Goh, 56, has been prime minister of Singapore since 1990. Educated in the U.S. (at Williams College in Massachusetts), Goh was the handpicked successor to Lee Kwan Yew, the founding father of the 32-year-old nation. Singapore, a city state with fewer than 3 million people, has built itself into the wealthiest and most modern nation in Southeast Asia. It also has earned a reputation as an authoritarian and paternalistic society, with strict limits on dissent. Criticism of leaders often is answered by libel suits that the leaders always win.
Goh and Lee have become spokesmen for “the Asian Way,” a philosophy that places society above the individual, imposes limits on the press and political debate and prizes stability over democracy.
Q: Americans often say that a country can’t have capitalism and a vibrant economy without liberal democracy. I understand this belief is not shared in Singapore.
A: Not fully shared, by Singapore or by myself. We believe you have to get law and order in place first, and that you must create conditions for economic development, you must invest in education, have a cohesive society, get the economic fundamentals right. Then, as the country develops, people’s thinking changes. It must be so. When stomachs are well looked after, then we look after the minds. And of course at that point of time, you want to have freedom of expression, freedom of travel, freedom to criticize the government and so on.
Q: Up to that point, who tells the government when it’s making a mistake? Unless there is someone there to tell the governors when they’re doing something wrong, catastrophes can occur, such as the recent economic crises in Thailand or Malaysia.
A: We do have free and fair elections. So the people who will tell us will be the voters.
Q: Where do the voters get their information without a free, vigorous, even rude, press?
A: They get it from their own experience. The press will give objective data. In Singapore’s context, the press is as free as it can be. But we also emphasize a free and responsible press, not just a press that looks for mistakes all the time and does not recognize the obligations of society.
Q: To Western ears, this emphasis on law and order sounds like an excuse for the government to prevent criticism.
A: No, I think that would be wrong. Law and order simply mean orderly conditions for people to live happily and harmoniously.
Q: You have said that the question of China’s admission to the World Trade Organization should be decided strictly on economic terms, not on its human-rights record. Does this mean that we can judge a nation’s performance only by the market?
A: This is the WTO. When you consider a country’s ability to join such an organization, it must be by the criteria of the WTO. Bringing in values that are not relevant to the WTO do not help us. We can pursue other interests in other forums.
Q: How do you separate economic, political and security issues in this world? It seems to me that they all fit together at some point.
A: There’s no clear dividing line. But there are appropriate organizations for each task. So we discuss economic issues in economic forums and, on the political side, we can discuss political issues. Otherwise, at every forum you’re going to discuss all these issues.
Q: You have said that a continued American security presence in Asia is extremely important. At the same time, we hear a lot here about Singapore’s criticism of American values. This makes many Americans wonder why we should defend countries that reject us so openly.
A: An American presence allows our countries to grow. (For us), that’s important. We should be able to buy machinery, plants, equipment, consumer products from America. But for the Americans, this creates a consumer market. This is the return to the American public–more exports to our countries.
Q: As the world economy globalizes, as living standards in Southeast Asia rise, will there be a convergence of values?
A: There will always be differences. In most areas, they will converge; for example, in our attitudes toward trade. But in Asia we do believe that while the individual is important, the collective interests of society are much more so. On that part, I’m not sure we will converge.
Q: Doesn’t emphasizing society above individual rights stifle the creativity and even aggressiveness that a modern economy needs?
A: Yes. It depends on the evolution of a society. While we want individual rights to be submerged into collective rights, we recognize this could stifle individual creativity. So at this moment, we are inventing a school system so students will become more creative when they grow up. We are telling them, “Think more.”
Q: Can a government do this? It sounds like you’re changing an entire culture.
A: I don’t know. We are trying to change a culture, but I don’t know whether we’ll succeed.
Q: Americans tend to see the U.S. as a model for the rest of the world. Officially, this has been rejected in Asia. But to what degree do you see American democracy as a model, and to what degree is it irrelevant?
A: The essence, such as having free elections and an independent judiciary–we are for that. But for having an unfettered free press, we are against that. And likewise, individuals are free to disagree, but there are certain areas where they should not enter. In our case, you can’t move into the areas of race and religion. We are very careful about that and also the integrity of government and the integrity of the leaders. If you make unfounded remarks against the integrity of individuals, under our system, which is based on British libel law, we would expect the leaders to take action against those who defame them. If they don’t, then of course the leaders would be diminished in the eyes of the people.
Q: Again, this sounds like an attempt to protect the leaders from criticism.
A: No. That’s where people are wrong, because even opposition leaders do likewise. When members of parliament from the ruling party make remarks against opposition leaders’ integrity, they get sued. This I think will remain a difference between us and the U.S. But we admire the individual entrepreneurship, the creative part of American society. That is one value that we are trying to see how we can get.
Q: I don’t see how you can prevent this sort of free criticism, even irresponsible criticism, in an era of modern communications. Won’t the Internet and satellite TV overcome government efforts to block criticism?
A: These criticisms and ideas, they’re perfectly all right, so long as they are not defamatory, so long as they don’t corrupt the morals of the people. We are trying to come up with rules to prevent this defamation or corruption. I’m not sure we’ll succeed, because it’s now a very different world.
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An edited transcript
