 Welcome to all to this interview session with Kishore Maibabani. I assume because you're here you probably have some idea who he is, but let me introduce him briefly. Kishore is a former head of the Singaporean Foreign Ministry, twice ambassador to the United Nations, now Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School at NUS. He's a man who's written about how one of the characteristics of Asians is a willingness to avoid conflict, but thankfully he doesn't always live up to that himself, and so it makes for a lively discussion and is prepared to take things on. His most recent book is called The New Asian Hemisphere, The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East. Kishore, it's a great read, and I was very struck in the opening chapters, the way in which you weave in your own personal story and the transformation in your life with the broader story of the rise of Asia. Could you perhaps recap some of that for the audience? Well, I decided to begin on a very personal note because I suspect that very few people could realize that you could actually grow up with five of us living in a one-room house in Singapore in a typical developing country with no flush toilet until the age of 10 with racial riots at my doorstep with people cutting each other with bottles, and I saw that as a 10-year-old child right in front of my house. So to grow up in a sort of very typical third world environment and then in the course of my own lifetime to sort of live in a first world society, I believe that the journey that I travel is one that is now going to be traveled by hundreds of millions of people, if not billions of people. And the critical thing I realized that to succeed you actually got to believe that you can succeed. I mean, to be very candid, when I grew up as a child in Singapore and it was a British colony until I was about 11 years old, I actually believed that I was ethnically inferior, that whatever we call the white man, the westerner, was naturally superior, naturally was smarter, performed better and we Asians would always be second class. And then in the course of my lifetime again to see this complete reversal of roles where now if you go to American universities, many of the western kids complain there are too many Asian-Americans in my class, too many Asians are Asian in my class, I can't compete with these bloody Indians and Chinese, why is life so unfair? And that, you know, you just imagine that, you know, that would have been inconceivable when I was in school or university and now you have this complete reversal and that's why I wanted to put it in personal terms because when you multiply it by hundreds of millions and billions you realize that this really is a big story. And do you think that that's a story in a way that unites very disparate parts of Asia because in a way that's something that the Chinese are going through, that Indians are going through as well and it creates a sort of Pan-Asian sympathy, they understand that there's a sloughing off of old poverty but also psychological burdens. Yeah, well I think that was the big advantage, actually. You know, when you grow up as a minority, ethnic minority within a minority, I grew up as an ethnic Cindy and the Indians only 6% of the population, the Cindy's only 10,000 people and in a Chinese majority society I could actually, I found through my personal experience as an Indian I could connect with over a billion people in India growing in a Chinese majority society I could connect directly with a 1 billion people in China and both our neighbors, ironically, we were Hindu refugees from Pakistan when my mother arrived in Singapore in 1947 and all through my childhood, both our neighbors were Muslims and so again we had a very close relationship with our Muslim neighbors and that enabled me to also connect with the Islamic world and I think it's the capacity to understand the three of the biggest streams in Asia that enables me to write so confidently that when I speak about Asia, it actually applies not just to the Chinese in Singapore, the Malays in Singapore or Indians in Singapore, it applies to much larger societies because I've seen them. And what if I were to say to you, but hang on Keetal, we're talking about 40% or more of the world's population, is it even conceivable that one can generalize about such a huge group? Yeah, I mean I'm sure when you dig deep into it there will be lots of differences but what's interesting to me is watching the Asian reactions to my writing and I get very large block of sympathy in China. Apparently my Chinese name, Mark Aishaw, is very well known in China, if you Google it, I'm better known in the Chinese-speaking world than I am in the English-speaking world and if I travel to India, of course quite naturally there's an affinity because of my ethnic background but also frankly when I go to Iran or when I go to the Arab-speaking world and when people have watched me, for example, on BBC Hard Talk at the interview, I got emails from Morocco, from China, from India saying, hey, we're glad you spoke up for us. And when you're speaking up for us, so to speak, are you in a sense also telling the West off and saying, look, we've had it with being lectured to by the West? Is that part of the message? Yeah, well, I think, you know, as you know, one of the most significant aspects of the era we're entering now is what I call the end of the era of Western domination of world history and this domination was overwhelming for over 200 years and so it's like layers of Western influence that had been wrapped around the world and now these layers of Western influence are being unwrapped around the world and in the process, all kinds of minds are changing and I found it, one of the things that I found most puzzling is that the Western societies are supposed to be among the most open societies in the world, the most receptive to new ideas, but they've been very resistant to accepting this idea that we're reaching the end of the era of Western domination of world history and part of the reason why, as you know, I write things as sharply as I do the reason I do that is to provide a kind of wake-up call to the West and say stop trying to do things in the same old way that you did before except the fact that you got to share power with the rest of the world and essentially the good news that I have for the Western world and I want to emphasize this because as you know, there's so much pessimism today in the West, it's ironic that I as an Asian now feel obliged to inject some optimism into the Western world and say don't, don't, it's not over, it's not over, you haven't lost everything, you've got hope, you've got hope, keep on fighting, you can do it, you know? So it's sort of ironic that someone with my background is now telling the West, you know, don't give up. Is it also enjoyable in the West? Now that's getting too personal. Now I think, the reason why I studied philosophy at the National University of Singapore is because I like the clash of ideas. So what I enjoy is actually meeting a formidable debater and then having a good debate because it's my nature. And so, and then having to deal with so much Western arrogance, you know, which I can tell you at the end of the Cold War was amazing and it was my good fortune that I was in Harvard in 91-92 at the peak of the Francis Fukuyama Essay, the end of history. And I remember many of the Harvard professors just found it inconceivable that there could be any other road of history except the Western road of history. And that's when I began to realise, hey, they've got to listen to something new. Okay, now you've argued that the West can learn now having dished out lessons for many years to the rest of the world, now needs to learn some lessons. And I think one of the things you think is that the West has become very un-pragmatic, as you put it, that Asians are more pragmatic. Could you expand on that? Well, I think if you look at this crisis, just in the last three years, okay, what's happened? And I think, firstly, if you look at the causes, in the case of the United States of America, to put it very bluntly and briefly, Alan Greenspan actually believed, ideologically, that markets were smarter than governments. Let the invisible hand do all the work and everything will be okay. And that was a huge ideological mistake he made. The Asians never believed that. The Asians believe you need the invisible hand of free markets and the visible hand of good governance. So you have to combine the two. And I always say, somewhat unkindly, in the land of the two-handed, the one-handed is at a disadvantage. So that's why I think, and I think the role of government, and Ronald Reagan, unfortunately, he was a great president in many other ways. One of the worst things he ever said, which I think damaged Western society was his line, government is not the solution. Government is the problem. And I can tell you the one thing that virtually all Asian societies agree upon is that, you need government. Societies need government because if you don't have governments, things will get much, much worse. As you know, in the Chinese mindset, the thing that they fear more is not the lack of freedom. The thing that they fear most is chaos, luan. And that's why having strong governance is so important. And frankly, as it now turns out, the big lesson of this last crisis is that you need to emphasize and develop good governance in all societies. And for the West, it will be very painful backtracking from the ideological positions they used to take. Even further, I think in my own newspaper, and I'll give you that the West is one of its promises, it tells itself lies. Now what do you mean by that? Well, I think frankly, and even listening to Chancellor Merkel yesterday here, I mean the one thing that Asians have learned, because the Asians actually have struggled enormously to escape two centuries of inferior performance. And the lesson that they have learned in the two centuries of struggle is that change doesn't come easily. That to succeed, you have to have painful sacrifice, you have to work harder, and you have to, you know, sacrifice for the long term. And I find not a single Western politician, not Obama in his State of the Union speech, not Chancellor Merkel yesterday speaking to us, will use the word sacrifice and say, I'm sorry, the good times are over, we can't get them back, but let's work harder, let's sacrifice now, and then we can transform and change. But the word sacrifice, I mean, waiting for one major Western politician to use it. But don't Asians, you know, some Asian countries also tell lies just of a different sort. I mean, if you think, say, when China says, well, we've arrested Ai Weiwei because there's something wrong with his taxes, that's a lie. Well, it is a fact that all governments lie. I have not yet found a single government that doesn't lie to its people. And frankly, if any government decides to be truth 100% of the time, it obviously hasn't read Marquis Valley and doesn't realize that that's not how you run governments. And from time to time, you go to shape messages and all so on and so forth. But the question is the degree of lying. And here, one of the biggest failures in Western understanding of China is that they see the Communist Party and they assume that the Communist Party is a dictatorial force sitting down and oppressing the Chinese people. Actually, the last 30 years of Chinese Communist Party rule have been the best 30 years that the Chinese have enjoyed the last 200 years and they do see the Chinese Communist Party rule as having liberated them from lots of things. As long as the Chinese population considers the government legitimate, right, there is a bond between the two, it can carry on. Because the Chinese Communist Party is acutely aware that the minute they stop performing, the minute they stop delivering economic growth, they can be gone very quickly. So there is a social contract over there that exists. And the difference is that the reason why I say there's greater lies in the West than in the East is because the social contract is broken down because people don't realise that they've got to make some fundamental transformations if the West is going to turn around. Now, a popular debate in the West and also in Asia as well is this contrast between China and India. Who will succeed better? Will it be the democratic system of India or the more authoritarian one-party system of China? Where do you come down on that debate or do you see that as a misleading debate and the commonalities being more interesting? I think frankly both will succeed. But both will succeed differently. I mean, China will succeed because of its government. India will succeed despite its government. And they are very, very different. That's as if you believe that democracy is a disadvantage for India. No, no, no. Not at all. In fact, I do think that all societies have to become democratic eventually and that's actually a competitive advantage that India has over China because China will have to make a painful transition to democracy at some point in time. But the critical thing as I explained in my book is that the reason why both are succeeding is because they're both understood, absorbed and are implementing what I call seven pillars of Western wisdom. So I give the West a lot of credit for the success of Asia and it is these things like free market economics and mastery of science and technology, the culture of pragmatism, meritocracy, all these things they're implementing in their own way and that's why I think both will succeed. What about this issue that I raised in the introduction is a question of conflict avoidance. I mean, you think that the West in recent years has made a mistake by sort of looking for fights around the world particularly in the Middle East and the nations say in Burma have taken a different view. Yeah, I think the thing that's most surprising is that internally within the Western universe, within the European Union, within North America, there's total peace. But the United States has, I mean, I like the United States but to be objective, has emerged as the most trigger happy country in the last 10, 20 years. And I think it's got to learn that war is not the solution. It wasn't the solution in Iraq. It's not going to be the solution in Iran. And if you compare and contrast, when we decide to adopt a long-term policy of engaging Myanmar or Burma, everybody laughed at ASEAN and said, you're not going to change the military regime through this kind of engagement process. And believe me, I'm absolutely astonished at how quickly Myanmar has opened up in the last few weeks, far beyond my expectations. But I think that's a result of this drip, drip, drip method of every day exposing the Myanmar rulers to the rest of Southeast Asia. And then they can ask themselves the obvious question when they fly to Bangkok or Lumpo, Hanoi, Singapore, why are we not progressing? Why are they progressing? And it's by making them aware that things have changed. And that's what I would do with Iran. I would, frankly, and don't forget that Iran, like China, like India, represents one of the oldest civilizations in the world that has its own cultural traditions and the Iranians are among the smartest people in the world. Engage them, expose them to the rest of the world, and then over time, you will evolve. What about those who argue that actually the future of Asia may not be that peaceful and may not always be characterized by an avoidance of conflict because there's a growing anxiety about the power of China and the way it's clashed with the Japanese, over the fishing boats, the Vietnamese, the Indians, last time I was there, were very anxious about their territorial dispute. Aren't things actually a little bit more tensor and more conflictual than you think? Well, I mean, as you know, geopolitics has been around for 2,000 years. It would be around for another 2,000 years. And whenever you have rising powers, it is natural to have rising tensions. And that's why one of the best things that the Lee Kuan Yew School has done is to raise an $8 million endowment fund to study how China and India can avoid conflict. So we do believe that there is a threat of that happening and that's why we're investing money in that. So it is possible. And I would say there's a 10 to 20% probability of some kind of conflicts emerging in Asia. I don't rule that out. But I still think there's an 80 to 90% probability of it emerging peacefully. Because remember one important thing. Fortunately, all the leaders of China and India remember what life was like 30, 40 years ago, right? Hu Jintao, Xi Jinping went through the Cultural Revolution. They know how bad life was then. They know that this is the best historical moment that China has had. This is the best historical moment that India is having. So why waste it on conflict? And you have to, in a sense, be almost devoid of common sense to engage in that kind of conflict. And I think that's amazing in Asia is some brilliant success stories that no one writes about. The Taiwan Strait was supposed to be one of the most dangerous flashpoints in the world today. No one talks about Taiwan Strait as a geopolitical flashpoint. That's because of a very slow, patient strategy of gradually linking Taiwan economically with China. So in a sense, we're coming back to where we started, where a certain sort of wisdom comes out of knowing in your childhood real turmoil, real poverty, and then you can recognize how much you have to lose, perhaps from a more advantage perspective. But since we're coming to a close, could I ask you to look a little further ahead? You talk about, in the book, about the irresistible shift of power to the East and the rise of Asia. So what would the world look like? How will it differ and feel different from how it does now, say, in 30, 40 years' time, when China is easily the world's largest economy, when India is up there in the top three or four? A shift of power, will that necessarily make things feel less comfortable for the West, or will it be a different sort of world? I'm going to apologize for my optimism. I actually think that we are headed into the best century that humanity has ever enjoyed. And I actually believe that this century will not just be good for the Asians, because they'll have a traumatic improvement in standard living. The number of people living in the middle class in Asia is going to grow from 500 million people today to 1.75 billion by 2020. That kind of change you've never seen before in history. But the West will also benefit from this change. And if the West engages Asia in a different way, in an equal way, without trying to be condescending or looking down and so on and so forth, then I think we can have a wonderful new era of human history, where I wrote about this incidentally almost 20 years ago in response to Samuel Huntington. I said we will not see a clash of civilizations until the 21st century. I say we will see a fusion of civilizations. And that's coming. What about those who say the environment can't take it, that it may be frightfully unfair, but as a matter of fact, if Asians live like Americans, if they all have cars and fridges, the world's going to fry? I completely agree. And I think the Asians have got to accept the fact that life is unfair, that even though the Americans have a number of cars, they refuse to tax their gasoline, they refuse to make any sacrifices, I think Asians got to accept that they will have to grow differently. And fortunately, by the way, in the case of China, it's got the largest solar program, one of the largest wind turbine programs. India's got larger wind turbine programs. There's an awareness in the governments that they got to grow in a green way. But will it happen fast enough? I mean, the last time I was in Beijing, you look at the car statistics, there were a number of cars coming onto the roads in China, and one can't see that slowing down because everybody, it's a tool of personal liberation, people have wealth, they buy a car. Yes, but I can tell you, you're absolutely right again, but then look at cities like Seoul, okay? It was congested, crowded and everything, and then they decided to build a stream, reopen a stream in the middle of the city. They said, we need to get re-engaged back with nature, so that will come. And increasingly, I mean, if you look at how Singapore is built, the largest botanic gardens in the middle of the city, on some of the most expensive land in the city, that's in itself a very telling symbolic sign. Now, in our last five minutes, I'd just like to come back to this question of values. We were talking earlier, and you said to me, oh, the Asian values debate, it's an old one, I think that as we're looking forward to a world in which Asia is clearly bound to weigh much, much more economically, culturally, and so on, a big question is whether the kind of values that we in the West, a lot of people in the West, have come to believe are universal, beliefs in certain forms of human rights, individualism, et cetera, actually are universal, or whether they stem from a distinctly Western tradition, or whether, in fact, we're right. And in the end, there'll be a sort of, maybe even Dara said Fukuyama was right, and that there will be a convergence around a universal model which does involve individualism, human rights, democracy, et cetera. I mean, clearly some values are universal. I don't like to have my nails pulled out. I don't want to be tortured in Guantanamo. I don't want to be hanged naked in Abu Ghraib. It's true. I mean, none of us likes to be tortured, so I think those kinds of values will be universal. And so, there's no fight over those kinds of issues. I also think that democracy will be universal, that all societies, one way or another, will have to become democratic. But the question is not the destination, the question is the root. And I think the biggest mistake that the West has made is to try and export democracy and to say, hey, I'm right and you are wrong. Whether you do it by the Iraqi road of invading a country, which is a disaster, or you try and preach to the Asians, and I think the fundamental point I make at the very beginning is that we have reached the end of the era of Western preaching. So if these values are universal, and I agree they're universal, let them be absorbed in their own way. Let people choose them and accept them. And what people actually have not noticed, I mean, even if you look at China, right, which is technically still run by the Communist Party of China, the amount of freedom that the individual, average Chinese citizen enjoys today is almost like 100 years ahead of what they had in Mao's Cultural Revolution. So they made an enormous transformation in the quality of life. They can travel around the world. Every year 40 million Chinese leave China freely and return to China freely. Why? Not because it's a prison, but because it has actually liberated the population. So I do believe that it's going to happen. But what's not going to happen if people are saying, hey, you're the West, you're right and you're wrong. And if that's what the West is waiting for, then we'll be disappointed. Okay, good note to end on. Tony, thank you very much indeed.