August 26, 2025 • 40 mins
The future of Asia is interesting but even more so is the man who created it!
'Lee Kuan Yew' by Allison & Blackwill is a compiled selection of speeches & quotes from Lee Kuan Yew bundled together to come across as a single interview. The focus is on his opinions over the years on what he imagines the future will look like. It's split into 10 chapters on topics like democracy, China/USA/India, geopolitics & Islamic Extremism.
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(00:00:00) Intro
(00:01:49) Themes/Questions
(00:26:56) Author & Extras
(00:33:57) Summary
(00:37:18) Value 4 Value
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kyrin Down (00:00):
The future of Asia is interesting, but even more so the man who created it.
(00:11):
Welcome, Mere Mortalites, to another round of the mere mortal book reviews. I'm your host here, Kyrin, live on the 08/27/2025.
And as you might summarize, this is the podcast where I announce my intention to challenge the prime ministership
of Singapore.
Okay. No. I'm not gonna be doing that on this podcast, but we do have a guy who actually did that and did it rather well. We have Lee Kuan Yew. The book is titled Lee Kuan Yew, the grand master's insights on China, The United States, and the world. Interviews and selections by Graham Allison and Robert d Blackwill with Ally Wine forward by Henry Kissinger.
(00:47):
So this book was published in 2013.
It's a 158 pages in length. Took me about four hours of reading to get through in total.
It's a compiled
selection of speeches,
quotes that he's made over as many years as a,
a public figure, I guess, as a statesman,
all bundled together to come across as a single interview. So it's a bit of a strange format. I'll talk more about that at the end. The focus is really on his opinions of what the future holds for various different topics
(01:20):
and why he thinks, they
this these outcomes will happen. So,
it's split into 10 chapters in total, and I can read you what they are. They're all is called the future of, so the future of China,
United States, US China relations, India, Islamic extreme extremism,
national economic growth, geopolitics and globalization,
(01:42):
democracy, and then chapters nine and ten, how Lee Huan Yew thinks, and then the conclusion.
So let's just jump into
what he thinks in the future. So going on to it,
what does the future have in store for us and Asia in particular? And how does Lida go about shaping that future for the better as well? Because even though it's talking a lot about the future of,
(02:05):
it's really focusing on Lee Kuan Yew. The the book is Lee Kuan Yew. So it's really going, okay. What does this in particular person think, and how would he act as perhaps as a leader in the future? So a little bit of a a brief intro first,
because he is not the author of this book.
Harry Lee Kuan Yew, and he kinda dropped the Harry name and then went by Lee Kuan Yew, was born in 1923
(02:29):
and passed away
not too long ago. I think it was 2014,
2015,
or 2013, around that period,
in the then British colony of Singapore. And so he has a rather multicultural background
himself with, you know, Chinese, Malay, but he spit he spoke English at home.
He was, quite the linguist himself, probably speaking, like, five plus languages and dialects and stuff like that.
(02:55):
Very well educated
in his upbringing, and he was from, I guess, like, a little bit of a wealthier family.
He, managed to get through World War two despite some very close
scares, with the Japanese invasion of Singapore and and, things like this. Before going to The UK, becoming a lawyer, coming back to Singapore, lawyering for a bit, then becoming a statesman and politician,
(03:20):
Eventually,
was
prime minister of Singapore for, like, thirty plus years,
still active in the government even in the later years of his life as a senior minister and things like this. So,
what he's really known for,
I guess, was for when he was a statesman, when he was prime minister
of
Singapore slash Malaysia because it was part of the, part of Malaysia,
(03:43):
when Singapore became independent and was its own country,
really taking it from this kind of very unstable,
uncertain future
backwater
third world
country,
newly formed country into the Singapore of today, which is, you know, a financial powerhouse
leading in technologies, industries,
(04:03):
green, you know, Singapore airports well known throughout the world as one of the best airports, if not the best.
All of this with the uncertain British withdrawal,
geopolitics, all of these sorts of things, you know, fighting for, you know, his own party and to become prime minister, continually get elected, all of those sorts of things. So that's the man himself.
So let's talk about what is actually contained within the book. And
(04:28):
caveat here, I found it rather uninteresting
compared to
the person himself and kind of how he thinks
and his own principles rather than
his visions for the future. So just just know that upfront.
That being said, considering he was such a
political
leader, dominant force in shaping
(04:50):
Singapore's future at the time,
it's he's probably worth listening to when it comes to
what the future of Asia and,
the Asian region will have in store considering he navigated that so well for,
like, forty plus fifty years, something like this. So a summation of his thoughts here
is number one, China will become the superpower
(05:12):
in the
and when it says the future, there's no certain
time limits or dates, but I largely interpreted this as the
following decade slash twenty first century. So probably,
you know,
the next eighty years roughly is is kind of what he was talking about. And if you try and to extrapolate too far beyond that, you're not gonna do too well. So China will eventually become superpower number one,
(05:37):
in terms of
probably
economics, certainly, but likely also militarily,
but is willing to take its time, AKA decades, to displace The US as, as the number one. And he feels there's unlikely to be a hot war conflict, but
certainly economical
kind of fighting. And we're actually seeing this nowadays with all the trade wars and tariffs and things like this. So, you know, already a decade into his predictions where where they're kind of looking pretty rosy so far.
(06:10):
He says The USA's biggest strength is its entrepreneurial culture.
This creates tremendous wealth and resiliency of people who rely on themselves to,
kind of drag themselves to out of the mud to become,
achieve their goals, become successful, become wealthy, things like this. However, he worries about the long term effects of multiculturalism,
(06:31):
especially
the amount of immigration from Latin America, Mexico,
and how that will shift the kind of balance of,
the culture,
perhaps moving away from English as the dominant language over time,
the welfare dependency that is created with that, and in particular,
(06:52):
the non balanced budgets, I. E. They're spending more than they're
earning from tax revenue and tariffs and things like this, and that they won't have the strong leaders necessary to make the tough calls. And when he says strong leaders and tough calls, he's really talking about to his own people,
I. E. Having to raise taxes or having to communicate to the people like, hey, we're not
(07:15):
a world leader anymore. We're not number one.
We probably need to tighten out our belts and, you know, go through a period of austerity,
much like the Asians have had to for the last, you know, hundred
ish years,
when Asia was long no longer was the dominant force in the Asian region. So
(07:36):
things like that.
Asia, and he's really referring to China and India in particular,
are likely to become the dominant forces in the twenty first century.
China first, because even though India will likely outgrow it in terms of the amount of people in India by, let's just say, 30%,
(07:57):
the Indian government
was
too slow, too bureaucratic
and didn't have the right mix of is
to didn't have the right mix of like pushing forward with innovation. It was stuck in this regulatory
quagmire
where things take forever to go through and it stifles a lot of innovation and growth. Hence why China will
(08:19):
rise and become more successful in India over the shorter term, I. E. The next couple of decades. But then after that,
India will likely to become very dominant as well. And then, you know, perhaps even The US won't even be the equation of, like, superpowers in the world anymore. It would be India and China. So
Southeast Asia will play a part in all of this as but more as a strong consumer base rather than a military power,
(08:47):
I. E. Places like Singapore,
just don't have enough people to technologically
become a, you know,
scary nation. They're not going to
rule the seas like England did with its,
with its
naval warfare
and things like this.
But you can have very strong
(09:07):
economies and you can have very strong manufacturing bases like we see nowadays with Taiwan and Singapore
and Korea being very important
because of all the semiconductors, which we learned in our last book review on Chippewa. So good good thing we read that book.
And finally, culture is more important than governments is largely what I'd
(09:30):
say. They should be viewed more as a means to enabling people to be as efficient
as possible whilst providing the basic need of, I guess,
stability and security, I. E.
Singapore,
Singaporeans can be safe in the knowledge that they're not gonna get invaded by Malaysia in the
(09:51):
following day, week, month, year, decade,
and can kind of trust their government for that, but that they
are not
entirely dependent on it when there's not a welfare state.
But also kind of
the culture is very tricky, and, it's very nuanced. And so it's it's kinda hard to give his views
(10:12):
just in a in a quick jab here because he he did talk a lot about culture,
and it can't be summed up really easily.
But one thing I did find rather interesting was,
he didn't think that democracy
as a government style was inherently better,
than other styles.
There are many examples that he provides of
(10:35):
the French and English constitutions
failing in all of their various colonies. And he was saying it wasn't because the constitution wasn't written well.
It was more that they didn't have the the wise or the strong leaders necessary to
implement it. And he even says himself in the book of he thinks a,
a a democracy with a twist where instead of each person has a vote,
(11:00):
when a a man gets to a a a certain age of, like, let's say, 40 years plus and he has a couple children dependent on him,
he or his family, or the family should be able to vote with those extra votes
and that they should kind of count double. So therefore, the more children you have, the more votes that you have or something along those lines where it's it show it's got an increasing
(11:25):
reflection that, you know, he's got more lives dependent on him. So he's likely to be making decisions
for his children's future as well,
and not just on, you know, the immediate short term or can I get this little trinket from the government because they've got a favorable tax law for me, but other things which will screw screw up his children in thirty years time? So I thought that was an interesting point as well, that,
(11:52):
as someone who has a rather democratic
government style, he was in that,
kind of, of of government for so long, didn't necessarily think that it was the best.
Showed a bit of a humbleness of of him as a as a person as well.
So going on to him as a person, my main reason for reading the book was to know more about his
(12:17):
style of
thinking, how he operated in the world, his principles.
Because
although I largely
do not care about politics,
I am very interested in how
one man and he wasn't just one man, but
he was the leader of a country which really
(12:37):
changed its fortunes in such a small period of time.
Considering it was so small, considering the circumstance it was kind of birthed from,
there are many innumerable countries which you can point out and go like, well, they didn't do that
that well. They didn't have, you know, a lot of the
disadvantages that Singapore had. Maybe its smallness was an advantage in a certain respect, but
(13:02):
it certainly wasn't a place where you would look at and go, they've got a really bright future ahead of them in the 1950s, the 1960s.
So that was one of the reasons why I chose this book to read. And,
he strikes me foremost from
reading between the lines a little bit as a realist.
(13:23):
He when he argues about things,
he's argue about things that are already happening and likely to continue happening. He he
isn't stuck in this kind of, like,
identifying a problem, coming up with some random solution and then saying
and trying to enact that. He was always going like, what are actual,
(13:44):
tangible,
you know, physical ways that this will work or not work?
And then
put those into practices and be willing to
change when he realized things were going wrong. An example of this was,
the two child policy in Singapore. They were growing too much,
and too fast, and they were worried that,
(14:06):
they were going to kind of overpopulate.
So there was a kind of two child policy where there was I think it was mostly tax incentives to not have more than two children.
And then when they realized a couple of decades later that they didn't have enough people and they needed more workers,
they,
reversed that. And then there was tax incentives to have more children. So
(14:27):
things like that where it was more of a guiding hand rather than a
strict enforcement.
I don't think you could ever say that he was a dictator
or authoritarian,
but there were things that he did which
had leanings towards that. For example, he would lock people up
with no
(14:48):
trial. And
it's he he struck he had to strike a real
balance between,
leading and,
you know, doing the things that would enable the people to become
secure, safe, trust in him and his government, but whilst also
not allowing anarchy and chaos,
(15:10):
because of the huge multicultural background of of Singapore with the Malays, the Chinese, the Indians, the, you know, probably Indonesians and Vietnamese and people from all over.
There was a lot of racial tensions,
economic tensions, and
it was it was really interesting seeing his kind of thoughts on how he navigated that. This is kind of bleeding into another book review I'm doing, so I'll get back on track on talking about what in particular he said in this book. For example, when he was making his future predictions,
(15:44):
on globalism, let's say,
he was asked, like, is this reversible? And he says no. And the reason, he says, is because technology
that that enables it, the instant communication, the better slash cheaper travel,
which I think is something we can all agree is just going to continue happening,
can't be uninvented and no society can really stop their people from using it as well.
(16:10):
Caveat here from my in person
position,
somewhere like North Korea has shown that they can do that. So it's not totally impossible. But as a trend worldwide,
I think we can agree that, yeah, he was pretty much on the money with that. So
then he would go on from that and say, like, okay, so if globalization is going to continue happening,
(16:30):
what
could or should or will countries do in response to that? And so he was saying with,
within Asia, within Singapore,
he thinks that the
kind of more more of an open border policy in terms of
having people come in with their expertize
and
(16:52):
attracting talent
is a good thing, is something that you want. And then you also have to manage the the cultural
issues that this brings up. If you do have a lot of Westerners, for example, coming into Singapore
and changing the culture or having their ideas on, like, oh, government should be run like this. I like it more like the way it was back in America or Australia or wherever. So,
(17:14):
when he talks about what the future will hold,
he's really extrapolating from trends he already sees. And this is, of course, where going into the future and predicting too far ahead is impossible because trends can change over time. You can have
a birth rate which is
declining
like we see in the West for now, but in thirty years time, perhaps it's increasing and that these are the sorts of things that can change. So
(17:41):
the real realism that I really got from him, I feel is reflect,
reflected in his principles for government as well,
which to me seem rather wise. And also the order that he, put them in
is,
I thought I think the correct way or at least indicative of the way that he,
himself
(18:01):
ordered and and led
Singapore, and this worked out really well for them. So
number one for him was that an efficient and effective government is the
right way of of viewing what a government's purpose is. So therefore, they should probably have balanced budgets.
The ministers, the people in the government should be well paid to attract talent and also disincentivize
(18:24):
corruption at the same time.
Hit and and that
to stop this kind of
weird thing you see a lot in The US, for example, where regulators,
will be in the government. And then as soon as they leave, they go into these cushy jobs in the industries they were regulating because they know all the back ways around all the rules that they were just making, which is kind of like a a soft form of corruption.
(18:47):
So he was saying, no, you want
a well paid
position so that people come into it and want to be part of the government, that you can attract talent and people who are willing to lead, who are willing to,
you know,
create
the CEO who the person who would have been a CEO of a company and, you know, led that you want him,
(19:09):
in the government instead. And
I think that was a reasonable type of thing to say. Once again, I'm not that interested in politics and governments and how they're
led, created, and and things like this, but
efficiency and non corruption are pretty high up on my list of moral and
practical things to do. So that that seems to make sense to
(19:31):
me. He was also saying,
the government's role or a leader's role is to make firm decisions that provide certainty
and stability for its population.
He really focused on jobs and value
so that,
for example, in terms of solving any problems that arise from wealth disparity
(19:52):
wasn't let's distribute the wealth back from like the top down to the bottom. It's like, no, let's try and just create
more valuable
ways that the people at the bottom can contribute so that they will rise closer to the top.
And in this instance I'm talking about, he was really focused on creating jobs for Singaporeans. That was one of his number one things.
(20:14):
It's kind of like a communist twist in his,
in his,
slogans or in the way that he
views,
what would I call it, the
efficiency of people, which was,
he started saying each according to his ability. And I was like, oh, god. This is this is probably not gonna turn out well.
To each according to his worth instead of to each according to his needs.
(20:39):
And the reason that is interesting is
from each according to his ability, is this really call to
Singaporeans
and Asians, I guess in general that,
and this is a cultural thing in Asia, that they really focus on
the whole the the community, the nation as a whole,
(20:59):
the
way the Japanese work ethic is not to
put your heart and soul into a company so that you can get the personal recognition. It's more so that the company can do well so that the nation can do well. And you see this with a lot of Asian type,
family structures,
the cultural structures, the nation structures. This is very much part of of their,
(21:22):
the way that they view things, which you go, okay. That's, you know, kind of like communistic in nature, nature, for example.
But,
to each according to his worth is also this
balance where it goes, okay. But people are individuals. And he makes this very clear, like, every person is an individual. You can't just look at statistics and
(21:42):
wholesale,
you know, numbers in general. You have to recognize, no, each person is different. There's differences in strength and IQ in,
you know, work ethic in
all the behaviors, personalities, things like this,
and that
therefore
there should be some compensation for people who provide more value and are therefore worth more. So
(22:07):
it kind of is this balance between the two of like the ultra
communistic, let's just say, which is, you know, really focused on the whole versus the more American style, which is individual individual. And he was saying, look, you got to try and find somewhere roughly in the middle of that, which, once again, seems to have worked really well.
The last couple here, ears on the ground to know the grievances, like, I e, the reality of what people actually want in their government, not even in their government, what people actually want.
(22:38):
And
for him, this was why he had such a big focus on on houses, for example, and
that the security and stability of that and kind of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, he he was ticking that off right at the get go for for Singaporeans.
And that's building self reliance in its people is
the one of the prime objectives and not to have this kind of welfare dependency
(23:03):
whilst also having a slight, you know,
welfare state, social state so that people who do fall through the cracks, who are incapable of for themselves of providing for themselves are able
to at least not just be vagrants
and have to resort to crime or things like this. So,
you know, a lot of this is this but that at the same time. And so he I think what you could say about him was he was a very nuanced guy. He
(23:32):
thought about things rather deeply and wasn't
attached to positions which
didn't which if they weren't working in the real world,
weren't,
he would reverse decisions or admit that he was wrong and that he did things wrong. So funnily enough, he claims to not really have a philosophy
and that all he cared about was what was realistically possible, what would get the job done and make Singapore a better place for its people. So
(24:00):
he's kind of what that's interesting to me because it's kind of reflects myself, which is I don't have an overall general philosophy of life of, like, a one thing. It's more, no. Okay. Like, you know, I like aspects of Buddhism. I like aspects of stoicism. I like aspects of being pragmatic and realist. So I think he kind of embodied that, and,
(24:21):
that is part of what made him so special and such a great leader.
And I think that all all the above was kind of the gem I was looking for when it came to what made him a great leader.
And when I say leader, I mean, in terms of visionary
slash funneler of effort
of other people of of that leadership style, because
(24:42):
a great politician, for example, requires other skills, which I really don't care about. That's more about the, you know, interpersonal
skills, the
managing of people of, you know,
understanding like, okay, I have to make concessions here for this group.
You know, I have to take tough decisions on here. I have to beat this person.
(25:04):
I have to garner the votes of this. All this all this sort of shit, kind of like marketing.
I'm rather uninterested in that.
He was also very good at that, obviously, because he stayed in power for so long. But,
that personally to me bores me. So when I'm talking about the leader, it's, yeah, this visionary. And this is part of why this book is interesting because he
(25:25):
could predict the future to some certain extent and go, okay, this is what is happening in the world
and this is how Singapore can take advantage of that and,
create more wealth for its people and create a better world for its people. So,
I noticed he talked very little about himself
or even how his upbringing shaped his views.
(25:47):
He just wanted Singapore to survive and thrive.
And he was contrasting this to the American style of politics, which is more obsessed with the president,
you know, what he ate for breakfast, who he talked with. He went for golf on this day and didn't do this thing or he did do that thing or there was this scandal.
And,
(26:07):
you know, the tabloid
side of issues about the family and,
you know, what clothes they're wearing and shit like that. He was he was just saying like that is unhelpful,
unproductive, and
the media in Singapore also kind of reflected
that to a certain extent as, but I I remember there was instances where he was talking about saying
(26:30):
why he wouldn't allow
the American style media to operate the way it does. And there was all other sorts of things about laws, litigation, stuff like that. Once again, kind of bleeding into the other book. I should probably have
separated these a bit more because I'm, I'm reading a book from first world to first by him,
written by him. So, you know, that I'm I'm kinda mixing books book reviews here, but you get the general gist. So jumping on to the authors and extra details,
(27:00):
the lot of them. So I mentioned,
Allison and Blackwell. So,
they're all politicians or academics of various sorts. Graham Allison, assistant secretary of defense, all Americans, by the way.
Robert's,
what was it? Blackwell Robert d Blackwell, ambassador to India at some point.
(27:20):
Mentioned Henry Kissinger with the four word, epitome of the politician,
Alley Wine,
researcher, policy analyst, etcetera, etcetera. I found a YouTube video
of a couple of them, the two main authors,
from the Belfair Center, and this was published
in probably, like, 2013, 2014 right after the book was published.
And it was exactly what I was expecting from them. A dry,
(27:44):
rather highfalutin,
a k a, was a little bit pompous and pretentious. They're on this panel in front of, like, all of these kind of colleagues.
They talk about how
this is being recorded, but they're doing a q and a section afterwards, which isn't recorded. So don't worry. You're not gonna you know, it's the kind of shit where it's like
people
(28:05):
who are politicians
behave in certain ways and they
they
they behaved in certain ways. They behaved as I expected. So all of that rather uninteresting to me personally. So let's move on to the style of the book.
What a bizarre book, man.
Very, very
strange.
(28:26):
It might seem
normal at first glance reading through it,
but upon review of how it's actually constructed,
it's kind of head scratching and
slightly impressive in a way if
if it was done the way I think it was, but probably not. So the setup, basically, of each of these chapters is you'll go to one of them. So I've got the future of US China relations here.
(28:51):
And the very first page of that is just a list of questions here. So how likely is China how likely is a major confrontation between The United States and China? What role should the balance of power play in America's strategy for addressing the rise of China? How should US policies, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And there's generally about seven to 10 questions here.
And then the final,
(29:12):
section of of this is then,
a kind of, like,
glowing praise of Lee Kuan Yew for and they do this in every chapter. I'll I'll read one out in a sec. But
the chapter, once it goes through that from the first page, it it then lists, okay, the exact same question. How likely is a major confrontation between The United States and China? And then it has Lee Kuan Yew responding to this. So you go, okay. That's that's kind of interesting.
(29:39):
The
strange thing about this is that it feels like he is actually answering them. This feels like this book was,
you know, constructed in 2012. The authors got the chance to interview Lee Kuan Yew, and they just asked him all of these bulk questions one after the other, and then he responded. So that I was going like, okay. That's kind of interesting because, you know, his his responses do seem to flow as as if that is the case. But no, this is not correct. This is actually a reference compilation of
(30:08):
fifty plus
years of his speeches. And so they have these notes section at the end and it says
exactly
when he,
spoke about something. So for example, chapter three, which I have just started
talking about,
there is,
an interview that he had with Graham Allison and Robert Blackwell in 2011.
(30:30):
But then there was from a 2009
speech.
There was a 1997,
other nineteen ninety sevens, 1991
here,
1994,
all these sorts of different things at different award medal ceremonies,
at
interviews,
speeches,
(30:51):
conversations,
all of these
random things, Apex CEO Summit,
battle for prone
Preminent Preeminence,
Forbes Magazine,
International Institute for Strategic Studies Conference. Like, there's so much just random stuff in here,
which is what confuses me a little bit about this because there is this
(31:12):
word for word direct If these are word for word direct references
or is there some massaging going on as well? Are these all
speeches and things he has literally said word for word? Or did they kind of go like, oh, this is we'll take this a little bit from here. And that doesn't,
you know, fit really well with this next sentence. So let's just chop it a little bit or add some extra words in.
(31:37):
I'm not exactly sure.
It seems to run too well for me for for me to think that's what they did. If they did do that, that is what is impressive and that they managed to make it
a kind of coherent
formula
that answering these questions,
despite them being chunks taken from various different
(31:58):
areas
over his lifetime of of speeches. So
that's that's kind of where I'm like, is it a literary hodgepodge
or did they kind of massage it? I'm not sure.
The start of each chapter, like I said, the start has all of these questions. And then this this this bit here, which is managing a changing relationship with China is a central challenge of US foreign policy in the twenty first century. In his answers to these questions, Lee Kuan Yew offers his advice to US leaders. And then in the next one, it'll be like, Lee Kuan Yew is uniquely positioned to answer the preceding questions. And then in the next one,
(32:34):
Lee Kuan Yew's answer to these questions reflect the fact that Singapore's neighbors are Muslim countries and that Singapore has been a potential target of terrorist attacks. And so it's like,
is this necessary?
Each of these pages seems completely unnecessary
in a way
because
what? Like, I don't need to hear why Lee Kuan Yew is
(32:54):
uniquely positioned in every single sentence. Like, that seems so overboard and unnecessary,
that bit especially.
Having all the questions in a bulk one form on the page,
I feel does add something because it's like, okay, what's the general gist of this chapter? What are they trying to get at when they're talking about India?
Is it just random stuff or is it no? Okay. Here's these particular questions. So it's kind of useful and then kind of not.
(33:18):
The conclusion
at the end. The last chapter is very similar, which is okay. Here is like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, you know, 21
different sections of conclusions.
But each of these is just literally a passage that's been taken from another chapter. So it's like, okay, here's the 21 most important
(33:42):
speech quotations, perhaps, that he's given. So once again, it's like, it's kinda helpful, but also unnecessary.
I'm not sure.
It's useful but not useful is is kinda how I I came away from a lot of the style of this, which I think gets me on to the final summary here. So,
this is easily one of the most unconventional books I've ever read, partly because it's of me reading this type of book. I just don't ever do that. I'm not that interested in politics,
(34:12):
geopolitics
and things like this. So
that
is why I'm you're unlikely to see much on this channel of ever these types of things unless Juan reads it.
So part of the that's why it's unconventional. The other is just because of the Frankenstein
creation of how it was made. I can't say I've ever come across a book which is similar in this regard.
(34:36):
Maybe maybe I've read a biography or something which has something similar or, like, you know,
selected poetry from Keats or things like this, which kind of have a similar vibe, but
not not the way that this was. So
I wouldn't particularly say I enjoyed the book.
But like I mentioned before, I did find that gem, which I was looking forward to what made Lee Kuan Yew a a great leader
(35:00):
and the kind of principles that he was
embodied and showed and that changed Singapore
from a third world to a to a first. So
that was a great insight that I could take from this.
The
my very meager understanding of world affairs, of geopolitics,
(35:20):
what he talks about in terms of geopolitical
terms of what the future holds for Asia and India and The US and China and Islamic extremism and things like that.
Sure, I'll take him for his word for it.
There's
not many other people who perhaps could do it better.
I'm I'm I really don't know about that sort of stuff, so we'll see if his predictions come true. And, you know, they weren't like
(35:46):
strong predictions of China will achieve this GDP
by this year or, you know, they'll overtake The US in terms of missiles made or whatever.
There was no strong predictions like that. It was just kind of like, here's the general trend the world is going in. And
we have to remember that
largely this was
(36:07):
the hodgepodge.
So he was making predictions,
I guess, back in
'19, you know, nineties and in the seventies and the sixties, which a lot of these quotes were referenced from. So
it's not exactly like he had sat down and was asked word for word prediction prediction
of all of these things. So
(36:28):
the most of the value I found this book was kind of reading between the lines of who he was as a person,
how he thought of things, his principles, and
in the
literal section entitled how the what Lee Kuan Yew thinks is probably one of the better gems that you'll find within this book. So
a weird book overall, Lee Kuan Yew
(36:48):
by Alison Blackwell and a couple other people.
I'm gonna give it a four and a half out of 10. So, yeah, you know,
give it a give it a try if you if you're interested in Asia and and him as a person, but I I can't say I can't I wouldn't say I really recommend it per per se either. So,
similar books, recommendations.
Honestly, I got no recommendations from this. I it's so unique in a way in terms of the content and style that I I can't really have one. Do you have any? Let me know, which gets us on to our last section here, the value for value.
(37:20):
I do all of this upfront
and
without any kind of sponsorships or ads or monetary compensation
from external sources from book from book authors. They're not knocking down my doors asking me to to review these. And even if they did, I would say no. And that is because I wanna keep this as open as possible as, give you my honest,
(37:41):
feedback,
my thoughts without any
kind of monetary incentives from
external sources
tied to the actual books themselves,
which means I actually need your help to
provide some value back to this channel because I do this all upfront.
I just ask that you do some small things in return. You could do it in a very easy way. Sharing, liking, subscribing,
(38:04):
commenting.
Word-of-mouth is really helpful. Telling a friend about the mere mortals book reviews
of a certain book that they might enjoy that we've already covered on the channel. There's 300, 400 plus book reviews here now.
There's a good chance that I've covered something that you have read in the in the past or would like to read and, would be interested in or other people.
(38:26):
You can do it with some talent. Give me your book recommendations.
What would you like to see me review on this channel? What do you think I would find interesting?
What's your favorite book of all time?
Writing those and letting me know about those is is very helpful. And then if you want to support financially,
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(38:46):
And there's a couple of options there in terms of like a PayPal or doing it via
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and
also, being able to send boostograms and streaming payments to Satoshis.
Go to, an app like Fountain, Podcast Guru, True Fans, things like this. So,
(39:08):
that is that.
Final reminder here, I am live. I do these live 11AM
Australian Eastern Standard Time on a Wednesday. So if you ever feel like joining in, please come in and join. It would be super cool
and to have some engagement and feedback.
The
reason I've been doing this was because I am on a slightly Lee Kuan
(39:30):
Yew bent. So I mentioned I'm reading another book actually written by him this time, which I would say I'm enjoying more than this one. I'm also reading Bad Science by Ben Goldacre.
One is starting to put out his book reviews for the Lord of the Rings trilogy that he's reading.
And
I'm not really sure what's gonna come up with my future in terms of other books. I've,
(39:52):
certainly got a big booklet
review here.
Barbarians at the Gate Paps,
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. That's I should have read that a long time ago.
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, maybe.
Yeah. There's a whole bunch of things that I'm interested in in tackling and will get my hands on shortly. So stay tuned. More book reviews coming out in the near future. And as always, I hope you are having a fantastic day wherever you are in the world. Ciao for now. Cara now.
The future of Asia is interesting, but even more so the man who created it.
(00:11):
Welcome, Mere Mortalites, to another round of the mere mortal book reviews. I'm your host here, Kyrin, live on the 08/27/2025.
And as you might summarize, this is the podcast where I announce my intention to challenge the prime ministership
of Singapore.
Okay. No. I'm not gonna be doing that on this podcast, but we do have a guy who actually did that and did it rather well. We have Lee Kuan Yew. The book is titled Lee Kuan Yew, the grand master's insights on China, The United States, and the world. Interviews and selections by Graham Allison and Robert d Blackwill with Ally Wine forward by Henry Kissinger.
(00:47):
So this book was published in 2013.
It's a 158 pages in length. Took me about four hours of reading to get through in total.
It's a compiled
selection of speeches,
quotes that he's made over as many years as a,
a public figure, I guess, as a statesman,
all bundled together to come across as a single interview. So it's a bit of a strange format. I'll talk more about that at the end. The focus is really on his opinions of what the future holds for various different topics
(01:20):
and why he thinks, they
this these outcomes will happen. So,
it's split into 10 chapters in total, and I can read you what they are. They're all is called the future of, so the future of China,
United States, US China relations, India, Islamic extreme extremism,
national economic growth, geopolitics and globalization,
(01:42):
democracy, and then chapters nine and ten, how Lee Huan Yew thinks, and then the conclusion.
So let's just jump into
what he thinks in the future. So going on to it,
what does the future have in store for us and Asia in particular? And how does Lida go about shaping that future for the better as well? Because even though it's talking a lot about the future of,
(02:05):
it's really focusing on Lee Kuan Yew. The the book is Lee Kuan Yew. So it's really going, okay. What does this in particular person think, and how would he act as perhaps as a leader in the future? So a little bit of a a brief intro first,
because he is not the author of this book.
Harry Lee Kuan Yew, and he kinda dropped the Harry name and then went by Lee Kuan Yew, was born in 1923
(02:29):
and passed away
not too long ago. I think it was 2014,
2015,
or 2013, around that period,
in the then British colony of Singapore. And so he has a rather multicultural background
himself with, you know, Chinese, Malay, but he spit he spoke English at home.
He was, quite the linguist himself, probably speaking, like, five plus languages and dialects and stuff like that.
(02:55):
Very well educated
in his upbringing, and he was from, I guess, like, a little bit of a wealthier family.
He, managed to get through World War two despite some very close
scares, with the Japanese invasion of Singapore and and, things like this. Before going to The UK, becoming a lawyer, coming back to Singapore, lawyering for a bit, then becoming a statesman and politician,
(03:20):
Eventually,
was
prime minister of Singapore for, like, thirty plus years,
still active in the government even in the later years of his life as a senior minister and things like this. So,
what he's really known for,
I guess, was for when he was a statesman, when he was prime minister
of
Singapore slash Malaysia because it was part of the, part of Malaysia,
(03:43):
when Singapore became independent and was its own country,
really taking it from this kind of very unstable,
uncertain future
backwater
third world
country,
newly formed country into the Singapore of today, which is, you know, a financial powerhouse
leading in technologies, industries,
(04:03):
green, you know, Singapore airports well known throughout the world as one of the best airports, if not the best.
All of this with the uncertain British withdrawal,
geopolitics, all of these sorts of things, you know, fighting for, you know, his own party and to become prime minister, continually get elected, all of those sorts of things. So that's the man himself.
So let's talk about what is actually contained within the book. And
(04:28):
caveat here, I found it rather uninteresting
compared to
the person himself and kind of how he thinks
and his own principles rather than
his visions for the future. So just just know that upfront.
That being said, considering he was such a
political
leader, dominant force in shaping
(04:50):
Singapore's future at the time,
it's he's probably worth listening to when it comes to
what the future of Asia and,
the Asian region will have in store considering he navigated that so well for,
like, forty plus fifty years, something like this. So a summation of his thoughts here
is number one, China will become the superpower
(05:12):
in the
and when it says the future, there's no certain
time limits or dates, but I largely interpreted this as the
following decade slash twenty first century. So probably,
you know,
the next eighty years roughly is is kind of what he was talking about. And if you try and to extrapolate too far beyond that, you're not gonna do too well. So China will eventually become superpower number one,
(05:37):
in terms of
probably
economics, certainly, but likely also militarily,
but is willing to take its time, AKA decades, to displace The US as, as the number one. And he feels there's unlikely to be a hot war conflict, but
certainly economical
kind of fighting. And we're actually seeing this nowadays with all the trade wars and tariffs and things like this. So, you know, already a decade into his predictions where where they're kind of looking pretty rosy so far.
(06:10):
He says The USA's biggest strength is its entrepreneurial culture.
This creates tremendous wealth and resiliency of people who rely on themselves to,
kind of drag themselves to out of the mud to become,
achieve their goals, become successful, become wealthy, things like this. However, he worries about the long term effects of multiculturalism,
(06:31):
especially
the amount of immigration from Latin America, Mexico,
and how that will shift the kind of balance of,
the culture,
perhaps moving away from English as the dominant language over time,
the welfare dependency that is created with that, and in particular,
(06:52):
the non balanced budgets, I. E. They're spending more than they're
earning from tax revenue and tariffs and things like this, and that they won't have the strong leaders necessary to make the tough calls. And when he says strong leaders and tough calls, he's really talking about to his own people,
I. E. Having to raise taxes or having to communicate to the people like, hey, we're not
(07:15):
a world leader anymore. We're not number one.
We probably need to tighten out our belts and, you know, go through a period of austerity,
much like the Asians have had to for the last, you know, hundred
ish years,
when Asia was long no longer was the dominant force in the Asian region. So
(07:36):
things like that.
Asia, and he's really referring to China and India in particular,
are likely to become the dominant forces in the twenty first century.
China first, because even though India will likely outgrow it in terms of the amount of people in India by, let's just say, 30%,
(07:57):
the Indian government
was
too slow, too bureaucratic
and didn't have the right mix of is
to didn't have the right mix of like pushing forward with innovation. It was stuck in this regulatory
quagmire
where things take forever to go through and it stifles a lot of innovation and growth. Hence why China will
(08:19):
rise and become more successful in India over the shorter term, I. E. The next couple of decades. But then after that,
India will likely to become very dominant as well. And then, you know, perhaps even The US won't even be the equation of, like, superpowers in the world anymore. It would be India and China. So
Southeast Asia will play a part in all of this as but more as a strong consumer base rather than a military power,
(08:47):
I. E. Places like Singapore,
just don't have enough people to technologically
become a, you know,
scary nation. They're not going to
rule the seas like England did with its,
with its
naval warfare
and things like this.
But you can have very strong
(09:07):
economies and you can have very strong manufacturing bases like we see nowadays with Taiwan and Singapore
and Korea being very important
because of all the semiconductors, which we learned in our last book review on Chippewa. So good good thing we read that book.
And finally, culture is more important than governments is largely what I'd
(09:30):
say. They should be viewed more as a means to enabling people to be as efficient
as possible whilst providing the basic need of, I guess,
stability and security, I. E.
Singapore,
Singaporeans can be safe in the knowledge that they're not gonna get invaded by Malaysia in the
(09:51):
following day, week, month, year, decade,
and can kind of trust their government for that, but that they
are not
entirely dependent on it when there's not a welfare state.
But also kind of
the culture is very tricky, and, it's very nuanced. And so it's it's kinda hard to give his views
(10:12):
just in a in a quick jab here because he he did talk a lot about culture,
and it can't be summed up really easily.
But one thing I did find rather interesting was,
he didn't think that democracy
as a government style was inherently better,
than other styles.
There are many examples that he provides of
(10:35):
the French and English constitutions
failing in all of their various colonies. And he was saying it wasn't because the constitution wasn't written well.
It was more that they didn't have the the wise or the strong leaders necessary to
implement it. And he even says himself in the book of he thinks a,
a a democracy with a twist where instead of each person has a vote,
(11:00):
when a a man gets to a a a certain age of, like, let's say, 40 years plus and he has a couple children dependent on him,
he or his family, or the family should be able to vote with those extra votes
and that they should kind of count double. So therefore, the more children you have, the more votes that you have or something along those lines where it's it show it's got an increasing
(11:25):
reflection that, you know, he's got more lives dependent on him. So he's likely to be making decisions
for his children's future as well,
and not just on, you know, the immediate short term or can I get this little trinket from the government because they've got a favorable tax law for me, but other things which will screw screw up his children in thirty years time? So I thought that was an interesting point as well, that,
(11:52):
as someone who has a rather democratic
government style, he was in that,
kind of, of of government for so long, didn't necessarily think that it was the best.
Showed a bit of a humbleness of of him as a as a person as well.
So going on to him as a person, my main reason for reading the book was to know more about his
(12:17):
style of
thinking, how he operated in the world, his principles.
Because
although I largely
do not care about politics,
I am very interested in how
one man and he wasn't just one man, but
he was the leader of a country which really
(12:37):
changed its fortunes in such a small period of time.
Considering it was so small, considering the circumstance it was kind of birthed from,
there are many innumerable countries which you can point out and go like, well, they didn't do that
that well. They didn't have, you know, a lot of the
disadvantages that Singapore had. Maybe its smallness was an advantage in a certain respect, but
(13:02):
it certainly wasn't a place where you would look at and go, they've got a really bright future ahead of them in the 1950s, the 1960s.
So that was one of the reasons why I chose this book to read. And,
he strikes me foremost from
reading between the lines a little bit as a realist.
(13:23):
He when he argues about things,
he's argue about things that are already happening and likely to continue happening. He he
isn't stuck in this kind of, like,
identifying a problem, coming up with some random solution and then saying
and trying to enact that. He was always going like, what are actual,
(13:44):
tangible,
you know, physical ways that this will work or not work?
And then
put those into practices and be willing to
change when he realized things were going wrong. An example of this was,
the two child policy in Singapore. They were growing too much,
and too fast, and they were worried that,
(14:06):
they were going to kind of overpopulate.
So there was a kind of two child policy where there was I think it was mostly tax incentives to not have more than two children.
And then when they realized a couple of decades later that they didn't have enough people and they needed more workers,
they,
reversed that. And then there was tax incentives to have more children. So
(14:27):
things like that where it was more of a guiding hand rather than a
strict enforcement.
I don't think you could ever say that he was a dictator
or authoritarian,
but there were things that he did which
had leanings towards that. For example, he would lock people up
with no
(14:48):
trial. And
it's he he struck he had to strike a real
balance between,
leading and,
you know, doing the things that would enable the people to become
secure, safe, trust in him and his government, but whilst also
not allowing anarchy and chaos,
(15:10):
because of the huge multicultural background of of Singapore with the Malays, the Chinese, the Indians, the, you know, probably Indonesians and Vietnamese and people from all over.
There was a lot of racial tensions,
economic tensions, and
it was it was really interesting seeing his kind of thoughts on how he navigated that. This is kind of bleeding into another book review I'm doing, so I'll get back on track on talking about what in particular he said in this book. For example, when he was making his future predictions,
(15:44):
on globalism, let's say,
he was asked, like, is this reversible? And he says no. And the reason, he says, is because technology
that that enables it, the instant communication, the better slash cheaper travel,
which I think is something we can all agree is just going to continue happening,
can't be uninvented and no society can really stop their people from using it as well.
(16:10):
Caveat here from my in person
position,
somewhere like North Korea has shown that they can do that. So it's not totally impossible. But as a trend worldwide,
I think we can agree that, yeah, he was pretty much on the money with that. So
then he would go on from that and say, like, okay, so if globalization is going to continue happening,
(16:30):
what
could or should or will countries do in response to that? And so he was saying with,
within Asia, within Singapore,
he thinks that the
kind of more more of an open border policy in terms of
having people come in with their expertize
and
(16:52):
attracting talent
is a good thing, is something that you want. And then you also have to manage the the cultural
issues that this brings up. If you do have a lot of Westerners, for example, coming into Singapore
and changing the culture or having their ideas on, like, oh, government should be run like this. I like it more like the way it was back in America or Australia or wherever. So,
(17:14):
when he talks about what the future will hold,
he's really extrapolating from trends he already sees. And this is, of course, where going into the future and predicting too far ahead is impossible because trends can change over time. You can have
a birth rate which is
declining
like we see in the West for now, but in thirty years time, perhaps it's increasing and that these are the sorts of things that can change. So
(17:41):
the real realism that I really got from him, I feel is reflect,
reflected in his principles for government as well,
which to me seem rather wise. And also the order that he, put them in
is,
I thought I think the correct way or at least indicative of the way that he,
himself
(18:01):
ordered and and led
Singapore, and this worked out really well for them. So
number one for him was that an efficient and effective government is the
right way of of viewing what a government's purpose is. So therefore, they should probably have balanced budgets.
The ministers, the people in the government should be well paid to attract talent and also disincentivize
(18:24):
corruption at the same time.
Hit and and that
to stop this kind of
weird thing you see a lot in The US, for example, where regulators,
will be in the government. And then as soon as they leave, they go into these cushy jobs in the industries they were regulating because they know all the back ways around all the rules that they were just making, which is kind of like a a soft form of corruption.
(18:47):
So he was saying, no, you want
a well paid
position so that people come into it and want to be part of the government, that you can attract talent and people who are willing to lead, who are willing to,
you know,
create
the CEO who the person who would have been a CEO of a company and, you know, led that you want him,
(19:09):
in the government instead. And
I think that was a reasonable type of thing to say. Once again, I'm not that interested in politics and governments and how they're
led, created, and and things like this, but
efficiency and non corruption are pretty high up on my list of moral and
practical things to do. So that that seems to make sense to
(19:31):
me. He was also saying,
the government's role or a leader's role is to make firm decisions that provide certainty
and stability for its population.
He really focused on jobs and value
so that,
for example, in terms of solving any problems that arise from wealth disparity
(19:52):
wasn't let's distribute the wealth back from like the top down to the bottom. It's like, no, let's try and just create
more valuable
ways that the people at the bottom can contribute so that they will rise closer to the top.
And in this instance I'm talking about, he was really focused on creating jobs for Singaporeans. That was one of his number one things.
(20:14):
It's kind of like a communist twist in his,
in his,
slogans or in the way that he
views,
what would I call it, the
efficiency of people, which was,
he started saying each according to his ability. And I was like, oh, god. This is this is probably not gonna turn out well.
To each according to his worth instead of to each according to his needs.
(20:39):
And the reason that is interesting is
from each according to his ability, is this really call to
Singaporeans
and Asians, I guess in general that,
and this is a cultural thing in Asia, that they really focus on
the whole the the community, the nation as a whole,
(20:59):
the
way the Japanese work ethic is not to
put your heart and soul into a company so that you can get the personal recognition. It's more so that the company can do well so that the nation can do well. And you see this with a lot of Asian type,
family structures,
the cultural structures, the nation structures. This is very much part of of their,
(21:22):
the way that they view things, which you go, okay. That's, you know, kind of like communistic in nature, nature, for example.
But,
to each according to his worth is also this
balance where it goes, okay. But people are individuals. And he makes this very clear, like, every person is an individual. You can't just look at statistics and
(21:42):
wholesale,
you know, numbers in general. You have to recognize, no, each person is different. There's differences in strength and IQ in,
you know, work ethic in
all the behaviors, personalities, things like this,
and that
therefore
there should be some compensation for people who provide more value and are therefore worth more. So
(22:07):
it kind of is this balance between the two of like the ultra
communistic, let's just say, which is, you know, really focused on the whole versus the more American style, which is individual individual. And he was saying, look, you got to try and find somewhere roughly in the middle of that, which, once again, seems to have worked really well.
The last couple here, ears on the ground to know the grievances, like, I e, the reality of what people actually want in their government, not even in their government, what people actually want.
(22:38):
And
for him, this was why he had such a big focus on on houses, for example, and
that the security and stability of that and kind of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, he he was ticking that off right at the get go for for Singaporeans.
And that's building self reliance in its people is
the one of the prime objectives and not to have this kind of welfare dependency
(23:03):
whilst also having a slight, you know,
welfare state, social state so that people who do fall through the cracks, who are incapable of for themselves of providing for themselves are able
to at least not just be vagrants
and have to resort to crime or things like this. So,
you know, a lot of this is this but that at the same time. And so he I think what you could say about him was he was a very nuanced guy. He
(23:32):
thought about things rather deeply and wasn't
attached to positions which
didn't which if they weren't working in the real world,
weren't,
he would reverse decisions or admit that he was wrong and that he did things wrong. So funnily enough, he claims to not really have a philosophy
and that all he cared about was what was realistically possible, what would get the job done and make Singapore a better place for its people. So
(24:00):
he's kind of what that's interesting to me because it's kind of reflects myself, which is I don't have an overall general philosophy of life of, like, a one thing. It's more, no. Okay. Like, you know, I like aspects of Buddhism. I like aspects of stoicism. I like aspects of being pragmatic and realist. So I think he kind of embodied that, and,
(24:21):
that is part of what made him so special and such a great leader.
And I think that all all the above was kind of the gem I was looking for when it came to what made him a great leader.
And when I say leader, I mean, in terms of visionary
slash funneler of effort
of other people of of that leadership style, because
(24:42):
a great politician, for example, requires other skills, which I really don't care about. That's more about the, you know, interpersonal
skills, the
managing of people of, you know,
understanding like, okay, I have to make concessions here for this group.
You know, I have to take tough decisions on here. I have to beat this person.
(25:04):
I have to garner the votes of this. All this all this sort of shit, kind of like marketing.
I'm rather uninterested in that.
He was also very good at that, obviously, because he stayed in power for so long. But,
that personally to me bores me. So when I'm talking about the leader, it's, yeah, this visionary. And this is part of why this book is interesting because he
(25:25):
could predict the future to some certain extent and go, okay, this is what is happening in the world
and this is how Singapore can take advantage of that and,
create more wealth for its people and create a better world for its people. So,
I noticed he talked very little about himself
or even how his upbringing shaped his views.
(25:47):
He just wanted Singapore to survive and thrive.
And he was contrasting this to the American style of politics, which is more obsessed with the president,
you know, what he ate for breakfast, who he talked with. He went for golf on this day and didn't do this thing or he did do that thing or there was this scandal.
And,
(26:07):
you know, the tabloid
side of issues about the family and,
you know, what clothes they're wearing and shit like that. He was he was just saying like that is unhelpful,
unproductive, and
the media in Singapore also kind of reflected
that to a certain extent as, but I I remember there was instances where he was talking about saying
(26:30):
why he wouldn't allow
the American style media to operate the way it does. And there was all other sorts of things about laws, litigation, stuff like that. Once again, kind of bleeding into the other book. I should probably have
separated these a bit more because I'm, I'm reading a book from first world to first by him,
written by him. So, you know, that I'm I'm kinda mixing books book reviews here, but you get the general gist. So jumping on to the authors and extra details,
(27:00):
the lot of them. So I mentioned,
Allison and Blackwell. So,
they're all politicians or academics of various sorts. Graham Allison, assistant secretary of defense, all Americans, by the way.
Robert's,
what was it? Blackwell Robert d Blackwell, ambassador to India at some point.
(27:20):
Mentioned Henry Kissinger with the four word, epitome of the politician,
Alley Wine,
researcher, policy analyst, etcetera, etcetera. I found a YouTube video
of a couple of them, the two main authors,
from the Belfair Center, and this was published
in probably, like, 2013, 2014 right after the book was published.
And it was exactly what I was expecting from them. A dry,
(27:44):
rather highfalutin,
a k a, was a little bit pompous and pretentious. They're on this panel in front of, like, all of these kind of colleagues.
They talk about how
this is being recorded, but they're doing a q and a section afterwards, which isn't recorded. So don't worry. You're not gonna you know, it's the kind of shit where it's like
people
(28:05):
who are politicians
behave in certain ways and they
they
they behaved in certain ways. They behaved as I expected. So all of that rather uninteresting to me personally. So let's move on to the style of the book.
What a bizarre book, man.
Very, very
strange.
(28:26):
It might seem
normal at first glance reading through it,
but upon review of how it's actually constructed,
it's kind of head scratching and
slightly impressive in a way if
if it was done the way I think it was, but probably not. So the setup, basically, of each of these chapters is you'll go to one of them. So I've got the future of US China relations here.
(28:51):
And the very first page of that is just a list of questions here. So how likely is China how likely is a major confrontation between The United States and China? What role should the balance of power play in America's strategy for addressing the rise of China? How should US policies, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And there's generally about seven to 10 questions here.
And then the final,
(29:12):
section of of this is then,
a kind of, like,
glowing praise of Lee Kuan Yew for and they do this in every chapter. I'll I'll read one out in a sec. But
the chapter, once it goes through that from the first page, it it then lists, okay, the exact same question. How likely is a major confrontation between The United States and China? And then it has Lee Kuan Yew responding to this. So you go, okay. That's that's kind of interesting.
(29:39):
The
strange thing about this is that it feels like he is actually answering them. This feels like this book was,
you know, constructed in 2012. The authors got the chance to interview Lee Kuan Yew, and they just asked him all of these bulk questions one after the other, and then he responded. So that I was going like, okay. That's kind of interesting because, you know, his his responses do seem to flow as as if that is the case. But no, this is not correct. This is actually a reference compilation of
(30:08):
fifty plus
years of his speeches. And so they have these notes section at the end and it says
exactly
when he,
spoke about something. So for example, chapter three, which I have just started
talking about,
there is,
an interview that he had with Graham Allison and Robert Blackwell in 2011.
(30:30):
But then there was from a 2009
speech.
There was a 1997,
other nineteen ninety sevens, 1991
here,
1994,
all these sorts of different things at different award medal ceremonies,
at
interviews,
speeches,
(30:51):
conversations,
all of these
random things, Apex CEO Summit,
battle for prone
Preminent Preeminence,
Forbes Magazine,
International Institute for Strategic Studies Conference. Like, there's so much just random stuff in here,
which is what confuses me a little bit about this because there is this
(31:12):
word for word direct If these are word for word direct references
or is there some massaging going on as well? Are these all
speeches and things he has literally said word for word? Or did they kind of go like, oh, this is we'll take this a little bit from here. And that doesn't,
you know, fit really well with this next sentence. So let's just chop it a little bit or add some extra words in.
(31:37):
I'm not exactly sure.
It seems to run too well for me for for me to think that's what they did. If they did do that, that is what is impressive and that they managed to make it
a kind of coherent
formula
that answering these questions,
despite them being chunks taken from various different
(31:58):
areas
over his lifetime of of speeches. So
that's that's kind of where I'm like, is it a literary hodgepodge
or did they kind of massage it? I'm not sure.
The start of each chapter, like I said, the start has all of these questions. And then this this this bit here, which is managing a changing relationship with China is a central challenge of US foreign policy in the twenty first century. In his answers to these questions, Lee Kuan Yew offers his advice to US leaders. And then in the next one, it'll be like, Lee Kuan Yew is uniquely positioned to answer the preceding questions. And then in the next one,
(32:34):
Lee Kuan Yew's answer to these questions reflect the fact that Singapore's neighbors are Muslim countries and that Singapore has been a potential target of terrorist attacks. And so it's like,
is this necessary?
Each of these pages seems completely unnecessary
in a way
because
what? Like, I don't need to hear why Lee Kuan Yew is
(32:54):
uniquely positioned in every single sentence. Like, that seems so overboard and unnecessary,
that bit especially.
Having all the questions in a bulk one form on the page,
I feel does add something because it's like, okay, what's the general gist of this chapter? What are they trying to get at when they're talking about India?
Is it just random stuff or is it no? Okay. Here's these particular questions. So it's kind of useful and then kind of not.
(33:18):
The conclusion
at the end. The last chapter is very similar, which is okay. Here is like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, you know, 21
different sections of conclusions.
But each of these is just literally a passage that's been taken from another chapter. So it's like, okay, here's the 21 most important
(33:42):
speech quotations, perhaps, that he's given. So once again, it's like, it's kinda helpful, but also unnecessary.
I'm not sure.
It's useful but not useful is is kinda how I I came away from a lot of the style of this, which I think gets me on to the final summary here. So,
this is easily one of the most unconventional books I've ever read, partly because it's of me reading this type of book. I just don't ever do that. I'm not that interested in politics,
(34:12):
geopolitics
and things like this. So
that
is why I'm you're unlikely to see much on this channel of ever these types of things unless Juan reads it.
So part of the that's why it's unconventional. The other is just because of the Frankenstein
creation of how it was made. I can't say I've ever come across a book which is similar in this regard.
(34:36):
Maybe maybe I've read a biography or something which has something similar or, like, you know,
selected poetry from Keats or things like this, which kind of have a similar vibe, but
not not the way that this was. So
I wouldn't particularly say I enjoyed the book.
But like I mentioned before, I did find that gem, which I was looking forward to what made Lee Kuan Yew a a great leader
(35:00):
and the kind of principles that he was
embodied and showed and that changed Singapore
from a third world to a to a first. So
that was a great insight that I could take from this.
The
my very meager understanding of world affairs, of geopolitics,
(35:20):
what he talks about in terms of geopolitical
terms of what the future holds for Asia and India and The US and China and Islamic extremism and things like that.
Sure, I'll take him for his word for it.
There's
not many other people who perhaps could do it better.
I'm I'm I really don't know about that sort of stuff, so we'll see if his predictions come true. And, you know, they weren't like
(35:46):
strong predictions of China will achieve this GDP
by this year or, you know, they'll overtake The US in terms of missiles made or whatever.
There was no strong predictions like that. It was just kind of like, here's the general trend the world is going in. And
we have to remember that
largely this was
(36:07):
the hodgepodge.
So he was making predictions,
I guess, back in
'19, you know, nineties and in the seventies and the sixties, which a lot of these quotes were referenced from. So
it's not exactly like he had sat down and was asked word for word prediction prediction
of all of these things. So
(36:28):
the most of the value I found this book was kind of reading between the lines of who he was as a person,
how he thought of things, his principles, and
in the
literal section entitled how the what Lee Kuan Yew thinks is probably one of the better gems that you'll find within this book. So
a weird book overall, Lee Kuan Yew
(36:48):
by Alison Blackwell and a couple other people.
I'm gonna give it a four and a half out of 10. So, yeah, you know,
give it a give it a try if you if you're interested in Asia and and him as a person, but I I can't say I can't I wouldn't say I really recommend it per per se either. So,
similar books, recommendations.
Honestly, I got no recommendations from this. I it's so unique in a way in terms of the content and style that I I can't really have one. Do you have any? Let me know, which gets us on to our last section here, the value for value.
(37:20):
I do all of this upfront
and
without any kind of sponsorships or ads or monetary compensation
from external sources from book from book authors. They're not knocking down my doors asking me to to review these. And even if they did, I would say no. And that is because I wanna keep this as open as possible as, give you my honest,
(37:41):
feedback,
my thoughts without any
kind of monetary incentives from
external sources
tied to the actual books themselves,
which means I actually need your help to
provide some value back to this channel because I do this all upfront.
I just ask that you do some small things in return. You could do it in a very easy way. Sharing, liking, subscribing,
(38:04):
commenting.
Word-of-mouth is really helpful. Telling a friend about the mere mortals book reviews
of a certain book that they might enjoy that we've already covered on the channel. There's 300, 400 plus book reviews here now.
There's a good chance that I've covered something that you have read in the in the past or would like to read and, would be interested in or other people.
(38:26):
You can do it with some talent. Give me your book recommendations.
What would you like to see me review on this channel? What do you think I would find interesting?
What's your favorite book of all time?
Writing those and letting me know about those is is very helpful. And then if you want to support financially,
you can do that via meremortalspodcast.com/support.
(38:46):
And there's a couple of options there in terms of like a PayPal or doing it via
directly within your podcasting app, which is
possible nowadays. So super, super cool with things like the funding tag
and
also, being able to send boostograms and streaming payments to Satoshis.
Go to, an app like Fountain, Podcast Guru, True Fans, things like this. So,
(39:08):
that is that.
Final reminder here, I am live. I do these live 11AM
Australian Eastern Standard Time on a Wednesday. So if you ever feel like joining in, please come in and join. It would be super cool
and to have some engagement and feedback.
The
reason I've been doing this was because I am on a slightly Lee Kuan
(39:30):
Yew bent. So I mentioned I'm reading another book actually written by him this time, which I would say I'm enjoying more than this one. I'm also reading Bad Science by Ben Goldacre.
One is starting to put out his book reviews for the Lord of the Rings trilogy that he's reading.
And
I'm not really sure what's gonna come up with my future in terms of other books. I've,
(39:52):
certainly got a big booklet
review here.
Barbarians at the Gate Paps,
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. That's I should have read that a long time ago.
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, maybe.
Yeah. There's a whole bunch of things that I'm interested in in tackling and will get my hands on shortly. So stay tuned. More book reviews coming out in the near future. And as always, I hope you are having a fantastic day wherever you are in the world. Ciao for now. Cara now.
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