The Evolution of Singapore-US Relations - Ambassador Chan Heng Chee
Ambassador Chan Heng Chee is Ambassador-at-Large with Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She holds the appointment of Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities in the Singapore University of Technology and Design.
She was also Singapore's longest-serving ambassador to the US, serving in Washington from 1996 to 2012.
00:00 US-Singapore Relations in the Early 90's
03:00 The Michael Fay Affair
05:40 Turning the American Media Around Towards A Favourable View of Singapore
09:33 How Chan Heng Chee Implemented On The Ground Diplomacy
11:50 Selling Dinner Tables for Lee Kuan Yew
16:45 America's Change from the 1990s
20:45 Working with Lee Kuan Yew
28:30 David Marshall and His Legacy
33:40 Aspirations for Singapore
36:30 Advice to Young Ambitious People
40:00 Three Books Every Single Person Should Read
Keith 00:00
Thanks Professor Chan for having this interview with us. I'd like to first start off with stating a fact, which is that you are indeed Singapore's longest-serving ambassador to any country, and most notably you were in the US for 16 years. I wanted to ask you, what was your experience like as an ambassador in the US for those 16 years when you were there?
Chan Heng Chee 00:33
I was appointed ambassador to the United States to represent Singapore in 1996. I was there from July 1996 to July 2012. I went in the wake of a very difficult episode between Singapore and the United States. You remember we caned Michael Fay. We beat the backside of a very naughty boy.
The United States was really upset because of the corporal punishment. At that time there was this debate about Asian values, whether there were universal values or different values for different countries and regions. We said there's something called Asian values.
This was about the time which was the end of the Cold War. The West and the United States in particular was triumphant. They wanted to promote democracy and human rights and promote democracy overseas. Singapore is always a country that feels its own agency and its own identity very strongly. Mr. Lee Kuan Yew and at that time Mr. Goh Chok Tong, the whole cabinet felt that actually it was not right for a country or the West to shove their values down our throats.
Of course we believed in democracy, but when the West pushes democracy in that way, people say, wait a minute, hold it. So we spoke of Asian democracy, Asian values. We have our own values. Countries elsewhere, that's non-West, felt it was a bit of a neo-colonial push of values and ideas. So we pushed back with Asian values.
There was the Asian values debate and it was during this time that Michael Fay got into trouble. Michael Fay was just given the sentence that anyone in Singapore would be given. The United States and the Western press made it an issue of Singapore trying to push its Asian values.
They kept pointing out that we were going to cane this Caucasian white boy. They did not highlight that his companion, they kept saying his foreign companion, was a Hong Kong boy of Chinese origin, whose parents were already Singapore citizens. He was not yet 21, so he couldn't opt for citizenship, but he was with his mother. I think he was a PR, but the press never said that. So it was like Singapore against the West. But one of the boys sentenced was Asian.
It was in light of that that I went to Washington. It was to repair relations between the United States and us. At first, we sentenced him to six strokes, and there was an appeal by President Clinton to Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, and the strokes were reduced by two. So he had four strokes. In the West, Americans mocked Clinton. The president was worth two strokes.
So it was not a good time to go. I think President Nardin did a valiant job. He was there at the brunt of the trouble. By the time I went, I thought the US was ready to turn the page. But how do you turn the page? Singapore is, after all, a friendly country with the United States. We're a good defence friend, and we are a great trade partner.
Bad relations between the United States and Singapore is an aberration. Good relations is the norm, and this was a period of bad relations. My job was to set the relationship right. One of the things which I had to do was to get back official meetings. When big countries want to punish other countries, especially small and medium-sized countries, they deny you access. You can't see the president, the vice president, certain very high-level secretaries and so on.
It was my job to restore the relationship and also to try to do something about the press. I remember before I went, Ong Keng Yong, now ambassador at large, was head of the America's desk. He said, "Heng Chee, we don't expect you to turn the press around. Who can turn the American press around?" I said, "But I want to turn the press around and get a better press for us." So I went and I did try that. And I'm very glad I can say that I succeeded.
The success in turning the American press towards a more favorable view of Singapore was a combination of circumstances. It's serendipity, I used to say. It is important to be a lucky ambassador. I think I was lucky. It was an ill wind that blew nobody good.
There was the Asian financial crisis and many economies in the region and their currencies and their banks swooned and collapsed. Singapore's banks stood tall. Our currency was fine. Our economy was affected because you cannot have economies around you in bad shape and being in trouble because of the financial crisis and you hope to do well.
But otherwise our dollar was fine and people began to sit up in the US, "What is this little country? Who is this little country that doesn't seem to succumb in the same way? They've done something right." About the same time, PISA was first introduced. These were math and science tests and results around the world for a few countries. Singapore came up tops in math, top in science for 13-year-olds. So everybody said, "What's this? What's this country?" And I think Singapore began to get good press.
With the financial crisis, we gave five billion drawing credit to Indonesia, which Indonesia in the end did not use. But they said, "What? Singapore can make this very generous gesture, can lend Indonesia five billion dollars US, just to help them fight the currency onslaught, speculators against the rupiah. Must be something special." So I think the press began to turn and I was there and I understood this, so I made use of the opportunity.
Keith 05:40
I want to double-click on what you felt like you did right or maybe did wrong at the start when you went in there. I understand that you had to turn the press. I know there was luck but I'm sure that your agency helped a lot. So what did you do when you went there?
Chan Heng Chee 05:55
When I went to Washington, I paid a call on Katherine Graham, who owned the Washington Post. I met her at the Trilateral Commission and in other circumstances. Tommy Koh wrote a letter for me to her too, but I had met her elsewhere. I called her and I think because I'm a woman ambassador, Katherine Graham also wanted to help me.
So she said, "Ambassador Chan, what can I do for you?" I said, "Can I meet your editors?" So I was there having a dialogue with three people who came in. They were from her editorial board. I spoke to them and challenged them. I said, "I arrived in Washington and I would read editorials saying, 'authoritarian countries such as Iran, Iraq, China, Myanmar, Singapore, North Korea.'" I said, "You think we belong to this group?" And they would say, "You put Singapore there." I said, "Do we belong to this group?" They said, "No." I said, "But it is there."
They said, "No, we didn't put that." I said, "Please pull up those stories and have a look." And they did. Later they just took it away. They didn't name the countries anymore. They just said "authoritarian regimes." I don't care, so long as you don't name Singapore.
I had dialogue. I had many lunches with Bill Safire, William Safire, because he was one of the main attackers. We became friends in the end. And he said, "Look, don't buy me so many lunches. I'll contact you, you don't contact me." I think he felt that I was trying to change his views.
Keith 09:33
That side of your job which is what you say like turning the American press—there's another part which I'm also really interested in, which is the part about opening up access again. How did you do that when you went there?
Chan Heng Chee 09:45
That's not just me. What I think I did right was to spot opportunities. Lee Kuan Yew was invited to receive the Architect of the New Century Award by the Nixon Center. And I was asked to convey this message to him, and I did, and I urged him to accept it. There was a Black Tie in Washington. I recommended that he accept it. This was in the early days. The first year I went.
I arrived in July. This dinner was like October. And in those months, Nixon Centre was planning to honour Mr. Lee. He was then Senior Minister. I took the opportunity and I helped Nixon Centre get companies to buy tables. I'm a very good saleswoman.
I did that at the UN because at the UN, it's retail politics. I'm selling an idea, getting people to sign on, vote for us. So I sold dinner tables. Nixon Centre got the money. I spoke to the chairmen and CEOs cold. I just rang them up and asked them, "Would you buy a table? Lee Kuan Yew, da, da, da, da." Singapore asks for so little. Everybody knew we were put in a bit of cold storage because of Michael Fay. And I said, "You know, we don't deserve this." They agreed. So they helped and they bought tables.
Then I got ambassadors, I got senators to come. I got people to help me get senators to come. And of course, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew is admired. John McCain, Senator John Kerry, all these people knew him. And there were one or two others. And they all came to the dinner. And there was a big write-up in Washington Post.
I think when Mr. Lee Kuan Yew came to Washington and he delivered his speech, he suddenly reminded Americans what a wonderful friend Singapore is, and what wonderful leaders we have who can understand the world and analyze it so clearly. And I think that was a step that led us on the road to the mend.
So it's not just one thing, Keith, but as an ambassador you have to be very active. This is an opportunity. If I have this opportunity, how do I make this a great opportunity? How do I make it a successful event? I never thought of the word opportunity, but "How do I make this a great event so that it's worth Lee Kuan Yew's time to come and he will have a good audience?" And I worked with Singapore agencies.
In that sense, ambassadors are very entrepreneurial.
Keith 11:50
Indeed. You are absolutely right in using that word because when people ask me, what is diplomacy?
Chan Heng Chee 11:58
I said a diplomat is a political entrepreneur. A diplomat is a political entrepreneur. You make things happen where otherwise it would not happen.
Keith 12:08
Are there any other instances of your political entrepreneurship that you felt like were either personally very fulfilling or stories that you would think a bit too crazy to tell now?
Chan Heng Chee 12:18
No, it's not too crazy but I want to save some of stories for my own book.
Keith 12:24
If I could go back into your time in the US, you were there for 16 years. I think that's a long time—that's four terms for presidents and leaders.
Chan Heng Chee 12:33
When I arrived I was in time to go to the two political conventions to see Bill Clinton nominated and Bob Dole nominated, one for Clinton for Democrats and Dole for the Republicans. I saw the election and Clinton came in for the second term.
So I served, strictly speaking, Clinton's second term, George W. Bush for two terms and I didn't complete the Barack Obama term, but I was into his fourth year. I left before the elections.
Keith 16:45
Did America change over those 16 years when you were there? And now that you're back in Singapore as an observer from a distance, how is America changing today?
Chan Heng Chee 17:00
Oh, drastically. It changed drastically. When I arrived, America was at its hegemonic moment, full of confidence, end of the Cold War, 1996. It was the only superpower, hegemony. Then when I left in 2012, it had gone through the great financial crisis and America was in the depths of its depression. It was a deep recession. I've never seen such a loss of confidence. So it was a sharp contrast. Within those 16 years, from the height of confidence to this low point. And in between there was the Iraq War.
Keith 17:52
How do you think America perceives itself now, looking forward to maybe 2024?
Chan Heng Chee 17:57
First, it's a very different America. It was changing very fast when I was leaving. The Tea Party suddenly came up. America has gone far more right, populist. And the bipartisanship, the moderate middle is disappearing, made to feel irrelevant. That's changed.
President Trump changed it drastically during his one term with "America first," and he brought populism to its height. And now there's a possibility he may come back as a contest between him and President Biden, candidate Trump and the incumbent Biden.
America is changing. The world is going more populist. President Biden, because he's a Democrat, the policies are far more pro-labour, pro-people, pro-the-poor. But Republicans too are looking at the left behinds, those who are left behind.
I think that's the way the world is going. People feel they can't keep up with what's happening, the growth. And it's all blamed on globalisation, blamed on Asia stealing the jobs, but it's a troubled world. And there's the growth of identity politics.
Keith 19:02
How are we as a small city-state that's so dependent on globalisation adapting to these changing times?
Chan Heng Chee 19:10
Well, globalisation 2.0 or is it 3.0? It's not the same as globalization 1.0. There will be far more regionalization. There will still be international trade, but the focus is much more within regions, between regions, and in some aspects global.
I think it will also be a more cautious globalisation and opening up. We used to talk of free flow of people, capital, technology. It's going to be less free flow of capital, technology and people because nobody wants a total free flow of people.
Keith 20:45
If I could go back, when you were talking about Mr. Lee, I felt that one of the things that really interested me was actually in your early years before you entered public service, you were quite critical of him and then you worked with him, especially as our longest serving ambassador. Why did your views change? And what do you admire the most about him?
Chan Heng Chee 21:10
I first met Lee Kuan Yew as an ambassador just before I went to the UN. I had dinner with him and Mr. Lee wanted to size me up, I think. I think it was before the UN posting.
We were talking about the Cambodian issue. I thought he was trying to see how I ate, if I had the appropriate manners, that I carried myself well enough to represent Singapore. I think he wanted to see how I carried myself and interacted in a social setting. There was a luncheon. Representative Steve Solars came.
He was a friend of Singapore and he was a friend of ASEAN and he tried to help us get a package for Cambodia, Cambodian aid. He was on our side when we fought the Cambodian issue at the UN.
But my interaction with Mr. Lee has been quite checkered. I first met him as a young academic and I was seen to be this irritant. I think I would say things that PAP didn't quite like, but I was never anti-regime and I was always respectful.
When I make my criticisms, I don't write in a language that is mean or hateful, like spitting on the other side. I don't do that. I write as an academic. I write in a very polite style. It's never personal and I never touch on personal issues. It is always the policy and I had a special interest in seeing greater intellectual space given to academics and greater space given to the opposition.
I was seen as a classic liberal academic. Later I began to question: "Are you distributing enough to the workers?" Primarily I was seen to be a liberal academic, but I was not someone who was going to kick the table over. I wasn't going to rip up the regime, the governance of Singapore. It's just that I wanted these policies corrected. So I think the PAP saw that.
Anyway, I was named to be ambassador to the UN. After I became ambassador, and particularly after I came back from the UN, you have to understand that the world was changing. I came back from the UN in 1991, just after the first Gulf War when Iraq invaded Kuwait. But within two, three years, the Soviet Union dissolved. There was a collapse of the Soviet Union.
I think Mr. Lee wanted to understand the world, what was happening. End of a world order, it's just the US alone, what's happening? Soviet Union has collapsed. He invited Tommy Koh, Kishore Mahbubani and I, to lunch with him. And we'd lunch with him quite often in the Istana.
During those lunches, he would talk. I don't know why he chose us. Some people think that it's because we talked back. If he said something, we were not afraid to disagree. We were known to be quite independent-minded, I think that was the point. So he talked most of the time and we agreed, disagreed with him.
It went on till he had a heart problem. He had a stent. Then he had to be very careful about what he ate, so we never had lunch together. Not that it was such a rich lunch. It was quite a spartan lunch with Mr. Lee Kuan Yew in the Istana. Simple.
That was my first glimpse of Mr. Lee Kuan Yew at close range, because he never came to the UN. Later I saw him a lot because he came to the US.
After that period of exchanges, he started writing his memoirs. And when he did, he sent his chapters to a few of us. I was one of them. He would tell us to read it and critique it. "Is it good? Is it bad? Does it slack? Will people be interested?"
I would say, "No, that's not how it should be interpreted." He'd say, "Why not?" And then you would argue back and forth. And he argues fiercely. I think Singaporeans get so scared because he will argue. Don't forget, he's a lawyer. He wants to win the argument. So he will come on strong. So you must be equally strong to push back. And you must know your facts.
So I learned from that that actually he's very open, and he will take criticisms. Then he'll send back the chapter after you give feedback. Can you imagine he sends me the chapter, I send it back to him, and this was in the early email days.
Many people didn't use emails. He learned to use email, to write his memoirs on the computer. And I didn't know how to use it then. And I said, "Oh, Mr. Lee, I learned to use a computer because I wanted to write my memoirs." He said, "Oh my goodness, if senior minister has learned to use a computer at his age, I really should learn to use a computer." He said, "Quite so."
My point is that he was very open to changes, arguments, and he'll come back and say, "Is this right? I've changed it. How does it read again?" And if I make another comment, he'll change it again.
I'm only one person. Three, four others read it. So you can imagine he will answer everybody. So he's very open to criticism, to make the product better. But you must know your arguments.
Keith 28:30
You wrote a very good piece of historical work I think many Singaporeans should read, which is the biography on David Marshall, "A Sensation of Independence" if I'm not wrong. I wanted to ask you this question: why should Singaporeans care about David Marshall?
Chan Heng Chee 28:49
Singaporeans should care about David Marshall because he's part of our history. He was the first Chief Minister of Singapore, but he represents a totally different personality and a set of values which was presented to Singapore.
David Marshall is much more a liberal figure. But like Lee Kuan Yew, they came from that generation where they were multiracialists. They believed in multiracialism. And because he's Jewish, he represents multiracialism. And he had a different style of politics altogether.
I call the book "A Sensation of Independence." People wonder why. Because he is a sensation of independence. You feel the sensation. He stirred people. His oratory stirred people. But he stirred people and then it disappeared and it was no more. He did not have the aptitude to institutionalise.
He mobilised, which was very important in the first phase of nationalism, to get people out of their stupor, to care, to be angry, to want your independence, and not just accept colonialism as a fate that you have to live with. He did stir people with his oratory, got them to feel angry and that things must be changed, mobilised movement.
But he didn't know how to build an organisation and he couldn't institutionalise. He didn't create the Labour Party, Labour Front. Labour Front found him and adopted him. And later he was at odds with his party members and so on. Lee Kuan Yew and his team represented the organisers and they could also mobilise and move on.
I also thought that David Marshall missed out on one aspect. He really didn't understand the real Singapore population. In my book, I said he always talked of the Chinese, a group that he understood. They were all very nice to him. They understood him. He was known to be generous. He defended people. And he was always a lawyer, a defence lawyer, that never lost. So, he was much admired. But he really didn't understand the people who admired him.
He meant very well. He had good ideas about helping people. It wasn't strong policy. He would just take money out of his pocket at the Meet the People session and give money when he heard sad stories and people in difficulty. Very kind man in that respect. But as a politician for policy manifesto organisation, achieving the goals, I think he just wasn't the right person at the time when we needed that. But I think Singaporeans must know about him.
He represented the anti-colonial movement. Before that, it was the underground Chinese communist anti-colonial movement. Also, there was the anti-Japanese movement. There was a combination of different kinds of nationalist patriots fighting for Singapore. And then there were the people who were influenced by communist ideology.
Keith 33:25
I've been in the public sector, shall we say, all my life, because I made a decision when I was young, after graduation, I did not want to join the private sector. So I was always in the public sector, because I wanted to serve people.
Private sector didn't have so many options in my time. What does the private sector offer? Local companies? If you are lucky, you can get into Shell, some of these British companies or Jardin Madison—you'll be joining the alternative civil service. But I wanted to be in the public sector.
Keith 33:40
You served the country for 60-odd years. I wanted to ask you what your aspiration is for Singapore in the next 50 to 100 years. What would Singapore the future look like to you?
Chan Heng Chee 33:54
You know, 100 years, I never talk in terms of 100 years. You don't know what technology will change, what will happen, climate change, environment. Things are just going to either degrade or suddenly technology can help us improve. So I would rather talk of 25 years, 30, 50 max. So what is my wish for Singapore?
Of course my wish is that Singaporeans will continue to enjoy well-being, physical well-being, financial well-being and have good health as a people, that we become more advanced. But now looking at the way the West is also going through, advanced countries can retrogress.
It's never a straight-line trajectory to be better and better and better. You can be richer and richer and richer, but the people need not be living better and better and better. So my wish is that Singapore first should have a trajectory of growing richer, maintain economic growth, but that the people will also share and enjoy that growth and live a better life, have a sense of well-being, that the old will be looked after and the poor will see a pathway through, their children will have the education.
And there is a high minimum. You cannot have everybody having the same level of income, living at the same level. It just doesn't happen in any society. But I want to see us draw a fairly high line at what our minimum is. I would like to see that.
I would like to see Singapore still considered relevant and has a role in the region and internationally, and that we will live in peace and stability and be able to cope with the headwinds and the black swans that come on the scene.
Keith 35:39
That's a worthy aspiration. I really like the idea of the high minimum, that we can live in a society where we're all comfortable, where even the maybe poorer as well, that they never fall so low—that your bottom line is frankly a high minimum. That's really something worth striving towards.
I wanted to then ask you, now that you've lived, I think so far your life has been such a wonderful testimony to what a good life can be lived as. What's some advice you would like to give to maybe the younger ones like myself?
Chan Heng Chee 36:30
Well, younger people, especially those who have a sense of wanting to achieve something, I would say do not be afraid to work hard. You have to work hard. There never was a successful artist, innovator, creator, business tycoon, leader, writer who did not work hard and got there.
And I think young people should not, when they are young, keep talking about the work-life balance. You should have more work, less life, because very soon you will find the life. If you begin by asking yourself, how do I work out a work-life balance, you'll end up having a mediocre life. It's comfortable, balanced, mediocre. You're not going to achieve much.
All those who achieve a level that they want to work hard. And I would say that's the first thing I would ask them to do. Secondly, you have to be curious.
Please maintain your curiosity. I am curious all my life. That's why my adrenaline flows, and I'm so excited and I read, and I'm almost young in the way I get excited and curious about something. I can get very passionate. If there's a movie and I want to see, I will check out everything about the background. I do research on it.
I think we should be curious and we must read, and I do mean read books, not just blogs and not just website internet stuff. Do read books. There's nothing like reading a book from cover to cover. It's not old-fashioned. It is in fact very nourishing. So be curious.
And work hard was the third thing I would like to say. I think you should be also aware that there must be a bigger mission outside of yourself. You must have a purpose larger than yourself.
I think that will help you fulfil life because if you're just working for me, me, me, after a time you will wonder what this is for. So you have to find a mission larger than yourself.
Keith 38:38
Those are three pieces of advice I definitely will try to apply in my life. On the topic of books, I wanted to wrap this up by asking you what are the three books that you would like to recommend that every Singaporean should read?
Chan Heng Chee 40:00
I've just recently completed "Chip War" by Chris Miller. This is about the development of semiconductors and microchips from the US which started it, went to Japan and Korea, China. It's a story about this era of technology and technology wars where the fight for technology and the chip is fundamental to understand what's going on in the world. Get this background.
I think one should also look at something of Mr. Lee Kuan Yew's. He is a statesman. Everyone considers him a statesman globally. And there are so many of his books. I thought "One Man's View of the World" is good because he has views on every country. So if you want a quick tour, it gives you that. Otherwise it's "From Third World to First."
And then Henry Kissinger's "World Order" is worth a very good read. He's a great strategic mind, and the "World Order" touches on every aspect of the world. He has a pluralistic world order, then he goes into Asia, even looks at Islam and Middle East, United States and Iran. So it's different parts of the world, multi-polarity of Asia.
This book was written in 2014. And he was already talking of the multipolarity of Asia because the rise of China was clear, towards an Asian order and the US as an ambivalent superpower, technology equilibrium and human consciousness. So it has everything.
Keith 42:02
So these are the three books we should all read cover to cover?
Chan Heng Chee 42:05
No, I said you get a good grasp of, if you want to understand the world, the directions, the trends, the trajectories. Where it's going. Three books that every Singaporean should read if you want to understand the world better.
Keith 42:20
With that, thank you so much, Professor.
Chan Heng Chee 42:22
Thank you, Keith.