Singapore's founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, had a three-day conversation with former Federal German (West Germany) Chancellor Schmidt. When they talked about Lee Kuan Yew's bilingual policy, which he was most proud of in his life, Lee Kuan Yew confessed:
Singapore's colonizers were British, which was fortunate for Singapore.
This is undoubtedly a meaningful sentence, and its implicit meaning is intriguing.
Not only this time, but Lee Kuan Yew also expressed his gratitude to Britain in the chapter on Europe in his book Lee Kuan Yew's View of the World. Lee Kuan Yew was grateful for the British system and his graceful departure.
He said that compared to the Belgian colonized Congo and the French colonized Guinea, the British colonized Singapore is in stark contrast to them:
Congo has long been used by the Belgians as a producer of raw materials. The Belgians left behind a mess that left the Congo struggling with its civil war.
The leaders of Guinea annoyed de Gaulle and fooled France, who ordered that all the wires there be cut when they were withdrawn from Guinea, leaving nothing for them.
Lee Kuan Yew said that compared to the two countries, the British were quite gentlemanly when they left. Their governor politely handed over the office building to him in perfect condition, took him by the hand and introduced him to each of the housekeepers in the building. As the song goes: This beautiful friend is beautiful when he leaves.
Lee Kuan Yew wrote: "If the British had left me the same situation as Congo or Guinea, I could not be sure that I would have been able to turn the country into what it is today."
Of course, Lee Kuan Yew owes more to the British than just their gentlemanly demeanor and the English they left behind, but Lee Kuan Yew valued the British system more. In his view, the system left by the British was mature and effective, and they did not need to subvert it. That's stupid, they just need to fill in and reinforce something.
Between Belgium and France, on the one hand, and the United Kingdom, they represented two completely different colonial models: the former represented tradition and the latter modernity, the former by means of military conquest and the latter by market and trade, the former was nothing more than a game of royalty and aristocracy, and therefore increasingly entrenched and closed, and the latter represented an open system and an extensible order. It is also colonial, but it is synonymous with barbarism and civilization respectively.
After World War II, there was a wave of nation-state independence, the British Empire collapsed, and the world hegemony was replaced by the United States. However, there are still many people who say today that "we still live in a world dominated by the British". This makes people feel strange, the British Empire has obviously collapsed, and some people even say that it is already a second-rate country, why is it still so influential?
Generally speaking, a country can influence the world by relying on at least two forces: one is strong economic, scientific, technological, military and other "hard power", and the other is "soft power" such as culture, system, ideology, etc., in comparison, the influence and attraction of "soft power" are more important and long-lasting. According to the "2018 Global Soft Power Research Report", the UK's soft power ranks first in the world, much higher than that of the United States!
Singapore's success is not only the success of the economy, but also the success of the system. It shows us that in order to break out of the cycle of history and get out of the "late-mover disadvantage", the late-developing countries must bid farewell to the barbaric mode of France and Russia, and return to the mode of modern civilization mainly started by Britain.
The clash between civilization and barbarism is, in fact, a clash of two economic systems, which did not end with the end of the colonial era, but intensified. In the face of a mixed world, the choice of a country or region has a bearing on its future destiny. Therefore, it is particularly important and urgent to understand why modern civilization originated and how to maintain it from the bottom of economic thought.