Patron Former Minister Mentor, Singapore
Mr Lee Kuan Yew
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China, India, US 'to be main world players'
The Straits Times
2010-07-14
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RUMOURS of America's demise, to use Mark Twain's phrase, have been greatly exaggerated, in the opinion of Foreign Minister George Yeo.
 
In fact, the superpower is "not only a reality, but a necessity", and he predicted it would take its place as one of the three poles in a tripolar world to come.
 
In a wide-ranging tour de force of a speech that examined the impact of China's re-emergence on the global stage, Mr Yeo said China and India would soon join up with the United States, and the trio "will decide the big issues of war and peace in this century".
 
Speaking at the closing session of the inaugural FutureChina Global Forum yesterday, he said neither China nor India will unseat the US, due to two reasons.
 
First, neither ancient civilisation is interested in world dominance. Second, the "software" that powers globalisation will continue to be American.
 
China's rise need not be feared by the world, for a "Pax Sinica" is not what the country or its Communist Party is after, Mr Yeo said, contrasting their foreign policy goals with those of the US.
 
"The Americans, because of the exceptional nature of their conception, believe that it's good for everybody in the world to become (like) America... you would be better off and the world will be a better place. So there's a natural missionary spirit among the Americans (which is) expressed from time to time in American foreign policy.
"For the Han Chinese, it is different. The Han Chinese are a little bit like Jews. If you are not born one, there's no need for you to become one," he said.
 
Chinese foreign policy – even for past conflicts, which have been interpreted as aggressive – has been a bid to "secure an environment of stability so that it can concentrate on its internal development", Mr Yeo said.
 
China is too "internally preoccupied" to have aspirations of creating a world in its image, he added.
 
"China is not interested in making the Myanmar people democratic or in making Muslims Confucianist. China is quite prepared to accept the world in all its diversity as long as you don't threaten them."
 
Would India and the US engage in a "natural partnership" to balance China's rise? Mr Yeo saw it as far from inevitable: "India is too old, too wise, too spiritual, too worldly to be anything but itself. Democracy is one layer, but there are many layers, going down many kilometres."
 
As for the US, he emphasised the mark it has left on the world, saying its political and social structure, based on the freedom of the individual, is like the "TCP/IP" – the framework on which the Internet was created.
 
"The globalisation that we see today is an American globalisation. America's TCP/IP is the connection that hyperlinks the Chinese to the Indians, the Europeans to the Latinos," Mr Yeo said, noting that it is the framework on which the world's trading and financial systems are created.
 
"What will link China and India together? Not Chinese software. Not Hindu software. It will be American software, through American universities, through the English language, through Anglo-Saxon rules of trade and financial standards."

 
Courtesy of The Straits Times, 14 July 2010.
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