Note: To keep things in manageable chunks and allow discussion of each topic, I've sectioned each part of the review off and will post them approximately once a week.

Previously in series: Citizen welfare & development

You are Free to Agree

Are you a fan of free speech? Are you eager for everyone to have a platform? Are you in favor of an open, unconstrained press?

Lee Kuan Yew isn't, and he's probably poking fun at you.

Free Press

Here are a few of his choicest quotes on Western-style free press:

My early experiences in Singapore and Malaya shaped my views about the claim of the press to be the defender of truth and freedom of speech. The freedom of the press was the freedom of its owners to advance their personal and class interests. ⁽¹⁸⁶⁾

And:

I did not accept that newspaper owners had the right to print whatever they liked. Unlike Singapore's ministers, they and their journalists were not elected. ...I do not subscribe to the Western practice that allows a wealthy press baron to decide what voters should read day after day. ⁽¹⁹¹⁾

And, when he got into an argument with the US State Department:

The State Department repeated that it did not take sides; it was merely expressing concern because of its "fundamental and long-standing commitment to the principles of a free and unrestricted press"--which meant that "the press is free to publish or not publish what it chooses however irresponsible or biased its actions may seem to be." ⁽¹⁹²⁾

All that's pretty straightforward, and clearly goes against the principles of free speech, right? Then you get to the next quote:

We have always banned communist publications; no Western media or media organization has ever protested against this. We have not banned any Western newspaper or journal. Yet they frequently refused us the right of reply when they misreported us. ⁽¹⁹¹⁾

Here's a question. You're a tiny city-state occupying valuable territory, trying to stay independent. You are watching the cultural revolution sweep across the homeland of three-quarters of your people, and you keep noticing them funding your newspapers. Meanwhile, other superpowers are locked in an all-out ideological struggle with those forces, a struggle that's shaping policy around the whole world. The country's dominant English-language newspaper at the time of gaining independence was "owned by the British and actively promoted their interests." ⁽¹⁸⁵⁾

What's the right level of freedom of press?

Keeping in mind that the book is telling things from LKY's perspective and so naturally seeks to cast his decisions favorably, his position has some nuances that make it easy to be sympathetic. First, there's a different standard for local and foreign media: "We had to tolerate locally owned newspapers that criticized us; we accepted their bona fides, because they had to stay and suffer the consequences of their policies. Not so 'the birds of passage who run [foreign-owned papers].'" ⁽¹⁸⁷⁾

Second, as he mentions above, he didn't ban non-Communist foreign press. Not exactly. Instead, every time a paper refused right of reply for a story he felt was misrepresented or slanted, he just restricted sales licenses to smaller numbers, with an eye towards reducing advertising revenue but not towards outright banning the ideas. This led to occasionally amusing exchanges. In one back-and-forth, after the Asian Wall Street Journal (AWSJ) published an alleged defamatory article and had sales restricted, the AWSJ offered to distribute its journal free to its deprived subscribers to "forego its sales revenue in the spirit of helping Singapore businessmen". Singapore's government agreed, as long as it left out advertisements. The paper backed out, claiming cost issues. Singapore offered to cover half the additional costs. When the paper refused, Singapore gave an official response: "You are not interested in the business community getting information. You want the freedom to make money selling advertisements." ⁽¹⁹³⁾

Third, well, it's only paranoia if you're wrong. In addition to facing consistent attempts at covert communist influence, I learned post-reading that Lee Kuan Yew had at least one memorable run-in with the CIA (h/t /r/singapore). In 1960, they offered him $3.3 million to cover up a failed attempt to buy information from Singapore intelligence officials. Lee's response? "The Americans should know the character of the men they are dealing with in Singapore and not get themselves further dragged into calumny. ...You do not buy and sell this Government." Never one to ignore leverage, he requested that instead of covert bribes the US provide public foreign aid. They complied.

Dystopian information lockdown, or prudent defense against foreign influence and misinformation? LKY is convinced, rightly or not, that it is the latter. Read with modern US politics in mind, it's easy to compare it to deplatformings from tech websites, concerns about Russian infiltration of social media, or the controversies around fake news. The context changes, the challenges stay the same.

Free Speech

I frankly have much less sympathy for LKY's eagerness to sue people for libel. It's worth mentioning that Singapore has avoided one obvious concern about relying on courts here: corruption is almost non-existent in Singapore, and deliberately so. We may come back to corruption later, since LKY does spend some time on it. Still, there's something unsettling about the leader of a country keeping a hawk's eye watch for anything that misrepresents him, then turning the power of the courts on the individual or newspaper who went after him.

He talks about a fair number of legal battles with evident satisfaction, about taking this opponent or that who accused him or corruption or lied about him to court, then winning the battles. He anticipates the obvious criticism about this practice, and defends against it:

Had I not sued, these allegations would have gained credence. ...Outrageous statements are disbelieved only because they are vigorously refuted. If I failed to sue, that ould be cited as proof that there was something in it. ...Wrong ideas have to be challenged before they influence public opinion and make for problems. ^(130-131)

And:

Far from oppressing the opposition or the press that unjustly attacked my reputation, I have put my private and public life under close scrutiny whenever I appeared as a plaintiff in court. Without a clear record, it would have been an unnecessary hazard. Because I did this and also gave the damages awarded to deserving charities, I kept my standing with our people. ⁽¹³¹⁾

Left unspoken, though, is that he's the one who's in charge of this whole system of lawsuits. Vigorous refutation of an idea can happen in writing, in speeches, in any number of official channels. If he wants to keep his public and private life open to scrutiny, he can do so however he chooses. Electing to wage time-consuming and costly legal battles against people who putforward unsavory ideas is hardly the only choice for the most powerful man in a country, and it's a choice that I feel warrants skepticism.

I'm much more fond of his response to a London Times reporter who made accusations he disputed (emphases mine):

I wrote to invite Levin to a live television debate in London on his allegations. Levin's editor replied that no television station would be interested. I had taken the precaution of first writing to the chairman of the BBC, my friend Marmaduke Hussey, who had agreed to provide half an hour and a neutral moderator. When I informed the London Times of this offer, the editor on Levin's behalf backed off, arguing that my response should be in the same medium in which Levin had attacked me, namely the Times. I wrote to regret Levin's unwillingness to confront me. When the Times refused to publish my letter, I bought a half-page advertisement in the British daily, the Independent. Interviewed on the BBC World Service, I said, "Where I come from, if an accuser is not prepared to face the person he has attacked, there is nothing more to be said."

Levin has not written about Singapore or me since. ⁽¹⁹⁶⁾

There's something delightful about the image of a politician going up to a reporter and saying, in effect, "Heard you were talking smack. Debate me, you coward."

Another instance shows up, by the way, in which it's hard to make assumptions about Singapore. Given LKY's desire for control over media messaging, you might expect some sort of overreaction to the internet. Instead, his message comes with characteristic bluntness: "Countries that try to block the use of IT will lose." ⁽¹⁹⁶⁾

On nanny states

One last topic remains to be covered here. From banning everything from drugs to tobacco advertising to chewing gum to eating durian in public spaces, Singapore has inevitably faced accusations of being a "nanny state."

LKY has this to say on the subject:

Foreign correspondents in Singapore have no big scandals of corruption or grave wrongdoings to report. Instead they reported on the fervor and frequency of these "do good" campaigns, ridiculing Singapore as a "nanny state." They laughed at us. I was confident we would have the last laugh. We would have been a grosser, ruder, cruder society had we not made these efforts to persuade our people to change their ways. We did not measure up as a cultivated, civilized society and were not ashamed to set about trying to become one in the shortest time possible. First, we educated and exhorted our people. After we had persuaded and won over a majority, we legislated to punish the willful minority. It has made Singapore a more pleasant place to live in. If this is a "nanny state," I am proud to have fostered one. ⁽¹⁸³⁾

To rephrase: "Yep, we're a nanny state. Works great. Any questions?"

I'll repeat my above explanation of LKY's approach: Will a policy make people more self-sufficient, more capable, or safer? Ultimately, does it work? Oh, and does it make everybody furious?

Great, do that.

On a world scale, I think I would be uncomfortable with this sort of standard. I believe in the importance of creating robust societies where a wide range of ideas can thrive, and this sort of deliberately limited culture doesn't really provide that. But part of creating robust systems is questioning assumptions and experimenting with dramatically different approaches. I'm from Utah. I grew up in a similarly self-restricting and proud "nanny state". While it wasn't right for me in the end, for a lot of people I'm close with, those unambiguous strict standards work really, really well in a way that "eh, just do what makes you happy" doesn't. A single city of five and a half million people seems to me just about the right size to run that sort of experiment.

Interlude Two

While reading the book and looking a bit into Singapore, I came across a few pieces of info that don't fit naturally into a review but deserve at least a moment's attention. One is the matter of Singapore's airport.

You might recall from my first review a brief mention of Lee Kuan Yew's focus on first impressions so people would "know that Singaporeans were competent, disciplined, and reliable... without a word being said" ^(62). Singapore's Changi airport takes that to its natural conclusion. He was determined to make Singapore a transport hub of the region and decided to write off their investments in an older airport to perfect Changi in a number of details. After seeing Boston's Logan Airport, for example, he reported being "impressed that the noise footprint of planes landing and taking off was over water" ⁽²⁰³⁾ and adjusting plans accordingly. In the end, they spent six years and $1.5 billion constructing the airport in a sort of anti-Brandenburg approach.

And (h/t elsewhere on reddit): The airport is wild. Features include: multi-story slides, a massive playground of climbing nets, an indoor playground and waterfall, hedge mazes and canopy bridges, and, well, just about everything else. Oh, and it has airplanes too. It's been ranked pretty consistently as the best airport in the world.

Until next time.

Next in series: Race, language, and uncomfortable questions