Brilliance

Q: “So, how serious is the brain drain, sir?”

Mr Lee: “The brain drain is pretty serious, our brain drain, losing them...”

Q: “To China?”

Mr Lee: “No, losing them to America. No, we’re not losing to China.”

Q: “Not China?”

Mr Lee: “China, they’ll come back. You want to be Chinese or do you want to be Singaporean. You go to China, you’re going to compete against 1,300 million very bright fellows, hardworking, starving. Do you stand a chance to be on top of that pole? No, but if you go there as Singaporean with a different base, speaking English which they can’t, with connections to the world, then you’ve got a different platform.

What happens is they go to America, Americans then collect them, the bright ones. You stay for two, three years in their companies, acclimatize them to the company culture and take them to China, if they speak Chinese. So, they’re part of the American team. Now, if they are working in China, I think they’ll come back because they don’t want their children to compete against Chinese.

But if they decide to take the Green Card and settle in America, then I think we’ve lost them and they are going to America and those who don’t want the hard competition here go to Australia and Canada.”

Q: “You have percentages on that, sir?”

Mr Lee: “We’re losing about… According to the people who give up their citizenship and take out their savings, their pension funds, we’re losing about, at the top end, 1,000 a year, which is about, if you take the top 30 per cent of the population, thereabout four or five per cent. It will grow because I think the numbers are growing.

Every year, there are more people going abroad for their either first degree or second degree or whatever. But we’re making up by getting many bright Chinese and Indians coming here because of better prospects, learn English, you can learn Chinese at the same time and so on and the Indians are near home, First-World standards as against Indian infrastructure.

The trouble is many of the Chinese then use us as a stepping stone to go to America where the grass is greener. But even if we only keep 30 to 40 per cent and we lose 60 to 70 per cent, we’re a net gainer. But the day will come, maybe 20 years, maybe 30 years, when Chinese say, look, my life is better than yours or as good.

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Q: “In fact, we don’t have great statesman anymore anywhere in democracies. Do you have a view as to why that is no longer possible to have someone like you or Charles De Gaulle or Margaret Thatcher?”

Mr Lee: “No, no, no, you will now have, I don’t know for how long this phase will last, an electorate that’s influenced by the mass media and a mass media run by a group of media barons with their appointed surrogates getting tired of leaders after a short while and wanting change, always believing that the next one
will be better. So, Tony Blair, use-by-date over, out. They’ve got Gordon Brown. Is he better? I don’t know. He doesn’t measure up, out. David Cameron, is he better? After awhile, out.”

Q: “So, the power of the media has made it impossible to be a great statesman or great stateswoman?”

Mr Lee: “I’m not sure. I think it depends upon the crisis. When a real crisis sets in, people begin to feel it in their bones and their opinion-formulators also begin to feel that this is life-and-death, it’s no longer pontificating and better be cautious about this. Let’s stick by somebody who knows what this is all about and will stay the course.”

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I guess this explains "MediaCorp is 100% owned by Temasek Holdings, the Singapore government's wholly owned investment arm."

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Full interview here