Indonesia and speaks Bahasa Indonesia. He knew where ASEAN was. So you have to learn patience. Don't get frazzled if one or two years are difficult. Things will change.

Keith 56:02:00

There's a question about the precedents being set by the Iran-Israel war. If we zoom out — the blockading of the Strait of Hormuz, the fighting in the Middle East — what are the longer-term fallouts that you foresee? Developments that will reshape the world in ways that many people are not paying enough attention to?

Kishore 56:31:00

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is a clear violation of international law under the UNCLOS convention, and Singapore's position stating this is correct. But at the same time, if you want Iran to behave as a responsible stakeholder in the global system and observe international law, you also have to be willing to say that the attack by the United States and Israel on Iran is a violation of international law. You can't tell one side to respect international law and tell the other side it's perfectly fine to violate it. The merciless bombing is itself a massive violation. So we must call on all parties to respect international law if we want to find a solution.

Keith 57:57:00

Is this going to be a world where international law is increasingly disregarded, treated as secondary to national interest? Because historically, great powers have never really let international law constrain them when they feel their interests are at stake. Do we see that spreading — not just among great powers, but any state that decides it can pursue its interests regardless of international law?

Kishore 58:20:00

My answer to that — forgive me if I sound repetitive — is to ask a simple question: is international law a sunrise trend or a sunset trend?

Let me put it to a vote. How many of you think international law is a sunrise trend? Raise your hands.

[Audience response]

OK, how many say it's sunset?

[Audience response]

Clearly a vast majority. I belong to the minority — I say it's sunrise. And I say it's sunrise for a very simple reason. Watch decade by decade: are most countries complying more or less with international law? This is a factual question, a measurable one.

The first and most fundamental violation of international law is invading your neighbour. That trend, over the long term, is going down. There are 193 countries in the world. How many are complying with international law? How many are violating it? The good news is the vast majority of 193 nations are complying. It is by far a sunrise tendency, because most countries do so for sensible reasons — it is in their interest to respect international law because it keeps them at peace.

Of course, there will be massive violations from time to time, and it is always the great powers who violate international law. So it is up to the rest of us — the non-great powers — to tell them: please behave yourselves and respect international law.

On the long-term trend, the world is actually becoming a better place, partly because policymakers around the world are becoming more educated and more aware of the costs and benefits of going to war. All the recent wars have again reminded us of the futility and stupidity of war. One of my life missions is to increase the forces that delegitimise war. Small states should speak out more strongly on this. That is why I launched the Asian Peace Programme. And yes, some of my Singaporean friends said to me, Kishore, why are you wasting your time? But if you have that cynical attitude, you will never improve the world.

Audience Member 3 1:02:25:00

There's a real chance that US security deterrence in Asia is weakening. Iran is a middle-sized power — but what are the implications for Asia if the US is now the biggest disruptor of the global system rather than its guarantor?

Kishore 1:02:46:00

The one thing I learned from our founding fathers is that they were realists of the highest order. If you are powerful, we will deal with you.

In the Cold War, we were much closer to the United States. But even then, we were never anti-Soviet Union. I personally accompanied Mr Rajaratnam to Moscow in 1976 — exactly fifty years ago — and we met with the legendary Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. Mr Rajaratnam told Gromyko: we are anti-communist at home — and it's true, Singapore is anti-communist domestically, we jailed communists — but we are not anti-communist in our foreign policy. We welcome American naval vessels in Singapore. We welcome Soviet naval vessels in Singapore. We don't take sides.

The same principle applies between the US and China today. We will be friends with the US and friends with China. We will not take sides. This is not our fight.

And fortunately, we don't have to make this decision alone. We are in ASEAN. All ten ASEAN countries broadly agree: we want to be friends with both the US and China. We are not going to choose. All ten of us agreeing makes it a reasonable, defensible position. That is one of the protections we have in this geopolitical context. It is what our founding fathers would have done, and it is what we are doing.

Audience Member 4 1:04:32:00

Earlier this week, the Indonesian Finance Minister raised the idea of imposing a toll on the Strait of Malacca — we've seen the situation with the Strait of Hormuz, and there was pushback from Singapore. What were your immediate thoughts? The Indonesian Finance Minister also suggested the revenue could be split three ways between Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Is this a viable solution?

And a related question: how do you compare Singapore's position to that of the UAE in the current situation, given that US alignment is making some Gulf states vulnerable? And how is the GCC reacting to what Iran is doing?

Keith 1:05:15:00

Let's gather those three questions together and then we'll take the answers.

Kishore 1:06:21:00

Three questions: the Indonesian Finance Minister's toll proposal, whether Singapore is like the UAE in some ways, and how the GCC is responding to Iran.

The Indonesian Finance Minister — that is easy to answer. He has withdrawn the proposal. The matter is closed. I am not even sure whether it was serious or a trial balloon. But it is a very good example of how countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore respect international law, and why it is in their interest to do so. Indonesia is a huge archipelagic country. It is very much in Indonesia's interest to see the archipelagic principles embedded in international law protected and not weakened. So Indonesia has enormous vested interests in upholding international law.

On Singapore versus the UAE: I would say our positions are quite different, because we are not directly involved in any bilateral conflict. Iran explained its strikes on US bases as a response to attacks on Iran, but to be completely candid, they went beyond that. When a country is fighting for survival, you have to expect it to do desperate things.

Which brings me to the GCC. The genius of ASEAN is that it maintains good relations with all its big neighbours — India, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia. We have good relations with all of them. The GCC must copy ASEAN on this. You must have good relations with all your neighbours, whether you like them or not. That is irrelevant. They are your neighbours. You have to live with them.

There is only one fact I can guarantee you with certainty: Iran will be a neighbour of the GCC not for the next ten years, not for the next hundred years, but for the next thousand years. If you have a thousand-year neighbour, learn to get along with it.

Keith 1:09:32:00

On that note, I have one last question as we wrap up. People call you the muse of the Asian century — not a title I gave you, but one that has been given to you. You've been influential not just in the public space, but in rooms where decisions are actually being made. Today we're in a room full of young, striving leaders trying to make their way in the world. If there is one piece of advice you would give them, or one bet you think they should be making today, what is it?

Kishore 1:10:04:00

One piece of advice is very difficult, but I would say this: despite everything I've said, be optimistic.

I am actually optimistic about the future. The reason I try to analyse every flaw in the international system is to identify what needs to be fixed. At the end of the day, consider what Singapore has achieved. When I grew up in the 1960s, our per capita income was $500. Now it's $94,000.

And I want to emphasise something to all of you, just in case you didn't know: no other country anywhere in the world, at any point in human history, has grown as fast and as comprehensively as Singapore has, in the years that Singapore has done it. We are number one in world history. We should be celebrating that fact.

Singaporeans are not even aware of this. It's stunning. You are living in a country that, by any millennial standard of human achievement, has done something miraculous. And yet we wake up every morning mourning all kinds of small things that don't work, fixating on all kinds of problems. Which is bizarre.

I have lived in Cambodia when it was being shelled every day. I have lived through war, I have lived through poverty, I have seen the other side. So I can see clearly what we have achieved — because I've been there, I've crossed over to the other side. And so I understand what a miracle we have today.

Every miracle is the result of amazing hard work and amazing genius. If we hadn't had our founding fathers — Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Keng Swee, Rajaratnam — I can tell you, they were real geniuses. And the proof is simple: why hasn't any other country done what Singapore has done? No other country has. We must understand that special contribution — understand what it was about the genius that created this Singapore — and ensure we capture it, preserve it, and let it survive another sixty years.

Keith 1:13:00:00

So what is that one thing we should capture in a bottle and carry with us wherever we go? I already know "worship ASEAN" is one answer, and the Singapore miracle is another. But what is the one thing you hope will stay with us as we go forward in the world today?

Kishore 1:13:16:00

I guarantee you that the geopolitical tensions in our neighbourhood will grow, because the US-China contest will accelerate and Southeast Asia will become an arena in this great-power competition. We will be caught in the crossfire. That is a given. The question is: how do you start preparing now to protect yourself from that crossfire? Because it's coming.

So life won't be boring.

Keith 1:13:51:00

On that note, thank you Professor Mahbubani for making the time for us.

Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you are watching this on YouTube, please consider subscribing and turning on notifications for whenever new episodes are out. If you're on Spotify or Apple, it would help us greatly if you could leave a five-star review. Once again, thank you for tuning in to The Front Row Podcast.

The following is a series of transcripts from an interview series I did at a SuperAI event.

I hope you find the transcripts useful :)

Dr. Dean Ho is currently Provost’s Chair Professor and Head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the College of Design and Engineering, Director of The Institute for Digital Medicine (WisDM) at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, and Director of The N.1 Institute for Health (N.1) at the National University of Singapore.

His central argument is that medicine has always been built on population averages — and that this is no longer sufficient. With AI and digital twins, he believes we now have the tools to treat every patient as a sample size of one.

The conversation spans three registers: oncology (a blood cancer patient who entered the trial at eighty and is still thriving four and a half years later); commercialised drug combination design (Kyan's 91% predictivity vs a competitor's 52%); and personal healthspan

(Dean ran an IRB-approved trial on himself tracking sleep, gut, metabolism, and supplementation).

The through-line is a simple but radical idea: a single annual health snapshot tells you almost nothing. Dynamics — how your body changes hour to hour, day to day — is where the signal lives.

DEAN HO

Keith 00:00:00

One of the biggest innovations in AI today is the ability to collect our own personal data and translate that into actionable insights that can actually improve our healthspan and longevity. Let me give you an example with cancer. What if I told you that many patients who don't respond to treatment aren't actually non-responders — that the truth is the dose was wrong, and not personalised to them? And that with artificial intelligence, they could actually receive proper dosages based on their body's specific response to a drug?

Would that change the way you think about medicine today? This is the problem that my guest, Professor Dean Ho, has been trying to solve. Professor Dean Ho is a researcher at NUS, where he heads up the N-1 Institute and is building a platform called Q8.ai. He is essentially asking the question: what if we stopped treating patients based on population averages and started treating them as a sample size of one — could we then truly personalise healthcare?

If you want a peek into how the artificial intelligence revolution could change the way we think about health today, and possibly tomorrow, this conversation is for you. My conversation with Dean took place at a community event jointly organised by SuperAI, CARTA, Singapore Global Network, and myself. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

Prof Dean Ho 00:01:31

I want to give a short talk about what we are doing to use data for real-world applications. We used to focus exclusively on oncology, but we have since moved into longevity, healthspan, and what many know as biohacking.

When we talk about living well, I go back to the very beginning. An overarching ethos of our work is that we are stories, not snapshots. Everyone in this room has probably been to a physical exam once a year. Your doctor hands you a PDF — a bunch of numbers, some of it essentially GPT'd back to you — and then you don't look at that PDF ever again until another one arrives a year later. In conventional medicine, we define "longitudinal" as one of these PDFs once a year for ten years. But as I'll show you shortly, our biology changes far faster than that. The best dose of a drug for you today could be very different even a few hours or a week later. If we only get one PDF per year, we miss all of that. We are stories, not snapshots.

On AI: in any AI panel or keynote you attend, you can do a drinking game. Every time you hear "garbage in, garbage out," take a shot. But I think we owe ourselves more depth than that. If you collect a single data point from a billion people — vertical scale, enormous breadth — but I've just told you that we change over time, then no AI can tell you the story that moves forward. It cannot capture that acute change. We have to think more deeply.

If we are indeed stories, then we must remember that terms like "optimal," "precise," and "personalised" describe dynamic processes. They are not static. No regimen can truly be optimal and remain so indefinitely.

Let me give you a real-world use case. A patient came to us with a rare blood cancer — maybe one case in Singapore every three to five years. We hear a great deal about digital twins. We do develop them for patients, but contrary to how most people think about AI and big data, we use only that patient's own data. Nobody else's data influences any other patient. Once we build this curve — this twin — we can adjust doses dynamically.

In oncology, the standard approach is this: you give every patient the highest possible dose until they stop responding. If a patient doesn't respond, you switch them to something else, and you keep going until they exhaust all options and move to end of life. For this particular patient, whenever he received the maximum dose, his cancer markers worsened. Before switching him to a new drug, our clinical trial allowed us to test different doses and track how his markers changed — which is how we build the curve.

As part of the trial, we were permitted to recommend a lower dose, but we were lowering the dose not for toxicity — which is common in cancer treatment — but for efficacy. We were the first to do this in the world. Fifteen years ago, when I proposed this to oncologists, I was shown the door. They told me it would be illegal, that it was wrong. Now, some of those same oncologists have to read about how to do this in their societies' annual education materials. It took fifteen years, but whenever we dropped the dose for this patient, the efficacy returned. High dose — no response. Lower dose — response.

This study was planned for twelve months. The patient entered the trial at around eighty years old, already quite frail. As of last September, he had been with us for four and a half years. He is still with us, and not only is he doing well — he is thriving. He is around eighty-four and a half years old. His cancer markers are the lowest they have ever been over the entire course of the trial. The patient himself has asked to remain on it.

Healthy people are very efficient at becoming unhealthy. We told ourselves we would keep helping cancer patients — that has not stopped, we have about ten clinical trials running. But healthy people accelerating toward illness is a separate and urgent problem. So we launched a trial where I became the test subject.

What is unique about this trial is that it is double IRB-approved. If you run a trial, you can either document things casually and post on social media, or you can submit to an ethics board. This required two ethics board protocols and additional MOH approval, because it had never been done here before. I believe it is the first human trial in history where the professor is the test subject in an interventional study — meaning the trial involved algorithms driving supplementation, fasting, sleep, fitness, the whole picture.

I never intended this to be the outcome. People often say that the only reason it worked for me is that I have some superhuman level of discipline. My parents would totally disagree with that. And if I truly had that discipline, the "before" photo would not have existed in the first place.

On the question of stories over snapshots: the chart showing my metabolism over the course of a single day illustrates the point. In the Delta trial last year, I did fifty-two blood draws — not one per week, but clustered: sometimes four in a week, sometimes none. I pricked my finger about a thousand times. I tracked markers that you cannot get from a standard clinical lab. This is ethics-regulated, deep phenotyping — well beyond what you typically see on social media.

On sleep: I was at Brian Johnson's home about two years ago. He is a friend — a genuinely kind person. We did discuss sleep. I used to sleep at one in the morning. Now I sleep at around nine-thirty. It took time to re-engineer that. Sleep is probably one of the hardest habits to change, but our team specialises in helping people see their dynamics. When you can see the immediate benefits of a single good night's sleep, it is far easier to sustain better habits than when you are waiting a year for a PDF.

On gut health: I ran twenty-four gut tests last year. There is a marker called Fusobacteria. It is linked to colon cancer, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and fatty liver disease. It is quite prevalent in the population. You do not need zero — but you do not want too much. After twenty-four tests, Fuso has never shown up in my results, not even at trace levels. We are trying to understand why. I do not know yet, but too many people are sharing gut test results on social media without understanding that their Fusobacteria may be elevated — and that they need to do something about it.

I published a paper on myself a couple of years ago, and the full Delta trial — sleep, gut, deep metabolics — is currently in peer review. Stay tuned.

One final acknowledgement: why is longevity personal to me? Some of you may know my wife. She is a two-time tumour survivor — brain and spine — and her illness came after we moved to Singapore. It was during her recovery that I found myself going in the other direction. I was staring at the ceiling one morning thinking: if I stay on this trajectory, my kids may not live as long as they could — one parent with serious health challenges, another becoming seriously unhealthy. People ask me all the time: your study is an N of one — what does that mean for the rest of us? The Delta workflow is designed for a much broader population. Everyone has their own Delta. That is why we named it that way.

Something that moved me: after I shifted my sleep to nine-thirty, my kids started sleeping at around the same time — earlier, in fact. Their friends, aged eleven and thirteen, are messaging them at three or four in the morning. Those messages are muted now. When you can see your habits helping other people, and then see them benefitting, your own adherence improves. It is a communal effort.

And yes — I did eat those ice cream cones. Balance matters. But when you can see your data in action, remarkable things can happen, especially when you move beyond looking at one snapshot of your health once a year.

Keith 00:13:25

We have some time before the next session, and I thought it would be useful to pick up on a few threads from Dean's talk. You will have noticed that Dean does not have a Singaporean accent — and that is intentional context. When people think about biomedical R&D, they tend to think Boston, or they think China. Singapore has quietly carved out a niche in advancing medical innovation. So I want to start by asking: what is it about Singapore's medical ecosystem that enables this kind of N-equals-one research — research that is perhaps less common elsewhere?

Prof Dean Ho 00:14:07

I am originally from LA, so when I start saying "dude" during the Q&A, you will know for sure.

What matters right now in the AI and digital medicine space is defining what impact actually means. I got to know Singapore well before I moved here in 2018 — I had been flying in regularly for five or six years before that. What I found is that you can collaborate with clinicians anywhere in the world, but when you combine exceptional clinicians who also carry a much higher patient load and who have a genuine tolerance for trying things differently — and then you add a regulatory agency that is ten minutes away and able to meet five days after you reach out — that is unprecedented. The accessibility of the key stakeholders who can bridge an idea all the way to patient benefit is, I think, going to save lives. That is why I am here.

Keith 00:15:23

You mentioned regulation. Can you elaborate on that specifically in the context of AI healthcare? What were some of the friction points you experienced in the US versus what you found in Singapore?

Prof Dean Ho 00:15:40

The most ironic example: about two and a half years ago, I was in a four-hour face-to-face meeting with Rob Califf — who was FDA Commissioner at the time. About six months after that, I was doing a fireside with his predecessor. The irony is that I had to move to Singapore to actually meet two FDA commissioners — and my colleagues back in the US do not even know the current commissioner's name. That is the bottom line.

Being at the leading edge of regulation, being in a place where the ecosystem is built to attract people from around the world who can help it thrive — that is what I mean. That is unprecedented.

Keith 00:16:22

Another thread I want to pull on: we have been conditioned to trust the randomised controlled trial. We optimise for the population average. Your thesis is that combining AI with digital twins allows us to personalise medicine down to an N of one. What is actually broken about the old system — what is so insufficient about it — that demands this kind of intervention?

Prof Dean Ho 00:16:51

Medicine is built on averages. That is the whole concept, and there is nothing wrong with it. The randomised controlled trial is designed to let you determine, with certainty, what a good dose is on average for a population. It is a robust, well-established system.

But at the time it was designed, we did not have the ability to track dynamics. We could not understand how people evolve during treatment the way we can now. You do not have to scan someone ten times a day — there are better ways to assess change.

Here is the problem: if you recruit patients into a trial, one patient gets a low dose, another a middle dose, another the maximum. But we have demonstrated that some patients respond better at lower doses. If the patient on the maximum dose does not respond, they are out of the trial — and you will never know whether a lower dose would have worked for them, because you never tried it. An average approach is suitable, but it is imperfect. It tells you nothing about what happens to that individual person tomorrow, or the day after. We have to do better.

Keith 00:18:12

If we take what you are doing now — N-equals-one personalised treatment — what are the actual bottlenecks to scaling it to a thousand people, or a hundred thousand? What are the structural barriers in the medical system?

Prof Dean Ho 00:18:28

I do not think the bottleneck is the medical system. It is not the doctors, it is not the nurses, it is not the infrastructure. It is people — meaning mindset.

Ten years ago, when I would describe this approach to doctors, the response was: "That's a case report." A case report, for those unfamiliar, is a technical term for a one-off. Someone comes into an emergency room, they have run out of standard options, they try something unconventional, it works. It may never happen again in human history. N-equals-one is different — it is systematic, it is calibrated.

But here is the contradiction: ask any of those same doctors whether they want medicine to be personalised, and every single one will say yes. Then ask them about N-equals-one and they say it is a one-off. At some point, you have to decide — are we going to truly personalise medicine, as we say we will? Or are we going to use the word performatively and stop short of the potential we actually have?

It is not the technology. We are our own biggest barrier. But we are getting there. It has taken a decade, and we are getting there.

Keith 00:19:48

My pushback — as someone on the street — is that these are highly trained people. They have been through medical school, they understand health outcomes. What explains the inertia if the use case is this compelling?

Prof Dean Ho 00:20:04

I think doctors, at heart, know there is probably a better way. I asked one of the doctors collaborating with us why he joined our trial. His answer: the doses I give are based on data from twenty or thirty years ago. He had seen patients do better at lower doses and could not explain it. His attitude was simply: if you can guide us toward something better, help us — help us help the patients.

Keith 00:20:40

You have given us the patient example. You are running multiple trials. Can you give us a sense of the economics — is it expensive to scale this? And roughly how many patients have come through the programme?

Prof Dean Ho 00:20:54

For the dosing algorithm, we have treated several hundred patients. For the combination design — where the algorithm recommends which drug combinations to use — it is several hundred more, with exceptional outcomes.

For the patient on screen, we saved him approximately $10,000 per month on his treatment, because for that particular drug, using less means spending less. We have not fully costed the approach itself, but the trajectory is clear: this will save both the healthcare system and patients money.

Keith 00:21:30

Can you give us a sense of the other live use cases — beyond that one patient, what other cases are you seeing where this kind of treatment has made a meaningful difference?

Prof Dean Ho 00:21:44

Part of this is now commercialised. Full disclosure: I am a shareholder in the company — Kyan — which is the combination design platform. We have treated hundreds of patients across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and now the US.

To put the numbers plainly: the positive predictivity of our drug recommender for blood cancers is around 91%. When we say a drug will work, it works 91% of the time. Our negative predictivity — arguably even more important — is also 91%: when we say a drug will not work, that prediction holds 91% of the time. Our nearest competitor, who has treated roughly half the number of patients we have, sits at around 52% on both metrics.

There are patients who have exhausted seven lines of therapy — patients who, by every conventional measure, should not still be with us. For some of them, finding the right combination means identifying one option out of a trillion possibilities. We have had patients who were a week from hospice care who are now back home. Some are in full remission. Some made it to transplant. It is not a one-off. This is commercialised, and it is helping people.

Keith 00:23:20

I want to bring it back to the personal, because I want to wrap this segment by speaking to the majority of people here — those who are healthy, trying to figure out how to engage with longevity. Not everyone is going to prick their fingers every day, not everyone is going to run a trial on themselves. The only other doctor I know who experimented on himself was Dr Octopus from Spider-Man, and I hope your outcome is rather more positive.

Prof Dean Ho 00:23:47

There you go — I appreciate that.

Keith 00:23:49

For the rest of us, not in that experimental space — what practical advice can you give on how the average person can take more ownership of their healthspan and longevity?

Prof Dean Ho 00:24:08

First: even having collected as much data on myself as I have, I believe there is genuine merit in not over-quantifying your life. I do not collect data on myself to the same degree I did last year. But there are meaningful signals you can track without great difficulty.

Many of you wear a wearable. In the Delta trial, I wore three simultaneously. One of the simplest and most revealing markers was resting heart rate first thing in the morning, as a function of the previous night's sleep. Sleep well for one night and your resting heart rate goes down. Sleep badly and it goes up. It flips with remarkable consistency. It is one of the easiest indicators of how you are actually doing.

Sleep is one of the hardest things to improve, and there is a persistent tug-of-war in the medical community about it. My doctor friends will sometimes say: "Dean, it is too late for me — my resting heart rate is already too high to sleep earlier." But the causal arrow runs the other way: good sleep is causative of a lower resting heart rate. It is rare to find a correlation-causation pair that clean. I tell my friends — kindly, because they are my friends — do not use the resting heart rate argument as a reason why it is too late. That is confirmation bias working against you. And if a patient asks you about sleeping earlier, what will you tell them if you will not do it yourself?

A hundred years of behavioural science data tells us that healthier doctors have healthier patients, healthier parents have healthier children, and healthier leaders have healthier teams. When you think about the simple things that will move the needle for you, remember that other people are watching. For the grandparents in the room — there is even a looser but real connection: healthier grandparents tend to have healthier grandchildren.

I had lunch with a friend last week — a very healthy sixty-three-year-old. He brought his medical records for me to look at. I said: you are in excellent shape, I'll bet your grandchild is too. He thought about it. His granddaughter, he told me, sees him eating fish — so she only eats fish. She sees him cycling every day, so she just asked for a trampoline. When he made that connection, his eyes lit up. And what mattered beyond the granddaughter was what that realisation did for him — the reinforcement it gave his own habits.

Technology is important, but if you want to improve the health of a million people, you do not have to put technology in the hands of a million people. You may only need to reach fifty to a hundred thousand. If they can stick with it, and if you can quantify and amplify the ripple effect, good things can happen.

Keith 00:27:49

Let me give you the final word. If everyone goes home tonight and tries to sleep ten minutes earlier — which may be ambitious given that we are still here — what is the one piece of practical advice you would leave them with?

Prof Dean Ho 00:27:55

We are probably going to be here until nine, so the timing is a little optimistic.

Keith 00:27:58

Fair enough. But if you had one thing to tell them — one concrete action they can take charge of — what would it be?

Prof Dean Ho 00:28:06

Just one. If you already sleep well — great, we will find something else to work on. But for those who genuinely struggle with sleep: move your sleep time earlier by ten minutes. Ten minutes, seven days, try it.

There are published studies — plenty of them — showing that even one week of micro-adjustment to sleep timing will improve your health markers. For some people, resting heart rate drops noticeably in seven days. For others, total sleep duration actually lengthens when they micro-adjust by ten minutes. The shift is small enough to not feel disruptive, but meaningful enough to be measurable.

I'll leave you with one finding. A study was conducted on a small group of healthy twenty-five-year-old males. They were sleep-deprived for seven days — meaning five hours of sleep per night. After seven days, their testosterone had dropped by 25%. That is a larger decline than the average reduction over an entire lifetime. The researchers chose that demographic specifically because the marker would rebound. But it illustrates what is happening when you are pushing through on four or five hours.

Watch your Netflix. Just move it ten minutes earlier. Give it a go. And when you feel slightly better, move it another ten. You owe it to yourselves.

Keith 00:30:00

With that — let us all sleep ten minutes earlier. Thank you, Dean.

Sau Sheong Chang is the Chief Technology Officer of GovTech Singapore, the government agency responsible for Singapore's national technology infrastructure and digital public services. In this role, he oversees the development and maintenance of platforms that underpin daily life for millions of Singaporeans — from SingPass, the national digital identity system, to Parents Gateway, CDC vouchers, and the Culture Pass.

Sau Sheong brings an unusual combination of deep private-sector experience and long public-service commitment to his work. He began his technology career at the National Computer Board in 1997, left in 1999 to found his first startup, and spent the intervening decades in startups and large technology companies before returning to public service — first as one of the earliest Smart Nation Fellows, and subsequently as a full-time GovTechie.

In this conversation, recorded at a community event co-organised by SuperAI, Carta, and Singapore Global Network, Sau Sheong speaks candidly about Singapore's 40-year arc of digital transformation, the buy-versus-build dilemma at the heart of government technology strategy, GovTech's adoption of AI tools including Claude Code for classified systems, and what the AI disruption actually looks like from inside one of the world's most advanced digital governments.

Keith 00:00:00

Singapore is one of the most digitally advanced societies in the world. When you use government services — whether paying your taxes, registering a company for your first startup, or applying for grants — the process is surprisingly painless. If you are a Singaporean in the know, your mind will immediately think of SingPass. This humble little app is what we use to verify our identity on almost all the important transactions we make.

But what doesn't get talked about is the army of public servants building and maintaining all of these services at the backend. I had the chance to speak to Sau Sheong. He is the CTO of GovTech Singapore and the man in charge of developing our national tech stack. He also happens to be one of the leading practitioners of AI in government and product building.

If you want to get a sense of what AI governance in Singapore actually looks like from the inside — from a practitioner's perspective — this is the conversation for you. The following conversation took place at a community event that SuperAI, Carta, Singapore Global Network, and myself jointly organised.

I hope you enjoy this. I managed to speak to this gentleman called Mehran Gu — I'm not sure if you've heard of him — he has this book called The New Geography of Innovation. His central thesis is that if you look at different countries across the world, there are distinct clusters that promote technological innovation in unique ways, and Singapore was one of his examples. He argued that in Singapore, the public service is leading in digital innovation — and that this is actually quite uncommon globally.

So I wanted to ask you, from your experience at the frontline: what makes Singapore unique in its ability to deliver public services at scale through digital means, efficiently and with excellence?

Sau Sheong 00:01:58

Hi everyone. First of all, very high praise from Keith — I'm not sure I actually live up to it. It's really a team effort. I'm not personally responsible for all the CDC vouchers you receive. And every time you can't log in to SingPass, please don't call me. Though SingPass does have 99.99% reliability, so I think we're doing pretty well.

To answer your question — it might take a little while — let me start with some background about myself. I joined GovTech about three years ago, but I've actually been part of this tech journey since long before GovTech existed. I was with the National Computer Board back in 1997, so some of the people in this room were probably not yet born at that point.

Believe it or not, Singapore's journey in digital transformation — what was called computerisation at the time — started in 1981, through an agency called the National Computer Board. That organisation evolved into the Infocomm Development Authority, and then, about ten years ago, became GovTech Singapore.

I was part of the NCB team working on computerisation for the Singapore Sports Council, which was then embedded within the old National Stadium. I mention this because Singapore started very early. It wasn't a fluke that we became good at technology. The computerisation project launched in 1981 and continued through different phases over the decades.

The very DNA of the Singapore government has technology built in — and I think that is one of the core reasons we perform better than many other countries. When I interact with my peers in other governments, the difference becomes clear. In most countries, technology is provided by external suppliers and vendors. In Singapore, we literally have government agencies in charge of technology. We have more than one — in fact, we have three: NCB was the oldest, then D-Star, and more recently, HGX. For the healthcare cluster, there is also Synapxe. So we are genuinely serious about technology and how it underpins our operations — and that seriousness isn't new.

Keith 00:05:45

There's another part of the secret sauce that I've come to realise from speaking to friends in government and overseas. One of the distinctive things about Singapore is that talented people — especially in technology — actually choose to work in government. Someone like yourself is a good example. You don't see this very often elsewhere in the world. I've spoken to friends in the US who say that, given a choice, they would never seriously consider being a civil servant as a software engineer.

Whereas in Singapore, GovTech is hiring world-class software engineers. Can you help me understand that a little more — how does the government position itself as an employer of choice for top tech talent?

Sau Sheong 00:06:33

We have a very good marketing team and a very good recruitment team — none of that is my doing. But we do go beyond our shores. We actively seek out Singaporeans who have worked abroad and try to bring them back to contribute to this effort.

I myself left NCB in 1999 to do my first startup. I spent many years doing startups and working in big tech companies, and I came back to public service because I felt a genuine pull to serve the nation. That is something we actively sell to candidates. When they see what we have built, when Singaporeans see our successes, many of them want to be part of that. They want to contribute to real impact.

If you've spent years doing commercial work, very often your contribution ultimately translates to one thing: revenue, shareholder value. In the Singapore government, you're contributing to the country itself. You live here, your family is here — this is your home. That strikes a chord in a lot of people.

We're also open to different forms of contribution. People can join at all levels, and we have a programme called Smart Nation Fellows for more senior practitioners who want to contribute for a defined period, in areas that match their expertise, without a long-term commitment. The Smart Nation Fellowship is a tool we use to encourage broader participation.

I was actually the second Smart Nation Fellow when the programme started. And many Smart Nation Fellows do eventually join GovTech as full-time staff, because they find — as I did — that building something with real value for the country carries a very different meaning from building something to increase shareholder returns. That, I think, is the real secret.

Keith 00:09:44

Can you give me an example of a project you were particularly proud of — something that felt like a genuine feat, and where you had to overcome real obstacles to get there?

Sau Sheong 00:09:54

There are many I could talk about. You mentioned SingPass earlier — it's actually quite an old product. Last year was its 20th anniversary. It started as a common login application for government systems and evolved into what it is today. The road was bumpy, but it has become something many Singaporeans are genuinely proud of. When I get introduced as someone who worked on SingPass, I see people light up — Singaporeans abroad especially seem to identify with it.

Beyond SingPass, if any of you have children in school, you've likely used Parents Gateway — an MOE system that is actually developed by GovTech. The government paid leave system is another. CDC vouchers, the recently launched Culture Pass — all GovTech. Many of the systems that underpin daily life in Singapore were built by GovTech or by GovTech teams embedded within the agencies.

Of course, none of these came without challenges. Developing the product is one thing — getting it rolled out is never straightforward. But that's part and parcel of any serious project.

The real satisfaction is putting something into the hands of citizens that makes a tangible difference to their everyday lives. That's the thing that is genuinely valuable.

Keith 00:12:32

You wrote an essay — a 37-minute read on Medium — that I'd recommend everyone here read. It explores the buy-versus-build dilemma that governments face: do you purchase software from external vendors, or do you build it yourself? And you tied this to the AI moment, specifically how large language models have dramatically lowered the cost of building and iterating on products.

I'd like you to elaborate a little on this. How does GovTech's AI strategy inform the way you decide what to build versus what to buy?

Sau Sheong 00:13:20

This is genuinely complex, and to explain it properly would take days. But let me try.

Government overall has more than 2,000 systems. Within GovTech itself, we run around 70 systems — most of them platforms, like SingPass, that power many other systems. We build a lot, but it is impossible for us to build everything for the whole of government. Inevitably, some systems are bought as commercial off-the-shelf products, and others are commissioned from system integrators.

For a long period — during the NCB and IDA era — outsourcing was the norm, as it was across the industry broadly. You reduced your own manpower requirements, you stimulated the external technology industry to grow, and there were real benefits to that approach. But over time, serious problems emerged. Government started losing its own capabilities. When the systems you've outsourced are peripheral, you can cope. But when they become core to what it means to operate as a government agency — to deliver the services the government exists to provide — losing that capability is a serious problem.

Part of the reason GovTech was established was to rebuild those internal capabilities and recover that ownership. There has since been a significant push towards modernisation and capability-building.

So is the answer simply "build"? No — because we will never have the manpower to build everything. The real question is: what is the strategy for deciding what to build versus what to buy? You need to capture the systems that matter most. But what counts as "most important" shifts over time as operations evolve.

Our response has been a platform strategy. We control the core layers of the most critical systems, and we engage suppliers to build applications on top of those platforms. We also push for standardisation so that suppliers work to common standards, making it easier to switch between them if needed.

As for AI — it is true that AI has made it substantially easier to build. But that doesn't mean we're going to rebuild SAP or Oracle. Systems that are deeply embedded and carry decades of institutional functionality are not candidates for replacement. The targets are the systems that were simply built on top of whatever was available at the time — those are the ones we want to change, to build properly on our own platforms, in ways that allow both our internal teams and our vendors to move quickly.

Keith 00:18:39

Can you talk more about AI adoption within GovTech specifically — the considerations you and the organisation have when adopting AI? I assume the calculus is quite different from the private sector. You probably place a much higher premium on security and on ownership. So how does that shape the way you integrate AI into your workflows?

Sau Sheong 00:19:05

It's not a trivial question, because what AI is capable of is changing almost daily. Just last night, Anthropic announced Claude and also announced managed agents. Many assumptions we held about what we should or shouldn't be doing have shifted as a result. When Manus was announced and shown to be capable of identifying vulnerabilities in systems years old, a lot of people in cybersecurity suddenly woke up.

So I'll offer this disclaimer: I don't want to give the impression that what I say here is authoritative or definitive, because it may not be true tomorrow.

That said, within government, many of the considerations around AI adoption are not so different from the private sector. There is significant pressure — coming from the Prime Minister's office — to drive adoption across agencies, and GovTech is expected to be at the forefront of delivery, and to deliver fast.

For me, and for GovTech, the most critical application is AI in software development. We've had a developer productivity programme running for about two years, providing AI tools to our engineers. Our earliest tool was GitHub Copilot. We subsequently added Codeium — which became Windsurf — and GitLab Duo, which is popular because we're heavy GitLab users.

Over the past year, the landscape has shifted considerably. Claude Code has become the dominant tool for software development, with Cursor also widely used and OpenAI's Codex entering the picture. Yesterday, in fact, we officially launched the use of Claude Code for classified systems. For unclassified systems, developers already had access to a range of tools. For classified systems, yesterday we issued credits to all our developers to use Claude Code up to a defined token threshold — with the ability to request more if justified. We're monitoring uptake, and it is ramping up well.

The next question, of course, is whether the investment is actually delivering. I've interviewed several teams who are early adopters, and the results are striking. Three separate teams reported productivity multiples — five times, ten times, one person even said thirty times. I'm not entirely sure how to interpret the thirty-times figure, but the direction is clear.

What's happening beyond software development is also significant. The Ministry of Education, for example, has been rolling out AI tools for teachers, students, and general productivity — tools to help teachers mark more efficiently, tools to help students learn mother tongue languages. Other agencies are adopting AI across their operations as well. There's quite a bit happening.

Keith 00:24:54

We're approaching the end of our time together. There are real trade-offs to be made — GovTech has a finite pool of talent and many ministries to serve. How does GovTech prioritise where to deploy that talent, so that the benefits of AI adoption are felt broadly across government?

Sau Sheong 00:25:15

We look at it across a few dimensions.

The first is scale: how many agencies need the same thing? Case management is a good example. It's one of the most common use cases across government — many agencies process cases and need a system to manage them. Rather than build the same thing repeatedly, we build a common platform and engage suppliers to build applications on top of it, adapted to each use case. So the first parameter is breadth: how many agencies and use cases does this address?

The second parameter — and this one is less obvious — is agency willingness to work with us. It sounds ironic, but some agencies prefer to commission their own external developers rather than work through GovTech. That's not optimal, because you end up with the same application replicated multiple times, which is a poor use of public funds. So we have to bring agencies on board, engage them, and get them to collaborate. Without that cooperation, we can't build centrally and deploy broadly.

The third parameter is value. The scale parameter captures breadth, but sometimes a use case has limited reach yet enormous value. Even one agency, one use case, can justify significant investment if the underlying impact is large enough.

In fact, there is a system we work on that processes around a trillion dollars of value annually for Singapore. That is clearly worth participating in, regardless of how many agencies are involved.

Keith 00:28:35

I have one final question for you. There are a lot of younger people in this room, and there's a lot of AI anxiety out there. My sense is that part of what's driving it is that knowledge work is being disrupted in a way many people haven't experienced before. As someone who leads a technology organisation and has been through multiple waves of disruption — in both the public and private sectors — how would you advise younger people to think about AI and their careers?

Sau Sheong 00:29:06

It's a question I get often. And I'll be honest: the real answer is that I don't know, because all of this is genuinely new. But I do have a sense of what's happening, because I engage with it every day.

The anxiety is real, and you are right to feel it. This technology is disruptive — not in the sense that it destroys things, but in the sense that it can multiply individual productivity so significantly that fewer people are needed to do the same work.

I speak primarily to the software industry, which I've been part of for 31 years. But I see this playing out across many industries. I have a close friend who is a legal officer in the public sector, and the legal industry is being disrupted just as profoundly — except that many in that field may not yet fully appreciate it. Software engineers understand it because they face it every day.

How do you deal with it? The industry's response has actually given me a lot of comfort. Rather than collapsing, I've seen it adapting — sometimes going down wrong paths, but ultimately moving in the right direction.

There's also an important asymmetry between senior and junior engineers that people often miss. The assumption is that senior engineers benefit most from AI because they know the technology deeply, and AI amplifies their existing capabilities. That is true. But senior engineers can also become fixated on the processes and workflows they've used their entire careers. They use AI to do the same things faster — which is impressive — but they don't always question whether those things need to be done at all.

Junior engineers, by contrast, often don't carry that baggage. They look at a problem and ask: why am I doing any of this the old way? And they find entirely different approaches that turn out to be far more efficient.

I'll give you a concrete example. I spoke to a team of senior engineers who had adopted AI tools and were getting ten times productivity improvements — genuinely impressive. Then I spoke to two junior data scientists, aged 25 and 28. They are data scientists, not even software engineers. They told me their productivity was roughly thirty times what it was before. They had simply skipped entire categories of assumptions about how the work should be done.

So my message to junior people is: don't despair. You have an edge that is not obvious. And to senior people: the edge is real, but only if you're willing to question the foundations of how you work, not just accelerate what you already do.

I'm actually quite comforted by what I see in the tech industry. My worry, honestly, is for the other industries — the lawyers, the people whose training doesn't naturally equip them to understand and adapt to what's happening. Whether they'll navigate this as well, I genuinely don't know.

Keith 00:34:13

With that — thank you, Sau Sheong.

Sau Sheong 00:34:16

Thanks, Keith.

Dimitra Taslim is seasoned tech investor and currently, serves as a Venture Partner at Granite Asia.

Before Granite Asia’s spinout and rebrand from GGV Capital Asia, Dimitra was part of the investment team at GGV Capital, where he helped source and support investments across emerging Asian markets. His work at Granite Asia reflects the firm’s broader thesis of supporting ambitious Asian founders through long-term capital, operational support, and access to cross-border networks.

Dimitra brings a blend of investor and operator experience. Prior to venture capital, he worked in private equity and growth investing in London, and also founded a digital wealth startup. His background gives him a strong focus on execution, operational scale, and founder-market fit — especially in businesses solving infrastructure and productivity challenges in Asia.

One of the biggest lessons VCs have learned in the past five years is that Southeast Asia is far more fragmented than anyone wished it was in the 2010s.

Today I'm speaking with Dimitra Taslim, a venture partner at Granite Asia, one of Singapore's and the region's leading venture funds. He has been investing across Southeast Asia and greater Asia long enough to know how to separate signal from noise.

In the context of the coming AI revolution, how should we make sense of Singapore's place? Where are the new opportunities for us to grow? I think you'll get a better sense of that after my conversation with Dimitra.

The following conversation took place at a community event that SuperAI, Kata Singapore Global Network, and myself jointly organised. I hope you enjoy it.

Keith 00:00:56

I wanted to start with the AI thesis and the geopolitical positioning of investments. If we use Jensen Huang's famous five-layer cake of AI to explain who comes out on top globally — you have the US and China competing at different layers — where does Singapore fit in? I'd like to get your view on where Singapore sits in this global contest for AI supremacy, and where we can truly make a difference in our startup ecosystem. Maybe you can start by explaining what the five-layer cake is.

Dimitra Taslim 00:01:27

The five-layer cake was made very famous by Jensen Huang. He said that AI is like a five-layer cake, and the layers are: energy, chips and hardware, infrastructure, models, and eventually applications.

Let me go layer by layer.

At the energy level, China is leading by far. China installs and produces more solar panels than the rest of the world combined. They make the best wind turbines in the world and have some of the best technology for harnessing and optimising renewable energy. So China is well ahead in terms of a sustainable future for AI.

On chips, the Taiwanese and Americans are probably a few generations ahead. They want to believe they are ten to fifteen years ahead of China, but I actually believe that with 1.4 billion people rowing the boat in the same direction, it's quite extraordinary. I'd say the Chinese are sub-ten years behind, and they'll reach two-to-four nanometre hopefully sooner than the Americans expect.

Infrastructure is interesting — it covers everything surrounding a data centre, not just the racks, but also energy efficiency and location. In the future of inference, you need data centres that are smaller and closer to the grid, possibly in city centres where latency is critical. For pre-training, you can use a data centre further away, somewhere cheaper. Singapore may play a small role here.

The foundation model layer is a different matter. If you're not at the bleeding edge — which really means the US and China — it's very hard to compete there.

Then you have applications. But what's emerging now is an interesting sixth layer sitting between foundation models and applications: agents. And I think Singapore should look closely at this. Our strengths — location, ports, logistics, warehousing, banking — create a significant orchestration opportunity. In an agentic future where situational intelligence and contextual knowledge matter, building things for specific verticals is where Singapore may have a real role to play.

Keith 00:03:56

I'd like you to elaborate a bit more on that sixth layer. If you think about Singapore's inherent advantages — even something like the Iran conflict makes you realise, as a Singaporean, how fortunate we are to have a certain level of energy sufficiency despite having zero natural resources. Can you say more about why Singapore has a unique advantage in that intermediate layer?

Dimitra Taslim 00:04:28

Firstly, thank you to the first generation of leaders for giving Singapore Inc. such a good name — people still want to do business with us and provide us energy to this day, when some countries are struggling.

To answer your question directly: we have to amplify our strengths. As our dear mentor George always says, Singapore's biggest arbitrage is cultural arbitrage.

Here's a quick example. Asia is the factory of the world, and Singapore is quite advanced in manufacturing and robotics. If you wanted to build an operating system for the factory floor, you could leave all the agent-building to the Americans and the Chinese. The Americans might be very good at building CRM and ERP agents. The Chinese might be very good at building inventory management and warehouse management agents. If you then wanted to build an agentic orchestration layer for the factory floor, which country is better placed to get the APIs from the Americans, get the APIs from the Chinese, and put it all together into one layer that has the best of both East and West? I don't think there's a better country than Singapore to do that.

The Americans might build incredible agents on certain things. The Chinese might build incredible agents on other things. But who is the middle layer that orchestrates the best American agents with the best Chinese agents? I don't think the Americans are as good at IMS or WMS as the Chinese are, and I don't think the Chinese are as good at CRM or ERP agents as the Americans. But somebody needs to be in the middle to orchestrate all of this together, especially when the APIs are closed.

Our advantage is never going to be in pure innovation. It's going to be in orchestration, arbitrage, integration, and the translation layer between East and West. That's what we have to do.

Keith 00:06:34

There was an analogy I was thinking through with a friend: if you think about all the different frontier labs, Singapore looks closest to something like Perplexity — you're able to plug into different models and still be a very valuable player in the industry, even if you're not one of the big frontier labs. Does that resonate?

Dimitra Taslim 00:06:53

Exactly.

Keith 00:06:58

The flip side of this is something many of us in this ecosystem have come to realise. Singapore has traditionally positioned itself as the gateway to Southeast Asia. For the past decade, there's been a thesis that if you have a market of 750 million Southeast Asians in one of the fastest-growing regions in the world, you could approximate it to a common market — perhaps not at the same magnitude as the US, but with some form of parity. That explained a lot of the large influx of venture capital in the past decade.

You're someone unique in that you were doing VC in the US before coming back to Singapore. I'd like you to help me understand some of the hard lessons you've learned deploying capital in two different markets. What has the past ten years taught us about Singapore and Southeast Asia, sometimes the hard way?

Dimitra Taslim 00:08:06

Let's start with a bit of venture capital history 101. Does anyone know how venture capital was invented?

It was invented off the coast of Nantucket, when captains of ships would visit coffee shops in Massachusetts and say, "Look, I'm putting together a crew. I'm going to go out and hunt a big whale. The seas are stormy, the waves are massive, my boat could capsize at any time. But if I don't die and I catch a whale, I could feed an entire village for a year — the flesh, the blubber for soap, the skin for leather." When they came back with a whale, they'd make investors rich and say, "But I need some operating expenditure while I'm out at sea, and when I return, you can have 80% of my profit."

The first firm to take that whaling model and apply it to company building was actually KKR. They said hunting for a good company is like whaling. They took that two-and-twenty model from the coffee shops of Massachusetts and applied it to building companies. So inherently, the economics of venture are whaling economics: you need big outcomes.

But here's the problem: whales only swim in big bodies of water. The body of water here seems large, but it's really about ten different ponds. And the whale can't jump from pond to pond. Each pond has a different culture, different race, different consumer preferences. The old adage that Southeast Asia is one monolithic, homogeneous market is very untrue. It doesn't lend itself as well to whale hunting. You do get some whales, but not at the frequency you'd see in China or the US.

So one of the things I've had to adapt coming back is understanding how to operate in a far more fragmented market.

The second thing is deal flow quality. In the US, the quality of deals at the top of the funnel is generally very high. If you and ten other friends across the top venture firms are all looking at the same deal, it becomes incredibly competitive at the bottom of the funnel — a really strong founder might get ten term sheets from big-name firms and has to pick one. It's a founder's market. In Southeast Asia, you may not see the same density of highly compelling deals at the top of the funnel, but if you're a good-quality name, your chances of winning at the bottom of the funnel are very high. Unlike the US, where there are firms that have been around for thirty to forty years with original founders' names still on the door and very strong brands.

Then there's exits. In the US, the old saying "buy high, sell higher" really works because the secondary market is so liquid. In fact, in the US, the biggest risk-taker is arguably the first-to-third joiner at a company, because the secondary market is so liquid that founders can sell their shares to the next investor even without a primary round — they derisk very fast. In a market that liquid, with an IPO market that's mostly open, it's great for investors. You don't have that here. So adapting to that — thinking carefully about exit paths, focusing on fundamentals far more than narrative — has been one of the big challenges.

Keith 00:12:42

Can you give an example of what that pivot towards fundamentals looks like? When you're looking at founders you'd put money into, what are the filters?

Dimitra Taslim 00:12:54

The US and China are just so deep. If I meet someone in New York working on something — say a vertical-specific e-commerce play — after two weeks of work, I'll find two more teams doing something similar in San Francisco, three in the Midwest, two more in New York. The same in China: if I speak to someone in Shanghai, there's probably someone doing it in Beijing, Chongqing, Wuhan, somewhere else. The market is so deep that when you analyse companies and think about competitive-adjusted returns, it's a very different calculation.

Here, if I meet a strong founder in Jakarta and do my work for two weeks, I'm unlikely to find anyone else doing something similar in Bandung or Sumatra. So when you find something really great here, you have to act fast. Very likely there are very few competitors. But that can cut both ways — in the US, you never really miss the boat, because there's almost always a second mover. If you missed Uber, you got into Lyft. If you missed Meta, there was Snapchat and others. Here, you don't have that option. If you have conviction, you have to move.

So there's a sense of urgency, a focus on fundamentals, and a rigorous check for fraud — which is far more prevalent here than in the US. You have to do the work that other people don't want to do.

I'll give you an example. I was looking at a coffee company once. They claimed to be selling a certain number of cups per day. So I sent two of my friends' kids — a sixteen-year-old and an eighteen-year-old — to their busiest location. One counted cups from 8am to 2pm; the other from 2pm to 8pm. When I extrapolated that count across the number of stores they claimed to have, the actual figure was 30% below what they'd stated.

You probably won't need to do things like that in the US, but here you simply cannot take claims at face value. You have to do the work.

I'll give you another example. When I was looking at e-commerce in Southeast Asia in the early days, there was a lot of what they call GMV fraud. One type is triangular fraud. Say Keith is on Shopee and picks something from page one. I'm the merchant on page one, but I'm actually sourcing the item from a merchant on page ten and drop-shipping it to Keith, who never reaches page ten. In the worst case, that single transaction can be counted three times. That's triangular GMV fraud. You don't get that kind of thing in the US. I don't know whether it's inherently a higher-integrity market or just a reflection of socioeconomic maturity. But there's a lot of fraud here, and you have to do your due diligence.

Keith 00:16:40

We have to come to the topic of AI. One of the challenges in Southeast Asia when it comes to AI adoption is that the cost of labour is still relatively low compared to the cost of technology. In the US, the economics make sense because labour is expensive — you can make the case that using something like Cursor or Perplexity could save you headcount cost. But in our region, it's harder. So it seems like Southeast Asia is naturally going to be a late adopter. Where do you see the real opportunities in this AI revolution for our region?

Dimitra Taslim 00:17:28

It really depends. We're not at a stage yet where our blue-collar workers are particularly well paid, so if there's any labour replacement happening, it's probably going to be on the white-collar side first.

But here's an interesting example. I recently went to Shenzhen and met a company making Level 4.5 autonomous vans — the kind you see delivering packages here. Almost fully autonomous, with LiDAR and camera technology. They're selling these vans at around 40,000 RMB, which is roughly 6,000 to 7,000 US dollars. A van driver in China earns about 1,000 US dollars a month. So if you're a logistics operator, you break even on the driver's salary cost in seven months. This thing doesn't take holidays, doesn't need insurance, never complains about too much work, and operates 24/7.

The Chinese government has stepped in to throttle the rollout because they're worried about job security, but it's a completely different story in the US, where both white-collar and eventually blue-collar jobs are getting disrupted.

What I find most remarkable is the cost of tokens. The cost curve is unlike anything I've seen before. Two years ago, per million tokens was maybe around fifty cents. Today it's around seven cents. Going back three or four years, it was even higher. That's a 100x fall. You can compare it to the cost curve of solar, or the internet, or the steam engine, or mobile — there's nothing quite like it. At some point, it may be cheap enough to change the equation entirely for our region.

Keith 00:19:54

Going back to Singapore and Southeast Asia — if you look at the map, only two countries in the region have reached developed-world status: Singapore and Brunei. The rest are still developing, with per-capita income under 10,000 US dollars and electrification and cost-of-living still catching up. So the downstream implication might be that AI won't be a transformative force for most of the region for quite some time. Do you agree with that? And if so, should investors based in Singapore simply be looking to deploy capital in the US and China instead?

Dimitra Taslim 00:20:41

I think the framework is fairly simple. Break it into white collar and blue collar.

White-collar workers in Southeast Asia's metro cities — Manila, Jakarta, Singapore, Bangkok — are pretty highly paid. When you adjust the cost of AI against human cost inclusive of insurance, PTO, and parental leave, AI is definitely in the game in terms of competitiveness.

On the blue-collar side, this is where the cost curve of industrial robots — and eventually humanoids — really comes into play. That's the physical manifestation of AI. If you can make industrial robots at scale, cheap enough, powered by AI, and model the total cost of a blue-collar worker including guaranteed bonuses, insurance, sick days, accuracy rate, and performance rate, you may well be in the money. It'll probably start with higher-value-add manufacturing rather than agriculture, but it will come. At some point the Chinese will manufacture robots cheaply enough that leasing one becomes more palatable for a factory than hiring a worker.

Keith 00:22:25

So from a venture investing perspective, you'd deploy capital into those frontier technologies and do so in the US?

Dimitra Taslim 00:22:30

Absolutely.

Keith 00:22:36

There's a related question — and it does sound like a somewhat doomer scenario. You're painting a picture of massive disruption across the board. As someone who's been in this industry for ten to fifteen years, how are you thinking about the changes happening within the venture industry itself? How are firms reconfiguring their teams? And what advice would you give to someone entering the space today?

Dimitra Taslim 00:23:07

I don't know if I'm the right person to give advice, honestly — I think I'm probably guilty of part of what makes this hard.

Sometimes I ask an analyst or associate to do something, and the work comes back below the standard I expected. I might make an offhand comment like, "Maybe I'll just do this on AI." And you can see them spring into action: "No no, don't worry, I'll do it, I'll do it better." So I can sense the anxiety.

I graduated post the Global Financial Crisis, and the biggest challenge I faced was entering the labour market at that moment — I ended up doing a master's just to delay it. I really feel for young people today. It's scary and exciting at the same time. Scary because there are so many variables that it's hard to focus on what really matters. Exciting because the future is literally in the palm of your hand.

Here's how I'd frame it. Say you're in charge of CRM data entry on a sales team. You spend hours every day going through Slack, Salesforce, and WhatsApp messages trying to eliminate duplicate entries. It's consuming your time. You come to me one day and say, "Dimitra, I spent the weekend on Claude Code and found a way to automate most of my job. I now have 50% more time." There are only two outcomes: I fire you and cut your salary by 50%, or I say, "Well done — here are more important responsibilities." Which do you think is more likely? If I'm a good boss, I'm going to think: I have to keep this person. I have to give them more to do.

So the fear of using these tools — the worry that they'll replace you — is, to me, utterly irrational, especially if you figure out how to use them well. Lean into it. Don't fear it. Get ahead of it. If you can do something genuinely impressive and you're open about it, any good boss will keep you and give you more.

Keith 00:25:58

Let's open the floor to questions. Feel free to raise your hand.

Audience Member 00:26:15

There's a lot of talk about AI and how quickly it's moving. From an investor's perspective, how do you tell if a company is going to be durable versus just something that's riding the current models — given that AI has that risk of disrupting itself?

Dimitra Taslim 00:26:34

That's such a good question, and it's genuinely hard.

If you look at past platform shifts — from the steam engine to mainframe to PCs, the internet, desktop to mobile, and on-premise to cloud — they've all had meaningful friction. Moving to cloud required extra cybersecurity work, data privacy consultants, and integration costs. Moving to mobile meant buying iPads and handheld devices. There was always an adoption cost, an integration cost.

This one is different. This is an API-based platform shift. If I'm a brand and I get an engineer to pipe ChatGPT into my Zendesk, I can have automated customer service in two days and probably let go of a few outsourced agents in the Philippines. In software terms, the time-to-value is extremely fast.

But that same quality — the very low friction — also means it's highly democratic. Every brand can do it. Which means the competitive moat from adoption alone is thin.

There's another dynamic too. Unlike past platform shifts, it feels like every big tech CEO today has a copy of Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma on their desk. They missed desktop to mobile. Some missed on-premise to cloud. This time, they're saying: I cannot be disrupted. I have to disrupt myself. I have to move faster. So not only is adoption happening bottom-up — everyone is using these tools to build more efficient companies — but top-down, the incumbents are more nimble than they've ever been. They're watching for ants that might grow big and looking to acquire them early, like what Meta is doing.

Where that leaves the balance between durable startups and those that get acquired or crushed, I genuinely don't know. But my best guess is that acquisitions will happen younger and faster than in previous cycles.

Keith 00:29:39

I'd like to come back to the Singapore and Asian advantage. You travel extensively across the region — what cultural patterns do you observe in how different markets are adopting AI?

Dimitra Taslim 00:30:14

Something interesting has happened in the past year. The Chinese started out very loudly positioned as an open-source ecosystem — "we are open, we share everything." But recently, look at Qwen and Zhipu AI: they've gone closed-source. Why? Because you have to pay the bills. Open source is great for building community and distillation, but if you can't monetise through the model layer, you close it.

Previously you had this polarised dynamic: the West was closed-source, frontier, "we're the best, we don't do distillation." The East was open-source and collaborative. Now the Chinese who were doing distillation are closing up too, because they have to monetise. So I think at the model layer, at least, you're seeing convergence.

At the application layer, though, the cultures are still very different. Let me give an example. In the US, if you're Zoom and I'm Slack, we might say: "I do video, you do messaging. Let's be frenemies — we open our APIs to each other, you don't come on my turf, I don't go on yours, we each do what we do best." In China, if you have one foot in my communications layer, I will destroy you. I will build up and down, left and right, and do everything until you're gone. That very gladiatorial, vertically integrated mindset — build the complete stack — is very Chinese. It's very different from the American approach of connecting through APIs. Very different cultures.

To return to your broader question about Singapore's role: I'm not sure it's entirely a choice. Going back to Jensen's five-layer cake — where else can Singapore play? Can we do energy at scale? Can we build leading-edge chips at two nanometres? Infrastructure, potentially — floating data centres, maybe data centres in space at some point. Foundation models? You'd need to throw a hundred billion dollars at it. Applications? Possibly, but I don't think we have the scale of market to win there.

So I don't think it's out of choice. I think the only layer where Singapore can genuinely play is orchestration — taking the best of East and West and putting it together into a workflow operating system for the verticals we're strong in: ports, banking, warehousing, logistics. I don't see any other layer where it's remotely possible to be at the bleeding edge alongside China and the US. The money is just too large.

Audience Member 00:33:48

Given the pace of AI and assuming Moore's Law continues, which frameworks or ways of thinking do you find most useful?

Dimitra Taslim 00:34:08

I've been thinking a lot about this.

When Google came out, their stated vision was to organise the world's information in a way that is universally accessible and useful. When Google got really good at it, there was a step-function reduction in the value of human ability to gather information.

With AI, and assuming Moore's Law continues, I think the curve is more like a massive decay — where the marginal value of human textbook intelligence asymptotes to zero. In that reality, what matters more? Human intuition. Commercial judgment. Empathy. Resilience. Adaptability. Those traits become far more important.

The consensus view — and I want to be clear this is a consensus, not a contrarian position — is that AI will amplify capitalists and technocrats at the bleeding edge in China and the US, while labour in the Marxist sense gets hyper-compressed. I don't know exactly what happens to labour in the short to medium term. In the long term, I hope for a Jevons Paradox: that this abundance actually causes people to do more, take on more, create more.

But I do think it's making building startups far easier. So people should try to be builders.

One framework I found really useful was recently put out by Jack Dorsey and Roelof Botha from Sequoia. After Dorsey let go of a large number of people, they co-wrote a piece arguing that in the future, companies will have essentially three types of people: individual contributors who own a specific part of the operating system; problem solvers who are given a challenge and go solve it; and what they call player-managers — people who can build things but are also managing across systems. Very different from today's hierarchical structure. A lot of middle management in the future could be replaced, because today the middle manager's value is that they hold information from above and below and act as a gateway. In the future, you can build systems that do that. If your only value is being an information conduit, that role is at risk. I'd strongly recommend reading their article — it's a useful lens for thinking about what role you want to build for yourself.

Audience Member 00:37:20

Where do you see Europe in this dynamic between China and the US?

Dimitra Taslim 00:37:34

My view is that Germany actually has more in common with China than most people would expect.

Look at monetary policy. The West is currently telling China to print more money — there's deflation, you're dumping cheap goods on us. But China looks at Western money printing and thinks: if I solve all my problems by printing money and people get addicted to that, I don't want to end up there. It's very much like post-war Germany, where there was a deep belief in industrial economics, scientific rigour, and a focus on patents. Post-war Germany generated more patents than any other country until Japan caught up. China is focused on the same model.

So there are real parallels. And I think China has more in common with Europe, on certain dimensions, than it does with the US.

Europe's situation is going to be very interesting. I think Europe has a chance to play a role more like Singapore's — but it's stuck between ideology and pragmatism. The pragmatic side says work with Chinese supply chains, because that's the only way your auto industry and others survive. But your ideological alignment is with the Anglo-Saxon world. How Europe navigates that tension will be, I think, the defining question of this decade for the continent. I hope Europe does well, because I love Europe.

Keith 00:39:49

There's an economist called Keyu Jin who wrote a book called The New China Playbook. Her central point was that China has always looked towards Germany in its developmental path — including how students are trained, the heavy emphasis on science and technology. That resonance is not coincidental.

And actually, the former Foreign Minister George Yeo, who I interviewed recently, was alluding to this same point about geopolitical multipolarity. In that same vein, hopefully Europe starts to carve out its own path. He had a very interesting conversation — I recommend checking it out — with the then-president of STG, Alexander Stubb, where the core thesis was: how could Europe better understand China? What are the misunderstandings Europeans hold? He pointed to a deep historical connection between Europe and China, and his favourite example was Matteo Ricci. I'd encourage you to look that interview up.

On that note, I'd like to thank Dimitra for sharing his perspectives today. Thank you so much for coming down and giving your time.

Dimitra Taslim 00:41:25

Thank you.

Professor Lily Kong is President of Singapore Management University (SMU) and one of Singapore's most distinguished geographers. A professor by training, she built her academic career studying the intersections of culture, religion, and urban space, with a body of work that spans both rigorous scholarship and practical policy relevance. She has published extensively and has, more recently, turned her attention to the future of higher education — producing a series of public lectures and a book that make the case for reimagining the university in an era of rapid technological and demographic change.

As SMU President, Kong leads an institution of some 13,000 to 14,000 students that has become known for its emphasis on entrepreneurship, interdisciplinarity, and applied learning.

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Introduction
0:26 The Geographer's Lens
3:21 Prisoners of Geography: Singapore's Hard Truths
7:29 Smallness as Strength and Constraint
8:52 Eastern vs Western Universities: Singapore's 50-Year Journey
12:49 Why Research and Innovation Are Under-Valued
15:48 Research That Changes Lives
18:15 Demographics Is Destiny: The Ageing Society
19:41 The 60-Year University
23:17 Rethinking How Universities Deliver
28:08 AI and the Accelerating Half-Life of Knowledge
29:21 What Universities Must Do in the Age of AI
35:51 Integrating Mind, Body, and Soul
36:37 Why Campus Life Matters More Than We Think
39:53 Reimagining the Humanities
43:35 Is the University a Scam?
48:31 SkillsFuture and the Lifelong Learning Challenge
51:46 What Lily Kong Is Telling Policymakers
53:46 Advice for Fresh Graduates

This is the 80th episode Of The Front Row Podcast

Keith 00:00:00

Today I am joined by one of Singapore's most iconic geographers, the President of Singapore Management University, and someone who has not only published a series of lectures online but also written a book about reimagining higher education in today's more turbulent world. With great privilege, I welcome Professor Lily Kong onto The Front Row Podcast.

Prof Lily Kong 00:00:23

Hello, Keith. It's a real pleasure to be here.

Keith 00:00:26

I'd like to start with the origins of the university. Perhaps it might be useful to first understand your background as a geographer. What is it about the lens of a geographer that would help you understand education differently from, say, a historian or an economist?

Prof Lily Kong 00:00:46

Geographers are very expansive in our approach to things. As an undergraduate, I studied geography and took courses in population geography, economic geography, transport geography, geomorphology, and hydrology. You can see immediately that it straddles the humanities, the social sciences, and the sciences. In that sense, it's very expansive and very integrative.

Critics will say that geographers are imperialistic — another word used is "adjectival." What they mean is: put a word in front of geography and the phenomenon becomes geography. Put "economic" or "urban" in front of it, and it becomes geography. The implication is that geography encroaches on many different disciplinary areas.

I take a different view — and other geographers do too — which is that this actually allows us to see things from very many different perspectives and to draw in insights from other disciplines. By nature of the discipline, we are integrative. We bring different perspectives to bear on a phenomenon. I think that is genuinely helpful today for two reasons.

First, as a scholar, we increasingly recognise that interdisciplinarity is so important, and geography has well prepared me for that. Second, it is actually very helpful for me as a university leader, allowing me to recognise the value of different disciplines and to intentionally — and the word is intentionally — bring different disciplines to bear on particular subject areas.

If we are interested in ageing or in sustainability, that is going to require multi- and interdisciplinary perspectives: climate science alongside climate history alongside sustainable and green finance. These are all different disciplines, but brought to bear on a particular phenomenon. As a university president, my geography background has really positioned me well to appreciate this integration and interdisciplinarity.

Keith 00:03:21

I'd like to press a little bit on this question. There is Tim Marshall's book about being prisoners of geography — the idea that geography, to a certain extent, influences policy behaviour. That's where the "geo" in geopolitics comes from. If geography does not dictate destiny, it influences it very seriously.

As a Singapore university leader, what are some hard geographic truths about Singapore that bear significantly on the way our education system is created?

Prof Lily Kong 00:04:02

That's a really good question. I've thought often about this notion of being prisoners of geography, and I think it's very real. Singapore's own existence could be framed within that context — the fact that we are a tiny island, bereft of natural resources, located in the heart of a predominantly Malay Muslim community. Those are geographical realities and imperatives. And just as they influence but do not determine Singapore's future and survival, so too do those factors influence how education, and higher education in particular, plays out.

As an example: the fact that we are heavily reliant on human capital — having no natural resources — means that Singapore's leaders have placed a great deal of emphasis on education. When Lee Kuan Yew first led a PAP-dominant Singapore, emphasis was placed on three things: housing, education, and healthcare. Education has always had very strong government support because of our geography.

Then there is the question of how geography influences how education is developed and defined. Here, our smallness has been both a constraint and a strength. A constraint in the sense that we always think: we are so small, we must plan. Some would say Singapore is a hyper-planned society — we plan to the last degree how many graduates we must have from which disciplines.

In that sense, we have succeeded in ensuring that our human capital responds to economic needs. But when we over-plan, driven by the view that we are small and must maximise our human resource, we over-plan. And in this day and age, where knowledge boundaries are much more fluid, it is very difficult to say we want this many civil engineers or this many lawyers, because of the fluidity of knowledge boundaries. So this geography that has influenced the ways in which we plan — and perhaps over-plan — is both a strength and a weakness at the same time.

Keith 00:07:29

There's an interesting parallel here. The beauty of being small is that you can scale up really fast. I was talking to some FinTech leaders previously, and some of them commented that if you look at the e-payment landscape a decade ago, Singapore was actually quite laggard in some regards — but the beauty of being small is that you can accelerate and catch up very quickly. Within a few years, you can leapfrog the rest, because you have the resources of a state but the size of a city. So it's a constraint, but also an amplifier.

Prof Lily Kong 00:08:01

Absolutely. Smallness is both a real strength and a setback. I think about that in the context of my own university: the fact that we are around 13,000 to 14,000 students, compared to universities of 30,000, 40,000, or 50,000. I see that as a real strength. That sense of community, that ability to bring everyone along together — it's a real parallel to Singapore. But at the same time, smallness can be a drawback, because you don't have that same pool of talent that you find in far larger societies. In any situation, the same fact can be a double-edged sword.

Keith 00:08:52

Another thing about Singapore is that we seem to synthesise really well both East and West. In your earlier lectures, you talked about the idea of Western universities versus Eastern universities — the European model of a self-governing institution, like a state within a state, versus more Chinese traditions of an imperial academy focused on training civil servants.

One of my past guests, Pak Gita Wirjawan, pointed out that if you look at modern university successes — in terms of generating a surplus of human capital — Singapore stands as a leading example. He said that within ASEAN, the Singapore education model is highly aspirational, because it was able to attract billions of dollars of FDI. I'd like you to comment on how Singapore universities succeeded over the past 50-plus years of independence, and perhaps some of the limitations or constraints we are facing now.

Prof Lily Kong 00:10:12

Lovely to hear Pak Gita's name — he is a friend of SMU and used to sit on one of our advisory boards.

Over the last 50 years, Singapore universities have evolved considerably. There was a time when we were a one-university town — much like a one-horse town. Everyone who was a graduate was a graduate from that one university. That was a period when a great deal of effort was put into developing human capital to feed economic needs.

When Singapore invested heavily in engineering and technology, the University of Singapore established an engineering school in direct response to what Singapore needed at the time. That is a very clear example of how the university responds to the needs of society by producing the kinds of human capital required at that moment. Things have changed significantly since then.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, it became apparent that universities needed to contribute not just by producing workers, but by ensuring that new knowledge is produced. Research became really important, and research universities became the model for Singapore universities to strive after.

Then came a recognition that research in itself is not enough — that it is important to translate that research into usable ends, whether through innovation and entrepreneurship, or through research that informs public policy, business policy, and practice. The evolution over time is a reflection of the maturation of Singapore society and of the universities themselves.

Keith 00:12:49

It's interesting you say that, because I think in public discourse today — especially given the economic anxiety around jobs — the dominant frame seems to be centred on universities as a means of generating employment. We still seem somewhat under-indexed on their value in creating innovation, new research, and IP. Why do you think that's the case?

Prof Lily Kong 00:13:20

Keeping the balance is really important to me. There is a danger — as we have seen in many universities around the world — where research takes over and too little attention is paid to the educational endeavour. Something is lost when that happens. So at my own university, I am deeply committed to ensuring we keep the balance: education matters, but education not just in terms of producing workers — education for the whole person. That is one balance. The other is between education, research, and enterprise and innovation.

Now, why is it that people in Singapore do not necessarily think as much about research, innovation, and enterprise? I think it is a reflection of the history of universities. For the vast majority of people my age and older, the university was principally a means to a better career. When I went to university in the 1980s, only about 10 per cent of the population attended. People went because it was a ticket to a better job. So the framing and the connection were very much about employment.

It is only in more recent years that the government has recognised that investment in research — and in turning that research into IP — is important. As the government recognises this shift, the population usually follows behind, because societal change needs to happen, investments need to be made, and the value of research and entrepreneurship from universities needs time to demonstrate its effect. Then people begin to recognise it.

Keith 00:15:48

If you enjoy this show, please check if you're subscribed. Every subscription matters and really helps us grow this show to serve you. Thank you so much for the support. Now back to the show.

As an aside — SMU is known for its entrepreneurial students and stands as one of the leading universities in Asia-Pacific. Have you seen any research and innovation that has excited you in recent years?

Prof Lily Kong 00:16:15

There are two ways of responding to that. There is research that leads to new innovations, which then lead to new enterprises that create jobs and make life better for people. Examples of that would often be in the medical or tech space.

To cite cases beyond the Singapore context: the mRNA technologies that underpinned the COVID vaccines were worked on for some years before being turned to immediate, useful purpose. Or take the humble seatbelt — it emerged from research into accidents, into how to design interventions that prevent harm. These are innovations that came largely from the Western world, but they illustrate how lives get changed through research.

The other part of the answer is that it's not necessarily about new technologies or new medicines — it is also about research into entrepreneurship and innovation itself. I have a colleague doing a research project on what makes good entrepreneurs. Another is studying why there are so few women entrepreneurs. Those kinds of studies can help unlock entrepreneurial potential once we begin to understand what circumstances actually support and encourage it.

Keith 00:18:15

What comes to mind immediately is the significant public good that universities generate, which often goes unspoken. The seatbelt example is a good illustration: you needed researchers with an intellectual pursuit that had real-world applications, and the result generated enormous public benefit that no corporation alone would have taken on.

This brings me to a big question that's been forming in my mind. There are significant mega-trends reshaping the world as we speak. One of the more striking points you have raised — and one that doesn't get enough attention — is the ageing society. Our TFR has reached a new low at 0.87, and we are also living longer than ever before. That creates new economic constraints. If anything truly shapes our destiny, it may be demographics. Demographics truly is destiny.

How should we understand the extension of our lifespans in the context of higher education today?

Prof Lily Kong 00:19:41

I really appreciate that question — it is a subject close to my heart, and there are many dimensions to it.

With the advances in public hygiene, nutrition, and healthcare, people in Singapore and in several parts of the world are living longer. I have written about living a hundred-year life, and it is not that distant a reality. Two scholars at London Business School have made their calculations: if we are to maintain a reasonable standard of living after retirement, we will probably have to work until age 80.

If we are to work until 80, and we graduated at 22 or 24, that is another 55 to 60 years of working life. What makes us think that the knowledge and skills we acquired 50 years ago will last us that long? They will not. Universities therefore need to think of our roles in a 60-year relationship. I call it the 60-year university — walking 60 years with individuals, and rethinking how we deliver programmes and what we offer.

For someone in a four-year undergraduate degree, learning the foundationals and developing critical thinking skills is really important. Once you are in the workforce, you need skills and knowledge that allow you to pivot quickly. So what kinds of formats — bite-sized, short courses — should we be putting out? How regularly should people be coming back? Do we leave it to individuals to decide? Do we work with corporations to structure training for their employees? Do we offer alumni a subscription model, allowing them to return regularly?

The concept of the university and the format through which we deliver needs to be rethought radically. No university in the world has done that yet. We are having those conversations within my university right now. There was a recent article in Forbes about precisely this — it talks about university as a service. The university is not simply a place you attend for four years and then return to occasionally as an alumnus. The university remains a place of service to alumni for the next 60 years.

Keith 00:23:17

In terms of these preliminary conversations, how are you rethinking these concepts? For example, as our productive years extend, the half-life of our knowledge is decreasing — what we learned in the past becomes irrelevant at a faster rate.

Prof Lily Kong 00:23:41

These are all preliminary thoughts and still in discussion — we have not yet decided which way to go. But the collective wisdom of my colleagues — and I want to genuinely credit them — has been very generative.

One colleague, our incoming Vice President for Professional and Continuing Education, suggested thinking about it in the same way we think about medical check-ups. Up to a certain age, we all go for regular check-ups. Some areas call for a deep-dive review; others just need an annual blood test. A colonoscopy might be done every five or ten years. There are different kinds of check-ins for different needs.

His analogy was: should we have people come in for regular, periodic check-ins — to identify shortfalls, to assess new developments in their field that they want to avail themselves of? Can the university be the location for those check-ins, helping individuals understand where their strengths and gaps are, and then guiding further development?

A second idea concerns the people who are not currently re-skilling or upskilling, even though opportunities exist. Evidence suggests two barriers: they do not know what to do, or the imperatives of the workplace mean they simply do not have the time. How do we respond to both?

For those who do not know what to do, the regular check-in mechanism helps identify their gaps and guide them toward relevant programmes. For those who do not have the time, how do we work with employers to show that letting employees re-skill is a medium- to long-term gain, not a short-term loss?

One approach we are already using to some extent is to make training project-oriented rather than didactic. We have a pedagogical approach at SMU called SMUX — undergraduates and postgraduates work on real-world projects with partner organisations under faculty advisement. Why not extend this to continuing education, where the projects are drawn directly from the individual's own workplace? That way, when an employer asks who will cover the work during two weeks of training, the answer is: the employee is still doing the work, because the training project is the work project.

This SMUX-style pedagogy could be extended — and we have already started using it to good effect. The question is how to scale it.

Keith 00:28:08

I spoke to a number of people in the spin-off space, particularly those working in university spin-off labs, and that seems to be some of the inspiration behind that approach — pairing someone technical from the startup world with industry experts who can identify the right use case. That seems to be a very effective model for generating enterprise value.

On top of that, there is this idea that our knowledge half-life is not just depreciating — it's depreciating at an accelerating rate, because of AI. We think about generative AI today, which has generated significant economic anxiety. For younger people like myself, entry-level roles used to be the gateway to better training. But now that seems to be disappearing as organisations seek to leverage AI and downscale. In that landscape — where knowledge is no longer the key bottleneck — how do universities adapt?

Prof Lily Kong 00:29:21

I see university education in an expansive way. One thing worth noting is that the focus of universities has actually narrowed compared to schools. Schools tend to see whole-person development as quite important — character education, physical education, art, music. By the time we reach university, we have narrowed dramatically to cognitive learning: knowledge and thinking skills.

I think that needs to change. Especially because, as you say, information has become ubiquitous — though knowledge is not ubiquitous in the same way. You need to help young people learn how to turn information into knowledge: how to make sense of what you encounter online, through MOOCs, social media, or abundant material available digitally — and to apply it to a specific situation. That cognitive work cannot be taken for granted, even with AI.

Beyond that, whole-person development needs to come back to universities. Being more human — everyone says this when we talk about AI. But what are we actually doing about it in universities?

Building resilience is really important. Giving young people the creative room to explore and think out of the box is really important. What is AI? AI is trained on existing knowledge. What we need is new knowledge, new perspectives, new insights. Creativity, resilience, integrity, ethical judgement — all of these are outside the immediate domain of knowledge acquisition. The traditional classroom approach is very limited in cultivating these qualities.

So how do we create environments that stretch students in ways that ChatGPT or DeepSeek cannot simply answer? For example, creating environments where young people do the kind of work that first- or second-year lawyers used to do — because by the time they enter the workforce, AI can already handle that work. Why not create those environments within university, so students learn to do that work before moving on to the higher-order work?

I firmly believe that at this point in time, AI is benefiting people from my generation more than the younger generation. Why? Because we have had to go through the difficult work of reading and synthesising. We have the experience that gives us tacit knowledge — so when generative AI throws up an answer, I have a suspicion that something is not quite right. Younger people, who have not yet had that depth of experience, may not. How can we reasonably expect them to question AI when they have not yet built that foundation?

For me, therefore, the task is to create environments of deeper experience within a shorter time during university years.

There is also a second dimension. If we are going to live a hundred years, we do not want to spend 30 or 40 of those years in ill health and without friends. Cultivating in young people the ability to make and keep relationships is critically important — otherwise, we risk dying lonely.

And physical health: nutrition, healthy living, physical activity — none of this really appears in university. We tend to think that after primary or secondary school, physical education is a thing of the past. But it is not. I genuinely believe that universities are the place where we cultivate these habits. It is as much about forming habits through doing as it is about understanding why they matter. We should be running seminars and workshops for young people on these dimensions. When I was young, I took it for granted — and I now regret that.

Keith 00:35:51

It seems you are making the case that university is where we have the integration of mind, body, and soul. One could even argue this from a utilitarian perspective: if you are a state or a government, you are incentivised to invest in it because you can keep downstream costs low. I had a conversation earlier on with Minister Ong, who made the point about healthier ageing — that if you solve upstream problems, you save a great deal on mitigation and generate better health outcomes at a lower cost. And I think there is something to that: that your most formative years in university should be the time to invest in all of this.

Prof Lily Kong 00:36:37

Absolutely. Investing at the younger age, so that we understand why this matters and develop habits that we carry forward. The other thing — and I feel passionately about this — is the question of why our TFR is so low. We are not getting enough marriages, and when people do marry, they do not necessarily have children.

Part of the answer lies in cultivating the right context for young people to meet one another and form relationships. I am an advocate for the position that when we fund a university, it is not just about classrooms. It is about the sports field. It is about the dance hall. It is about student residences. All the things that make for healthy ageing, positive relationships, and a healthy marriage rate come from those contexts — not just from the lecture theatre.

We are short-sighted and wrong if we say we will only invest in lecture theatres and seminar rooms.

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It is almost ironic that until the age of 18 there is an obsessive focus on physical health, and then once you enter university it becomes a free-for-all — a huge drop-off that seems quite paradoxical.

There is also another paradox you touched on with AI. Beyond what you earlier described — the difficulty of articulating tacit knowledge — there is the Moravec paradox: the idea that AI cannot act in the real world, and there remains a fundamental limit to what artificial intelligence can do. You are essentially making the case that we should invest in being more human. What does a new model of humanities education actually look like in this day and age?

Prof Lily Kong 00:39:53

I was hugely encouraged about ten years ago when I joined SMU. I noticed that the business school capstone was centred on the humanities, and I thought — how did that happen? One of the professors explained to me that he believed many leadership lessons, including business leadership lessons, can actually be observed in the classics. He wanted his students in the capstone to draw on classes in leadership and team-building, ethical business, literature or history, and then say: what lessons have you learned, and how do you apply them in business?

In the humanities, there is a great deal of applicability that we are not tapping sufficiently. Studying literature is not just about practical criticism — though I think it is one of the most useful skills I learned in junior college. You learn to deeply read a text, to take apart its meaning. Those skills are transferable to any job. But beyond utility, studying the humanities is about understanding humanity. And humanity needs to be understood whatever field you are in. If you are a business leader and need to read your competitor, that is part of it. If you are a political leader reading Sun Tzu or Machiavelli — these are texts from the humanities that help shape the human individual each of us is.

I think drawing those lessons to light makes people recognise the value of the humanities in living their lives.

Keith 00:42:25

It's interesting you say that, because I was a humanities student, and one thing I realised as I explored history and economics was that you develop a deep capacity to empathise with a person's or character's motivations — and it is surprising how often that plays out in real life. There is a reason people say that life sometimes models itself after fiction.

Prof Lily Kong 00:42:50

It shapes our values in ways we may not realise at the time. For me, one of the classics that has really stayed with me is To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus Finch's idea of climbing into other people's shoes and walking around in them — that is empathy. That phrase has stayed with me and my friends for the best part of four decades, and it shapes how we think about who we are and how we respond to situations.

Keith 00:43:35

So far we have had a broadly optimistic reading of where universities could take us. But there is an idea that has been gaining traction in recent years — that universities are, in some sense, a scam. I mean that with some hyperbole, but the argument is essentially about the sheepskin effect: that much of it is signalling — demonstrating compliance — rather than genuine capability formation.

Layer on the economic anxieties of today — geopolitical instability, US-China decoupling, increased competition for high-value jobs — and you have middle-class aspirations across the world that looked to universities as a ticket to a better job, and are no longer seeing that delivered. Singapore does not suffer from the tuition inflation that we see in the West. But the anxiety exists here too. And this year, 74.4 per cent of our graduates were able to find full-time employment within six months — a decline. How are you thinking about how universities should adapt to ensure this uncertainty does not become disillusionment?

Prof Lily Kong 00:45:09

Maintaining trust in universities is really important. We have seen it decline in the United States. Pew Center polling shows that trust in institutions has fallen broadly, and trust in universities has declined alongside it — for several reasons. One, because of growing graduate debt. Two, because people feel they got a degree and still could not find a job. Three, because of the extreme ideological positions taken on some campuses.

Closer to home, in Taiwan and China, youth unemployment is higher than the general average — and that speaks to how well education is preparing people for the workforce. Trust declines accordingly.

In Singapore, employment rates are still good for graduates and polytechnic graduates combined, which accounts for a significant majority of each cohort. Whether this year's decline is the start of a long-term trend or a reflection of a difficult period — time will tell.

What must universities do? It is imperative, critical, that universities pay attention to the value they provide. That value must operate on two levels: immediate employability, and lifelong relevance.

On immediate employability: as AI makes entry-level roles redundant, how do we prepare young people to enter at what was previously the third- or fourth-year level of a career? That shift needs to happen in our curriculum and pedagogy.

On lifelong relevance: if someone graduates ten years later, faces a block in their career, and does not know where to pivot — and if the university steps in to help, and they see genuine value in that help and successfully make the pivot — then trust in universities will lift. The relationship is no longer just about the point of employment. It is about value across the longer arc of a life.

Keith 00:48:31

When you talked earlier about the university-as-subscription idea, it resonated with me. In Singapore, the government is already doing a great deal to promote lifelong learning through SkillsFuture credits. But the challenge is that the sheer volume of choices can be overwhelming, and quality control is inconsistent. I think if SkillsFuture credits were channelled more directly to universities, people would feel more reassured — they would know the quality, and they would feel supported. But another challenge is that people find it hard to step away from the intensity of the marketplace. How else should universities be reaching out to actively engage people to return and continue their education?

Prof Lily Kong 00:49:36

We have made a start and seen some progress, but I think we need to think harder about how to accelerate it.

One thing we have done is open up career advisory to alumni — permanently. The career office in a university should not be only for graduating students. We have expanded that service and put in more resources for alumni to return. And that connects to the check-in idea I mentioned earlier: you come back, you speak to the career office — which should be scanning the changing landscape, understanding shifting skills needs and emerging opportunities — and it can offer advice tailored to your existing experience, identify your gaps, and recommend relevant training programmes. Even if we don't have those programmes, we should be honest enough to say: for this, you need to go to another university.

Those regular check-ins should be paired with advisories for training. And then the last piece is placement — and that is the most difficult, because universities are not really placement agencies. We need to work with bodies like Workforce Singapore or with professional placement firms. That whole loop needs to be closed, and universities can play a significant part in it.

Keith 00:51:46

What are some of the ideas you are surfacing to policymakers — the things you are saying we should do more of?

Prof Lily Kong 00:51:57

I am making a bid for more residential space — and I dislike the word hostel. It is not just a roof over people's heads. It is a residence, a residential college, where community is built. That is one bid.

A second is continued support for lifelong learning. In the same way that undergraduates receive subsidies to attend university, SkillsFuture has been supporting working adults coming back — and my bid is that we must continue and expand that.

A third bid — and this is less about employability and workforce than about something I care about deeply — is upliftment and enrichment for older people for its own sake. I wrote about this in a recent op-ed. When my late mother received a letter informing her she had $500 in SkillsFuture credits — she was about 89 years old — she was delighted. She said she could learn how to cut hair. She was never going to become a hairdresser. But the joy on her face told me something important: we cannot put an expiry date on curiosity and learning. If there is some way to support older people in continuing to learn — for upliftment, for a sense of self-respect and value — we also go a long way, in a very utilitarian sense, towards keeping older people healthy.

Keith 00:53:46

One last question. Knowing everything you know, sitting where you are — what is one piece of advice you would give to a fresh graduate entering the working world today?

Prof Lily Kong 00:53:56

Don't panic — because the human qualities are going to stand you in very good stead, even in the face of AI. And use your university years to cultivate your humanity.

Keith 00:54:17

With that, Professor Kong, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you are watching this on YouTube, please consider subscribing and turning on notifications for whenever new episodes are out. If you're on Spotify or Apple, it would help us greatly if you could leave a five-star review on those platforms. Once again, thank you for tuning in to The Front Row Podcast.

Prof Lily Kong 00:54:19

Thank you so much, Keith.

Professor Selina Ho is Vice Dean (Research and Development), Dean's Chair and Associate Professor in International Affairs, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. She researches Chinese politics and foreign policy.

Specifically, she is interested in how China wields power and influence via infrastructure and water disputes in Southeast Asia and South Asia. Her work stands at the intersection of comparative politics and international relations.

Her book, Rivers of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power in Southeast Asia, is considered to be a definitive text on the Belt and Road Initiative in the region.

If you are interested in her latest research paper - "Elite Perceptions of a China-Led Regional Order in Southeast Asia" - you can download it here:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/18681034241294093#table2-18681034241294093

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 — Trailer
00:52 — Introduction
01:21 — Why Southeast Asia Matters to Both Superpowers
04:25 — Will Trump Turn His Back on the Region?
09:41 — The Fear of US Abandonment
14:17 — How Southeast Asia Actually Sees China
18:37 — Chinese Influence vs. Chinese Dominance
21:37 — Wolf Warrior Diplomacy In China
29:11 — The Belt and Road
33:47 — When China Owns Your Power Grid: The Laotian Lesson
37:44 — China Wants Regional Dominance
40:16 — How ASEAN Elites Actually Respond to Chinese Influence
43:06 — What Regional Decision-Makers Really Think
47:31 — ASEAN Centrality
51:52 — Why ASEAN Is Strong on Trade and Weak on Security
55:15 — Building an ASEAN Identity
01:00:19 — What Singapore Should Do With Its 2027 ASEAN Chairmanship
01:01:46 — Advice For A Fresh Graduate Entering The Working World

This is the 79th episode Of The Front Row Podcast

Keith 00:00:52

Southeast Asia is a region of interest to both the US and China. But what exactly is our value proposition to them?

Selina Ho 00:01:29

Southeast Asia has been described by many as the battlefield for supremacy between the US and China. It is considered the front line in their competition, and there are good reasons for it. Our value add is in two key areas.

The first is that we are the fastest-growing region in the world. Africa is also growing quickly, but Southeast Asia is growing very rapidly. Some have described this as the Asian century. We are a key hub for manufacturing, services, and infrastructure. We have some of the fastest-growing economies, including Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia, and we have a relatively young population. I must caveat that because while we are still relatively young, all our countries are facing ageing societies. We know that about Singapore, of course, but it is a broader regional challenge that few people are aware of.

We are also a key node for global supply chains, and we know how important that is now in terms of value for superpowers trying to diversify and reduce reliance on any single country. We are China's largest trading partner and a very important economic partner for the United States. We are a vital hub for semiconductors, particularly Singapore, and a source of critical minerals. All of these factors are important in the competition between the United States and China.

The second reason we are important is that we sit at the intersection of two great oceans — the Pacific and the Indian — which means we are where the vital sea lanes of communication are located. The Malacca Straits is extremely important for the shipping of goods and energy supplies for both China and the United States. And if you want to control the seas, as is important for American naval supremacy, you need access to this part of the world.

So economically, strategically, and in terms of sea lanes, Southeast Asia is extremely important.

Keith 00:04:25

My immediate question is that if you look at what President Trump is doing, there seems to be an increased focus back on his hemisphere — mainly Europe and Latin America. Will Southeast Asia once again be pushed to the background, despite the importance you've outlined?

Selina Ho 00:04:42

The interesting thing is that with US attention on the Middle East now, especially with what is going on with Iran, and the turn back to Latin America with Trump's declaration of what amounts to a corollary of the Monroe Doctrine, you might imagine Southeast Asia is not that important. We have always feared this. It is not the first time we have worried about the US turning away from us.

The big question for all of us in the region, especially for US allies, has been what happens with US presence after the Cold War. In the 1990s, we grappled with whether the United States would stay, what would happen to its naval bases, and whether allies would be abandoned — especially Japan, which probably worries the most. There was a drawdown in US presence right after the Cold War. The naval bases in the Philippines were gone, and there were problems with bases in Japan as well.

So this is not the first time we are facing this kind of problem. It has always been a struggle for allies in the region to try to keep the US engaged. In political science, when we talk about alliances, we call this the fear of abandonment.

Now, for the rest of us who are not allies, it is not to say that we do not need the US. We do, because the US plays a very vital role as a security guarantor in this region. There is a reason why we want the US here. We want all the major powers in the region as a way to balance each other out. We are mainly composed of smaller states. I would not call Indonesia a smaller state, but it is relatively weaker compared to the great powers. We want all the powers in the region so they can balance each other off.

The US presence balances several things. It maintains freedom of navigation in places like the South China Sea. It is a security guarantor for Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. There is always a fear of China, and US presence serves as a form of guarantee and balance.

Economically as well, some people think we look at China as our most important economic partner. But we often forget that the largest source of foreign direct investment is actually the US. The US is our largest foreign investor in Southeast Asia. We look to the US for economic benefits and security cooperation. We exercise extensively with the US through multilateral exercises like Cobra Gold and Super Garuda Shield. Singapore has a bilateral arrangement. We are not an ally, but we are an important security partner.

So if the US were to turn away from us, it would be a great cause for concern. It would mean less stability for us.

But I want to say that despite what President Trump is saying, the alliances are still intact. US presence in the region has not actually gone down. During the Biden administration, there were enhanced defence agreements with allies — the Philippines, Japan, Korea, and Australia. We had QUAD, AUKUS, and ORCAS. These show that the US is staying in the region.

We might fear that the US is turning away, but institutionally, the alliance system is very much intact and alive. There is a lot of talk about the US moving away, going back to its traditional backyard of Latin America and Europe. But we have to look at the effects on the ground, and the alliance system is really still very much in place.

Keith 00:09:41

Going forward, will it actually be stronger or weaker? Especially when one considers the domestic pressures the US faces and the argument that it should focus more at home.

Selina Ho 00:09:58

You will see the US focusing at home, but look at its actions right now. I think it is quite amazing — and I say amazing in a slightly horrified way. Sometimes I look at its actions in Venezuela and Iran and I have a very conflicted attitude towards them.

On one hand, these kinds of interventions are horrifying. But at the same time, the efficiency with which the US military is able to move into these areas demonstrates that its strength is still very much intact. So while one might think the US is turning inwards, I think it is turning inwards in terms of trade. It is turning away from globalisation and international institutions. But when it comes to security interventions and maintaining what it considers world peace and stability, the US is still very much out there.

I would say we should take different slices of what the US is trying to do and judge each one on its own terms.

Keith 00:11:20

That is a very important nuance.

Selina Ho 00:11:22

There were some polls on whether there is domestic support for US action in Iran, and they showed very little support. So when it comes to certain types of foreign policy, the Trump administration has not always followed what Americans want, but has followed its own path with its own reasoning. Different stakeholders within the American political establishment have their own agendas, and they are not necessarily always aligned.

This is something that is really quite interesting — how the administration does not always follow domestic sentiments. While wanting to appeal to Americans, I think they have their own considerations, especially when it comes to security matters and foreign policy.

Keith 00:12:19

What are those considerations, in your view?

Selina Ho 00:12:23

One thing I find interesting about Trump — and I want to caveat that I am not an American foreign policy specialist — is that he wants to be number one. He wants America to be number one in the world. It has something to do with pride, American pride, and America's place in the world.

So it is very unlikely that despite all the talk about cooperating with China, Trump will cede space to China or to another power. He wants to always be winning. He will make deals, but he will make sure the deals are always in America's favour. I think all these different interests within the establishment somehow become aligned when it comes to security and foreign policy issues.

Keith 00:13:18

You mentioned this idea of fearing US abandonment. It reminded me of something Ambassador Bilahari spoke to me about in a previous episode, where he discussed the change in the litmus test around American presence in the region. In the past, when US military presence was very large in Singapore, we would hear protests from our Southeast Asian neighbours. But when we renewed our partnership in 2019 with Prime Minister Lee and President Trump, there was almost nothing. He attributed it partly to a failure in Chinese foreign policy.

So where is this fear actually stemming from? If we take the view that China has risen and ascended, does it really pose a serious security threat to the region?

Selina Ho 00:14:17

The way we look at China is very mixed. We see China quite differently from how the West sees it. China is good for the region because it has been an economic boon, especially after the 2000s. The economic interdependence, access to markets, investments in infrastructure, the trade we have with China, the Belt and Road Initiative — all of these have been good for our economies. Obviously, there is now a mixed picture with China's overcapacity, but the region as a whole has benefited economically from China's growth.

Now, there is still this distrust of China. For every single country in the region, there are differences. There are historical legacies that we worry about. Vietnam, for example, has historical memories of Chinese invasion many years ago. Some would say that Vietnamese nationalism is built on anti-Chinese sentiments. That is not to say the relationship is no good — it is complicated, but they are able to resolve their problems and keep relations stable, primarily because they have party-to-party relations. A lot of problems are solved behind the scenes.

That contrasts with how Vietnam handles the South China Sea dispute with China as opposed to how the Philippines handles it, which is far more confrontational, with no real back channels for negotiation. Historical ties matter and colour the perception of whether we see China as a security threat.

The Philippines has territorial disputes, which is why it sees China as a threat and has enhanced its defence treaty with the United States, working closely with Japan and Australia on the regional security architecture.

There are also racial considerations. If you know the history of racial problems in the region, particularly with the Chinese presence during early nation-building efforts, you see that anti-Chinese riots in Indonesia were actually quite recent. There is a fear of Chinese influence. This is understandable because every country in Southeast Asia is still engaged in nation-building. It is an incomplete project. When you think about our histories as independent nations, it is recent. All these considerations come into play.

There is recognition that China is good for us in many ways, but we also fear Chinese dominance. I think the region is accepting of Chinese influence — we see it as inevitable because China is our largest neighbour. Chinese influence is inevitable, acceptable, and in some ways beneficial because it brings economic gains.

But I do not think the region is comfortable with the idea of Chinese dominance. First, I think it is in our DNA to value diversity. We have always welcomed all the major powers into the region because diversity means a balance of power — each of these powers balances the others out.

Second, the US is still a very important economic partner. It is the largest foreign investor and our security guarantor. The US cannot be excluded, and we cannot have Chinese dominance to the point where the US is no longer in the region.

Third, we guard our sovereignty very carefully and very jealously. Any threats to that sovereignty are something we will always resist. And there is the anti-Chinese sentiment that still exists in the region, especially now with newer arrivals of Chinese labour in certain countries. There is pushback from local populations.

But to be fair, the Chinese have been responding. I just went to Laos recently and brought a group of students there. We always talk about Chinese labour in Laos, but in the last few years, the Chinese have actually been training Lao workers, especially for running the high-speed railway — the subject of my book, Rivers of Iron. They have been training workers not just in soft skills like services, but also in technical skills and engineering, so they can run the railway themselves. Chinese workers who initially manned the stations and worked on the trains are now slowly being replaced by Lao workers. To be fair, the Chinese have been listening to the region.

Keith 00:20:30

When you talk about diversification, it reminds me of an idea that Engagement Ujawan from Indonesia talks about. If you conceptualise our relationship with the US and China, we get a lot of access to financial capital through the US — FDI, for example. From China, especially for developing countries, it is access to technology at a much cheaper price. Seventy per cent of US capability at thirty per cent of the price. That need for diversification is what would enable further development, especially in the developing world.

I would like to get you to focus more on China's foreign policy outlook. You have previously described Chinese policy as both assertive and insecure at the same time. Many of us are not really trained in foreign policy terminology. So let us break it down. What does it mean for China's foreign policy to be insecure, and then we can discuss its assertiveness?

Selina Ho 00:21:37

When I described it as insecure and assertive, that was during the period of wolf warrior diplomacy. Since then, there has been a toning down. China has not been as strident in the way it speaks out, probably because it realises it was counterproductive. From the outside looking in, the wolf warrior diplomacy made China look belligerent. Great powers would not want to appear belligerent. Coercion is one of the most costly ways of trying to get things to go your way, and it seldom works.

So wolf warrior diplomacy has gone away primarily because it does not work. The second factor is that the Chinese economy is in trouble now, so there is less room for chest-thumping. The insecurity stems partly from economic problems, especially the real estate crisis, which will take a long time to resolve. It was also a time when the regime was doing a lot to consolidate power — anti-corruption campaigns, purges — and the insecurity partly stemmed from that.

You could see this insecurity and assertiveness coming together, but I think it is less so now. Wolf warrior diplomacy has gone away. China has realised it is counterproductive. They still face internal problems, without doubt, but the leadership is in a consolidated position now.

One more point: you see this same insecurity-and-assertiveness dynamic happening with the United States too. The US is afraid of its own relative decline. It is afraid that China, its peer competitor, is charging ahead while it is falling behind. That is why you see language like "they have been cheating us" and "now it is time for payback." This is the language of an insecure power.

It stems from a place of insecurity — the feeling that you are falling behind, so you need people to pay up. You become less generous, more calculative, and you tend to lash out. Power transition theories tell us that when a power is in relative decline, or perceives itself to be, it may do things like start a war. I am not saying either China or the US will do that, but there is always that desire to cling to power so it does not decline further. This insecurity-and-assertiveness paradox can coexist.

Keith 00:25:23

I wanted to ask more about this idea of insecurity. China's assertiveness has toned down, as you pointed out, but there is a sense that China remains insecure in its outlook.

Selina Ho 00:25:43

There are many aspects to it. If you want to go back historically, one thing that China — like Tsarist Russia — has always worried about is the security of its borders. Historically, they have always needed to fight what they called the barbarian hordes. The security of borders is natural for continental powers with huge, long borders. That is a good reason why the Great Wall of China was built — to keep out the hordes.

Currently, China has settled most of its border issues with its neighbours, except for maritime borders. That is why you see what is happening with the South China Sea. The other unresolved border is with India — there are ongoing low-level conflicts, primarily because China is worried about its borders.

During Mao's time, he tried to move the biggest economic assets inland, away from the coast, because that is where China's greatest vulnerability lies. The Americans are there, Japan is there, and China has been attacked from the sea by Japan before. The worries have always been on the eastern seaboard. The western side is different because the Himalayas serve as a natural barrier, though the dispute with India persists.

With Southeast Asia, what we are looking at right now are the borders with Myanmar and Laos, where all the scam operations are happening. China is reacting and intervening because it is about the security of its borders and its citizens being trafficked and defrauded.

What I am saying is that this insecurity, both historically and currently, stems from this idea of border security. There are other reasons for insecurity, but it would take a long time to unpack them all.

Keith 00:28:33

That gives us a high-level sense of where the insecurities stem from. If you contrast it with the US, which is often described as relatively secure — friendly neighbourhood, the largest power, two oceans — then the flip side would be to ask why China would be insecure when it is by far the biggest economy and biggest power in the region.

Selina Ho 00:29:11

Long borders and other major powers in what it considers its backyard — all of that is going to be something it is concerned about.

Keith 00:29:31

You talked about China's rise in the region and the mixed effects we are now seeing. One example is the BRI, which has improved interconnectivity, but there are trade-offs. I would like you to help us understand what those trade-offs are, because I think they remain under-appreciated in public discourse.

Selina Ho 00:29:56

The BRI comes with a lot of opportunities but also a lot of risks for recipient countries. The opportunities are clear — China provides loans, aid, and grants for infrastructure development, something the region desperately needs. The poorer parts of the region do not have the money for it. I keep coming back to Laos because it is the most obvious example.

The need for connectivity and infrastructure is real, and the BRI is one of the best answers that has been provided. The Pan-Asia Railway, which my book Rivers of Iron is about, was an idea conceived in Southeast Asia, by Southeast Asia itself. But we did not have the money to build it. When China grew richer in the 2000s, it could export its technology and capital. That is when the Pan-Asia Railway, or at least one part of it, was realised — in Laos and also with the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail in Indonesia.

Now there are trade-offs in terms of risk. There are risks to the environment from some of these infrastructure projects, risks to local communities, and risks of Chinese influence. There is a reason why countries like India are not part of the BRI — they do not want that connectivity to China because China is a threat to them. Railways have historically been used to transport troops, so there is that element. Vietnam, although a signatory participant of the BRI, has been more cautious about Chinese projects because they bring in Chinese workers, create strain on the social fabric, and enhance Chinese presence in a country that has traditionally been wary of invasion from the north.

There are also trade-offs to sovereignty. Let me give the example of Laos. I want to be very clear — I do not agree with the description of what China is doing as debt-trap diplomacy, as in purposely going out with a strategy to trap poor countries into debt. I think debt distress is a consequence, and probably an unintended one, of some of these projects, because eventually some poor countries will have difficulties repaying.

The Lao state-owned enterprise for electrical transmission, called EDL, went bankrupt. It was not China's fault. A Chinese state-owned enterprise, Power Grid, came in and bought shares, and now it owns ninety per cent of this national enterprise responsible for electricity transmission for the entire country. That is a vulnerability. When your state power grid is held by an external party, it can be used as leverage. I am not saying China will do that, but it is a trade-off in terms of sovereignty. These are key installations, and if you allow a foreign party to control your electricity grid, it impacts your sovereignty.

So there are trade-offs — sovereignty, cultural impact, environmental impact. But at the same time, there are gains. That is why there is this mixed attitude towards China: appreciation for the economic benefits, but also wariness about the influence China can wield within the domestic context of countries.

Keith 00:35:15

If you look at the Laotian example, what would be the way out? Could they buy back or renationalise their power grid? What is the endgame?

Selina Ho 00:36:27

The concession the Chinese company agreed to is twenty-five years. The question is whether Laos can get it back. It does not have the money. Laos's credit rating from Moody's is C-plus, which means it is essentially in default. It is a highly indebted country, and not just to China, although China holds the majority of its debt.

If you do not have the financial capacity, the resources, or the ability to develop your human capital, then this is the problem a country like Laos faces. It is trying to graduate from being a least-developed country, but it faces enormous challenges along the way. It needs help from others.

Keith 00:37:22

In Chinese rhetoric, they say they do not want to become a hegemon or follow the US model of regional hegemony. But as you have pointed out, China very much seeks to shape a Sinocentric order in Southeast Asia. Can you speak more on that?

Selina Ho 00:37:44

I can, because primarily I am saying this is what all great powers do. They want to secure their neighbourhood. If you are a power with very long borders, you want to secure your surroundings. It is the same thing the United States does with the Monroe Doctrine. It is the same thing Russia is doing now in Europe. It is the same way India behaves in South Asia. You do not want a potential adversary to gain a foothold in your backyard.

China wants regional dominance, and this is not the first time I have said it — I have said it in several publications. It is China's traditional backyard. It wants to ensure its security. It wants the region to take its interests into account when making decisions, especially on foreign policy. And it does not want the region to take sides with the US at China's expense.

But I want to caveat this by saying that this is what all great powers do. I am not singling out the Chinese. This is very normal great-power behaviour. Of course, it is not acceptable for those of us in the region who are smaller or weaker powers with our own sovereignty to safeguard.

We see some of this playing out through the BRI, which enmeshes countries in a set of strategic economic relations with China at the centre. There is also the creation of alternative institutions like the AIIB, the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation in the Mekong region, and the Xiangshan Forum, which is seen as a competitor to what China perceives as the Western-centric Shangri-La Dialogue. All these alternative institutions are another way of staking a claim on the region and building a security and economic architecture centred on China.

Keith 00:40:16

How has the region responded to that kind of Chinese approach?

Selina Ho 00:40:19

ASEAN has eleven members, so everyone reacts very differently. In an effort to understand this, my co-author and I conducted a survey of how regional elites — decision-makers, policymakers, leaders — perceive Chinese influence and whether the region is becoming China-led.

The survey showed that across the six countries we surveyed, more than fifty per cent of respondents said ASEAN is more influential than either China or the United States. Overwhelmingly, more than eighty per cent said they identify most with ASEAN rather than with China or the US.

There is a sense of regional identity and a desire to build up ASEAN so it can be a stronger organisation standing at the centre of the region. That is why there is so much talk about ASEAN centrality and unity. This is what smaller states do — they come together and coalesce in a regional institution to gain strength in numbers.

There is a sense that we need to take care of ourselves, that we need to use ASEAN more effectively to counter imbalances and deal with great-power rivalry. In that sense, it is going to be very important for Singapore in 2027 when we chair ASEAN. I expect the foreign ministry to have a very robust programme to strengthen ASEAN.

Keith 00:42:45

I would like you to speak more about the methodology. Why was this survey needed, as opposed to the existing literature on ASEAN? What was the gap?

Selina Ho 00:43:06

There is actually no study out there that examines how elites in the region view Chinese efforts to establish a Sinocentric regional order. If I am right that China wants regional dominance — and I am pretty sure I am right — we need to see how elites actually react to it.

Why is it important to survey elites? Because elites are the decision-makers when it comes to foreign policy. Most citizens are interested in bread-and-butter issues, meaning domestic politics is more important to them, and domestic policies are shaped more by public opinion. But in the case of foreign policy, traditionally policymakers have the room to make decisions. Obviously, there are cases where foreign policy cannot be immune from public opinion — Gaza is one that has galvanised public opinion all over the world, including in Southeast Asia and Singapore. But where it does not involve such sensitive issues or require mobilisation of resources, foreign policy is essentially the purview of elites.

The survey focused on elites from six countries: Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Thailand. These six are what I would call least-likely cases — least likely to want a China-led regional order. Some have declared independent foreign policies, like Malaysia and Indonesia. Others are US allies, like Thailand and the Philippines. Thailand has significant Chinese influence, but it is still a US ally. Singapore is an important partner to both China and the United States.

The logic is that if these least-likely respondents show strong support for a China-led order, the study gains a lot of validity. As it turned out, respondents overwhelmingly looked to ASEAN rather than China to be the centre of the region.

The survey used quota sampling. The best surveys use random sampling, but we chose quota sampling because we needed specific types of elites. Across the six countries, on average about a third were policymakers, roughly two-thirds were business leaders, and a small proportion were academics and other types of elites. The average age was about thirty-four, and on average respondents had about twelve years of working experience. Most had university education. So they would qualify as elites, and that is how we ensured the survey was robust.

Keith 00:47:18

When people talk about ASEAN centrality, is it more of a hedging statement? How should we understand ASEAN centrality in context?

Selina Ho 00:47:31

To me, ASEAN centrality and unity is aspirational. But I think the region would be worse off without ASEAN, so the critiques are a bit unfair. We were never meant from day one to be like the EU. ASEAN was never supposed to be legalistic, based on formal institutions, laws, and rules. It was based on the idea that countries can come together and have a platform to talk to each other.

A lot of things happen behind the scenes. We have not seen conflicts primarily because a lot is resolved informally. This informality works well for the region because we are so diverse. If we were more uniform, we might have something more legalistic, but our diversity requires room to play out. Hard and fast rules would be very difficult to implement, accept, or make work.

Without ASEAN, the region would be worse off. That is the counterfactual. But as we enter the twenty-first century, ASEAN needs to change, primarily because the threats have changed and morphed. There are far more existential threats now. During the Cold War when ASEAN was born, the threat was nuclear war. The existential threats today are many — climate change, public health crises, pandemics. Climate change is a massive threat that requires action from many countries.

ASEAN as a whole is not well placed to deal with the challenges of the twenty-first century. We do very well in certain areas. In a recent piece I wrote for Foreign Affairs with my co-author from Brazil, titled "How Multilateralism Can Survive," what was obvious was that where ASEAN countries really excel is in trade. We have been extremely innovative, and for good reason — trade is the lifeblood of Singapore and the region. We are all small, open economies. Without trade and globalisation, we would all be in serious trouble.

We have come up with innovative approaches. We moved forward with our Comprehensive Economic Partnership. Many of us are members of the CPTPP. Singapore just launched something called FITP — Future of Investment and Trade Partnership. The idea is to innovate ways of maintaining open trade and reducing barriers. Singapore's initiative now has sixteen members, and the concept was to bring these innovations up to the WTO level, because the WTO is completely defunct now.

At the regional level, we are working on these issues to keep trade going. But we deal very poorly with security matters. We cannot do anything about Myanmar. We were quite helpless when the border dispute happened between Thailand and Cambodia. We are not good at security. We need to do more in terms of conflict prevention and mitigation. I do not think we can do resolution — that requires hard laws, and that is not in ASEAN's mandate. But we can do more to prevent conflict and strengthen the security realm. We are doing very well in trade and economics; we need to do more in security.

Keith 00:51:52

But intra-ASEAN trade remains low.

Selina Ho 00:51:58

Very low. I think that is a pity, because there is competition among ASEAN countries. The economies are too similar, and this has to be resolved. There is a lot of potential. The idea was that RCEP could help push this along, but RCEP is still in its early days and we need to beef up inter-regional trade.

Keith 00:52:28

I have a follow-on question about the security component. Why are we so weak in this area, especially given that the genesis of ASEAN was actually in response to wanting to ensure our own security as a region?

Selina Ho 00:52:50

There are territorial disputes among us. Several ASEAN states are claimants in the South China Sea dispute. On the mainland especially, borders were artificially created as historical legacies of colonialism. Before the colonisers came, people moved across borders and did not consider themselves as belonging to a particular state.

Economics is something we can all agree on — we all want prosperity, so that is an area where we can move forward. But security is too difficult because there are territorial disputes, historical issues, and security touches on the sovereignty of nation-states even more than economic issues. Southeast Asian nations guard their sovereignty very tightly.

I should share a little about a project that has been given a large grant by the Social Science Research Council in Singapore. It is about regional resilience. We need nation-states to think broader than national resilience. That is how we think about our countries — we guard our sovereignty and focus on national resilience, worrying only about our own borders. But we do not think about regional resilience: how to build it collectively, not just in trade and economic growth, but also in dealing with security matters and the forces that could fragment the region. Especially amid great-power rivalry, we need to be resilient and stay together. This is a project we are about to launch.

Keith 00:55:16

I have always thought that at the grassroots level, there has been a challenge with creating an ASEAN identity. Part of it is attributed to the unresolved systemic security issues you have pointed out. But at a cultural and personal level, we just have not had the kind of ASEAN construction project that the EU has been through. My friends from Europe talk about the Erasmus programme, where the EU Commission sponsors people from Italy to study in Germany, from France to study elsewhere. There is this cultivation of a cross-border, pan-European identity. In ASEAN, we just kind of accept that everyone is different and leave it at that, and engagement happens mostly at the policymaker level.

Selina Ho 00:56:19

Singapore does a lot in this area. In our secondary schools, we have ASEAN scholars. We offer scholarships with no obligations to very good students from regional countries to study in our secondary schools and universities. This is a public good, a regional public good, which in the long term will pay back to us. People may not understand that, but it will benefit us because you build a generation of very good people — whether they end up in government or the private sector — who will remember their time in Singapore and the friendships and networks they built.

NUS now has ASEAN fellowships and scholarships aimed at getting really good people to study at NUS or collaborate with us, with a focus on Southeast Asia. You can see all these pieces coming together to build ASEAN identity and resilience. It is slow and will take time. Nation-building projects take time; regional-building projects take even longer. But that does not mean we should do nothing. We have to start somewhere.

Keith 00:57:51

Would the reverse be something we need to work on as well — sending Singaporeans into other parts of ASEAN more actively?

Selina Ho 00:57:57

I think this is something NUS is looking at. There is a reason why I bring my students to Laos — it is part of getting to know our own region. We have something at the Lee Kuan Yew School called LKYSP in Asia, where we bring students from the various graduate programmes to one country in Southeast Asia to learn about public-policy-related issues. For me, I bring my students to understand Lao foreign policy, because nobody knows Laos.

Laos is a fascinating country with all the challenges of a small state. Very few countries face what they face — surrounded by five much bigger countries along their borders and being completely landlocked, with no access to trade via the sea. How do they survive? Those are the questions.

Through these kinds of projects — and NUS's main campus has its own programmes sending students to other parts of Southeast Asia — we are building understanding. In some secondary schools, there is a Regional Studies Programme where students learn another language from the region and study these countries. While the exchanges are not as robust as our programmes with the West, Europe, the US, or East Asia, there are ongoing interactions at both the institutional and student levels, so that we all understand Southeast Asia better.

Keith 01:00:04

Singapore takes the ASEAN chair in 2027. You alluded to it earlier and mentioned your expectations. What should Singapore actually do in that one year of chairmanship? How can we move the needle?

Selina Ho 01:00:19

One thing I am aware of is that Singapore really wants to have regional projects that most countries can work together on. We are very interested in doing something about climate, in dealing with technology, and in the maritime domain.

The most recent thing I have heard is that we are hoping to get nations to act together to deal with the scam pandemic, which is a very real issue and a transnational challenge. It is considered a project that could bring even rivals together. The US and China are both affected by scam operations — citizens being scammed, trafficked, and worse. There are synergies to be found. These are some of the areas we are thinking about. I am not from the foreign ministry, so I do not know the exact plans, but these are some of the areas being explored.

Keith 01:01:41

If you have one piece of advice for a student entering the working world today, what would it be?

Selina Ho 01:01:46

You need gumption, you need passion, and you need traction. Traction means you need to keep up the momentum. Do not look at the state of the world and think there is nothing you can do. That is not the right way to deal with the challenges ahead, because the world is yours. In the future, it will all be yours, and you are the ones who will have to deal with the problems coming your way.

There has to be a sense of urgency in going out and trying to make the world better — for yourself and for the generation after you. You must have a never-say-die attitude, that determination, that willingness to work hard. I think that is true for every generation, and it is the best advice I can give.

Keith 01:02:53

Never say die, work hard, and always pursue traction. I think that is very good advice. With that, Professor Selina, thank you so much for coming on.

Selina Ho 01:03:01

Thank you very much, Keith. It has been an honour and privilege to be on air with you.

Keith 01:03:05

Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you are watching this on YouTube, please consider subscribing and turning on notifications for whenever new episodes are out. If you are on Spotify or Apple, it would help us greatly if you could leave a five-star review on those platforms. Once again, thank you for tuning in to The Front Row Podcast.

Zheng Yu Huang is a technology executive, entrepreneur, policy adviser, and author whose career spans Silicon Valley, the Obama White House, and the US-China policy arena.

He is the author of Rethinking China: Challenging Our Economic Assumptions and Opportunities for Lasting Prosperity, as well as Lifelong Learning: Six Classes After Harvard Graduation, published in Chinese.

Huang holds a BS in Industrial Engineering, a BA in Economics, and an MS in Computer Science from Stanford University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

After Stanford, Huang joined Intel Corporation, rising to Managing Director — one of the youngest to hold that title.

He subsequently served as a White House Fellow under President Obama, becoming the first person of mainland Chinese origin to hold that distinction, as well as a Special Assistant to the Administrator of the US Agency for International Development.

During his fellowship, he led an interagency task force to restore Haiti's telecommunications infrastructure following the 2010 earthquake.

After leaving government, Huang founded a financial services data firm that grew to 300 staff across seven offices, reaching a valuation of $100 million.

He later served for four years as President of the Committee of 100, the prominent Chinese American organisation co-founded by IM Pei and Yo-Yo Ma.

In this conversation, Huang draws on that breadth of experience to challenge what he argues are dangerously flawed assumptions underlying current US policy and the pivots US administrations need to consider.

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Trailer
00:55 A Drive-By Shooting on My First Month in America
5:29 Why America Is Still the Land of Opportunity
9:24 Negotiating IP With Beijing at Intel
16:27 What the White House Fellowship Taught Me About Power
23:49 When US-China Relations Broke
27:49 The Consequences of Getting Your Assumptions Wrong
33:14 Why Southeast Asia Is America's Blind Spot
34:41 The Real Reason the US Pivoted to Securitisation
35:43 The China Shock Was Never Really About China
41:15 The $600 Billion Number That Isn't Real
46:26 How the China Initiative Destroyed Innocent Lives
52:59 Compete or Cooperate? The AI Question
58:03 What History Tells Us About US-China-Taiwan
1:00:57 What China Gets Wrong About America
1:06:10 Focus on Results: A New China Strategy
1:08:32 America's Real Domestic Challenges
1:11:59 One Final Piece of Advice

This is the 81st episode Of The Front Row Podcast

Keith 00:00:55

You were a migrant who came from Shanghai and moved to the US, navigating a dual identity — first as an ethnic Chinese immigrant, and subsequently as an American citizen. I'd like for you to unpack a little more about your experience growing up in the US.

Zhengyu 00:01:17

I arrived not speaking a word of English. About a month into the move, my dad was studying during the day and working at night as a motel manager. My mom and I would bring him soup — this was downtown LA.

I remember one night, walking to his workplace around 10 or 11 PM. The streets were deserted. We walked past a hotel, and out came a gallantly dressed couple who had clearly just been to a party. They were maybe four or five paces ahead of us, and we thought, great — some company for the walk.

Then I heard a car screech by. As it turned the corner, I heard what I thought were firecrackers — growing up in China, you play with firecrackers, especially at Chinese New Year. Then the woman was lying in a pool of blood, and the man was screaming for help. That was my first drive-by shooting.

My mom and I ran as hard as we could. When our bodies finally gave out and we stopped to catch our breath, I thought to myself: this is a brave new world. So different from everything in my first ten years. I must really understand it.

I think I've carried that perspective ever since. I've been to about 92 countries, and every time I go somewhere, I try not to assume what that place is about — I try to figure it out. That stems from being an immigrant. I had to understand and make a life in this brave new world, make a home for myself. And that is, I think, the story of so many immigrants who came to America and, in that process, contributed to its growth and success.

Keith 00:03:49

I'd like you to elaborate a little more on what kept you in the US — what made America appealing enough that you decided to call it home. Earlier you mentioned the drive-by shooting. Why didn't that push you away?

Zhengyu 00:04:06

I've been to over 90 countries and lived in five. And I must confess: America still seems like the place where, regardless of where you're from, if you work hard and pursue your dreams and passions, you have a chance to make it. This is why Elon Musk didn't found his companies in South Africa, where he's from. This is why Eric Yuan started Zoom in Silicon Valley. The list goes on.

Even though for many people the American dream may be fading, I saw it — I bear witness to it. And the second thing is a genuine sense of helping each other. America is known as individualistic, very much out for oneself — but I can look back on everything I've accomplished and think of all the people who helped me along the way. None of them asked for anything in return. They helped because they could, and they were willing to take a risk on a young man. I'm very grateful for that. In many senses, America is still that land of opportunity.

Keith 00:05:29

You went to Stanford and rose to become one of the youngest managing directors at Intel. One of the early milestones in your career was negotiating an IP transfer with the Chinese government. I'd like you to pull back the curtain a little. What was that experience like? Because I think it sets up the frame for understanding technology transfer to China in the earlier years of the US opening up.

Zhengyu 00:06:06

We were negotiating with multiple agencies within the Chinese government — the lead agency being the Ministry of Information and Technology — at the vice minister level, which is where the real work gets done.

In one meeting, I had with me a senior vice president visiting from the United States. He spoke at length. The first thing the Chinese officials said was: "You Americans don't understand what's going on in China. You don't understand us."

After he finished, I said: "You're right." And I explained that Intel has never charged intellectual property fees on any technology. We produce enormous amounts of IP — in microprocessing, in wireless — but we've never charged for it, because we believe technology should be global, shared, and that its benefits should go to consumers wherever they are. And we believe that China also wants to be a technology leader. In 3G alone, China paid over $100 billion in IP fees — a number slated to grow significantly in 4G.

I had prepared this response because I had heard the same complaints many times. After I finished, the government official paused, then turned and said: "You're Chinese. You understand what I'm talking about."

The fact is, I was representing an American company. All I had done was articulate that I understood the Chinese perspective — not that I agreed with it, but that I understood it, and that our intentions took their concerns into account. That was probably the biggest lesson: at some point, you don't have to agree with somebody, but showing that you understand makes an enormous difference in bridging the divide.

Keith 00:08:55

That was really about going to the table, understanding their interests, and finding a win-win solution.

Zhengyu 00:09:07

Exactly.

Keith 00:09:08

You were also a White House Fellow.

Zhengyu 00:09:10

Yes.

Keith 00:09:11

For those of us in Southeast Asia and Singapore, we might not be entirely familiar with the programme. Could you explain what the White House Fellowship is, and what your experience was like serving under President Obama?

Zhengyu 00:09:24

The programme was started by Lyndon B. Johnson during the Vietnam War era, when many young people were protesting against the government. Johnson's idea was: what if we invited perhaps ten of the most promising young leaders in America to spend a year in the White House, with full access to the most senior people in American government, and then send them back into all parts of American society? By understanding government, whatever they chose to do later, they would be better equipped to engage with it. Every year, roughly ten to twelve people — usually in their mid-thirties — are selected.

I was fortunate to be selected in what I believe was the second year of President Obama's term. One story I can share: we had multiple meetings with the president, and in one of the first, we sat in the Roosevelt Room. It's a long table; the president sits at the head, and the back of each cabinet secretary's chair bears their name — because when a secretary retires, that chair is typically given to them as a token of appreciation.

I asked President Obama a question: "Mr President, what has been your biggest realisation since taking office?"

He paused for perhaps twenty or thirty seconds — which feels like a very long time — and I worried I had offended him. But when he spoke, he said: "The people around this table — the Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, has a Nobel Prize; the Secretary of Defense, Bob Gates, served perhaps thirty or forty years in various capacities in Washington; the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was First Lady. Everyone at this table is probably smarter than me in their respective area."

"But the second thing I know," he continued, "is that every issue that comes to my table is genuinely unsolvable — because if it were solvable, one of these very smart people would have already solved it. So my role as president is to gather all the wisdom around me and make a decision on something that seems intractable, in a way I believe is correct, in order to push the matter forward."

That stayed with me. So many of the challenges America grapples with today — racial inequality, wealth inequality — have been around for decades. They come to every president. The best any president can do is gather the wisest counsel available, make a decision they believe is right, and advance the agenda a little further.

Keith 00:13:29

Were there other crucial lessons from your year in the White House?

Zhengyu 00:13:35

When the Haitian earthquake happened — around January 2010 — roughly 250,000 people died. Because of the longstanding relationship between Haiti and the US, the American government was invited to assist with search and rescue. Because of my background at Intel in telecommunications, I was put in charge of an interagency task force to restore the telecommunications network. This was critical: many people were still trapped in the rubble with mobile phones, and that network was the primary way to communicate with survivors and direct the delivery of food, water, and essential supplies.

The task force brought together about ten different agencies, including the FCC and FEMA, and I had a one-star general seconded to the group. I was working until three or four in the morning every night.

One night, leaving around 3 AM, I stepped outside into the bitter Washington cold. The sky was pitch dark, but clear enough to see the stars. And it struck me: public service means something. In DC, people say "thank you for your service" — not just for your leadership, but for your service. That night it hit me. The best we can do for the world is to be of some service to others.

And the US government — it's like a giant elephant. Generally it doesn't move much. If a fly lands on it, the elephant swats its tail. But if you get it truly moving, it becomes a formidable force.

Keith 00:15:55

You have been quite critical of some of the core assumptions underlying US policy towards China — arguing that they are not merely flawed, but actively harmful. When did you first start recognising that this was a serious problem, and that the US-China relationship had fundamentally fractured?

Zhengyu 00:16:24

I became president of the Committee of 100 just a couple of days after the start of COVID. By way of brief background: the Committee of 100 is a nonprofit organisation founded about thirty years ago by prominent Chinese Americans such as IM Pei, the noted architect, and Yo-Yo Ma, the celebrated cellist, among others. The story goes that IM Pei was good friends with Henry Kissinger, and over dinner in New York one night, Kissinger said: "US-China relations are on the up. Chinese Americans — you have the cultural background and linguistic skills to play a critical role." And so the Committee of 100 was formed with two purposes: to advance Chinese American inclusion, and to foster a more productive US-China relationship.

It is a member-based organisation of roughly a hundred people — you might know Gary Locke, former ambassador to China, or Jerry Yang, the founder of Yahoo, among others. I served as president for about four years.

In one of my early meetings at the State Department, a senior official said to me: "Mr Wang, you have to understand — the relationship between the US and China has fundamentally changed. And you as Chinese Americans must take a stand." That statement made clear to me that after roughly forty years of engagement, the US strategy towards China had shifted from engagement to competition and confrontation. And unfortunately, Chinese Americans were the only people in America who looked Chinese. In many ways, we found ourselves caught between a rock and a hard place.

Keith 00:18:43

You are right to frame this as a shift from competition to confrontation — and I think that distinction matters enormously. You can compete without entering an escalatory spiral of confrontation. One of the core intellectual arguments in your work is that the assumptions driving US policy towards China are not just incorrect, but harmful. Why, in your view, does the Yellow Peril trope remain so persistent — and why has anti-China sentiment become, in some respects, almost unanimously bipartisan?

Zhengyu 00:19:36

Let me answer in two parts. The first is that this pivot in US strategy happened about ten years ago, and my book was written precisely because, after a decade, the results are in. I spoke to more than 300 leading experts on US-China relations in the United States and Europe, and I examined the data and evidence to assess whether this pivot has made American businesses more competitive, made America more secure, and advanced American interests and values around the world — three goals on which virtually all Americans agree.

And the truth is, all the data and evidence suggest otherwise. The strategies pursued over the last ten years have not yielded the results intended. Which then leads to the question: why not? And this brings me to a principle I learned at Harvard Business School — GIGO: garbage in, garbage out. If your assumptions are wrong, no matter how much resource or talent you apply, you will still get bad output.

One of those underlying assumptions — unspoken but persistent — is the trope of the Yellow Peril. What is the Yellow Peril? It dates back more than a hundred years: the belief that a yellow horde from Asia is coming to take over America, destroy Western civilisation, and destroy the American way of life. Consciously or unconsciously, this persists today — and it clouds judgement. It underpins fear-based policy. And as we know, human beings almost never make good decisions when they are afraid.

Keith 00:22:48

I spoke with Michael O'Hanlon from the Brookings Institution about America's involvement in wars, and he made the point that America often continues to be a great power in spite of itself — that many of its military involvements, from Vietnam to Iraq, were ultimately mistakes. We are seeing something similar play out now with the assumptions underlying US involvement in Iran. I'd like to use that as a frame. What do you think are the assumptions that are currently wrong in US policy towards the Middle East — and what does that tell us about how America understands powers that seek to challenge its dominance?

Zhengyu 00:23:50

Let me give you clear examples from the past. We entered Vietnam on the false assumption that if South Vietnam fell, the rest of Southeast Asia would follow — the so-called domino effect. South Vietnam did fall. Southeast Asia did not. We entered Iraq on the assumption that there were weapons of mass destruction. There weren't. We went into Afghanistan on the false assumption that defeating Al-Qaeda required defeating the Taliban, which proved not to be the case. And in Iran, the intervention proceeded on the assumption that the regime was imminently developing a nuclear bomb — which, according to virtually all experts, was not true.

These are the kinds of assumptions that, when wrong, provide a disastrous foundation for any military expedition.

How does this apply to China? Today, we are already at war with China — a tech war, a trade war, a currency war, a media war. Every form of conflict, in fact, except a kinetic one: a direct military confrontation between the two largest economies on earth, each with nuclear weapons capable of devastating the other. And we are dangerously close.

Most people do not fully appreciate what a Taiwan contingency would actually involve. Unlike Ukraine, Taiwan has no capacity to defend itself without the active military participation of the United States. To put this in context: Taiwan has a population smaller than the city of Shanghai. Its GDP is smaller than Shanghai's. It has no realistic prospect of defending itself against China — all it could do is prolong the time before the United States intervenes.

And yet most discussions stop there, without asking what happens in the actual conflict. I went and found the answers. Many war games have been conducted, most classified, but some public. The ones in which America wins the first engagement — and it does not always win — project losses in the first two to three weeks of perhaps two aircraft carriers, a dozen warships, hundreds of aircraft, and thousands of service members. Roughly half the total American losses over ten years in Iraq. In two to three weeks.

And then I always ask: what happens after the first battle? No expert believes China would simply concede after a single engagement. The conversation then turns to escalation: does the United States strike the Chinese mainland — where most missile batteries, naval bases, and weapons production are located? And if it does, does China then strike American military bases or the American mainland? At that point, how quickly does this approach nuclear exchange?

I have to tell you — when I pressed experts on those scenarios, they literally stopped talking. The scenarios are too frightening to contemplate.

For me, the conclusion is clear: if we fully understand not just the possibility but the potential consequences of war, then we must ask very precisely what we are fighting for. If there is a real risk of this going nuclear, then what, exactly, justifies that? And I have not yet heard a compelling answer.

Some say we must defend Taiwan because it is a democracy. But the United States did not intervene militarily in Ukraine, which is also a democracy. Others say we must fight for Taiwan's semiconductor dominance. I worked in semiconductors for seven years. That argument is nonsensical — if the US wanted to deny China those assets, it could simply destroy the fabrication plants. The idea that we must go to war to protect them makes no sense.

The most coherent argument I've heard is that if the United States fails to defend Taiwan, it may lose the trust of Southeast Asia. That may be true. But if that is the concern, then the answer is to deepen our engagement with Southeast Asia now, before any conflict — not to prepare for a kinetic confrontation. And instead of deepening that engagement, the United States has largely pulled away. China and Southeast Asia are each other's largest trading partners. The US is falling far behind on economic and broader engagement with the region.

What troubles me most is that the American media discusses this potential conflict constantly, without helping Americans truly understand its consequences — and without asking whether, given those consequences, the underlying justifications hold up.

Keith 00:31:51

When you talked about Taiwan, one thing I've observed is a profound asymmetry in commitment. When I speak to friends on the mainland, Taiwan is almost an existential red line — it touches something at the core of Chinese identity, and the emotion around it is intense. When I speak to American friends, the issue is often framed as a tool for constraining China, and when you press them, many are not deeply committed to it at all.

Given that asymmetry, and given your point that the US needs to deepen its engagement in Southeast Asia — what would that actually look like in practice? What policy recommendations would you make to a Washington decision-maker?

Zhengyu 00:33:13

Southeast Asia is on track to become one of the world's four largest economic blocs over the coming decades, with one of the largest, most dynamic, and best-educated young populations globally. Even today, you are seeing a remarkable supply chain forming across the region, serving not just the United States but advanced economies worldwide.

If the United States were to identify the key regions it must engage beyond the usual interlocutors — the EU, China, India — Southeast Asia is the obvious answer. It is, frankly, a no-brainer.

And here is what I find important: every person I have spoken to in Southeast Asia understands that China is here. China is not going anywhere. China has 1.4 billion people, the world's second-largest economy, and is every Southeast Asian country's largest trading partner. But every person I've spoken to also wants the United States to have a meaningful role — both because America has genuinely extraordinary things to offer in terms of innovation, market access, and institutional capacity, and because an American presence provides a useful counterbalance to China.

The United States has an open invitation to deepen its engagement across the region — economic, cultural, educational, diplomatic. What I see instead is a strategy almost entirely focused on military deterrence, carried out without the attendant integration across all other domains. That is an unfortunate imbalance, and a costly one.

Keith 00:35:43

Why do you think there has been this persistent shift towards securitisation? What caused it?

Zhengyu 00:35:59

The United States is going through profound internal change — trying to make sense of how the promises that generations of Americans believed in can be renegotiated in a world transformed by AI, by globalisation, by rapid technological disruption. And in that process, as throughout American history, it is always tempting to blame a foreign group. Whether it's Mexicans, Chinese, or Indians — fear is an effective way to mobilise voters, and externalising a domestic problem is politically convenient for people on both sides of the aisle. It doesn't solve the problem, but it works as a short-term strategy.

My book examines China's entry into the WTO and what became known as the China shock. I spoke to the economists who authored that research, and to pretty much all the scholars who have studied its effects on US employment. They found that yes, perhaps a million manufacturing jobs were lost as a result of China joining the WTO. But the part almost nobody discusses is that roughly the same number of jobs — perhaps more — were created in its wake. The difference is that those jobs were created largely in coastal, high-skill, high-mobility regions of America. The people most hurt were those who were less mobile, less educated, and concentrated in specific geographies — the middle of the country, the south.

The China shock, properly understood, is not a story about what China did to America. It is a story about the concentrated costs and distributed benefits of globalisation. And without addressing that directly — without real, concerted strategies to help the people most affected — even if you removed China from the equation entirely, you would still face fierce competition from India, Malaysia, Indonesia, and others. The US economy has shifted from manufacturing to services. If you call a service centre today, you're speaking to someone based in India, the Philippines, or Malaysia — not China — because that part of the economy has moved.

Without honestly confronting the effects of globalisation, this problem will persist. Politicians find it easy to say: here is the villain, if we block them, your problems go away. Tariffs and bans are simple answers. But the right answer is harder — investing in helping American workers migrate to better opportunities, building resilience against the structural effects of globalisation. That work is unglamorous, and it takes time. But done well, it would actually help people.

Keith 00:40:17

I've read the research as well, and I think one thing often missed is that the outsourcing of manufacturing and the emergence of global value chains — which Singapore benefited from enormously — were already underway two decades before China entered the WTO. Perhaps it was the sheer scale of China that brought the trend into sharper relief, but the underlying dynamic was already there. So when people draw the wrong conclusions from the data, as you say, it tends to cause more harm than good.

This brings me to the specific issue of the $600 billion IP theft figure. You have been quite direct in arguing that this number is not merely wrong but actively harmful. Help me understand: where did it come from?

Zhengyu 00:41:39

I heard politicians — including presidents and presidential candidates — use that figure constantly: $600 billion stolen annually by the Chinese from the United States. Being an engineer by training, I was genuinely curious about where that number came from. It is an enormous figure. I asked every expert I could find. Almost nobody could answer. I got blank stares — as if asking the question was somehow impertinent.

I finally tracked down someone who explained it. The number originates with the OECD, and it is a rough estimation: typically about two to three per cent of national GDP is estimated to be lost to IP loss globally. The US economy at the relevant time was about $20 trillion. Three per cent of $20 trillion is $600 billion. But IP loss has many categories — the largest being counterfeit goods: fake Nikes, fake watches, and so on. All of that rough global estimate was attributed to China. That is how you arrive at $600 billion.

When I dug further, I found some rigorous, credible think tanks that had actually analysed how much is genuinely stolen from the United States by Chinese actors. Their estimate: roughly $30 to $40 billion. Now, $30 to $40 billion is still a significant number. But it is 96 per cent smaller. The magnitude matters enormously.

Here is why. If you believe the $600 billion figure, then there must be a vast spy network — countless operatives inside the United States stealing at that scale. And on the basis of that assumption, the Department of Justice launched the China Initiative in 2018 — the first law enforcement programme ever targeted at a single country. The FBI director at the time said they were opening one new China case every ten hours.

So then you ask: who do you actually target? There were not that many spies. But the most visible and accessible targets were Chinese American academics, who for four decades had been actively encouraged by their universities to engage with Chinese counterparts — precisely because of their language skills and cultural knowledge. Everything they did was public, posted on the web, and it instantly became suspect.

The China Initiative ensnared thousands of Chinese American scientists. The MIT Technology Review conducted a comprehensive analysis of all the cases brought under the initiative. They found that none of those cases — essentially zero — involved economic espionage. The cases fell apart on shoddy evidence. But in the meantime, thousands of people's careers and lives were destroyed. Many Chinese American scientists left the United States. Some went elsewhere in the world. A significant number went back to China.

Consider the context: there is a great deal of talk in the United States about winning the AI competition with China, because AI is genuinely transformational. I agree. But transformational technological leadership — in quantum computing, nuclear fusion, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, space technology, as well as AI — depends above all on talent. China today produces six times as many STEM graduates as the United States, and fifty per cent more STEM PhD students. The United States can only compete by attracting the world's best talent, including from China. Instead, it has driven away some of that talent. That is, quite simply, shooting ourselves in the foot.

Keith 00:47:24

I was struck by the human costs you described in the book following the launch of the China Initiative — people whose lives were genuinely shattered, who went through extremely dark periods. It is easy to discuss geopolitics and economics in the abstract. The real and tangible harm to individual lives is something we cannot afford to overlook.

Zhengyu 00:48:01

In my role at the Committee of 100, I had the opportunity to meet many of these scientists, and their stories are heartbreaking. Most academics are not wealthy. When they were arrested by the FBI, their universities — fearful of the reputational and legal implications — often fired them immediately. The cost of mounting a legal defence against the federal government is staggering. Many of these people lost their jobs, were publicly branded as suspected spies, had to sell their homes, and borrowed money to cover legal fees. And even those who won — who had their charges dropped — often struggled to find work afterwards. Careers, and lives, were destroyed. It is deeply sad.

One example I include in the book is Sherry Chen. She worked for the US government and had won multiple awards. She was arrested after a trip to China, accused of being a spy. When the case was examined, there was plainly no substance to it, and it was dropped. But instead of retreating into private life — as most people in her position would understandably do — she kept fighting. She wanted justice and restitution.

I met with her and asked why she was putting herself through it. She said: "I'm not doing it for myself. I'm doing it for everyone else. Justice needs to be served — not for me, but for all of us."

Because she persisted, a subpoena uncovered something remarkable: a rogue group within the Commerce Department had been systematically surveilling Asian American employees on the assumption that there was a vast Chinese spy ring operating inside the government. This was directly traceable to the $600 billion figure — if you believe that number, a massive internal operation to identify and stop spies follows almost inevitably.

That rogue surveillance operation was exposed as a result of her fight. And she ultimately became one of the first people to receive not just an apology from the Commerce Secretary, but approximately $1.4 million in restitution for the pain and suffering she endured.

She walked a very long road. But speaking to people like her makes me believe that courage is real, and that ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

Keith 00:52:06

Her story goes right back to the GIGO principle you mentioned earlier. Catastrophise the number — $600 billion — and extreme responses become not just justified but necessary. The same logic, incidentally, operates in other historical contexts: inflate the scale of a threat, and you create the conditions to treat the other side as an enemy that must be eliminated at all costs. That kind of thinking is dangerous.

The other question I wanted to raise is this: when you talk about the tech war, is it actually a war in the sense people imagine? From where I sit in Singapore, the US and Chinese approaches to AI look genuinely divergent. China's model appears to be oriented around integration and open source — make it affordable, make it accessible, embed it everywhere. The US model is about frontier capability — pushing the envelope as hard as possible. That divergence shapes the startups being formed, the investments being made, the innovation ecosystems on each side. So is this really an existential contest, or do we need to re-examine the assumptions underneath that framing?

Zhengyu 00:54:06

We do have to compete — there is no question about that. But consider the framing more carefully. From an American perspective, China is a genuine threat. The question is not whether China poses challenges, but what kind — and of what magnitude. To borrow from meteorology: if it is a Category Five hurricane, you evacuate. If it is Category One, you close your windows and stay home. The problem today is that, because of the hysteria surrounding China, everything is treated as Category Five. And the responses become unmeasured and disproportionate — often hurting America's own interests and values.

When people say this is an AI war, when they say it is existential, they are, once again, playing to fear. And so the responses become disproportionate.

My view is this: the US and China will compete in many of these domains — and must. But in many of these same domains, they must also find ways to cooperate. You have to do both simultaneously. Why? Because AI, for all its promise in terms of productivity, also carries real risks of harm — particularly if you take seriously the possibility, as Jensen Huang does, that AGI is already here or imminent. The United States and China working together to govern the most consequential effects of AI would be critical. Because ultimately, we are the same human species.

The same applies to climate change, to nuclear proliferation, to a range of challenges that will require active collaboration between the two largest powers on earth. None of that precludes competition. Competition is fine — even healthy. The question is whether competition devolves into conflict. As you noted at the outset, those are different things. The goal must be to compete without allowing the competition to become something that destroys both sides.

Keith 00:56:53

There was a period when the US and Chinese economies were deeply integrated. If you speak to the first generation of Chinese tech entrepreneurs, many of them hold Americans — especially in business and innovation — in very high regard. And the first wave of foreign capital that underwrote Chinese technology companies was largely American. A great deal of Chinese technological growth was, at its foundation, underwritten by American capital. That seems to be almost entirely forgotten today — not just in the US, but in China as well. Some of my friends there, as they become more nationalist, have developed a sense that America is simply out to get them. I tell them: many of your biggest tech companies were funded or given their public market liquidity by American investors. It was a genuinely win-win relationship. Things were not always as they are today.

Zhengyu 00:58:03

History is endlessly fascinating. You can see something similar with Taiwan. For a long time, China's largest source of foreign direct investment was not the United States or Europe — it was Taiwan and Hong Kong. At the height, Taiwanese companies operating in China accounted for about fourteen per cent of all tax receipts. Foxconn was China's largest private-sector employer. Today, there are still over a million Taiwanese business people living and working in China.

A number of serious scholars — and I engage with some of them in the book — have argued that China's economic rise would not have been possible without the active participation of Taiwan. And as you noted, even before manufacturing migrated to China, it first went to Taiwan. I remember flying to Taiwan regularly because all the ODMs — the manufacturers of computers and mobile phones — were headquartered there. It was Taiwanese companies that then built out facilities on the mainland.

There is simply so much interaction and interdependence across the US-China-Taiwan triangle that people have chosen to forget — because they have convinced themselves that this is a zero-sum contest, a you-or-me situation, rather than recognising that throughout history, working together has produced better outcomes for everyone. In the fifty years since US-China normalisation in 1972, we have seen unprecedented prosperity on all sides — and unprecedented peace. Before 1972, there were actual Taiwan Strait crises involving live ammunition and real fighting. Since 1972, nothing of the kind.

We would do well to remember what history offers. It does not repeat itself exactly — but, as someone astute once noted, it does rhyme.

Keith 01:00:16

Given your perspective as someone who has moved between both worlds and understands China deeply — let me flip the question. What do you think the average Chinese citizen most misunderstands about America today?

Zhengyu 01:00:57

I have come to agree with several senior DC policymakers who say: all policy is ultimately domestic. In China, there is a tendency to interpret American actions as deliberate attempts to contain or undermine China — without fully appreciating that many of those policies are primarily driven by domestic political pressures and concerns. The same is true in reverse: Americans often attribute expansionist or malicious intent to Chinese policy without recognising how much of it is driven by internal imperatives.

If you look beneath the surface, both countries share remarkably similar underlying challenges. Ageing populations. Youth unemployment. Income and wealth inequality. The disruptions of rapid technological change. The list goes on. And I think it is those commonalities — not just cultural similarities, but shared problems — that could form the basis for a more honest relationship, rather than one defined by projected fears and assumed intentions.

Keith 01:02:52

So Chinese counterparts would benefit from extending some of the same empathy and interpretive generosity to American policy that you're advocating Americans extend to China.

Zhengyu 01:03:02

Absolutely. And this connects to something I explored in the book — a study by Harvard professors on the question of intentions. A great deal of geopolitical thinking is premised on assumptions about what the other side intends. Some American policymakers believe China intends to surpass and replace America as the dominant power. Many in China believe America intends to contain and ultimately bring down China.

The Harvard research — which aligns with my own experience, and I suspect with yours — is that human beings are genuinely terrible at accurately reading other people's intentions. We almost always assume the worst in others and the best in ourselves. And in reality, most of the time, people do what they do because of their own circumstances and pressures. If something they do happens to benefit you, it is probably incidental. If something harms you, it is probably not targeted. We are just not very good at recognising that.

This is also why I argue in the book that we should construct policy that protects and advances our interests regardless of what we believe the other side's intentions to be — rather than calibrating our entire strategic posture around an assumed, and likely inaccurate, reading of those intentions.

Nobody actually knows what President Xi truly thinks. And for that matter, nobody truly knows what President Trump thinks — despite him having been in the public eye for decades, Americans remain almost evenly split on the question. If that is true of someone so extensively documented, imagine how unreliable our assessments of a leader operating in a very different system must be. The answer is to have well-constructed policy that protects our interests in any scenario — whether the other side turns out to be friend or adversary — and to stop making grand assumptions about intent.

Keith 01:06:10

If you were advising Washington policymakers today on a rethink of China strategy, what would you advocate?

Zhengyu 01:06:21

That is, incidentally, the title of my book — Rethinking China: Challenging Our Economic Assumptions and Opportunities for Lasting Prosperity. It is available now, and for those who want to go deeper, you can visit RethinkingChina.us, where you can download the first chapter for free and sign up for updates.

If I were to distil the recommendation into a single phrase: focus on results. Ultimately, results are what matter. Rhetoric and intentions, however sincere, are secondary. In DC, I believe that virtually everyone I met genuinely wants America to succeed. But we know the old saying: the road to ruin is paved with good intentions.

After ten years, let us stop debating intentions and rhetoric. Let us look at the results. Have the policies made America more economically competitive? Have they made America more secure? Have they advanced American values in the world? The data suggests the answer across all three is no. That should be enough to prompt a genuine rethink. If the results are not there, we need to be open to adjusting course. If they are, double down. But intellectual honesty requires looking at what has actually happened.

Keith 01:08:13

You alluded earlier to the importance of getting domestic conditions right. As a technologist and bridge-builder, what do you see as the most pressing challenges within the United States itself that policymakers should be addressing?

Zhengyu 01:08:32

The world is changing so rapidly, across so many domains, that America's systems may need to be updated to keep pace. The primary system, for example, structurally rewards extreme positions — if you are a moderate, you tend not to survive a primary. You end up with an increasingly bifurcated political field. Can that system be reformed? Yes — smart people are actively working on it, including through innovations like ranked-choice voting. This is one of the reasons I remain cautiously optimistic about America: it retains the capacity to reinvent itself. Simply calling yourself a democracy is not enough. You have to continuously innovate the democratic machinery itself.

The other issue is the role of money. Running for Congress today costs perhaps five to ten million dollars. A Senate race in a large state can exceed a hundred million. Presidential elections routinely cost billions. When you are constantly fundraising, you are constantly making commitments — and that shapes what you are able to do once in office. Campaign finance reform is not a simple problem, and I know many very intelligent people are grappling with it.

But again, these are internal issues. No external actor is going to solve them for America. That work has to be done by Americans. And I believe, if done well, it will come out stronger for having done it.

Keith 01:11:36

My final question: drawing on everything you have experienced — your time as a managing director at Intel, your White House Fellowship, your work running your own firm and building bridges — what is the single piece of advice you would give to a new graduate entering the working world today?

Zhengyu 01:11:59

Time moves extraordinarily fast. I have spoken to people far more accomplished than I am, and even they say the same thing: it went by in an instant. We each have one life. However long it is — seventy, eighty, ninety, a hundred years — it will feel like it passed in a moment.

The promise I have made to myself, and try to live by, is this: I want to reach the end with no regrets. I may not be able to control every outcome — some things are simply beyond my reach. But I can control whether I pursue the things that truly matter to me.

My advice to a younger person is: have no regrets. If there is something you genuinely want to do, ask yourself — if I don't do this, will I regret it in ten, twenty, fifty years? If the answer is yes, then you have to do it. You cannot live with regret. And at the end, there is nothing we can take with us. The only thing we can say at that last breath is: I lived without regret.

Keith 01:13:34

On that aspirational note — Z thank you so much for coming on.

Zhengyu 01:13:38

Thank you.

Professor O'Hanlon is the inaugural holder of the Philip H. Knight Chair in Defense and Strategy and Director of Research in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. His newest book, timed to coincide with America's 250th birthday, called "To Damn Mighty Things," was an interesting read for me as it helped unpack the growth of America as a nation, then industrial power, and eventually superpower.

In today's conversation, we talk about America's evolving defence strategy from its birth in the Revolutionary War all the way to the Iraq War. I hope you'll find this conversation as illuminating as I did.

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 — Trailer & Introduction
01:37 — Grand Strategy vs. Defence Strategy: What's the Difference?
06:50 — George Washington's Guerrilla Instinct: How the Revolutionary War Shaped America
11:45 — The Founding Fathers Were Not Minimalists
15:10 — The War of 1812: Punching Up at the World's Number One Power
18:50 — Was America Ever Really Isolationist?
21:10 — The Uncomfortable Ethics of American Expansion
30:15 — How World War II Made America a Superpower
32:55 — Three Wars That Built a Nation
34:30 — The Cold War Was Scarier Than We Remember
37:45 — Vietnam: America's Worst War — and Why Lee Kuan Yew Still Defended It
40:20 — The Cold War Was About More Than Containing Communism
42:30 — The End of the Cold War: Triumph or Anxiety?
46:05 — 9/11, Fear, and the Road Into Iraq
49:30 — The Paradox of American Power: Winning the Grand Game While Losing the Wars
51:20 — Nixon's Art of Losing Without Admitting It
53:35 — Iraq: What Went Wrong and What Didn't
55:15 — Trump Through a Historical Lens: A 19th-Century President in the 21st Century
56:40 — If You Had 15 Minutes With Trump, What Would You Say?

This is the 78th episode Of The Front Row Podcast

Keith 01:36

There is a lot of interest today in geopolitics and grand strategy, but you make a very clear distinction between understanding grand strategy and defence strategy. Can you help us understand that distinction?

Michael O'Hanlon 01:53

First of all, Keith, thanks for having me on. It's great to be speaking with friends in Singapore. We in the United States have just great admiration and appreciation for Singapore as a polity, as an economy, as a security partner. So it's just great for me to be speaking with you tonight.

Grand strategy is the big idea for how you keep yourself safe and ideally also powerful. It is the most conceptual, most far-reaching, most sweeping idea that guides overall security policy. It may or may not be explained in any official document. You may have to figure it out by looking at how a country behaves, not just what it says.

For example, in the United States, for the first half of our history, our grand strategy was expansionism. We wanted to make this country bigger and more powerful. We also believed we had a form of government that had never been seen before on earth, one that was worthy of being expanded and covering the whole continent.

To give one more example, in the Cold War, the grand strategy was containment. Push back against the Soviets, push back against the Chinese Communist Party when they wanted to try to spread their idea of governance around the world. That's the big idea.

The defence strategy or military strategy is what you do with your armed forces to back up your grand strategy. How big is your military? Where does it choose to fight, or where do you decide as a country to have it fight? Which countries do you ally with? Which kinds of weapons do you buy for the possibility of future warfare? All the elements of the nitty-gritty of how you build a military and how you commit it to fight in certain places. That's defence strategy.

So grand strategy is the big idea. Military strategy is how the armed forces support that grand idea with the military instrument of national power.

Keith 04:04

Why do people conflate the two often in American public discourse when it comes to America's military involvement overseas?

Michael O'Hanlon 04:11

I'm not sure how many people lose a lot of sleep over this issue, because political scientists try to be very precise with their terms, but most normal people and most normal politicians don't really insist on using that kind of language.

The term grand strategy is sort of a grand term. It's a fancy word. It's not really a phrase we use a lot in normal conversation. Military strategy is a word you hear quite a bit, and it covers everything from how you fight a certain war to how you prepare for a possible future war or how you try to prevent that future war.

Political scientists sometimes try to explain these terms very clearly, and some of them say that grand strategy is just how you try to make your country safe. But in the United States context, that's not a good enough definition, because for the first half of our history, our goal was not just to be safe. It was to be more powerful and bigger, to cover more of the territory of North America, and to have the resource base to build a military that, if we wished, could do other things and bigger, mightier things.

In that sense, there are at least three definitions out there and it's confusing. One is how do you keep yourself safe. One is how do you keep yourself safe and powerful. And the third is how do you guide your overall foreign policy — not just defence, but economics and diplomacy.

I think that last definition is too big and broad and not specific enough to really be very useful. And the first definition does not do very well at explaining the United States. So I settle on this definition of grand strategy: it's how you try to keep the country secure, but also how you try to make the country powerful militarily. That's the way I think about the term.

Keith 06:22

I wanted to quote this from page 13 of your book. You said the Revolutionary War was the main existential struggle in American history. The very creation of the United States hinged on its outcome. Only in the Civil War, which threatened to divide the country in two, and then World War II, which had the potential to rip the entire planet apart and perhaps even lead to a direct attack on the US mainland if Hitler had realised his greatest dreams — so here we see three wars that shaped America. Maybe it might be useful before we jump into the present to go back to the start, to the Revolutionary War. You describe it as an existential struggle. Can you tell me more about how the Revolutionary War shaped America's outlook towards defence strategy?

Michael O'Hanlon 07:10

That's a great question and I look forward to responding to that. Let me also say there were a couple of other wars that were important for the United States because they involved our expansion into a great power.

One of those was the US-Mexico War of 1846 to 1848, where we wound up with the entire southwest of the United States. Previously that had been Spanish and then Mexican, and we essentially forced Mexico to give it to us. And of course also all the battles over the centuries against Native American tribes who were here before the United States was ever present. This raises a lot of difficult ethical issues, but in terms of the expansion of the country, those battles were crucial as well.

But you're right, the Revolutionary War was the war that gave us our independence. I think at a military level, the most interesting part of the Revolutionary War legacy to me is that George Washington figured out how to change from fighting a traditional open field battle kind of conflict against the British. He realised pretty soon he was going to lose that, especially in New York City in 1776, and he had to be more of a counterpuncher. He was one of the modern world's original guerrilla warfare experts — not quite guerrilla warfare in the sense of Ho Chi Minh, but he tried to counterpunch and avoid the battle in many cases rather than engage in it.

George Washington realised defending New York, defending any given city like Philadelphia, was not really essential. He could afford to lose those cities temporarily as long as the army stayed intact and still had resources to keep punching and punishing the British. That led to a couple of big victories, for example in Saratoga in 1777.

Then France joined the American side. Without France, I'm not sure that the United States would have won that war. But France, always at war with Britain throughout this whole period, joined once they realised the United States had an idea for how to fight the British that might just work.

It was counterpunching. It was an alternative to open field battle. It was a little bit like guerrilla warfare in some cases, although Washington was willing to have big fights with the British if he had the right circumstances and conditions. Fascinating conflict militarily and obviously crucial to the country's independence.

Keith 10:05

You spoke about the early republic leaders like Washington and Jefferson. They were almost allergic to a standing army of sorts. I think you alluded to how Washington, when he stepped down from power, voluntarily stepped down as president and was happy to wash his hands of future military engagements. So the question would be, where does this sort of assertiveness come from if the founding fathers didn't really have that strain in them?

Michael O'Hanlon 10:42

I love George Washington just like almost every other American. But Washington himself was ambitious in the sense that, yes, he stepped down from the presidency after two terms and he set a great example and became a magnificent influence on our future politics.

But as soon as he won the Revolutionary War in 1783, he set off to the west of the United States. At that time, the west was not very far west. It was Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He rode there on horseback, then took a boat down the Ohio River. He was interested in bringing Ohio, which was then part of the Northwest Territories, into the United States and building a big canal from the Ohio River to the Potomac River, creating this broader eastern United States that went well beyond the original colonies.

Washington was not content just to have our independence. He wanted to expand our territory, and this was more or less accepted by everybody at that time. It was not a debate. There were other debates that were very vigorous, and the early decades of the United States were not always happy and not always peaceful. Remember the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, for example. In the early 19th century, there were a lot of very ugly political engagements. But everybody pretty much agreed we needed to go west, needed to keep expanding. That started with Washington and others of his generation.

In that sense, Washington was not a minimalist. He did not want to be the general forever. He did not want to be the president forever. But he wanted the United States to keep growing.

Keith 12:40

On page 23, you talk about how Washington stayed true to the idea that the federal government needed to be strong enough to hold together and protect the union. Was it that once you achieved a union, a United States of America, you needed to draw down militarily? Or did the expansionist train continue even after him? Help us understand a little bit more about America's expansionist tendencies in those early years.

Michael O'Hanlon 13:06

There were a lot of things going on in those early years. Some people considered the United States to be a plural word — that this was a confederation of 13 states, and the states were the most powerful. They had collectively decided to fight the British and collectively defeated the British, but their main loyalties were to their own states. We saw this again 80 years later in the Civil War, where the South felt that states' rights were more important than federal rights.

In those early years in the 1790s, with Washington as president and Alexander Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury, the United States decided to behave more like a single unified country. All the debts of the different 13 colonies were brought together under federal control. The federal government assumed responsibility for those. The federal government imposed its own taxation policy on states, even where some places like Pennsylvania, with the Whiskey Rebellion in the 1790s, did not really want that kind of federal influence.

Washington, Hamilton, and later John Adams were instrumental in creating this sense of a single unified country. That was not really solidified until 1865 with the end of the Civil War and the defeat of the Confederacy. But it was fascinating to watch how, for the early decades of American history, some people really wanted the individual state to have the centre of power in our system, while others thought that the federal government should be ultimately the arbiter and the most powerful part of the government. Obviously the latter won out, but only really with the Union victory over the Confederacy in 1865.

Keith 15:07

I now have to move on to this seemingly unimportant war, but a war that you talk about quite often — the War of 1812. You describe it as powerful evidence in support of your main observation about America's strategic character, which is its highly assertive and self-confident nature. It picked a fight with the world's number one power at the time, which was Britain. Why was the War of 1812 so important in understanding America's strategic character today?

Michael O'Hanlon 15:38

First of all, for friends in Singapore and everywhere else who may be watching this show, it is fascinating. The American national anthem was written during the War of 1812 — "The Star-Spangled Banner" — and you probably watched some of our athletes singing it at the Olympics. It's a famous song.

But if you ask Americans what the War of 1812 was about, most of them cannot tell you. I know this because I've been giving a lot of speeches about my book and I sometimes ask people who feels like they understand that war, and hardly ever does anyone raise their hand — except in Baltimore, Maryland, where the Star-Spangled Banner was written close by. That's where the British assault on the United States sort of ended in 1814, leading to the negotiated settlement of 1815.

Basically, the War of 1812 reflected an American assertiveness because we thought the Brits were being a little bit mean and unfair in the way they would impose tariffs on us, because we still wanted to trade with France. France was ruled by Napoleon. Napoleon was trying to conquer all of Europe and Britain didn't like that, understandably. But we said we're not part of that war; we're going to trade with whoever we want. So Britain started imposing tariffs and also stealing some of our sailors from ships to put on British ships through the policy of impressment. Those were the causes of the War of 1812.

But what I say is that psychologically, the real cause was American confidence and assertiveness and a desire not to put up with this kind of treatment, even by the world's number one power. You might have thought that after winning the Revolutionary War, we would be content to leave Britain alone, not look for a rematch, not try to have a second fight with the world's number one military power. But we decided that we would prefer to fight them rather than put up with mistreatment.

That led to the War of 1812, which really resolved nothing. Ultimately, it was essentially stopped three years later with none of the underlying issues resolved. Britain did stop taking our sailors and putting them on British ships, but for the most part, the territorial gains were insignificant on either side. Nobody really won. Yes, the British burned Washington DC, but we just fled back into the hinterland just like we had in the Revolutionary War. Britain was not going to be capable of dominating the whole United States, so they didn't really win the war because they took Washington or torched the White House.

It was sort of an inconclusive war, but it reflected this American assertiveness that I think is pretty strong in our national character and was always pretty strong in our national character.

Keith 18:48

Despite this strong and consistent assertiveness in America's national character, there seems to be a trending view that America was actually relatively isolationist. Naturally, my question is, where did this stance or belief come from?

Michael O'Hanlon 19:03

The simplest answer is that now in today's world, we Americans think of our natural borders as the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean and Canada and Mexico, because we're used to that. All of us were born when that was already true. But that was not the original condition of the country. Those were not the original borders.

The original United States was a small piece of land along the Atlantic seacoast of North America, stretching from today's New England down to Georgia, not even including Florida. We pushed west and roughly quintupled the size of the country in the next century — magnified our territory by five or six times.

When we look back on it, we Americans think those are the natural borders of the country. So we don't even think of this first 125 years as being a period of assertiveness. We think of it as consolidating our territory. But talk to the Mexicans, talk to the Spaniards who were in Florida, talk to the Native Americans. They will understand better than we sometimes do ourselves that the United States was pushing them off land they previously controlled.

That's why I say the United States — I think we're a very good country. I think it's good that we became powerful and big because it helped us have the resources to win the World Wars, to prevail in the Cold War. I think we've been a generally positive force for world peace and international stability. But we did not become big through any kind of minimalist approach to foreign policy. We were pushing and expanding and looking for new opportunity from the very beginning of this country's founding.

Keith 20:56

As an aside, I just wanted to ask you a little bit more about how you grapple with these questions of history, especially when we learn that a lot of the history was actually written in blood, especially of its less powerful neighbours.

Michael O'Hanlon 21:10

In the book, my book is a history of defence strategy. In a sense, I don't really have to answer your question about the ethics, because what I'm trying to describe is what happened and what strategies were guiding this behaviour.

But I acknowledge — I don't want to completely ignore the important ethical issues. There are some very tough ethical questions to wrestle with as an American. I have friends who are Native Americans and I have friends who are Mexicans. To go through our history and justify everything we did to push and expand our territory is not really going to work with them. It's not going to seem credible.

I can't go back in time and change any of that. I would acknowledge that the expansion of this country under a new system of government the world had never seen allowed us to have the resource base to defeat the Nazis and the Tojo government in World War II and prevail in the Cold War. In the grand scheme of things, over 250 years of American history, I think we've had a lot of beneficial results from this expansion of the United States into a continental power and ultimately the world's number one superpower throughout the 20th century and into the 21st.

But that's not to say it was all done in a proper and ethical manner. I think you can really debate the ethics of this.

Let me make one more point. Taking land from Native Americans was a sad chapter in our history, just like having slaves in the first 80 years of our country was sad. But with Mexico, it's interesting that Mexico inherited the American Southwest from Spain. Mexico became independent in 1821 and had very little control of territories that are now California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada. They had a claim to it based on the fact that Spain had stolen or taken that land.

So the idea that the United States would simply defer to Mexico inheriting this land from Spain in what was a big imperial conquest from a previous century — I'm not going to feel too bad about that. I think the United States was a more natural country to control the current southwest than Mexico or Spain. I'm not going to lose too much sleep over the fact that the United States expanded in the Southwest in a way that was at the detriment of Mexico.

Our battles against Native Americans — they trouble me. I can't really justify those. If I could go back and redo the history, I would try to find a way to share the land with the Native Americans much better than we did.

If I could make one other comment — today's China likes to say that it's basically peaceful, that it has a Confucian ethic, that it hasn't been launching foreign wars for a long time, and that in the 19th and 20th century, China was a victim of European and Japanese aggression. All that's true. But let's also remember that China became a continental power by conquest a long time ago. Both China and the United States had grown into these giant countries because they were willing to use military force against their neighbours. It's a reality of human history we're just going to have to accept. We can't change it, but we should be aware of it.

Keith 25:28

I was wondering if you personally had to grapple with these questions as you were writing the book, because I can't imagine going through 250 years of history, a lot of it being bloody, without it stirring some thoughts within yourself.

Michael O'Hanlon 25:42

You're right. I think when you're thinking about history, it's good to wrestle with some of these ethical issues. Even if you know you can't change the past, and even if you know that maybe the overall good was greater than the overall bad, it's still worth reflecting on the nature of human beings and human government.

If nothing else, it should remind us all that we are all capable of making mistakes. I think that should be sobering in a world where the great powers are all pursuing their own advantage and where Russia's attacking Ukraine and China's flexing its muscle in the Western Pacific. We all need to be aware that everyone's capable of making a mistake, and sometimes the goal should be to try to walk back from the brink rather than to have a great showdown.

Keith 26:34

I was just struck by how impressive America's rise was from its birth to today. It's only been 250 years and it's emerged from one small European-sized country and become the world's leading superpower. I think that's very impressive, but you can only understand the scale or the rapidity of its rise when you take a step back.

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The full question I had was actually about the uneasy relationship or dichotomy between grand strategy and defence strategy that you pointed out in the early 1900s, where America was going through a relatively isolationist interlude but at the same time was building a lot of capabilities — be it military institutions or industrial capability.

Michael O'Hanlon 27:35

There are a couple of periods within this time. When you go to the late 19th century, the United States is becoming one of the world's dominant industrial powers. We had a lot of thinking at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, with Alfred Thayer Mahan, a great writer, arguing that the United States should take advantage of this moment and become one of the world's great naval powers. That debate continued.

But we also continued to believe that Europe's ground wars were sort of stupid and unnecessary and not wars that we should allow ourselves to be dragged into. So yes, we wanted to be a world-class naval power. We did not really want to be a world-class ground force because we didn't want to use that military to fight wars over borders in Europe. That seemed unimportant to us.

It's understandable for a while why we didn't want to get into World War I, why Woodrow Wilson thought it was a silly war — a war of imperialist, jealous powers. I think Wilson was right about a lot of that. But unfortunately, as time went by, we realised that maybe Germany was the bigger problem and really needed to be dealt with. Then of course in World War II, Germany was the huge problem and definitely needed to be defeated.

But between World War I and World War II, we decided we didn't want any of this. All the progress we had made with our navy, we basically dismantled a lot of it. We no longer tried to compete with Japan in the Pacific. We tried to pretend that World War I was a war that happened by mistake, that we should never have gotten involved. We allowed the Europeans and our own military-industrial complex to drag us into that. The presidents of the 1920s and early 1930s just tried to say, "Let's just ignore all that."

So that was the great isolationism in American history. It was interesting because in the 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, and 1910s, we were building up this big navy because we wanted to be a great global power. But in the 1920s and 1930s, we decided to ignore that and just hope we could not be bothered with Asia or Europe any longer. Of course, that proved to be a great mistake.

Keith 30:10

World War II — that's the moment where America became truly a superpower. Its industrial capability matched its ambitions as a power. How did American military leaders and political leaders see themselves being involved in the war as it progressed?

Michael O'Hanlon 30:33

In 1935 and 1937, the United States Congress passed neutrality acts that prevented us from even helping Britain and France with their military modernisation. We couldn't even sell them weapons, even as Hitler was rising in Europe and starting to do terrible things.

Then by the late 1930s, Hitler starts attacking countries. In 1939, it's Poland. In 1940, it's France. In 1941, it's the Soviet Union, after attacking the Balkans. At this point, we're starting to wake up, but not completely. We're still hoping maybe we can stay out of it.

The best single indication I can give you is that in 1940 — remember, 1940 was the year in the spring when Hitler conquered France as well as Belgium and Norway, and revealed just how sinister his goals were — that year, the United States passed a law to allow for military conscription, drafting young men to join the army. But in the summer of 1941, Hitler had already attacked the Soviet Union as of June. We had not yet had Pearl Harbor — that was December. In the summer of 1941, the US Congress had to decide whether to continue the draft, and it passed by one vote.

At this point, we had started to provide weapons to Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, but we still wanted to stay out of it. We did not want to get involved directly. So those are some of the big milestones: the 1935 and 1937 neutrality acts, the 1940–41 conscription policy, and then Lend-Lease in 1941 that started to help us provide weapons to our friends.

But it was not until the Pearl Harbor attack, and then Germany deciding to declare war on the United States right after that, that we really realised we could not stay out of this war.

Keith 32:54

It might be useful to take a step back and put these three wars into context. The Revolutionary War established that America would exist. The Civil War proved that you could have total industrial-scale warfare without the country collapsing on itself. And World War II really transformed America into not just an industrial power but a foreign military superpower. Is that the right understanding?

Michael O'Hanlon 33:22

Yes, but I would also add the US-Mexico War of 1846 to 1848, because that created the size and scale of the country — together with all the individual battles against Native American tribes throughout the 18th and 19th centuries that contributed to the control of this entire big resource base.

Originally, the United States was sort of the equivalent of another European country in size, population, and scale. If that had remained the case, we could never have played the role we did in the 20th and 21st centuries. So it required the expansion, then the Civil War to reconsolidate the country, and then the industrial revolution to give us the kind of economic, scientific, and industrial power that we brought to bear.

It's all those things together. But yes, I would otherwise say you're exactly right. That's the way to think of our history. We're into a new phase now and who knows where this one is going, but ever since the 1940s, the United States has thought of itself as a global power — as the global power.

Keith 34:30

Another interesting point you made was this idea of looking back at the Cold War with rose-tinted glasses or having a certain nostalgic view of that period. But you pointed out that during the early stages of the Cold War especially, it was actually very terrifying. There were a lot of difficult decisions being made. You made this point about President Eisenhower, where he was the president who had to resolve some serious military quandaries, and some of the solutions he proposed were going to be extremely violent or costly.

Michael O'Hanlon 35:12

Think of it this way. Douglas MacArthur — who I think was not a very great general, but maybe I'm unusual in that opinion — in the Korean War, he was fired because he threatened nuclear attack against China. He wanted the United States to attack China on the mainland and maybe use nuclear weapons. Of course, it was not his job to have that opinion because he was a uniformed military commander, not a politician. But it was seen as outlandish and he was fired.

Then Dwight Eisenhower becomes president and he proposes the same kind of idea to try to force China to negotiate an end to the Korean War. This is a very calm guy, the hero of World War II, and yet he is threatening nuclear attack. He did it again over the Taiwan Strait crisis in the 1950s.

We had a period which was very tumultuous, very unsettled, very scary, and we sort of got through it. Then we had Berlin and the Cuban Missile Crisis of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Then we had the Vietnam War, which was extremely scary to people of my generation — well, actually, people just a little bit older. I was still a kid during the Vietnam War, didn't really understand it, but it affected the country profoundly.

The United States in the 1950s and 1960s was a very unsettled place. This notion that we somehow had a very clear sense of purpose in the Cold War and we were all working together and didn't really disagree with each other — that's not true. It was tough and it was scary.

Then the 1970s, we felt defeated in many ways by the loss of the military campaign in Vietnam, by the oil price shocks, by the stagflation of the Carter years, going into the 1980 failed Iranian hostage rescue mission. That whole period was unhappy.

The United States in these Cold War years was not some great bastion of happiness, power, strength, and consensus. We were often fighting with each other and we were often very scared about what was going to happen next in the world. I don't think the Cold War mellowed out until the mid-1980s. That was the first time when Gorbachev came to power and we were starting to ratchet back.

Keith 37:48

I remember there were a few interviews of Lee Kuan Yew talking about the US role in Vietnam. It was deeply unpopular in Southeast Asia, the American presence. But I think he was one of the huge defenders of American involvement because it was essentially a public good — it provided for regional security to a certain extent.

Michael O'Hanlon 38:18

I hope that some American military men and women who served in that period listened to your comment, because for our country it was a disaster. It was the worst war we ever fought in our whole history. It was a war that maybe we should never have fought in the first place. It was a war that we fought very badly. It was a war that tore us apart internally, and it was a war that we lost.

But you're right, there might have been some additional effects that were in some cases not all bad. At least we showed the Soviet Union and China that we would push back even in a place like Vietnam, which for the United States is very far away and not really at the centre of geopolitics.

My own view is we should not have fought that war. But because we did, and because a lot of American men and women — especially men, but also women — lost their lives, served their country, and came home traumatised in many cases, I do want them to know that there may have been some broader benefits to this conflict, even though I think it was still a bad idea.

Keith 39:26

I think his comment was that having fought the war, it wasn't a complete failure.

It might be useful to also elaborate a little bit more about America's role in the Cold War, where you pointed out it wasn't just about containing the Soviet Union, which although was crucial in its Cold War strategy. You pointed out it was containment plus building an alliance structure, building multilateral institutions. So what about America's Cold War strategy remains misunderstood today, and how should one actually understand America's defence strategy during that period?

Michael O'Hanlon 40:16

In this period, we wanted to contain the communist threat, but we also wanted to strengthen the underlying democratic community — and not just pure democracies, but countries that had elements of democracy, like Singapore, that still wanted to play by the rules and be contributing and fair-minded members of the international community.

We realised we needed to strengthen that group of nations in order to buttress our position vis-à-vis Moscow and Beijing. So there was a positive side to the grand strategy in addition to the negative side of pushing back against communist expansion. The positive side endured even after the Cold War ended.

Now, President Trump is calling into question a lot of those precepts and principles, and we'll see where the United States goes next. But I think the Cold War grand strategy was not just about fighting communism. It was also about building a community of market-oriented, fair-minded, pro-human rights countries that, in varying degrees of democracy, still wanted to better the condition of their own people and work together to build a more prosperous planet.

Keith 41:35

If you look at America's formula throughout the Cold War to the end of it, it wasn't just containment but also actively building partnerships and alliances, however imperfect they may be. We think about the multilateral institutions — the IMFs, the World Banks, the United Nations — and their crucial role in upholding American primacy.

Naturally, the following question I had was, when you reached the end of the Cold War, there was this idea by Francis Fukuyama about the end of history, where America's unipolar moment had become a new norm. How real was this impression?

Michael O'Hanlon 42:27

I think back to the end of the Cold War. That was 1989. I was 28 years old. I had just finished graduate school. I had just arrived in Washington. It wasn't a bad period in US history.

But one of the ways to understand where our collective mindset was is to think back to a famous book written then by Paul Kennedy called "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers." Ironically, this book was written throughout much of the 1980s, published in 1987, and became popular in 1988 and 1989, just as the Cold War was ending. It basically said the last 500 years of history should tell the United States that we are probably now on the decline and other countries are probably going to surpass us.

At that point, we were worried about Japan and Germany — two of our friends, two of our allies. It wasn't so much that we resented their success. We worried about ourselves. We didn't think we had the same prowess, the same ability to reach the new frontiers of technology and manufacturing that we had had in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.

Even though the Vietnam War was terrible in the 1960s, we reached the moon in 1969. The 1960s are a fascinating period of almost strategic schizophrenia in the United States. We were still feeling very good about our capabilities, but we were fighting this war in a place we wished we weren't, dividing the country.

By the 1980s, even though Ronald Reagan ultimately made the country feel better about itself and strengthened the military and helped win the Cold War — and when you look back, it seems like it must have been a wonderful time — Paul Kennedy's book captured the moment almost better than anybody else. He was saying, "I think we're in decline, like Britain in the early 20th century or other great powers in previous periods."

So there was never this moment of triumphalism. There really wasn't. If you look at the economic trend lines, it's really in the 1980s and 1990s and thereafter where American manufacturing was declining, the American middle-class dream was becoming less realistic, people no longer felt that their kids were going to have a better life than they had. We started to have this polarisation in American society to some extent between the white-collar and the blue-collar workforce. That was really already starting to happen in the late 1980s.

When I look back on my life, I don't really see any period where the United States was fundamentally happy and content. We were always anxious about something.

Keith 45:26

As America entered into the Iraq War, you were one of the earlier commentators that pointed out that a war in Iraq was going to be much more protracted, bloodier, and violent than people thought. There was a Washington consensus at the time that viewed America as going to achieve a swift and decisive victory. Can you speak a little bit more about the concerns you had about America entering the Iraq War, and what were the underlying motivations that pushed US involvement into the Middle East?

Michael O'Hanlon 46:01

9/11 was scary in the United States. I know you saw a little bit of this in Indonesia in the same period — in 2002, I believe — and of course Pakistan contributed to an attack on India in 2008 that had a little bit of the same feel. But both of those attacks, in Bali and in India, were 200 people killed. The United States was 3,000 people killed in one day.

This was a huge shock. The United States felt vulnerable. We didn't know who had nuclear weapons, if al-Qaeda could get its hands on nuclear weapons, if Manhattan would be threatened. I was in Tokyo the day of the 9/11 attacks. It happened in the nighttime in East Asia, the morning in the United States. I remember I couldn't sleep that whole night because I was in a hotel in a skyscraper.

Then I started to think that East Asia was not really part of this fight, except maybe Indonesia and the Philippines. But my point is simply to say that for the United States, this was really scary. We realised we were the target and we spent a lot of the next few years trying to figure out how to make sure a 9/11 never happens again. We had a lot of good ideas for how to do that and also a lot of bad ideas. We made a lot of mistakes, especially in Iraq.

But we were doing it primarily out of fear. I don't think we were doing it primarily out of arrogance. It was primarily out of fear that it could happen again and be even worse next time. That was a defining moment in American national security policy. It really played out for the next 10 to 20 years.

Really only Donald Trump changed that, because when he first ran for president in 2015, he told Republicans that they had supported these big wars overseas too much. It was a mistake. We needed to focus more on our own defence and get out of these long, protracted conflicts. It was sort of stunning that Donald Trump could take the Republican Party away from George W. Bush and people like that and turn the Republicans into more of a stay-at-home, focus-on-the-Western-Hemisphere party, because we had sort of overreacted to 9/11 and then maybe overreacted in the other direction 10 or 15 years later.

Keith 48:53

Here's a quote from your book. You said that the paradox of American power is that since 1945, the nation has developed and implemented the most successful grand strategy in the history of civilisation, even as it continued to struggle on the battlefield — meaning it lost a lot of wars that were pretty much inconsequential, but from a grand strategy level, it was relatively successful. Naturally, I have to ask, what were the lessons from the Iraq War that one should actually learn?

Michael O'Hanlon 49:27

It's sort of like Vietnam. The first lesson is try never to fight this kind of war again. We're not very good at it. When you're done with it, it seems less important than it seemed at the time. We could actually afford to lose these wars, which makes you wonder why we fight them in the first place. Why would we want to spend so many of our resources and lose so many American lives on conflicts that turn out to not be that important? So that's one lesson.

But another lesson is these wars tend to happen anyway, even if you decide you don't want to be part of them. And a third lesson is that actually showing resoluteness in places around the world helps us convince friends like Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore, Western Europe, and Middle East allies that we are a dependable partner. Because if we would fight for Vietnam and Afghanistan and Iraq, of course we would fight in defence of more important allies or more strategically important partners.

Obviously, Iraqis and Afghans and Vietnamese are very important and great people, but in terms of their significance for the global economy or for the United States, they are less crucial than Japan or Western Europe or South Korea, Australia, or Singapore. In a sense, we are signalling that we're very committed to stay engaged in the world, and that's an important message to send.

I still wish we had found a way to do it without these terrible, protracted, bloody conflicts in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan — especially Vietnam and Iraq. Those are the two that I think are the most troublesome for most Americans.

Keith 51:14

Why did the US perhaps still continue to venture there? Was it because of this fear, as you pointed out?

Michael O'Hanlon 51:20

It's worth going back to study the Nixon presidency, because I think Richard Nixon was one of our most flawed presidents but also one of our most brilliant. He realised when he ran for president that we did not really need to win the Vietnam War. We could even afford to lose it. But he developed a whole strategy for losing the war without really admitting we had lost it.

He bombed in Cambodia and in Hanoi. He tried to have the Paris peace talks give a certain amount of cover to our withdrawal. Then he opened up the relationship with China. He was doing a lot of different things all at the same time. He did not want to admit that we had lost. He wanted it to look more complicated and to have other positive things happening at the same time.

I'm not supportive of his bombing of Cambodia or some of the other things he did, but the overall strategy was complex and fairly well thought through. He realised as an American president it was not going to work politically at home, and maybe not internationally, to just accept a defeat. You had to wrap it up in a broader strategy.

It took him four years to do that. By the time he finished, he had been impeached. A very complex American president. He will always be one of the most controversial and complex presidents in our history. But I think that shows just how much we wanted to make a change but also not do so quickly or in a way that was admitting defeat. We wanted to find a way to wrap it in a broader new strategy.

Keith 53:26

With the benefit of hindsight, what would your post-mortem of America's involvement in the Iraq War be?

Michael O'Hanlon 53:34

One thing about Iraq is we were not ready for that kind of fighting, because the US Army had decided it didn't want to be ready for that kind of counterinsurgency. Vietnam's lesson was: don't prepare for it and maybe you won't have to do it. That was the wrong lesson.

Luckily, in Iraq we had better commanders than we did in Vietnam, especially David Petraeus. We had a more humane way of fighting that focused more on protecting civilians. Ultimately, we found a way to limit our involvement. We were not quite as preoccupied with Iraq as we had been with Vietnam.

Iraq was still a very unfortunate experience, but it was not nearly as bad as Vietnam. We ultimately extricated ourselves with some hope that Iraq as a nation will move forward in a positive way, but with far fewer casualties and far less of a blow to our overall national esteem than Vietnam caused.

Keith 54:44

We sprinted through 250 years of American history and understood America's growth and development as a superpower all the way to the end of the Cold War. I wanted to ask you, if you look at someone like President Trump today and we take a historical lens, consulting the American history you've unpacked in your book, how should we understand and interpret President Trump's strategy in this new era?

Michael O'Hanlon 55:11

It's hard to make sense of President Trump in one final question. But what I would say is that he reminds me of a lot of our 19th-century presidents at the time of American expansionism. He doesn't really fit very well in the 21st century or even most of the 20th century.

He is not isolationist. He wants to be involved in everything. Sometimes that's good, sometimes that's bad. He is not like our 1920s and 1930s presidents — Warren Harding, Herbert Hoover, Calvin Coolidge — who were content to just focus on the United States. He is very global. He wants to have a hand in every part of the world. He also wants to expand the country's power and maybe even its territory, like many 19th-century presidents.

I am not a supporter of President Trump, but I do see echoes of his behaviour coming out of the 19th century.

Keith 56:18

The last question I have for you is slightly different from the one I ask every other guest. I'm going to ask you this: if you were in the room today with President Trump and you had 15 minutes with him and you could pitch him on how he should conduct foreign policy, what would your pitch sound like?

Michael O'Hanlon 56:38

I sort of like the way he's handling China overall. Maybe the tariffs aren't always perfect, but he wants to maintain a positive rapport with Xi Jinping at the same time that he's pushing back against certain Chinese policies. I like that.

I also like the fact that he's become a much clearer supporter of President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people. I would encourage him to go further and actually have policies that back up Ukraine, including new American aid packages for Ukraine and tougher economic punishment on Russia.

I would encourage him to keep trying to make peace in the Middle East and to challenge Israel and promote a two-state solution with the idea of a Palestinian state someday, and to do that with the kind of energy that he is capable of providing.

I would encourage him to stop picking fights with our European allies. I think that's weakening deterrence and stability in Europe. It was very scary last month when he seemed to want to take Greenland militarily. That was frankly ridiculous. That's the single most anxiety-provoking and concerning policy of his to me. I would ask him to discard that way of thinking.

Venezuela, Mexico — these are complicated issues. I don't want to get into them case by case right now. But I would say he's doing okay with China, he's doing better with Russia, but let's remember the importance of allies and friends. And definitely don't pick these fights inside NATO the way that he's been doing lately.

Keith 58:30

With those illuminating insights, Professor O'Hanlon, thank you so much for gracing the show. Always welcome to have you back again.

Michael O'Hanlon 58:38

I would enjoy that. Thank you very much.

Keith 58:42

Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you are watching this on YouTube, please consider subscribing and turning on notifications for whenever new episodes are out. If you're on Spotify or Apple, it would help us greatly if you could leave a five-star review on those platforms.

George Yeo is a former Singaporean Cabinet Minister whose distinguished career in public service spanned twenty-three years. Between 1988 and 2011, he held several senior portfolios in the Singapore Government, most notably serving as the Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2004 to 2011, as well as the Minister for Trade and Industry and the Minister for Information and the Arts.

After retiring from politics, he transitioned into the global business arena, where he served as the Chairman of Kerry Logistics Network for several years.

Today, he continues to contribute his expertise as a Senior Adviser to both the Kuok Group and Kerry Logistics.

Beyond his business interests, George Yeo is a prolific intellectual and a bridge-builder between civilizations. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and a member of the Board of Trustees of Berggruen Institute.

His commitment to interreligious dialogue is reflected in his long-standing service to the Vatican, where he served a member of the Council for the Economy under Pope Francis.

A widely respected voice on geopolitics and Asian history, he recently authored the acclaimed three-part series, George Yeo: Musings.

He remains one of the most insightful commentators on the evolving relationship between the East and the West and the future of international cooperation in a multipolar world.

00:00 Trailer & Intro
01:13 Rome to Today: World Orders Explained
03:30 Why Global Stability Is Gone
05:45 The New Power Poles
08:00 AI and the Fragmented World
10:51 Making Decisions in Chaos
13:00 How to Learn Today
16:30 Why the West Sees Thucydides
19:00 Understanding Other Civilisations
22:00 How Trust Works
25:41 How To Understand China
28:00 Trump as an Agent of History
31:24 What Drove the MAGA Phenomenon
34:00 Can America Heal Itself?
39:23 The US Dollar's Uncertain Future
43:00 Gold, Bitcoin & Fiat Money
46:19 Gaza, Singapore & Staying Neutral
49:40 The Diplomat's Deal
51:51 Why Long-Term Thinking Wins
53:15 Taiwan: Will There Be War?
57:00 Cross-Strait Politics & What's Shifting
59:18 What Singapore Must Become
01:02:30 Singapore's Lesson
01:04:42 Balancing Global and Local
01:06:18 Lessons From Public Service
01:08:18 The Taoist View of Existence
01:09:02 One Piece of Advice

This is the 77th episode Of The Front Row Podcast

Keith 00:00:44

I had the privilege of speaking with George Yeo, Singapore's former foreign minister and one of the most astute geopolitical analysts of today. In this conversation, we unpack the coming global multipolarity and figure out how small states like Singapore can survive in this global disorder. I hope you'll enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

You once alluded to the three-body problem as an accurate description of what the coming multipolar world will look like. I wanted to get your sense of why this specific analogy — and perhaps sketch out for us how we should feel when this coming multipolar world arrives.

George Yeo 00:01:26

If it's a unipolar world, like what it would have been for people living around the Mediterranean during the Roman Empire, there is a certain stability and certainty about life. You conform, and if you're a Roman citizen, you get certain privileges. If you are difficult, you get smacked down, and life went on. Trade flourished. Of course, it can't last, because it leads to corruption and all the excesses of the Roman Empire.

If you are in a bipolar world, like during the Cold War, there was a certain stability maintained by a nuclear arch where each side could destroy the other completely. It was stable because each had a counter-strike capability. A whole theory developed around nuclear warfare which maintained an arc of stability during the period when both the US and the Soviet Union were equal military matches for each other.

With the collapse of the Berlin Wall, for a brief moment we were back to a unipolar world, and a certain hubris infected American thinking. The neocons started nursing almost untreatable ambitions about US dominance in the world. It's very ahistorical, because the world doesn't stay still.

I remember Lee Kuan Yew saying, when the Berlin Wall fell, that the ice has cracked — meaning it's a glacier, and now the ice has cracked. That's just the beginning of further cracking, the development of which would be difficult to predict, but which follows a certain direction.

In a sense, we're seeing the world still cracking, and there's no going back to a unipolar world. However strong China becomes, it will not dominate in that way, and that's not how it sees itself. It's a subject I've talked about repeatedly — China is a universe unto itself. The rest of the world can disappear. It has really no wish to dominate the entire world, because that makes the whole job of internal governance infinitely more difficult. Governance is difficult enough with a homogeneous population. If their population were to become heterogeneous the way Western society has become, then all that Confucius and Mencius have bequeathed onto the Chinese people would become almost impossible to follow.

So we can't avoid the world becoming multipolar — with China as one big pole, the US remaining a very big pole, and Europe separating but becoming a pole unto itself.

Whether Europe can become a unified pole — this is the European experiment. We don't know. It's never existed before. Ever since the fall of Western Rome, many have tried to unify Europe.

But I often say, in an affectionate way, that the European peoples are tribal nations. They're passionate about being Portuguese, German, Bavarian, Dutch, or Croatian. And you say, "Well, come together." They've tried many times and always failed politically, but they are held together by a certain sense of all being inheritors of Greece and Rome, and most importantly, the Christian inheritance, which really unified Europe.

Now they've said religion should be set aside. Prince Charles talks about being not only the head of the Anglican Church but embracing all religions, which is a very humanistic thing to do. But it cuts into the very core of the European construction, which is a Christian basis giving it a civilisational quality, even though the constituent elements are tribal nations.

So Europe will be a kind of pole unto itself. After the Second World War, it was kept in place. But with Trump now, and with the Ukraine war not getting anywhere, there is a recognition that Europe must find its own future. Will it be a unified future? We don't know. But it's going to be a big drama in Europe.

Then in other parts of the world, you have India. India is too big to be anybody's sidekick. It's growing organically. It will become the world's second biggest economy later this century — I think that's a certainty, because of the size of its population, growing sometimes because of government, sometimes despite government. At the surface you'll find all kinds of excitement, but if you go down to the villages, to the countryside, to the smaller cities, they're all growing. Infrastructure is improving, people are getting more educated and connected. You can't hold them back.

So we now have a world with many poles — China, Europe, America, Russia, which will not be subjugated by anybody. People have tried in the past, to their grief. There's India, there's Brazil in South America, which represents a different vision from that of the north. Whether Brazil can become economically powerful, we don't know, but it certainly has a strong sense of itself. And then Africa — Africa doesn't belong to anybody. It belongs to Africans. It's three times the size of China, it's got over 50 countries, and they're all finding their way to the future with varying results.

It's going to be a messy world. So when I use the three-body metaphor, I'm saying that with just three bodies alone, the mathematics is impossible. With multiple poles like the period we're entering, there will be no stability. It'll be a kind of continuous movement — the ice continuing to crack — and people having to live with each other.

I don't think anybody can dominate everybody else. Some will try. There will be a lot of friction at the margins. Each pole will now develop its own character against the others. And even within each ice floe, technology — and now we have this AI revolution — is creating a lot of internal fissures. So there'll be further cracks.

We may find new collaborations, because the first stage is a breakdown of hierarchies into smaller and smaller pieces — fragmentation. But then the fragments are linking up in a kind of neural network configuration, made possible by the internet, by air travel, by drones, and so on.

So we're entering uncharted territory. No historian, no philosopher can anticipate it. It will be a world first empirically experienced and felt, and then philosophers and historians will rush to catch up and make sense of what's happening — and perhaps find a chance to give the evolution some direction.

This is what I meant when I said we're entering a kind of three-body, multi-body world.

Keith 00:10:53

You don't have the sense of certainty that existed in the past. Even at a micro level, the decisions you make — where to study, what kind of career to pursue, what kind of company to go to — it all seems harder than before.

George Yeo 00:11:07

Yes. I think it's a moment in history. It's like Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey — marking the end of an old epoch and the beginning of a new one, where that monolith appears and the orchestra strikes up that famous strain. And it begins, first, with violence.

So what is this world we're entering? At one level, there are new freedoms. We're no longer tied to a particular configuration because of where and when we were born. We can travel. We are connected. Money flows. We need not be trapped in any particular jurisdiction.

So patriotism — old-fashioned patriotism — is weakening. It will still be important, but there'll be new tribal affiliations, new religious affiliations. All of us, like a node in a network, will be tied to multiple nodes, not just to the one above and the ones below.

It affects countries, companies, families, and individuals. So what do I do? Will AI replace me? Do I become obsolete? I no longer have to learn how to code because AI will do the coding. How do I add value? What does life mean in this world?

There's a lot of questioning, and it's important to question. Because if you don't question and you think you know — you are definitely wrong. But if you think you're not sure, if you're confused — that's a very good start, because it begins a process of searching, of asking the right questions.

Keith 00:13:08

You take AI, you ask any question, and it pops out abundant answers. We don't trust everything, so we check multiple AI sites. What's your approach to navigating that?

George Yeo 00:13:22

Let's put it this way. You can put a child in the British Library, surrounded by all the knowledge of the world. Will all that knowledge go into the child's mind by osmosis? No. The key is: how does the child decide which book to access? The ability to identify what is useless, what is obsolete, what is interesting — and then hunt it down and read it — that is something no AI can teach the child.

And maybe in the world we're entering, this is the kind of education we need for ourselves. It's not about getting more knowledge. There's already too much knowledge, too much information. It is about what should be subtracted from that haystack. Which drawer do I go for?

I find myself no longer trusting any media outlet. I don't read newspapers. I don't have a go-to source of information. Instead, I say, "Oh, this subject looks important — the Japanese election, Ishiba just had a big victory. What does it mean? Whose analysis do I read?"

I can try to read some Japanese sources, but I don't read Japanese, so that's difficult. The South China Morning Post is not bad for Northeast Asia. If I want a particular point of view, I may want to read Chinese sources or Western sources. And then I think back — what is Japan in its history, in relation to its neighbours, to China, to America? If I were Japanese, what would be my deep desires, which prompted them to vote strongly for the LDP and for a fairly right-wing set of objectives?

Then you begin to form a view of what's happening. It takes time. If I happen to have a Japanese friend, there's an opportunity to learn — but don't depend on just one friend. Know from which standpoint your friend is giving his views. Is he young or old? Right-wing or left-wing? Then meet another, and another. After a while, you form a view.

So the process of learning is very active. It requires you to access diverse sources, to meet people, and to be intensely curious — not judging them, but seeking to understand why they hold a certain point of view, why they have certain hopes and fears.

Keith 00:16:26

You've alluded in other lectures to the fact that the West is very fond of the concept of the Thucydides Trap, and the way they see great power relations today isn't necessarily the multipolar view. They have this view that the US will dominate its part of the world as a regional hegemon, and China will become a regional hegemon in this part of the world. The question I've struggled to grapple with is: why is this thought so persistent?

George Yeo 00:17:07

You cannot escape your own history, because your history is embedded not just in your conscious mind but in your subconscious and unconscious. When we wake up every day, we can't begin at zero to decide how we relate to one another or what we do. Every day is just a delta upon what we inherited from yesterday.

Every human being who exists has embedded in him all the memories of his past. So if you are a Western student, you learn your own history — Greece and Rome, Judeo-Christianity, the Peloponnesian War, Napoleon. It is natural that you should view the present and the future in the terms you grew up with.

For East Asia, the dynamics of the Peloponnesian War might have occurred during weak periods — like between the end of the Han and the beginning of the Sui dynasty. Right now I'm watching a series called Nirvana in Fire, which marks the transition between the end of the Tang and the establishment of the Song. During such periods, kingdoms view each other in a very suspicious, paranoid way, which may hearken back to the Peloponnesian War.

But these are only brief periods in Chinese history. The rest of it is just internal governance. Foreign relations mattered only in periods when the realm was weak, and then external forces opportunistically came in to take advantage. So it's a very different view.

In Indonesia, in Japan, in Vietnam, you can't understand your own history without reference back to China and the great cycles of Chinese history. But no such equivalence existed in the West. In the West, at every period of history, religion played a role — particularly Christianity. And it's very difficult for the Chinese people to understand this, how religion can play such a role in human society. So they go to St. Peter's, they take photographs, they try to remember the names of popes and saints, but they find it baffling.

There's nothing to be surprised by. Each views the world through the prism of his own past.

Keith 00:20:29

But if we are prisoners of our own history, how then does one understand each other?

George Yeo 00:20:36

It's important not to see your own experience as universal, and to accept the possibility that there are other ways of viewing that same reality.

I found it interesting that Xi Jinping, when he met foreign leaders recently, said that China is like a big elephant, and different people feel different parts. One should continue to assemble these different perspectives together to form a view of the real China — which is probably too big for any one person, including even Chinese leaders, to fully comprehend.

This exercise requires humility. It requires a recognition that there are many things you don't know and that you should try to find out. Hold back the temptation to judge, to close the loop and say, "No, it must be this or it must be that." Just suspend judgment. Understand the reality, understand the dynamics, and gradually crystallise in your own mind a model of what the reality is — accepting that at any one time the model is imperfect and probably needs newer versions to replace it.

If our Western friends can see that of China, and if China can see that of the West, then they say: "Oh, now I understand why you said those things. Now I understand why you did those things." And then maybe, because we have a better grasp of the dynamics — you know, if you know yourself and you know the other side — you can strike better deals. Because there are things which are important to you but not important to me. I offer them to you. And in return, there are things which are important to me but not important to you. You offer them to me. Then it's win-win.

That is the kind of world we should be entering. And it requires a greater humility from each side about itself, and a greater willingness to accept that there is an internal logic to the way the other side behaves.

When I was in India recently, I had a session organised by an old friend. An Indian industrialist said, "Oh, I don't trust the Chinese. They will cheat you."

I had the same thing in Hong Kong and China — said about India. I said, "How could it be that the Chinese cannot be trusted? If the Chinese cannot be trusted, how can there be a Chinese economy? If India cannot be trusted, how can there be an Indian economy?" But each has its own system of trust. And when you don't understand it, you jump to the conclusion that they're cheats. And therefore, there's no room for negotiation.

But if you say, "Oh no, trust for them operates in this way" — a contract, yes, is very important, but litigation is frowned upon because it already represents a rupture. The essence of a contract should be a relationship. Whereas in the British legal tradition, a contract once signed is sealed. However the world changes after that, you're bound by it — and suing is almost commonplace. Don't take it personally.

I remember once: my brother was a doctor in Boston. My father went there for a cataract operation and it did not go well, and he became partially blind as a result. My American brothers who had immigrated said, "No, we should sue." My brother from Singapore, who had recommended the doctor, said, "How can you sue him? He did it as a favour to us, and these things happen."

The other brother said, "No, that's nothing personal — they all have insurance. You're just a statistic, and when it turns the other way, they just sue and get their claim."

I, being the youngest, watched this conversation with some interest. I said, "Wow, this reflects the perspective of two different worlds."

Keith 00:25:44

If you want full access to the transcripts of every episode, just head over to ykeith.com and you'll get full free access to each transcript. Now, back to the show.

To understand a country as big as China, you need to touch the elephant. And you've intimated how the system of trust in China works. I thought it would be useful to get your sense of what are some of the things you feel strongly about regarding China today — things that you think more people should better understand, that perhaps remain underappreciated or understated.

George Yeo 00:26:18

Singapore is between and between. My mother came from China. She spoke no Mandarin, no English throughout her life. My conversation with her was in limited Teochew. She spoke some Malay in the marketplace and some Cantonese, but that was it. And somehow we were able to communicate. Looking back, I thought it was a very low level of communication — but she had the greatest influence on me, because there are things which are passed on not just by words. There are things which exist on other planes.

Two brothers died young, so the family converted to Catholicism. So I grew up in the Catholic tradition, and I take a deep interest in the Catholic Church and the history of the Church in Europe.

In a sense, I'm not unusual for Singapore. We live here, rooted in different civilisations, and therefore we sense how each views the other. We try to benefit from that — sometimes we can arbitrage, but sometimes we try to be peacemakers and say, "Look, the reason they are reacting this way is because of this, that, and the other."

In Europe, the greatest minds in European history have always wrestled with the idea of God and the afterlife. Even when they become kings and emperors, they seek the blessing of the Pope. All of Europe is reflected in the Vatican, in one way or another. During the seven years I worked for Pope Francis, I got to know the Vatican a little. I came to understand how intricate it is, and how in that microcosm all of Western civilisation finds its reflection.

In China, what is spiritual and religious is understood differently. The objective is not to gain entry into paradise. The objective is to bring paradise to the earth. So the greatest minds in China will not engage in science, mathematics, or engineering — they will engage in governance. In how human beings should relate to one another, as individuals and in families, in order that there will be peace and everybody can live a good life.

These are two very different intellectual and philosophical traditions. Both have their truths. Each can gain much by learning from the other — which may well be the next phase of human history.

Keith 00:29:47

In this configuration, there is this relatively new power — a new empire — which was the US. When thinking about the US, I remember you made this comment that Donald Trump is an agent of history, which I don't think is a mainstream view of how people see him. I'd like for you to help us understand what you mean by that — when you say that Donald Trump is actively fast-forwarding history.

George Yeo 00:30:13

The cracking of the ice is a phenomenon much larger than any human being or group of human beings. You can't stop the ice from cracking. But you can make it crack faster. You can make it crack in certain directions, by human agency.

In a sense, Trump is doing that. By his egregious behaviour towards the Europeans, he is deepening a fissure which was already there, turning it into a cleavage, and eventually there will be some separation. So even if there were no Trump, it would have happened. It might have taken another 10 or 20 years. But Trump is going around with sledgehammers, hitting the ice. In certain places he will achieve nothing. In other parts where fissures already exist, he may well accelerate the division. That's what I meant.

Keith 00:31:24

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Mr. George Yeo and his wife, Mrs. Jennifer Yeo, set up the Viva Foundation for Children with Cancer to eradicate the scourge of cancer for every child, regardless of their geography. They've moved the needle by funding paediatric cancer research, improving medical care, and enhancing education opportunities for these children. The best way you can help is to either volunteer or donate. You can go to ykeith.com/viva and see the opportunities I've personally created where you can find ways to contribute meaningfully. Alternatively, you can scan the QR code here to donate. Help us win the fight against cancer for children — and together we can make a better world. Thank you so much for considering these opportunities. Now, back to the show.

What drives this force that causes someone like Trump to emerge?

George Yeo 00:32:34

It is driven by the internal dynamics of American politics.

The US was created by Western civilisation. It was a daughter civilisation of Europe — stripped of all its trappings and restrictions, transplanted onto a new continent. It flourished. It's like you have an old bonsai, trapped in a pot, its roots cramped into one another. And suddenly you break the pot, you free up the roots, and you transplant it onto fertile land, with sunshine and water. It is the same tree, but now it grows — and it grew and grew to become the greatest power on earth.

Then the demographics changed. From the 1950s onwards, white Americans started taking liberties with themselves. You had the Vietnam War, the counter-culture movements. Because people were no longer prepared to work as hard, you brought in migrants. Those on Wall Street encouraged it, because that's how they made money — you outsource, you bring in cheap labour. And those among you who couldn't work as hard? It's okay, you buy them off.

Then the quality and nature of the society began to change. Values changed. The Vietnam War quickened this process. There was a kind of Reagan restoration, but things were already moving.

Increasingly, they felt a loss of confidence in themselves. Then you had the Obama phenomenon, which was remarkable. No one in Asia had believed that Obama — a Black man — could become president. But he did, for two terms. I had Republican friends who shed tears over how profound that was. But it led to disappointment, in the sense that this had not made their problems go away — it had made them worse.

So this dissatisfaction with what had happened in America created the MAGA phenomenon, and that created the phenomenon of Trump. Trump is the result of a deep current in American society. He reacted against many things which had gone on for a long time. It's a little reactionary, because it hopes to go back to the past. But I don't think it's possible to go back to the past. You have to find a new, creative solution to the problems you now have.

Those new ideas have not yet emerged in America. So right now, it's almost a contest as to whose version from the past should apply to the future.

It's the biggest drama in the world today — what's happening within America. And unlike China, which can tear up its constitution and still remain China, or France, which is now into its fifth republic, you tear up the American constitution and it's finished. I don't think it comes together again.

So even when you have to go to prison, even when you think the elections were rigged, you accept that these are the processes, these are the courts. You may think the judges are not fair, but this is how the system works.

But there are a lot of guns. And at some point, if people feel that you've bent things to breaking point — there could be violence. And we're beginning to see violence in American society. They have a tradition of handling guns responsibly. The great majority do. But is it a tinderbox? Will more sparks start a bigger fire? We don't know.

There are people, especially in Asia, who think that America is in terminal decline and are wishing for a speedier decline. I'm not sure that is wise, because if America is in terminal decline, there'll be mayhem for generations in the world.

Can it heal? If it heals, how long will it take? It will take more than ten years, because the decline took more than ten years. So we're entering a period of uncertainty with global ramifications — all of which is somehow reflected in one man who arose from that sense of unhappiness with the evolution of American society. He is an agent of change who has no real sense of history. He is a bully, acting impulsively — sometimes to the benefit of his people, sometimes not — but operating within what are still, possibly, the acceptable bounds of America.

So we're all watching with bated breath. And beyond Trump, it could be a JD Vance, it could be a Democrat — but no one can reverse the cracking of the ice.

Keith 00:39:23

If you think about the US today, one of its greatest strengths is that it is still the reserve currency of the world. In that situation where you see this ice cracking, what happens to the dollar's status? Would there be an alternative financial system that emerges, or will the US be able to maintain it, given its extensive military presence across the world?

George Yeo 00:39:51

There's a conventional wisdom that you need a financial system, that you need a reserve currency. But for most of human history, there was no reserve currency. If you entered China, China had a currency. If you entered a big polity like France, you had a currency. But if you were in the Hanseatic League or Venice, you went back to precious metals, which are not dependent on political power.

What is the essence of fiat currency? The essence of fiat currency is a contractual obligation to pay, and you fulfil that obligation with paper money, by law. Can that law be enforced? Behind fiat currency is, ultimately, the power of the state — and behind that, violence.

When Marco Polo went to China, he encountered paper currency, and was a revelation. The Venetians believed in gold ducats. Paper? But then they saw the chop — the seal of the great Khan on it. Because he can honour it. And if his treasury is short of resources, he can acquire them. So the paper is good.

It's like going to a casino — they give you a thousand-dollar plastic chip. For as long as the casino operates, the chip is good. One day the casino shuts down, and that chip is just plastic. But if it's gold, well, it's still gold.

So people ask me about Bitcoin. I say Bitcoin has no balance sheet backing it and no intrinsic value. For as long as the casino is operating, Bitcoin is okay. But if something happens to the casino, it's just plastic.

So you ask yourself — the Singapore dollar. We used to issue $10,000 notes until, under pressure from other countries, we stopped. But they're very convenient. It's like Marco Polo seeing the banknote from Kublai Khan. And I say, "Yes, Singapore has no violence, we are a peaceful and law-abiding people" — but people know that our currency is backed by reserves, backed by gold and hard currency. So it's good money.

China is preparing itself for financial crisis. It's been building up gold stocks, because if you have gold, people say, "Maybe I can trust the currency." Putin saw war coming and knew the rouble would be attacked. So he built up gold stocks. When the rouble was attacked after he moved into Ukraine, he opened a gold window and set a minimum price for the rouble. For a period, the rouble went higher, not lower.

So you come to the American dollar. There are rumours that Fort Knox is not overflowing with gold the way we used to think. We don't know. But Germany has asked for the gold it kept there to be returned. It's taken years, and only a small proportion has been returned.

The fact that the gold price has been soaring is because people worry that the US dollar may eventually lose its status. And if it does, there is a big problem — because the US cannot finance its deficit. Cannot. The debt servicing is already bigger than the defence budget, and it's diverging year by year.

Trump doesn't mind the US dollar getting cheaper, because it makes the US more competitive. But it means that if you don't work harder, who will finance your consumption? So then you print more money. And what happens? At some point people say, "You are just inflating" — and one day the currency be worth less, which accelerates the whole cycle.

There is no central bank, no corporation, no wealthy family which does not worry about the long-term future of the US dollar. I think it is of great concern to the powers that be in the US. When rumours swirled that the BRICS countries might create an alternative reserve currency, Trump's immediate reaction was visceral — 500% tariffs immediately. I thought: that is a neuralgic fear. There is fear.

We don't know how the US is going to square the circle. They thought they could cut down expenses, so they brought Elon Musk in and created DOGE. It was an abject failure, because every part of the budget is already accounted for and politically entangled.

Keith 00:46:17

That seems to be the biggest question coming out of the US right now, at least from my point of view. A lot of people are asking: can the primacy of the US dollar be eroded? And if it falls, what happens?

George Yeo 00:46:29

It depends on the US economy. It depends on the ability of Americans to work harder, save more, consume less, and take fewer liberties with themselves. And can you do that without immigration?

If you can do it without immigration, fine. If you do it with immigration, social stresses will increase. The Republicans will think that immigration is a way to pack the electoral rolls with people more naturally inclined towards the Democrats — though I'm not so sure about that, because sometimes when people are migrants, they come in and they don't want government to waste money, because it feels like their money.

The US is going through a very difficult period.

Keith 00:47:22

You've made this point about legitimacy being backed by violence. And today we are seeing actual violence in our times. I think in Singapore, for example, a lot of people pay great attention to what's happening in Gaza and Ukraine. Especially the Gaza situation — Singapore is in a delicate position. Our defence ties with the Israeli military have been well documented, and at the same time we have a significant Muslim Malay population within Singapore who feel a very strong kinship with what's happening. And not just Muslims — I think people from other races and religions also feel that what's happening in Gaza is very bloody, and it offends us.

So the question I have for you — you're someone who's been a diplomat, who's been in these spaces trying to broker peace. I want to ask: what is the endgame? How should one take a cold-blooded analysis of what's happening in Gaza, and how should we understand our response?

George Yeo 00:48:32

We can't change the world. We can't change Israel. We can't change Israel's relationship with its neighbours. Arab society is going through its own evolution, which we can only follow. It has some impact on us, in the matter of extreme Islamic beliefs. We have some control within the neighbourhood — limited. We just have to protect ourselves, and when the pieces move, we have to recalibrate dynamically and try to get into the safest position possible at all times. Sometimes we make mistakes — so we quickly adjust, pay the price, and adjust again. But be very alert, and be objective.

Keith 00:49:38

Can you elaborate on why we need to be objective?

George Yeo 00:49:43

I was watching the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Milan, and how the Israeli athletes were booed. There is a very strong feeling in the world against what Israel has done in Gaza. Our position is very clear — a two-state solution, going back to UN resolutions. Our relationship with Israel is not premised upon agreeing to Israel's larger ambitions.

So at some point, if Israel says, "Look, either you support us or you don't" — all relationships are affected. We have to accept that possibility. The same with Taiwan. We train in Taiwan. This has always been the understanding. But at the same time, we have to understand what China's core interests are.

At one point, we were going to have an air detachment in Guam. I was very troubled by that. And I'm glad that we decided not to proceed with it, because it would have put us in the line of fire. No position is permanent. Maybe one day we can train in Guam. Maybe one day we can do this or that. We just have to constantly calculate in our own self-interest.

Keith 00:51:17

There's this paradox about politics, right? You have to be cold-blooded at the same time as being warm-hearted. You have to feel that you care for the people you serve and work for. I think you embodied that during your time in politics — trying to be dispassionate, but also deeply passionate about serving people. How do you balance that dichotomy of trying to be objective without being too cool and calculated?

George Yeo 00:51:53

It's sometimes said that diplomats are paid to lie for their country. I was never comfortable with that description. You can lie and gain advantage once. It's not likely you can do the same thing twice. Do it repeatedly, and no one trusts you — so you've given up a long-term position.

In my years in government, I always tried to establish long-term relationships, and then settle short-term problems within those long-term relationships. And since I'm coming back to you again, how can I be nasty to you or cheat you, because I'm going to meet you again and again? And equally for you.

So I think good foreign policy takes a longer-term view. This is the wisdom of Chinese statecraft — they take a very long view and set problems and issues within a longer-term perspective. So even when they have a big quarrel and they apply pressure, they always leave a ladder, because they want to go back to the long-term position.

Keith 00:53:14

If one were to use the Taiwan example you've alluded to — I read a lot of commentaries, and there's a lot of discourse about, for example, Xi Jinping having fired some of his most senior military generals. There's a lot of chatter, especially in Western media, around the idea that China is moving in on Taiwan. What's your view?

George Yeo 00:53:50

I read those reports with scepticism.

The main reason, in my analysis, is corruption in the PLA. They're recruiting very bright young officers because they have to be technologically advanced — in AI, quantum computing, aerospace. You can't have a bunch of senior leaders who are corrupt, and the corruption was very deep.

The problem is that in all countries, military procurement requires secrecy. You cannot subject it to the same scrutiny as civilian procurement. So there have to be internal checks and specialised groups — and that therefore creates more opportunities for special arrangements to be made.

It was quite clear, before Xi Jinping, that promotions were being bought. Think about it: from colonel to general, from one star to two stars, and so on. This went on for many years. People knew about it and played the game. It doesn't mean they weren't professional — they still were, otherwise they could not have developed hypersonics and aircraft carriers. But there was a lot of corruption which degraded the professionalism of the organisation.

So cleaning up the PLA takes time. It's layer upon layers. And even if you have a new group coming up, can you be sure they were not already tainted further down? It'll take time.

To me, that is the most plausible explanation for what's happening. But of course, in a hierarchical system — which is consistent throughout Chinese history — in the process of cleaning up, you also make sure that your political purposes are served.

Keith 00:55:51

Your view is that the structural trends between China and Taiwan suggest that war is unlikely to break out.

George Yeo 00:55:56

Whether or not there's war with Taiwan depends entirely on the US. If the US doesn't back Taiwan, the Taiwanese would quickly find ways to negotiate. Where the US gives Taiwanese people hope that it will back Taiwan independence — whether explicitly or implicitly — the politics of Taiwan are affected. People say, "There's a chance, so let's vote deep green." If there's no chance, they say, "No, that's a dead end" — and minds will change.

When Trump was interviewed by the New York Times after a certain operation, he was asked: what would he do about Taiwan? What is it to him? His answer was astonishing — essentially, that it was no different to Venezuela. One dark night, a special operation, a country folded.

And if you're China, you say, "Oh, that's interesting. Maybe I should plan for such an operation." And you lick your lips.

And if you're a Taiwanese — whether green, white, or blue — you say, "Okay, elections are coming. This is my view of cross-strait relations." It must affect the politics of Taiwan. It must affect the way young Taiwanese are thinking about their future.

The KMT under its new chairwoman — arrangements have been made for her to go to China to meet Xi Jinping. Her deputy has already gone and met with officials. At first, people said she was wrong to take a clear position on one China, because she would lose supporters. I'm not sure about that. Because in a period of instability, what you want is clarity. You may lose some support initially, but in the end you may gain more.

And one notices that this is also Xi Jinping's position — a formulation first articulated by Deng Xiaoping, used a number of times, and recently repeated by a senior Chinese official to the KMT during a meeting in Beijing.

So now, if the blue and white work together, they will win. But I don't believe the green will just sit back and do nothing. They will also adjust. So we're into a new dispensation.

Keith 00:59:14

I wanted to draw out all of these takes precisely because I think they help bring into clarity this idea of multiplicity — that things are going to be much murkier than we assumed before.

Going back to Singapore: in all your lectures, you've been consistent in showing us that the essence of Singapore is arbitrage. We become the place where — as you put it — we buy cheap and sell dear. I wanted to ask you, from your view of where this world is headed, what should Singaporeans be carrying in their minds in terms of how we should adjust?

George Yeo 01:00:05

If we are just traders — if Singapore is just a Change Alley where you buy and sell and make on the margin — that may be the essence of an economy, but it will not give us great satisfaction as a people. It's not all we are. There was once a dismissive comment made about the Japanese — that they were just transistor radio salesmen. It was a remark of contempt. Are we just a big Change Alley?

What we are philosophically, in terms of values, is much more than that. Arbitrage is the result of the fact that in this small place, the world is reflected, and we learn to live with one another. This is very important.

I may be a Buddhist. I may be Chinese, and Chinese New Year is coming. In the old days, there were firecrackers and the smell from the joss sticks. But you're Muslim, you're Hindu — you may complain a little bit, but not too much. You live with it, and you celebrate it too. You visit your Chinese friends, you go to their homes. You don't eat the pork, but you eat the other delicacies. And in doing this, we are embodying and expressing values which the world desperately needs at this point in time.

When I was in Delhi recently, talking about Panchsheel version 2.0 — the five principles adapted for the modern world, taking into account the environment, human rights, and other things — the world needs more of that.

You can be China, you can be Brazil, you can be Russia — each has its own nature, its own history, its own sense of itself. Not only accept that: something you can admire and celebrate.

When I was in Natuna recently — it's in the middle of nowhere, right in the South China Sea — I found the people preparing for Chinese New Year. I thought there must be a lot of Chinese there. There are some. I was talking to a local man who spoke Chinese. He said, "No, everybody celebrates Chinese New Year here. Everybody celebrates Christmas. Everybody celebrates Hari Raya." It's a small community of about 8,000 people, overwhelmingly Muslim, but with some Chinese and a smattering of Christians.

I thought: it's a little like Singapore. Next to the temple is a church, and further down is a mosque. I was woken up by the call to prayer — I'm not used to that. But if you live there, you adapt. I have friends in Indonesia who, during Ramadan, become vegetarian. They say, "We also join in the self-sacrifice."

People adapt. The world needs much more of this. In other words, Singapore is particular, but Singapore should also be universal — in our own unique way. We don't arrogate to ourselves that we are espousing global values. It's just that by who we are and how we treat one another, we express a hope for the future of a diverse world.

Keith 01:04:42

But there's a tension inside, right? Being global and local at the same time. I think you experienced that firsthand — the political cost of trying to embody that spirit, where sometimes in policy it doesn't translate perfectly and locals grumble. How should governance manage this tension between, as some scholars put it, the particular and the universal?

George Yeo 01:05:16

The tension never goes away. It's in the nature of society. The moment you have interaction, there's conflict.

I was listening to Father John Paul, a Franciscan friar, at mass yesterday. He said that when he was younger, he found many of his brothers irritating — they didn't like each other. As you grow older, you become more mellow and eventually become friends. There's always conflict. The moment you live together, there's conflict — within the family, between husband and wife, between parents and children. These conflicts have to be managed every day, not just occasionally. That's how we have society.

And sometimes hard decisions have to be taken — where it involves right and wrong. So too with society. There will always be troublemakers. There will always be moments when moral issues have to be decisively settled. And that's Singapore.

Keith 01:06:09

You are one of the most fondly remembered ministers, and many people view your 2011 exit as premature. I want to ask you: looking back at your time in governance — and even predating your time in politics — what are some of the big lessons you have learned?

George Yeo 01:06:36

I see it as a continuum in my own life — from school days to university, student politics, my time in the army and air force and SAFOS, having to deal with diverse groups both within the SAF and with other agencies in government, then helming different ministries, leaving government to join the private sector, working for the Holy Father for seven years, and then being involved with a number of universities and groups not only in Singapore but scattered around the world.

I don't see each stage as dramatically different from the others. In all of them, you are dealing with human beings. You have to respect them. You have to find ways to work together. You have to achieve common direction. Set goals and do your best.

Never take credit, because you are just part of a flow. Never be depressed by failure, because that too is part of the flow.

That's how I see my own time in politics. People say, "Oh, you did wonderful things with MICA." I say MICA was already being cooked years before I became minister. The idea for it came long before. The land was already reserved in the 1970s. There were many white papers about building the arts in Singapore. I was just there at a particular point in time. The ingredients came, I did some frying, and passed it on to somebody else. So take some credit, but not all — and always remember: if you take all the credit, you take all the blame.

Keith 01:08:13

That sounds very Taoist of you. I think that's where the Taoist strain of thinking emerges.

George Yeo 01:08:19

It's very deep in me. But it's not a choice — to me, it is the nature of existence.

The Taoist view is, I believe, a scientific view. It is not about values. It's the nature of the world. Everything is in cycles. Everything is in motion. And there are cycles within cycles.

Keith 01:08:47

One last question: you are in the business of advising many people, including young ones like myself. If there is one piece of advice you would want a young Singaporean today to take into this coming, more turbulent world, what would it be?

George Yeo 01:09:00

When I wrote Musings, I wrestled with whether I should dedicate it to my children — not to puff them up. So I dedicated it to them with a prayer that their lives should be a blessing to others.

You can be very clever, you can be wealthy, you can have high achievements. But in the end, for that brief moment when these atoms coalesce and become you — from birth to death — have you added or subtracted from the world? If you have subtracted from the world, then perhaps it is better that you did not exist. You are a net minus.

But if you have added to the world, you will die happy. If you have subtracted from the world, I think you will die miserable.

Keith 01:10:09

Wow. Those are powerful words, Mr. Yeo. Thank you for coming on.

Prof Wang 00:00:19

I've been asked to respond to all that has been said, but having written 300 pages already about my rather long life, I shall only tell two stories.

My first is that the book launching today is not volume three of my memoirs. Margaret had inspired me to write Home Is Not Here for our children. Tommy may remember this — when he launched that book, he pointed out that I was then 88 years old and the book only covered the first 19 years of my life. He did his sums and concluded that I had another four volumes to write. Everybody laughed.

My alumni friends then asked: if home is not here, where was it? You had not arrived in Singapore, and none of us appear in the book. How can you write about home when you had not even met Margaret?

So it was again Margaret who helped me answer the question. After we married, we had moved house six times — twice from Cambridge to London, twice in Singapore, and twice in Kuala Lumpur. Our seventh move was into the new house that she had helped to design and build in Paling Ja. Three years later, in 1968, when we were leaving that house to go to Canberra and I looked dejected, Margaret said, "Home is where we are." And she was right. Those words became the title of our book and completed our story of home.

My other story is about the title of my new book, No Borders. I was asked: what do you mean? There are borders everywhere — notably those created when departing empires produced new nations. The whole world has borders drawn largely by Western European powers.

But here is a paradox. That world order was dominated by a civilisation that claimed to represent universal values — a world with no borders. In any case, my journeys have nothing to do with being civilised or with trying to be cosmopolitan. My story is actually very simple.

I discovered that all borders were drawn for a purpose, and sometimes those borders are radically changed. But there are no borders between civilisations. And for me as a student of history, time also has no borders. Nothing remains unchanged between past and present.

I was ten years old when I first noticed borders in an atlas I was given. There were places marked in red within the borders of the British Empire. My town was in the middle of one of those red patches. Years later, when I returned from Nanjing, I found the empire was gone, and the Federation of Malaya was about to become a nation state. Nine Malay sultanates and two former colonies would now share a border. But there was an anomaly: the country's university, the University of Malaya, was outside the country, in the colony of Singapore.

When Malaya became Malaysia to include Singapore, Sarawak, and Sabah, I worked hard to promote the new nation — but only saw its borders changed yet again when Singapore separated. At the same time, I had become a historian of China and learned that throughout its recorded history, every dynasty had different borders. For a while, even the United Nations could not agree where China's borders were.

I concluded that changing and crossing borders was normal. My own experience with universities confirmed that. I was a Chinese who only lived and studied in China when I was seventeen and eighteen years old. I then became a federal citizen of Malaya and later an Australian citizen so that I could continue my studies and pursue a scholarly career.

I was lucky. Each of the universities I worked in gave me the freedom to learn and teach, and my colleagues and students helped me adapt to different local conditions. Whether the universities were in China, Malaya, Malaysia, Australia, Hong Kong, or Singapore, I saw no borders. That made it easier for me to make myself useful wherever I was.

In short, I could go on with my work to connect the past with the present, and look for links that would help me identify possibilities for the future. I could do that best by exploring our region between islands and continents. That exploration has guided my work and became the story of my life — the subject of this book.

Thank you all so much for coming to this launch.

Keith 00:06:44

It's my great privilege and pleasure to be here today. Let me first pay homage to Professor Wang. I had him on my podcast a while back, and that video did quite well — around 100,000 views — and I've had many listeners email me saying it rekindled their sense of wonder and interest in history.

Soon after, Pagitawi Jawan from Indonesia wrote to me saying they were thinking of flying down to Singapore to interview Professor Wang. They did, and I sat in on a two-and-a-half-hour conversation, enraptured throughout. I consider it a great act of service and love that you've continued to inspire so many younger generations here today. Professor Wang, I'd like to first express my thanks to you.

Professor Wang, I wanted to start with a question that bothered me a little — mainly because I think it reflected my own incompetence. You wrote this line in your book: "Amid the great turbulence, the historian could always see some semblance of structure." Many of us, when we see chaos and disorder in the world today, feel disoriented and confused. How do you see a sense of order in chaotic times?

Prof Wang 00:08:06

I have a very simple understanding of the human condition: all of us seek order because we cannot stand chaos. We can't stand the turbulence we so often meet. So we all work for order. And I am deeply impressed by the fact that people everywhere have worked so hard throughout history to achieve it — and yet, again and again, they have failed.

I've come to think that failure is probably inevitable, owing to our own lack of capacity to understand ourselves. That is why I think the past is so important. The past may not tell us everything, but being aware of it — and learning from it — can at least make the turbulence and chaos of the future more manageable, more liveable.

There are no simple answers to order because order has never lasted very long. Almost invariably, it fails because the vast majority of people can't quite cope, can't keep order, and can't sustain it for extended periods. The reasons are too complicated to go into here. But when you look across the sweep of history, it is remarkable how consistently people can turn success into failure.

All I can say, as a natural optimist, is: thank goodness that almost every time, after a period of failure, people succeed again in re-establishing a new kind of order — always hoping it will last longer and be better. And that is something one can hold on to: the hope that we may one day be capable enough, and wise enough, to sustain that vision longer and longer into the future.

But I'm not certain, because in my lifetime, while things were much slower when I was young, they've become much faster today. The speed at which things change now makes it almost impossible to keep up with what is happening each day. In the days when things moved more slowly, people had more time to think, to plan, and to adjust — and yet they still failed. So with the speed we are going, how can we as human beings build the capacity to cope? That is a puzzle to me.

I may be entirely wrong. We may have reached a stage where new technologies can help us overcome the disorder we so regularly face. But I'm not sure. All I can say is that I hope we have learned, and I hope we will continue to learn from the past.

Keith 00:12:02

Looking back at your life, you've witnessed revolutions, the birth of new nations, and the birth of new orders. I'd like to ask you to give us an object lesson — to really draw home the point of how one sees order in a time of chaos. Perhaps it might be useful to look back, from your early days as a young historian until now: what was the most turbulent period you lived through, and how did you make sense of it?

Prof Wang 00:12:34

There are so many stories one could tell, but let me give you two quite obvious examples that you may find relevant.

The first is the Treaty of Westphalia. From that point onwards, we began to develop the idea of borders and an attempt to bring about a new peace — to avoid wars that had arisen from thirty years of conflict in which millions were killed, with people of the same religion killing each other mercilessly. But after thirty years of killing, they decided they must find a way to prevent future bloodshed. They met, reached an agreement that there would be borders, that people would respect those borders, and would not cross them to attack or intervene elsewhere. And it lasted for quite a long while.

It eventually led to the creation of new nations — the idea of the nation state, each recognising the sovereignty of the other, recognising its borders, and recognising that its citizens had all the rights of a citizenry. That was a tremendous step forward. So there was one example where, after total misery and thirty years of killing, people conceived of a world that would minimise further killing — and they succeeded for quite a long while.

The second example is that the nation state idea, with the national empires that followed, didn't work in the end. Those national empires fought each other to a standstill in the First and Second World Wars and virtually destroyed themselves. All of Western Europe was subjected to absolute destruction of the worst kind. And yet again, at the end of it all, the human condition proved remarkable. With great optimism, they reconstructed a new world — the United Nations. As a young student, I was utterly amazed and full of admiration for the ideals set out for it: a world of innumerable nations, all equal, all sovereign, all independent, with the question of respecting borders absolute in the idea of sovereignty.

That raised great hopes. I think the efforts were genuine, highly idealistic, and the work of tremendous numbers of people trying to make it work. And it did work for a while. Despite all the problems — the rivalries, the ideological differences, the ambitions of those who wished to dominate — for about forty or fifty years, there was a kind of balance in which people respected each other enough to prevent the worst of wars.

And yet when the Cold War that enabled that balance came to an end, when it looked as if one superpower could now manage and enforce the rules of the United Nations and deliver a world of peace — it all went wrong. I cannot fully explain what went wrong; it is too complicated. But when people had that power and were expected to use it wisely, they failed. And when that happened, a series of events destroyed the illusion that one superpower could enforce the rules that make the United Nations truly successful — not just based on mutual deterrence, but on genuine principles. What we have seen over the last forty years is a steady decline from those ideals, and a slow erosion of faith in the very things that created that hope.

So what went wrong? I cannot explain it simply. But certainly the lesson of the past is that we should not be surprised. There is no such thing as a perfect order that will last forever. It fails again and again. And yet, at the back of it all, there remains that recurring fact of history: that after a period of failure, people learn enough to try and rebuild something better. So I still have that hope — being a natural optimist — that somewhere, some group of people will reconstruct a new vision of peace, drawing on the lessons of the past.

Keith 00:18:20

Thank you for sharing that. I had a chance to speak with Professor Tommy and Professor Kishore, and I think you join them in that remarkable conviction of being both UN lovers and eternal optimists — seeing the failures and the tragedies, and yet remaining committed to progress.

With that, I'd like to ask you a question about your work as a historian. You recounted in your book your first published article in the Journal of Sinology in 1957, where you made a comment about how Thucydides and Herodotus shaped the way history writing was done in the West. What struck me as a throwaway line was actually quite profound. I'd like to ask you: what did you mean by that? How did these two figures impact Western historiography? And then, how did China's own tradition shape its understanding of history? Where did the two schools of thought diverge?

Prof Wang 00:19:32

What truly impressed me was seeing how Asian historians had spent so much time thinking about their own experiences and drawing lessons from them for the future. Thucydides is a very good example — he drew entirely from his own experiences and tried to sum them up to provide ideas for a better world. Herodotus had a wider perspective, but the same fundamental idea was there: that the collective experience of all the peoples one could learn about, and all the lessons that could be drawn, could lead us to a better world. If we understand that world better, we will be better placed. All of them seemed to embody, for me, faith in the idea that we can learn from the past — and that we should try.

So historians were not simply people searching for truth. What they were really looking for were lessons to learn from the past. That is my reading of even the Greco-Roman tradition of history.

But you also ask about Chinese history, and there it is even more obvious. Look at how the Chinese wrote history. The greatest of them was Sima Qian, but before him there were earlier records. The emphasis of his great work was not about history as we understand it today. Although we translate his work as "histories," the word shi actually means records and documents. What he was really saying is: we now have a collection of records and documents about the past. They have been preserved. We must read through them, ensure they are genuine, authentic, correct, and accurate, and pick from them those that will help us understand what lessons we can learn.

His successor Ban Gu, who wrote the history of the Han dynasty — between the two of them, with Shiji and Hanshu, they set the pattern of a historical tradition that essentially says: we learn from the past and transmit it to the future, so that the same mistakes will not be repeated. The documents are there to prove what was done correctly and what was done badly, causing the decline and fall of a dynasty, and showing where bad rulers appeared.

Behind it all was a kind of moral — not an ordinary moral between individuals, but a model of governance. Governance itself carried a moral lesson, because it was founded on the idea that you govern because you care for the people. That is the Mandate of Heaven. Heaven chose you as a ruler because you were supposed to care for the people. If you did, the people would live happily, social harmony would prevail, and stability would follow. But because rulers make mistakes — because they are greedy, corrupt, or surrounded by ambitious men — all kinds of private interests come in the way of good governance, and it begins to decline.

This became a tradition whereby every dynasty would learn from the previous one by collecting and selecting records to illustrate where that dynasty did well and where it failed, and why it had ultimately been overthrown and replaced by a new dynasty with a new Mandate of Heaven. That mandate was determined by the fact that the people had rebelled and overthrown you — that told you that you had failed and the people no longer accepted you.

Every dynasty did this for the previous one. It became, in a sense, a new profession — sifting through documents to draw lessons from the past and teach them to the future. In the Tang dynasty, they actually established a history office precisely to collect documents even as the dynasty was unfolding, to preserve evidence of what constituted good governance and what did not. At the end of a dynasty, you collected it all and began again. Every dynasty did this, all the way down to the twentieth century.

In fact, even today, the Chinese face the problem of writing the history of the Qing dynasty, which has not been completed — because modern Chinese historians thought: we no longer need to do that. We are modern historians now. So they took modern history to begin in 1840 with the Opium War, which means Chinese history has no proper beginning or end, because anything before 1840 is treated as pre-modern, or even ancient. That completely distorted the Chinese rhythm of historical telling.

But what I find fascinating is that the present regime — after two revolutions and having tried so hard to learn from modern Western civilisation, both from liberal capitalism and from European socialism, both of which flow from the same Enlightenment period — has learned from the west, tried to absorb it, and yet found that it cannot copy either tradition and still remain Chinese. Something else, some other wisdom from its own past, was calling to them. I cannot summarise it for them because that is how they see it. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I try to understand it.

And they are doing it by referring to their own past — to learn what not to do, what not to fail at. If you look at Chinese historiographers today, they no longer speak of Marxist history, the model they had learnt from the west. Even though they are called the Communist Party of China, they no longer use the Marxist historical model. What they are asking instead is: what went wrong with the Cultural Revolution? What went wrong with the Republic of China after 1911? What went wrong with the Qing dynasty?

The irony is that if you look at the most popular books, television shows, and films being made in China today, they are great admirers of the eighteenth century — the century of peace, stability, and prosperity under three Qing emperors: Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong, who together covered the whole of the eighteenth century. And they were not even Chinese. They were Manchu — conquerors of China. And yet it was under them that China became more prosperous than ever before, stable, free of major internal wars, with determined borders, and with the confidence that China had become great again. And yet it was precisely at that peak that things began to go wrong.

So again there are lessons. When the British arrived in the nineteenth century, they found the Chinese utterly incapable of dealing with a relatively small number of foreign ships arriving at their coast — simply because they had neglected the sea. What I want to emphasise is that the Chinese look back and say: yes, there was a great period long before we learned from the west. So what was it? What was there?

This led them back to their own history. And I am very struck by how often professional historians as well as policymakers refer to Chinese history for examples of both success and failure. The perfect example is corruption — which Xi Jinping uses as a tremendously powerful weapon to try and control the country today. And if you look across the whole of Chinese history, almost every dynasty points to corruption as one of the major reasons for its decline and fall.

What is extraordinary is how the people respond to that. They find it extremely easy to understand: we must root out corruption, at least minimise it enough to enable the country to survive and prosper. And the examples are there in every dynasty history — in the second half of each dynasty, corruption was invariably the central issue.

I don't think that is accidental. There is something to it: the system goes wrong when people become corrupt, and when leaders are incapable of, or unwilling to, stem it in time. And Xi Jinping is also learning from history — not only China's history but others' as well. I was struck when he came to power and said the first thing we must learn from is the Soviet Union. What did he mean? He asked: why did the Communist Party of the Soviet Union fail? If we had modelled ourselves on them, and they failed after eighty or ninety years, are we not in the same danger? And they identified corruption as one of the key causes.

So it is a coupling of a kind of Marxist understanding of the Soviet Communist Party's destruction with a reading of Chinese history — to say that saving the Chinese Communist Party is saving China, and to save China, one must learn from all the mistakes and all the lessons that history offers.

I find that quite extraordinary. And I think it comes quite naturally to the Chinese. It reflects a completely different understanding of history from the Western tradition — where history is the search for truth. That is entirely respectable, and I agree with it. But the fact is, there is another question: what do you learn from the past that will enable you to avoid at least some of the worst mistakes as you move into the future?

Keith 00:34:18

Thank you, Professor Wang, for indulging us. I had about fifteen questions prepared, but I've cut it down to three. I thought it would be useful to quickly open the floor for questions.

Ambassador Chan asks: if corruption is constantly the lesson drawn from dynasty to dynasty, do Chinese rulers or historians arrive at the idea that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely? Did they ever draw that lesson from history?

Prof Wang 00:34:48

That is a very good question. I probably cannot prove that the Chinese explicitly understood the idea that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But they acted as if that were true. I don't think they ever spelled it out as a formula distilled from history — they were probably not certain it was always the case — but they acted as if it were.

What is telling is that instead of doing what the West did — establishing constitutional checks and balances, the rule of law, to ensure rulers do not acquire too much or absolute power — the Chinese from the very beginning discarded the idea of the rule of law in that sense. Instead, they emphasised the rule of li — proper behaviour, a profound respect for relationships between people. From that, you develop a way of behaving that recognises what is correct, what is moral, what is good, and what demonstrates care for the people.

The Confucian idea of the good ruler is someone who obviously cares for the people and proves it, again and again. Whenever something goes wrong — a great famine, a foreign invasion, locusts destroying the crops — there is a tremendous response from the central government to show that it cares. The historical records document the moments when emperors responded immediately and officials did their duty to minimise damage and restore order, safety, and security to the people.

All of this was accepted — not through law, but through moral conduct. Law simplifies things by laying them down in explicit terms. The Chinese rejected that, and for good reason. There were legalists who advocated for the law and used very severe punishments to deter wrongdoing — but the Confucians rejected it, arguing that either you end up punishing the wrong people or you produce great injustice, because there is no way to guarantee that laws will be properly carried out unless the people administering them are themselves good. Morality, quality of character, and a genuine sense of right and wrong — that is what matters. If you fail to embody that, law is meaningless.

This is what Confucius wanted to emphasise. In a way, the Chinese were responding to the reality of the past — recognising, without quite articulating it as a formula, the truth that absolute power corrupts absolutely — and trying to prevent it through the ethics of the ruler and the moral demands of governance.

Keith 00:38:31

Professor Kishore asks: I'd like to pose a puzzle about Southeast Asia. This is one of the most diverse regions in the world — religiously, culturally, and linguistically — with large Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, and other communities living side by side. And yet, paradoxically, Southeast Asia has been relatively peaceful compared to other regions that are arguably less diverse. In South Asia, for example, the differences between Pakistan and India, or Bangladesh and India, are not as vast as what we see across Southeast Asia, yet conflict has been frequent. In Europe, despite deep cultural familiarity between Russians and their European neighbours, we are witnessing one of the most brutal wars in recent history.

So the real question is: why has Southeast Asia, despite its immense diversity, avoided major wars among its member states, apart from isolated conflicts like Thailand and Cambodia? When you attend ASEAN meetings, there is a noticeable comfort level among leaders — they sit together and speak to one another with a certain ease. Where does that comfort come from? What are the historical roots of this relative peace and mutual accommodation among Southeast Asian societies?

Prof Wang 00:40:07

That is a very large question, but let me try to simplify it — at least for myself; it may not satisfy everyone.

I was struck by the fact that Southeast Asia was the furthest away from the Eurasian continent. It lay between two oceans, and long before we developed the ships that could traverse those oceans with ease, the sea was a dangerous place. No major navies were ever developed in the waters between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. So my starting point is this: Southeast Asia was furthest from the Eurasian continent — and the Eurasian continent was where the major struggles took place, where people fought over territory on land, where the mobility of horseback riders and their later equivalents could cross continents at great speed. If you had superior horses, you could dominate the world, and it happened again and again.

Even India — the south of India, entirely flanked by ocean — was relatively peaceful. What really went wrong for India came from the northwest frontier, from Central Asia. Where did all the enemies of India come from? Central Asia. Where did all the enemies of China come from? Central Asia. Even the Indo-Europeans who came to dominate Europe originated from Eurasia — they moved west instead of east, because it was too cold in the north. They moved in all the other three directions. But Southeast Asia was beyond their reach, because there was ocean.

So I think Southeast Asia was, from that point of view, very fortunate. And when new ideas did arrive, they could be accepted freely — there was nothing forced upon them. People could pick and choose. When they encountered Indian civilisation, it came at a time of peace. It was not the period of Turko-Mongol invasions or Persian conquests — those all came from the northwest frontier. The ocean was left to the Indians and the peoples of Southeast Asia, and they learned from one another without difficulty. Indian civilisation permeated Southeast Asia for a thousand years because it was peaceful, because it was something you could selectively absorb. Nobody forced it upon you.

As for China — Chinese civilisation was concentrated in the north, constantly threatened by northern invaders. They never concerned themselves with the south. Once they reached the coast, they stopped. Their problems were in the north. In fact, one of China's great achievements was learning to manage those northern invaders across so many dynasties. But in the end, that very success became a weakness — they never anticipated that they could be attacked by sea from the south. That was their final mistake. But they were right, for thousands of years, to focus on the north.

So what China offered Southeast Asia was different from what India offered. China offered trade, technology, and economic benefit. What is striking is that Chinese civilisation was so compact in its own way — defined by an extraordinarily complex linguistic and moral system — that it was very difficult to simply adopt it from the outside. The Chinese had no missionaries; they never set out to spread their civilisation. People either adopted it or they didn't. By the time Chinese civilisation reached the coast of Southeast Asia, Southeast Asia was already deeply Indianised, all the way to Vietnam. What Southeast Asia needed from China was not cultural transmission, but what China could provide practically — trade, economic relationships, and specific technologies that were new to them. It was a very happy relationship.

So the Indian influence brought aesthetic, musical, artistic, philosophical, and moral values to Southeast Asia, while the Chinese brought trade and technology. I am oversimplifying, of course, but the fundamental point stands: the distance from Eurasia was what made Southeast Asia a special place.

And even today we face the same reality. When people talk about the Indo-Pacific, they speak as if it were some new invention. On the contrary, the Indo-Pacific is the most ancient set of relationships between those two oceans, and the people who benefited most were those of Southeast Asia, lying between them. If the Indo-Pacific means anything and has a future, Southeast Asia has a good future.

Keith 00:46:48

What do you think your unique contribution as a historian is?

Prof Wang 00:46:55

When Tommy mentioned it, I hesitated — I still hesitate — to call myself a historian, because I don't do history the way professional historians do it today. They are guided by a scientific goal that I respect: the search for truth. I totally respect that. Except that my understanding of the past is that the past keeps changing. Every time a new document is found, history has to be rewritten. So history doesn't stay fixed for very long. You're constantly rewriting it whether you like it or not.

If that is the case, then professional historians are well positioned — they will always have work to do. And I've seen people rewrite history so often over just the last few decades, including the history of Singapore, that I think we have to be very careful about saying: this is the truth, this is history, this is fixed. In that sense, I'm not a historian. I'm not out to find the truth, because I know the truth will always elude me. Who knows whether by tomorrow a new document will appear from somewhere and show that things didn't happen the way we thought?

And then I ask myself: does that really matter? For those who search for truth, the scientific method is entirely respectable, and I respect it. But for myself, it doesn't help me understand the past if it keeps changing all the time. What is more important is that I remain aware it can change, that I hold my understanding provisionally, and ask: if this is how we understand the past for now, does it tell us anything? Does it teach us anything? How does it help us deal with the present and the future?

That is what has come to interest me. I don't know whether it sets me apart from others. I think many historians, whether or not they realise it, are doing something similar. And of course, you can also abuse the past — pick from it what you want to use to influence people to do what you want. That is another way of using history. I hope I don't do that. All I really want is to find out whether there are lessons worth learning, and what lessons can be drawn from what we know. If we don't know something, don't pretend that we do. Try to find connections and links between the past of one part of the world and another.

I am constantly struck by the fact that human beings in very different parts of the world very often behave in remarkably similar ways. They may not recognise it — all sorts of cultural and ideological factors keep them separate. But if you actually look at how human beings behave when they are ambitious, or greedy, or cruel, they do very similar things. And if you go far enough to trace what actually happened, the causes are very similar too. They are not all that different.

When you look at it that way, it gives us a better way of understanding what we are like as human beings. I don't think I am fundamentally different from other historians, but I have been consistently concerned that the search for truth should not be the only thing history is for. History should also be understood and used — as best we can — to help us think about the future and its possibilities.

Keith 01:00:43

So the lesson I take from that is: standardised examinations are a way to kill creativity and destroy a civilisation. I suppose that's the right lesson to draw.

Perhaps we have time for one last question. Professor Wu from the Penang Institute asks: we know that geography plays a crucial role in shaping history and politics. At the same time, we have to be careful not to overstate its influence or fall into geographic determinism. How should we think about the proper weight to give geography in our understanding of historical and political developments?

Prof Wang 01:01:27

I actually agree with the concern. I don't want to sound geographically deterministic at all. But I raise geography because it cannot be ignored — it is a vital part of historical understanding. History is not only about time; it is also about space. What space do you occupy? How do you use it? What do you make of it? How do you use that space to gain what you want — power, wealth, influence? So it's not just geography in itself, but the agency of the human groups involved — how they can make use of, or take advantage of, whatever geographical features they find, to maximise their strength.

A good example — and one I haven't mentioned enough — is the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean has nothing to do with the Eurasian heartland. It is just a small sea, almost entirely enclosed, with the narrow Strait of Gibraltar, a small opening to the Black Sea, and no direct access to the Red Sea. Geographically, you might expect it to be limited in historical significance. Yet the opposite happened: because of the intensity of relationships within that small sea, all the peoples involved were so close, so proximate to one another, that they had to engage with each other constantly — fighting, trading, exchanging ideas.

Unlike Southeast Asia, which was widely dispersed across vast oceans where people on one side of the Indian Ocean could barely interact with those on the other, the Mediterranean was compressed. From the days of the Cretan Empire, the Egyptians, the civilisations of the Tigris-Euphrates region, they were all participating in this shared space. The Persians against the Greeks — probably no accident that we still speak of Iran today as a major force in the world — the Greeks representing city-states and something like democracy, the Persians a more centralised imperial power. That war between Greeks and Persians was the best example of what the Mediterranean was doing to all its peoples.

The Greek colonies spread everywhere; the Romans built upon it; the various peoples of North Africa became more and more intensely connected with one another. They created a very distinct civilisation — not only through trade and military exchange, but through the exchange of philosophies, of religion, of visions of the future. Great philosophers and religious leaders emerged precisely from that crucible of conflict. They were improving themselves all the time through the intensity of their encounters.

And yet, out of that intensity, they found they could not remain contained within the Mediterranean alone. They had to find a way out. And they were blocked — the conquest of the North African coast by Islamic forces in the seventh century transformed the Mediterranean into a space divided between Christians and Muslims. The Crusades lasted nearly a thousand years. And the net result was that the Mediterranean was effectively cut off from the trade of India and China — the two wealthiest parts of the world — for those who were not Muslim. That intensified the crusading wars between Islam and Christendom, and eventually forced Europeans to look to the Atlantic, something they had never dared to do, because they believed the earth was flat and that venturing too far would mean falling off the edge.

The idea that the earth was round had to come first — and it is quite extraordinary how long that took. Eventually, people came to believe that if you went the other way, you could reach India. And that is what they set out to do. Nobody knew about the Americas. They were heading for India. The Spanish sailed west; the Portuguese went the other way, down the African coast and around the Cape of Good Hope. Why did they do that? Because they could not reach India or China any other way. They were completely blocked — except for the brief window of the Pax Mongolica, which Marco Polo had described with such vivid stories, making Europeans want even more desperately to reach China and India, while being even more frustrated by the Muslims who blocked the overland routes.

So they went round. And when they arrived in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, what made the decisive difference was something they had perfected in the confined waters of the Mediterranean: how to fire a cannon from a ship without sinking it. All the navies of the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea had never solved this problem. It was the Mediterranean peoples who perfected it, and the Portuguese who became the greatest cannon builders of their era. The first century of Portuguese victories in Asia was entirely about Portuguese cannons. They transformed the Indian Ocean. The same was true of the Pacific — once the Spanish arrived, they too brought galleons that could fire without sinking, and no Asian navy could cope.

What I also find fascinating is how the Portuguese became mercenaries, working for different kingdoms across Southeast Asia and Asia as experts in cannon building. Technology changes everything — once the technology shifts, everyone wants it. But none of them could match the Portuguese for a long time. It was only later, with the Dutch and the English, that superior naval power put the Portuguese aside.

Then the English and the Dutch created something altogether new — something that had nothing to do with cannons. It had to do with capitalism: the idea of a commercial empire, of building power through trade alone. You need ports, you need control, you need monopolies. You dominate the trade and you win. But it means fighting everyone for control of those ports. And from that comes the whole story of Western dominance thereafter. By the eighteenth century, the British Navy was the strongest in the world, and nobody could challenge it effectively for another hundred and fifty years.

Keith 01:10:42

From China to the Mediterranean, from the printing press to the cannon — it's no wonder the book is titled No Borders. Once again, thank you all for coming. May we give Professor Wang a round of applause.

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Thank you for checking out The Front Row Podcast and my interview with Ho Kwon Ping.

Ho Kwon Ping is one of Singapore's most iconic entrepreneurs.

He currently serves as the Executive Chairman of Banyan Tree Holdings, the international spa and resort group he established in 1994.

Under his leadership, Banyan Tree grew from a single resort in Phuket into a global luxury brand operating in over 30 countries. He runs the business alongside his wife and co-founder, Claire Chiang.

Beyond the boardroom, Ho is known for his candid perspectives on Singaporean society, the changing global order and what he thinks Singapore needs to succeed in the coming years.

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - Introduction
01:37 - Singaporeans And Cultural Intelligence
07:07 - Singapore's Strength
14:10 - Maintaining A Cultural Core in a Globalized World
18:21 - Cultural Intelligence vs. Cultural Identity
19:52 - Redefining Luxury: Aspirational vs. Exclusive
26:30 - Status Obsession
30:03 - The Coming Civilizational Reset
39:43 - US and China As Civilizations
40:57 - Clashing Reference Points In Political Discourse
50:07 - Implications for Singapore in a Post-Western World
57:43 - Diversifying Knowledge: AI and Non-Western Civilizations
59:06 - Communitarian Capitalism
1:03:11 - Mindset Shifts for Thriving in a Messy World
1:12:36 - The Price of Sovereignty
1:13:27 - Avoiding Mediocrity
1:19:50 - Building World-Class Excellence
1:25:05 - Difference Between Leadership vs. Management
1:32:53 - Hope for Singapore 2056

This is the 75th episode of The Front Row Podcast.

One of the things I really enjoyed about reading your book was discovering the breadth of the Banyan Tree empire — over 100 hotels across the world, from Saudi Arabia to China, Vietnam, Japan, and most recently Singapore. I wanted to ask: what does being so global teach you about cultural intelligence that you think a Singaporean today might underappreciate?

KP 00:01:37

The biggest thing about cultural intelligence is a sense of humility and an openness to what you can learn from others. The reason why it's underappreciated in Singapore is that Singaporeans are generally very judgmental about other cultures because we've been brought up to believe that what we have is the best.

Much of it is true — we are very good in many ways. But it's insufficient to just look at what Singapore has achieved, because some of our success has been difficult due to our size, and some of it has actually been easier because of our size.

When I ask our general managers who the most difficult tourist is — and difficult is the word, not the most rude or violent, but difficult — they say without a doubt: Singaporeans. Because they're niao. You'd have guests who are violent or get drunk easily — the stereotype would be Russians and Brits. You'd have others who don't appreciate Western culture and essentially live communally, cooking their own food in hotel rooms — sometimes Arabs and Indians do that. These are stereotypes, but they have some truth. But what people say about Singaporeans is that they are really niao about little, little things. They won't let up.

Keith 00:03:37

Can you elaborate on what you mean by niao?

KP 00:03:40

Complaining about small things. Not demanding compensation, the way many English-speaking guests do — they're proficient in English, they know how to write complaint letters and threaten to sue. Singaporeans don't ask to be refunded. They're just very difficult to please. Always complaining, but not to the point of wanting a refund or thumping the table. Just always picking on little things.

To me, it probably reflects a lack of cultural intelligence. And that matters less for Singaporean tourists, but it's a real setback for a Singaporean trying to work as a businessperson or employee in a multinational or foreign setting.

Keith 00:04:47

There's a quote I think you said — that Singaporeans are hard workers but also world-class complainers.

KP 00:04:56

Yeah. There's a joke that whenever a Singapore delegation goes anywhere in ASEAN, at the social nights when everyone starts singing, Singaporeans don't know what to sing. They end up doing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" because that's the only thing they know. They're just not very comfortable in various milieus.

Keith 00:05:26

How does that hurt us?

KP 00:05:31

There are two types of hurt. One is what I'd call instrumental hurt — it prevents us from getting things done, whether as a nation or as individuals. The other is a deeper, more psychic one. It just doesn't allow us to enjoy things, to be more lighthearted, more appreciative of the world, rather than always looking for things to pick on.

It hurts us as people if we can't see the beauty of poorer cultures, or in meeting people who may not seem as bright or as accomplished as we are. And that's probably the root of it — if we cannot appreciate the outside world, we also cannot fully appreciate what we have inside, in Singapore, in our homes.

Keith 00:07:07

So let me ask the inverse question. Now that you've been out in the world and seen so much of it — what is it about Singapore that you've come to appreciate, that you find beauty in, that maybe other cultures don't have?

KP 00:07:24

I think there's a sense of pride that I appreciate. And maybe also because of our niao-ness, Singaporeans are very hard to intimidate, which is actually pretty cool.

You see what's happening geopolitically today — a lot of countries are bending over. Europe in particular has been grovelling. I hope Singapore will not grovel. Most Singaporeans wouldn't want to, because we've been brought up with the mentality of being this little red dot — nobody, but a tough little red dot. That sense of vulnerability, of being small, has made us quite spunky.

Another aspect I've spoken about before is what I'd call an egalitarian spirit. Not equality — there's very high income inequality in Singapore, just as there is in the United States. But egalitarianism is different. It's an attempt to reduce the social friction of apparent inequality.

Japan has a very egalitarian culture. Singapore had that too. The joke between myself and Hong Kong friends is this: in Hong Kong, if you could barely afford a Rolls Royce, you'd buy one just to show off. In Singapore, the super rich would drive a normal Mercedes because they didn't want to stand out, even though they could easily afford a Rolls Royce.

Now you're beginning to see people in Singapore flaunting their wealth. But that egalitarian spirit was something the PAP, as a founding generation, clearly cultivated. People forget today that the PAP was born as a democratic socialist party — it was a member of the Socialist International. It espoused a very egalitarian culture that has in some ways persisted, but is now eroding.

The first generation of Singaporeans — whether in business or politics — went through the hardships of colonialism and World War II. People who have lived through hardship generally take no pleasure in flaunting wealth. The achievement of wealth was about proving you could escape poverty, not about displaying it.

Now, wealth has become so easy for an entire generation. And it has perhaps worsened in Singapore because we've shifted from a manufacturing-based economy to a more financialised one. Financial services became the main source of economic growth after the global financial crisis, and with financialisation comes capital begetting capital — accumulated to obscene amounts.

The flaunting of wealth is so much easier when you're a private equity guy who made money quickly, compared to someone who built wealth through manufacturing. And you see it in the second generation — Indonesian rich kids driving Lamborghinis in Singapore, or Singaporean second-generation wealth flaunting it. It's beginning to fray.

Keith 00:14:10

It's very globalised, so naturally the cultural influences from other parts of the world are going to be more obvious. But that openness is what keeps the economy going. The question is: how do you filter out the parts that are harmful?

KP 00:14:28

Do we have a big enough core? It's unfortunate, because it's not just the wealth culture of private equity in the West. China has a very strong culture of hard work. But the people coming from China — the family offices, the money launderers, the crypto guys — they live lives and display inequality far more than even family offices in the West. Their displays of wealth are truly obscene.

So we get the worst, because we are so welcoming. And particularly, we welcome not because of agriculture or mining, but because of financial services. You get people with great amounts of capital coming here — whether money launderers from China or legitimate family offices or private equity firms. It's all about capital. And because of that, a certain culture develops — the pubs, the bars, the private clubs, and so on.

We should have a strong cultural core in the Singapore heartland. But we are very small. Compared to Dubai or Monaco, we luckily have a larger local population, because those are two examples of city-states going in directions I would hope we avoid. Their local populations are so small that they have very little cultural ballast of their own, and they become essentially hotels where the rich come to play.

Then you have societies of similar population size to Singapore — Denmark, Switzerland — but with far longer histories and a hinterland that gives them a deep sense of who they are. We inhabit a difficult in-between place.

Keith 00:17:12

And we're also a relatively young nation. Given that we're a multicultural and multiracial society in a very heterogeneous region, that makes it even harder to build a stronger core.

KP 00:17:33

For sure. It would have been much easier to build a strong core if we'd wanted to be like Hong Kong and just build up the Chineseness of Singapore. But that would have been a mistake.

So at a time when Singapore was so young, the leadership elite — not just the PAP, but religious leaders, business leaders — all agreed that we had to try to build a truly cohesive multicultural state, otherwise we would fall apart. And at the same time as you're trying to build that sense of identity, you're getting outside influences that are not always positive. It has not been easy.

Keith 00:18:21

How does a sense of cultural intelligence emerge out of all this?

KP 00:18:24

I think there's a difference between cultural intelligence and cultural identity. Identity is an internal recognition of who you are. Intelligence is something that manifests when you deal with people.

The cultural identity of Singaporeans is moving in the right direction — a greater sense of who we are, not defined by shallow things like cuisine or landmarks, but by a growing awareness of who you are through knowing who you are not. Singaporeans become more acutely aware that they are Singaporean when they travel overseas than when they're here. Here you're just floating like little guppies. But out in the big world, you suddenly realise you're a kopi, and when you see another kopi, you bond.

Cultural intelligence, however, is a different thing. It requires self-awareness about how to behave and think about other cultures. That one, I think, we're still lacking.

Keith 00:19:52

When you talk about the erosion of egalitarian culture in Singapore, you're also operating in the space of luxury — which I think is an interesting paradox. Most people think luxury means being ostentatious and showy. But you're offering a luxury service through your resorts. How do you think of luxury differently?

KP 00:20:24

Egalitarianism does not mean equality. And in the same way, I make a distinction between aspirational luxury and exclusive luxury. Aspirational luxury is, to me, a little bit like egalitarian luxury.

Take an Apple smartphone. It's more expensive than many alternatives, and you get young people queuing for the latest model. In a way, buying an Apple is a certain kind of luxury. But Apple is an aspirational luxury, and it's inclusive — its sense of luxury is not based on exclusiveness. People are happy that the Apple community keeps growing. When you have an Apple and I have an Apple, we talk about the features, the design, the apps — we aspire to be part of that community.

Then you have what I'd call total exclusive luxury — and the clearest example is a Hermès Birkin bag, selling for 30,000 euros. The bag looks like any other bag. Its inherent value is nowhere near that price. Its sole value is its exclusivity — "I have, you don't have." It builds entirely upon the haves and have-nots.

Apple doesn't ask you to brag that you have an iPhone and someone else only has a Huawei. You're happy to be part of a community built on shared appreciation. Some luxury brands are built on aspiration; some are built on pure exclusivity. We are very clearly in the aspirational camp.

When we first set up Banyan Tree, we clearly said we did not want it to be luxury. Even now, I wouldn't call it a luxury brand. It's quite expensive because building beautiful pool villas isn't cheap. But we've always wanted to be aspirational.

We loved reading the guestbooks in our early days, particularly in Bintan — couples from HDB flats who'd saved up because they thought Banyan Tree was so special. We're proud of that rather than being seen as only for the rich.

When we set up, people kept asking why we didn't use Hermès soaps or branded fragrances. We refused — we said that doesn't make sense. We're trying to build our own brand, not borrow other people's exclusive ones. Instead, my wife sourced locally, we created our own fragrances, used small ceramic jars instead of disposable bottles because it was better for the environment. Now others copy us, but we did those things out of conviction. We're quite expensive, but we've never said we're about luxury.

Keith 00:25:56

Most people falsely equate price with luxury.

KP 00:26:02

Exactly. I would equate price with quality, not luxury.

Keith 00:26:09

And that idea of aspirational versus exclusionary luxury makes me think about status obsession — the way exclusive luxury builds on in-group and out-group dynamics, where status is derived from others not having what you have.

KP 00:26:30

Exactly. But look at how Patek Philippe has positioned itself, with a slogan unchanged for decades: you never actually own the watch, you merely look after it for the next generation. It's about the idea that it's expensive, but not to show "I have and you don't." It's expensive because it's a legacy, an heirloom you pass on. The ads don't show beautiful women on yachts. You own a Patek Philippe not to show it off — you own it to pass it on to your children.

Compare that to a Cartier or Chanel watch worn purely to show off. Status obsession is very real and it is growing everywhere in the world.

Keith 00:27:59

Maybe in this time of status obsession, Singaporeans should think more aspirationally rather than getting caught up in all of this.

KP 00:28:08

They should just think more for themselves. Like buying Uniqlo because it has real value and you like the values of the company. They position themselves as lifewear, not fashion. It's not just cheap — the quality is good, there's technology and fabric innovation behind it, and there's a clear philosophy of producing things you wear every day that you can mix and match into good fashion. Every brand has to have its own values and stand for something, and customers resonate with that.

Keith 00:29:09

And zooming out, it's not just relevant to brands — it's true of every family, every company, every country. You need a philosophy and a value system you have clear conviction in, not just because it's politically convenient.

KP 00:29:27

Absolutely. And I find it very facile when people talk about "brand America," because what American values should stand for — the values of liberal democracy — is not just a brand. It's a set of civilisational values: values about family, about the individual, about governance and community.

Keith 00:30:03

When you talk about civilisational values, one of the ideas you've put forward is this coming civilisational reset. Can you elaborate on why you use that specific term?

KP 00:30:26

I was quite surprised, and quite happy, when I saw Donald Trump's National Strategy Paper using the word. I started talking about a civilisational reset about two years ago, when I began arguing that what's happening now isn't best captured by the terms political scientists prefer — the shift from a bipolar to a multipolar world. I objected to that framing because those terms belong to the Cold War period, when bipolarity and multipolarity were understood primarily in quasi-military, security-oriented terms.

In the Cold War, there was no real civilisational clash of values. The Soviet Union was not a civilisation — Russia may have been, but not the Soviet Union. It was already a failed state with no values to speak of, only military power.

What I observed, beginning with MAGA, was the culmination of a long process: the decline of Pax Americana. After roughly 100 years — from the end of World War II to now — American civilisational power has been dominant. But the bigger thing happening is that the entire Western civilisation has been dominant, which is the only thing the whole world has known for over 200 years. Western civilisation was the dominant civilisation and therefore the reference point for everything.

After World War II, that dominance was largely benign. It was very good for countries like Singapore and many others. But what it did, almost invisibly, was make the West the reference point for everything.

Now you're beginning to see, particularly with the rise of China and the rest of Asia, a civilisation of 5,000 years that has never been broken — not like Egyptian or Greek civilisation, but a continuous civilisation with its own wholly coherent set of values. Its own reference points on family values, on the rights and responsibilities of the individual, on political governance. It's not just Xi Jinping being an autocrat. China has had thousands of years of dynasties — wise emperors, unwise emperors, good dynasties, weak dynasties. The Communist Party, in my view, is essentially the current dynasty.

So what I see happening is a reset. And what I find very interesting is that Trump's own strategy paper refers to the exact same phenomenon, but from a completely different viewpoint — they call it civilisational erasure.

The same words, different meaning. Civilisational reset and civilisational erasure are two sides of the same coin. From their perspective: "We, Western civilisation, are no longer going to be the single dominant force because we are being erased — by Muslim immigrants, by China threatening Taiwan, by people who are no longer white or Christian." I'm saying exactly the same thing. White Christian civilisation is no longer going to be dominant. They see it as erasure. I see it as a reset — back to a few hundred years ago, when Western civilisation was an important one, but not the only dominant one. You had a very vibrant Islamic civilisation before it went into its own crisis. You had a very vibrant East Asian civilisation — Japan and China — with its own set of values, which then declined and is clearly rising again.

There are aspects of Western civilisation, beginning with the Age of Enlightenment — the secular state, industrialisation — that led to an extraordinarily positive confluence of events. It was not bad at all, and all of us thrived for quite a while. I would certainly hope that liberal democracy, which much of Western civilisation has created for all of us, does not go down the drain. But at the same time, liberal democracy is no longer the only reference point for good governance.

Twenty years ago, many people were writing that China was going to collapse, or that China would eventually become like us. Both arguments shared the same reference point: only liberal democracy can truly thrive. Either China becomes like us, or China collapses. But China has been essentially an autocratic dynasty — at its best, a benevolent autocratic dynasty — as we saw with the Han, Tang, and Song dynasties. No elections, and emperors like Xi Jinping. It's a governance system that has worked for China. And the Western world can no longer claim to be the only reference point against which we measure everything.

Keith 00:39:43

It reminds me of a quote from Wang Gungwu, who said that America and China are both civilisations dressing up as countries. On one level they are states, but at a deeper level, they have civilisational aspects that are not determined by borders or boundaries.

As you were articulating this shift in reference points, a question was forming in my mind: with now a multiplicity of views, don't you lose a sense of coherence? When the West-is-best mental model prevailed, there was a single ideal — rightly or wrongly. Now it's going to be a much more confusing world.

KP 00:40:42

That's why cultural intelligence is so much more important.

Keith 00:40:44

Where do you see the areas of conflict being played out between these civilisations — or however many there are?

KP 00:40:57

The conflicts arise from different reference points. Let me give you two examples: territorial ambitions and governance.

On territorial ambitions, Chinese historians have written quite interestingly about the difference in civilisational reference points. They observed that European civilisations — whether small Portugal, Norway's Vikings, the Romans from a small part of Italy — outgrew their ability to expand internally because they were in climatically hostile places with limited agricultural prospects and rapidly growing populations. A tiny Holland ended up controlling all of Indonesia. A tiny United Kingdom controlled the entire British Empire. And the United States expanded westward with Manifest Destiny, conquering Native Americans. So conquest as a means of expanding your people's reach is very much embedded in Western civilisation.

In contrast, Chinese historians argue that Chinese history is characterised by an enormous amount of internal conflict — warring states within a relatively fixed geographic area. Because of this, stability became the main governing principle for Chinese civilisational elites, whereas overseas expansion became the main governing principle for European elites.

That's why some Chinese historians say the West has misread China: when you see a powerful country, you immediately assume territorial expansion — because that's what powerful countries in your civilisational history have always done. But for China, the imperative is stability, not expansion.

On governance, Western society progressed through monarchies that maintained legitimacy through bloodline succession and clearly oppressed people. Out of that oppression emerged the primacy of individual rights — and eventually, one person, one vote, and elections as the prerequisite for legitimate governance. That is deeply embedded in Western thinking.

In Chinese thinking, there have never been elections in thousands of years. But embedded in Chinese history is the concept of legitimacy — the mandate of heaven. And embedded in Chinese history is the willingness of peasants to overthrow a dynasty that had simply failed, without any contortions about lineage or succession. In Western society, they go through extraordinary lengths to find the right nephew or cousin to be king. In China, a general can overthrow a failing emperor and start a new dynasty.

The Communist Party are good students of this history. They may not care about elections, but they read Chinese dynastic history closely and understand that political legitimacy is critical. If you lose it, suppression alone cannot save you. That's why there are all these anti-corruption campaigns — they recognise that the inability for internal self-renewal was what caused dynasties to fail. In the West, elections cause the self-revolution. In China, the party must generate it internally.

If these two great civilisations — Western civilisation as manifest by the USA and Western Europe, and East Asian civilisation as manifest primarily by China — cannot understand where each comes from, and how each civilisation's thinking is determined by its own historical experience, then I think you're going to have a genuine clash of civilisations.

Keith 00:49:24

It reminds me of a point a guest made earlier — that the Thucydides Trap is itself a Western frame. When political theorists from the West apply it, they assume it's universal.

KP 00:49:33

Exactly. Everything in Western civilisational thinking is assumed to be universal. That's what I meant about the West always being the reference point. They are beginning to recognise that many of their values are good values — but not necessarily universal.

Keith 00:50:07

What are the implications of all this for a small country like Singapore, which has for so long been so dependent on a Western-led world order? So much of our growth was underwritten by American FDI, American MNCs, Western cultural imports. How do we make sense of this transition? It's going to feel very messy and discombobulating.

KP 00:50:44

There are two levels at which we need to deal with this.

The first is the superstructural level — our government navigating the tensions between China and the US, not getting caught by either side. This Trump "Board for Peace" is childishly ridiculous, but it's a real test. If you say no, Trump targets you with 100% tariffs. If you say yes — which I would never advocate — no self-respecting sovereign country, other than Middle Eastern regimes totally dependent on him, would want to join that. So I think adroit diplomacy is what's required. And we need to be very careful, because things said innocently can offend other countries.

But there's a deeper level that requires a completely different civilisational mindset — a broader one. Let me give you an example. A Chinese researcher once argued that AI researchers in China would do no favour to the rise of AI in China if they simply chased Western benchmarks — making AI faster, more energy-efficient, and so on — because that would again just use Western reference points.

The argument this researcher made was that to the extent AI draws upon everything written on the internet, it will always be biased towards what dominates the internet. So even Chinese political scientists trained in the West, applying AI, will only draw on Western reference points. There's so much written on Western political philosophy — from John Stuart Mill onwards — while the Chinese political philosophers, from the Legalists to Mencius and beyond, are barely represented online.

So if AI is to draw upon civilisational knowledge, it's incumbent upon Chinese and Asian AI researchers to increase the access to non-Western civilisational knowledge. And this applies not just to political theory, but to science and medicine as well.

The relevance to Singapore is this: we have the potential ingredients for something remarkable, because we are multicultural. We come from several deep civilisations — Indian, Islamic, and Chinese — for which most younger Singaporeans have barely scratched the surface. Our educational system, our political systems, our economic linkages have all oriented us entirely towards Western civilisation. But we have the potential to go back and draw from our parent civilisations and extract far more value.

You could make the argument that tiny Singapore has, within itself, the basis for a very active AI community that is genuinely intercultural. AI researchers who want to work on India's wealth of knowledge — in literature, in Ayurveda, in Indian science — could do that from Singapore. Someone applying AI to traditional medicine could access knowledge from Indian, Chinese, and Southeast Asian civilisations all from one place.

Keith 00:57:43

If you enjoy this show, please check if you're subscribed — every subscriber helps us grow and serve you better. Now back to the show.

There is a need to essentially diversify the dataset, or the data points. Gita Wirjawan from Indonesia told me that Southeast Asia is about 14% of the global population but produces less than 9% of the world's text output. So if AI is simply taking the world as it is, going back to your point, it's going to be very Western.

KP 00:58:23

Yes, and it's not just about political thinking — though I don't think that's shallow, because political philosophy is the lens through which we look at everything. But take something very tangible, like medicine. Every old civilisation has had its traditional medicine. We've barely scratched the surface of applying AI to centuries of TCM or traditional medicine from these civilisations. Even getting the source data has been difficult, but it's all there.

Keith 00:59:06

You made a very good point that the lens of political thinking actually dictates how you conduct business and how you live. And one example you've given consistently is the idea of communitarian capitalism — which I'd describe as a synthesis of West and East. In the West, at least among certain elites, there's an almost unadulterated worship of capitalism itself, which has created disillusionment among many young people. Your view seems to be that capitalism should be moderated by a sense of egalitarianism and communitarianism.

KP 00:59:53

I'd push back even on the word "moderated," because that again takes Wall Street capitalism as the reference point.

Look, economics is a science. The laws of supply and demand, pricing, competition — those are tangible facts. China today is a totally capitalist system. Communism is really a political system, not an economic one, and it simply doesn't work economically. So the whole world is capitalist in the fundamental sense.

But it is part of Western, and particularly Anglo-Saxon, civilisational dominance — the rise of the UK and then America — that the so-called rules-based order was basically an anglophone world, with Germany and Japan having to conform. And when you clear your eyes of that dominance, you notice that capitalism already has multiple forms.

There's Nordic-style capitalism. There's Japanese-style capitalism, which people laughed at, but frankly, it hasn't been so bad for the Japanese people to have avoided the wrenching bankruptcies and the poverty that came with America's market-clearing mechanisms and creative destruction. Japan didn't go through that — and has it really been so bad?

You have the extreme law-of-the-jungle capitalism, and then you have the more muted communitarian capitalism. The mere fact that we take Wall Street capitalism as the reference point and say we need to "moderate" it — that's a reference point I reject. We should not see them as the norm and ourselves as the anomalies. They may actually be the anomaly.

Keith 01:02:55

I say "moderate" because I think Singapore has genuinely imbibed and imported a lot of Wall Street capitalism — that's the natural consequence of being so dependent on American multinationals.

KP 01:03:00

Yes, absolutely — because we have.

Keith 01:03:11

So the follow-up question is: if you look at the way we conduct business as companies and as individuals, what are the mindset shifts we need to make in order to thrive in this coming messy world?

KP 01:03:33

Let's talk about survival first and see where it takes us. Because I think you're right to pull it back to something practical — what will enable a normal Singaporean to prosper in the future?

To me, it's going to be largely economic. And I think where our government has gotten it right from the very beginning is that Singapore is no soft European state that sold its national defence needs to someone else for a peace dividend. We've spent a lot on our sovereignty.

And there's a wisdom in LKY's approach here — we refuse to ever be an ally. We're not an ally of any state. We don't have American bases. We facilitate the Americans having a presence, so we give them something — refuelling rights and so on — but even though Singapore is tiny, you could easily have imagined us becoming like the Philippines, which is a much larger country that is totally allied to America. A huge country like Australia has totally sold its soul to America.

Tiny Singapore has basically said: we will be a poisonous shrimp to everybody, to everybody. If Donald Trump wanted to threaten to invade Singapore, I think we would say bring it on. Of course you could invade us, but it's going to hurt you. You cannot go and kidnap Lawrence Wong from the Istana the way you did Maduro. We have no offensive needs, only defensive needs. We're so small, nobody really wants to invade us, but if you tried, it will hurt you — very much like the Swiss concept.

So I don't doubt for a minute that our sovereignty is at risk. The question most Singaporeans worry about is not civilisational values — it's how long this good life can go on. Being one of the wealthiest countries in the world on a per capita basis.

I think it can go on. But the question I think is important is: have we had sufficient discussion about the trade-offs that are going to be necessary?

Take the example of family offices. We went pretty extreme in one direction — welcoming them by the hordes, giving generous benefits, not being very scrutinising. Then some coming from China turned out to be money laundering. In Monaco or Dubai, which are solely dependent on this kind of capital, the government would have swept it under the carpet. Singapore made a big deal about clamping down. It has hurt us — a lot of wealth has not come here because Singapore is now seen as much tougher. But the government, I think rightly, took that decision. And if it hadn't, I would be concerned we'd be moving towards becoming a Dubai or Monaco — totally dependent on other people's money, essentially a tax haven and nothing else.

These trade-offs are going to happen all the time. Some areas where we've wanted to succeed, we haven't. Our intention to become an advanced manufacturing economy has not really succeeded. We haven't been able to go into AI and robotics the way the Chinese have. We haven't been able to turn A*STAR into the unicorn factory we hoped for. The National Research Foundation has spent a lot of money on research that hasn't been successfully commercialised — through no fault of anyone, but that's the reality.

So what do we pivot towards? One clear strength is our position as a financing hub. We don't have many indigenous startups, but Singapore has become one of the most important places for startups to come for funding — venture capital and PE firms have set up here, and startups from India to China come here for capital.

In aviation, we can't do manufacturing, but we're strong in MRO, potentially strong in avionics. Changi Airport may no longer be the clear premier airport in the world — Dubai is getting very strong — but are we still strong in aviation as a combined cluster? Leasing, repair and maintenance, sophisticated avionics manufacturing?

You have to build upon these clusters constantly. It's a daily exercise. As long as we can do that, I think we'll thrive. If we don't, we'll become a second-class, mediocre economic state.

Keith 01:12:36

On the price of sovereignty — I had a conversation with Tommy Koh recently, and he was saying that Lee Kuan Yew always positioned Singapore as a friend, not an ally, because a friend can tell you the truth and an ally can't. Being an ally to America means, to a large extent, subservience.

On mediocrity — you've spoken before about Singapore potentially becoming an A-minus or B-plus city, which is good by most standards, but perhaps not what we should be striving for. What would cause Singapore to become mediocre?

KP 01:13:27

Largely, it's people. And it's government. A government and its people that are no longer hungry.

We are obviously no longer hungry in a material way — we have everything materially. So hunger has to come from somewhere else. Hunger is either hunger in your stomach or hunger in your soul.

Societies that make the fastest economic climb are those with hunger in their stomachs, because that is such a powerful and imperative driver. But when you are a developed country, the question becomes: do you have hunger in your soul? Does the society have a vision and a goal for what it wants to be?

Look at old Europe today — so exhausted, so coddled. People have no national goals anymore. They just want their working week protected more and more, more work-life balance. I believe in those things too. But you also need a sense of who you are.

The Nordic countries seem to have maintained their social fabric far better than Western European countries like the UK, France, and Italy. That may be related to immigration, I don't know the full answer. But I think the converse of national ambition and vision is a fraying social fabric — because if the social fabric frays, it becomes impossible to have a common vision for the future.

That's probably why the government spends so much time talking about national identity and cohesion. Because if we start to fray, we will fray faster than other countries given the relative youth of our society. And once we fray, it becomes almost impossible to build a common vision. Then we become a capable, mediocre, relatively prosperous society — comfortable on our reserves, good education system, people will still come here. But you become mediocre.

You can sense that mediocrity when foreigners talk to Singaporeans and find them only interested in little material things, with no vision for what they want the country to be.

Keith 01:17:51

And in a world where the Singapore premium exists, the cost of mediocrity will be higher.

KP 01:17:59

Yes, and the Singapore advantage is reducing. Singaporeans were very much sought after by multinationals for leadership roles across Southeast Asia. Now you have very well-educated Indonesians, Thais, and Malaysians working in those same roles. Indian nationals, driven by the historical necessity of a less prosperous home economy, went off to multinationals and headed up many of them.

Singaporeans, not willing to travel, comfortable, always wanting to be at best the head of a multinational's APAC operations — well, with technology changing corporate hierarchies, many multinationals are no longer even basing APAC heads in Singapore. The opportunities for Singaporeans to become multinational leaders begin to shrink.

And interestingly, those with a strong Chinese background — like Singaporeans who've built familiarity with China — have a greater advantage than those who purely went through RI and ACS.

Keith 01:19:50

You're one of the few Singaporean outliers who has built a truly global hotel brand that stands alongside the Kempinski's, AHGs, and Mandarin Orientals of the world. You can speak to world-class excellence and to escaping the mediocrity trap.

For a young aspiring Singaporean today, looking at what you've built — what are the right lessons to draw? Can they make their mark on the world?

KP 01:20:44

One would be: always be hungry, always be ambitious. I'm 74. We have 100 hotels, and I think we've barely scratched the surface. We're doing a significant deal now in a part of the world a Singaporean company would normally never go to — when you find out about it, you'll understand what I mean.

So one principle is: be always very humble about how weak you are, and always be hungry for more. This mixture of ambitious humility is what has propelled me. Hubris, I've said many times, is the first source of collapse. When you think you're so great and you really aren't, you take on more than you should. Humility is critical to survival precisely because it keeps you aware of how vulnerable and frail you are.

And yet on the other hand, this ambition — to want to break out and be something meaningful. There's a constant tension between knowing how small you are and wanting to do more. That tension has been one of the reasons for our relative success. I am never content with where we are, but I always recognise we are far from what we want to be.

The other thing is recognising that because I operate in so many different cultural environments, the world is a very large and very different place — which is part of what makes experiential travel so exciting. But at the same time, people are all the same everywhere. You cannot judge them.

One thing I attribute to whatever relative success I've had is that I have always been an outsider. I grew up in Thailand — I'm definitely not Thai. I'm as familiar with American politics and literature as any American — I don't feel American. I don't feel I belong anywhere. I studied neither in Singapore nor in Thailand nor in America long enough to form that deep network of friends from school days.

But that outsider feeling is liberating. It frees you from being stuck in a particular mindset and allows you to look at everywhere you go and say: I can be successful here. So what I would tell a young Singaporean is: be humble, be hungry, and be completely open to every place you go. See the excitement and beauty of that place without bringing along your own baggage of superiority.

Keith 01:25:05

You don't come to where you've come by just being a boss — you needed to be a leader. You've spoken about the difference quite clearly. What do most people get wrong about leadership?

KP 01:25:28

I've always said there is a world of difference between leadership and good management, and most people assume the two are the same.

Management is a skill — the ability to coordinate minimal resources for maximum outcome. It's measurable. There are management tools, management education. All that is management.

Leadership, I think, is more transcendental. Leadership is the ability to motivate people to aspire beyond themselves.

With that definition, you can clearly associate transcendental, aspirational leadership with religious leaders, with great political leaders who exhort people to go beyond their little selfish selves to do public good. But there's this weird assumption that business leaders should not need to be aspirational. That business leaders just need to be good managers — make the most money for shareholders, give the highest salaries, produce the most competitive product.

That's all true, but insufficient. A great political leader like Lee Kuan Yew didn't just deliver efficiency. He gave Singapore a vision — from third world to first, from fear of being small to pride in being a tough little red dot. That's leadership.

So why is it so odd for business leaders to speak on things beyond their balance sheets? Why is it so odd for them to inspire their employees about the meaning of what they do?

I've spoken to companies across many industries and I've always said: you can always find something noble in the work of your business. Take hospitality. It seems glamorous from the outside, but on the inside it's tough — low pay, shift work, getting scolded by guests. So as a leader, what must I do?

First, create a culture and atmosphere so that even a lowly waiter wakes up in the morning and actually wants to go to work. Second, preserve self-respect — which is what we all want in life. We created a service culture around the idea of "I am with you" — you serve someone not out of servitude, but out of empathy. You try to understand where that person is coming from. If they're nasty to you, you try to understand why, and you don't lose your self-esteem.

Third, you must help your people feel that the company itself stands for something beyond giving them a salary. So we have values around sustainability, around community building, around the idea that tourism can be a force for peace — because when you bring people of different communities together and they understand each other more, that's a genuine contribution to peace.

With all of that, a young waiter at Banyan Tree may not religiously believe in the brand, but they do believe the company has a purpose. And if the company has a purpose, there is a purpose for them in it too. That's leadership.

Keith 01:31:29

Are there any leaders in your lifetime you've looked at and thought — that's a great leader?

KP 01:31:41

People who can build a vision and execute on it — to me those are leaders. Lee Kuan Yew was clearly one. In the world of business, Steve Jobs was clearly one. Leaders don't always have to be nice — many of them aren't — but there has to be a compelling vision.

And Elon Musk, before he went off the rails. He clearly is a genius, and in the beginning, probably also a good leader — inspiring people with his dreams for Tesla, SpaceX, and so many other things. But then, possibly because of Asperger's or other factors, he's gone off in his own direction and no longer really inspires in the same way.

Keith 01:32:53

I deeply admire Tharman Shanmugaratnam. I think he's an example of a great leader.

Last question. You wrote an essay about Singapore in 2045 — a science fiction piece about a futuristic Singapore — something about our first Malay Muslim Prime Minister and microchips, if I recall. I'll point it out to you later.

But looking forward — what's your hope for Singapore in the next 30 years? What do you think we can accomplish by 2056?

KP 01:33:45

I value the diversity we have in Singapore. We have ethnic and cultural diversity. But I'm not sure we have what I'd call intellectual diversity — and intellectual diversity has to come from greater political openness.

The government, including Tharman, has been very successful in building a relatively cohesive society, one where identity politics hasn't taken hold the way it has elsewhere. But I think, for reasons best known to themselves, the government has not been building as creative, as diverse, or as open a society as it could have.

You no longer get jailed for making statements the government disagrees with, but you still get ridiculed, you get put down. There is still, to me, not a real flowering of the Singapore creative spirit.

When that creative spirit is truly encouraged, there will be some rebellious aspects to it — but I think Singapore's electorate is mature enough to handle it. They've shown it, repeatedly re-electing the same government out of genuine sober confidence in how Singapore is governed, not out of lack of alternatives. Populist and demagogic political parties are shunned at the ballot box. So why can't we be more open? Why can't we be tolerant of truly diverse views?

The inner circle that determines Singapore's future is still very small. It could be opened up more.

Keith 01:36:58

So in 30 years, we want to be much more open.

KP 01:37:02

I would like to see a much stronger civil society. I thought we'd have one by now, and we don't. I'd like to see much more diversity of views.

A great man who recently passed, and was a good friend — Liu Thai Ker — was not always particularly revered because he was quite independent. He made a famous comment once, after which the whole debate was shut down. He said: let's have a discussion on what population size Singapore can sustain, and he put forward 10 million. That whole debate started, and then the government shut it down. No discussion today on that question. None of the think tanks will touch it, even though other countries discuss it openly.

Anything about the future that is not within the close scrutiny of what's acceptable — according to script — just isn't discussed. So how can you have genuine openness? We don't even debate the optimal population for Singapore. Liu Thai Ker brought it up and it was shut down. That's hardly radical.

Keith 01:38:52

It's a pity we don't have that kind of discourse. So the hope is that in the future, we have a more open space for discussing these core issues.

KP 01:39:05

I think Singaporeans are mature enough now. There are many other issues I think we'd all benefit from discussing more openly. It could be done under Chatham House rules. There's got to be greater trust between the governed and the governing — a sense of shared vision, of being brought into the conversation.

Right now we have a very competent, very capable government, but there is still a distance. The Singapore Conversation exists, but there's so much more that could be discussed.

Keith 01:39:51

With that, KP, thank you so much for coming on.