Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas

by Han Fook Kwang

  By 1975, Singapore had already been classified as an intermediate country, no longer developing but not quite developed yet. It had been a decade of the highest economic growth for the country, but Lee was also concerned about whether it could make that qualitative leap into the First World. In this National Day Rally speech on August 17, 1975 at the National Theatre, he shared these concerns with the people: whether they had gone soft, whether they would always retain that drive and that capacity for hard work that had made the country do so well, so far.

  What’s wrong with the Singapore worker

  Unconsciously, we have entered into the free-spending consumer society of the West. Parents spoil their children. There are better clothes, better food, better housing. All the time their expectation goes up and up, believing that it is always going to be up the escalator.

  The past decade was probably the most spectacular of all the ten years of Singapore’s history. There had never been such rapid transformation in any ten years. The physical landscape changed with new buildings, new roads, flyovers, traffic jams, homes, new factories. Our GDP went up, at factor cost, nearly three times between 1965 and 1975. When we borrow from the World Bank or from the Asian Development Bank, there are wno more soft loans. We are classified now as an intermediate country – not developed, not developing, but intermediate – and we pay the going market interest rate.

  We seized every opportunity to develop as fast as we could because ten years ago, you will remember, there was massive unemployment – at least over 12 per cent. Ten years after, with the new standards of incomes, we have got ourselves into a different mood, the younger generation especially – people who were not old enough in 1965 to understand what hardship and unemployment meant. And they are truly a different generation. Expectations have gone up. Unconsciously, we have entered into the free-spending consumer society of the West. Parents spoil their children. There are better clothes, better food, better housing. All the time their expectation goes up and up, believing that it is always going to be up the escalator.

  If there were no oil crisis, the 1973 prices did not quadruple, the developed world did not take a nosedive and GNPs weren’t down by 12 per cent, 13 per cent, 14 per cent in America and Japan, perhaps we could put up with this. But let me, by way of illustration, show you the changed attitudes which we cannot afford because the next five years will not be like the last five years. With oil prices five times what they were in 1974 and likely to go up this September by anywhere between 10 per cent, perhaps more – some papers talk about 30 per cent – we are not going to get the 10 per cent to 14 per cent real growth which we made in the years 1968 to 1973.

  Recently, we mounted an exercise to recruit drivers for the Singapore Bus Service. You know that we have got to have more buses to have a good bus service, and you need good drivers. So we thought that the National Serviceman who had learned how to drive a three-ton truck should be offered the opportunity. So we mounted three recruitment exercises this year.

  Ten years ago, if you had introduced a man into the Singapore Traction Company or into a Chinese bus company as a driver, he would have been happy to have given you his one month’s salary as commission.

  Ten years ago, if you had introduced a man into the Singapore Traction Company or into a Chinese bus company as a driver, he would have been happy to have given you his one month’s salary as commission. We circularised the posts. About 800 National Servicemen went on ROD [Run Out Date, the date their full-time National Service ends] between January and July. About 500 turned up to listen to the opportunities we were offering them. SBS produced a colour brochure, “The Bus Way to a Secure Future” – with diagrams and pictures. And on the face of the brochure it said, “This is not a sales brochure which you receive every day. This is a career prospectus which took us months to prepare just for you.” You know how many applied? Seven the first batch, 34 the second batch, 20 the third. You know how many are working now? One driver and three temporary conductors training to be drivers. Remarkable! Whilst training you are paid $11.60 per day, one year, as recruits. Then $12.80. This bewildered me. I chased up the Central Manpower Base. I said, “What are they doing? What marvellous jobs are they holding?” Because I got the monthly returns as to how many workers are retrenched, how many work permits issued. And I know that in the last 18 months since the retrenchment started, 30,000 workers have been retrenched, 70 per cent women and girls. But I just took this year, January to July; of the 7,500 retrenched, 4,800 – nearly 4,900 – were women. In those same seven months, we issued 11,500 work permits of which 4,400 were for women. It does not square up.

  What happened to these National Servicemen? They had primary six and secondary two – the highest levels. Many of them were just sitting at home! Some had gone out into the reserves in January. Forty or 50 are still unemployed. They go in at 18; they finish at 20. They only have a class 3 for driving a three-ton truck. You have got to be 21 before you take a class 4 to drive a bus. Originally, in the second batch, eight went in. They were asked – whilst practising to drive a bus and waiting to reach the age of 21 to get a class 4 licence – to sell tickets. They said pai-sei (shy). They liked their passengers bwehind them and did not want to face each chap to sell a ticket. This is the new generation Singaporean.

  If there had been no oil crisis, no problems in the West, we could perhaps put up with this. I ask parents whose instinctive response to their own hardship when they meet good times is to pamper their children, to remember that we are in for a less good time. It is always comfortable and easy to move into a higher standard of living. But I believe we are lucky if we make in the next five years – nobody can look beyond three to five years – somewhere from 3 per cent to 5 per cent, maybe with luck 6 per cent, growth in real terms.

  I will give you another illustration. We had some workers doing training in Japan in miniature ball-bearings. After one month they said, “What’s this? I am still doing the same job.” So the EDB went out to investigate why they were being held back. The answer was simple. This is a precision job and it had to be done to perfection. And they just did not know how important it is that even if you have only one, out of a group of 30 or 40 ball-bearings, which is not the right size, the wear and tear will be uneven and there will be not only damages to be paid; worse, the brand will lose its reputation and sales will go down.

  It reminded me of an incident some 11 years ago when I was touring some Third World group of countries. There was this Chinese restaurant thousands of miles away from Singapore. A Singapore Chinese had opened a restaurant there and he invited the whole chartered aircraft to his restaurant for dinner. I said to him, “The food wasn’t bad. Who is the cook?” He said, “Oh, it is a Singapore Chinese cook.” I said, “What about the locals, can’t they cook?” He laughed and said, “Well, you know, it is very difficult. You take the simple dish, foo yong hai. It is an omelette. You add some vegetables, you add some prawns, crab. But you show it to him three times and he says, ‘I know.’ But he doesn’t know. I tell him, ‘Watch again. You have got to add this amount of water to the egg so that it won’t be too hard. Then you’ve got to have the vegetables sufficiently cooked but still crisp. Then you must add the right salt and pepper and sugar and other condiments.’ He says, ‘I know.’ But it is not edible. You lose business.”

  We are like that: “Yes, I know,” when in fact you don’t know.

  We are like that: “Yes, I know,” when in fact you don’t know.

  The growth that we have made has carried us up to a pretty high level compared to what was, not compared to what the Japanese and the Europeans or the Americans have. And to make the next jump is a qualitative change. We made this first run-up by just starting from a low baseline – mopping up the unemployment, doing mostly assembly-line operations. Then we moved on to polishing lenses, making theodolites and balancing instruments and so on. This year, we are getting only about a third of the investments committed or promised compared to the number we had las
t year. But they are good investments – in precision engineering, aircraft spare parts, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals. And it means training, skills. It means that if you want to do your children good, make sure they don’t lose the work ethic. Whether it is the Confucian work ethic, whether it is the Hindu work ethic, whether it is the Muslim work ethic, whether it is the Protestant work ethic, if you don’t work, you are not going to make the grade and no amount of wizardry on the part of the EDB or the Ministry of Finance is going to pull this one off.

  In the last ten years we hitched a ride as the world bounced away at about 10 per cent a year growth in world trade up till 1973. It took a nosedive in 1974. It is not quite recovered in 1975. But we managed, with the momentum of eight years behind us, to ride through 1973 and 1974.

  Now it is going to be different. The oil crisis, with prices quintupling, plus a further problem of getting a new regional balance established with the new governments in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, which in turn will depend on the balance of forces between America, the Soviet Union and China. It is going to take two years to know how the interaction of these world powers will be and, in particular, the contest for influence over the Indo-Chinese states. It means that cooperation in Asean in the economic and the political fields must become a sincere effort to try and accommodate each other, in order that by being a more cohesive group, we can deal with a group of countries with different political and economic systems on more or less equal terms.

  It is the need to be realistic that is paramount. It is better for the government to take the 10th anniversary celebrations to cap the successes of the last ten years in undiluted self-congratulation. It is the easier way out but it is not the best way forward. We have done as well as we could possibly have done in the past ten years. To do as well as we can in the next five years, let us have no scales on our eyes. Let us face the world as we find it – as we find the other countries, as we will find ourselves. And if we are to overcome these problems, many of them will depend on our own internal thrust, the drive that we have got, the capacity to face up to our problems before they become too big and too unmanageable …

  And I hope that we shall together make the next five years at least not less successfully than the last one and three-quarter years since we ran into the oil crisis. If it is no worse than what it has been and better than what it has actually been up till now, at the end of another five years we will be all right. But it requires that constant drive and that willingness to learn, to achieve and to be proud of what you are doing; not just minimum of effort, maximum of monetary rewards. That attitude will never take us into the industrial society.

  Lee has spent a lifetime watching how other societies progress, what they have done which might work in Singapore, and what mistakes they have committed which should be avoided here. In this speech in 1981, made at the National Day Rally held at the National Theatre on August 16, 1981, he zeroed in on the concept of productivity which he believed held the key to understanding why some economies were more competitive than others.

  Who does Singapore Airlines belong to?

  They don’t like to go to the factory floor and soil their hands. They don’t know what happens on the factory floor. So how can they order more efficient work?

  It’s a simple word, “productivity”. But I have had to spend several years grappling with this problem, to seize hold of the meaning, the simple word, “productivity”. It means you get more out of a workforce with the same working hours. How do you get more? By more capital investment per worker. That’s how the Japanese have done it.

  And in the Japanese factory, a motor factory – I read the comparison recently – 9,000 recommendations from the workers on how to improve the assembly line. And all they get is recognition – their photographs and acknowledgement. General Motors pays a few thousand dollars for each suggestion proposed, and they get 900 suggestions a year, of which half are adopted.

  So you see the difference in the motivation of the worker. He is always thinking how he is going to do his job better. He is always making suggestions. It’s not the manager who can think up these ideas because the managers are not manipulating the machines, they are not on the assembly line; it is the highly motivated and intelligent workers who then sit down with a group of three or four, either called QC [Quality Control] circles or zero-defect circles, and they work it out. And, of course, the management is also efficient.

  Our graduates – and I have got quite a lot of feedback from the employers’ associations which I met recently – have paper qualifications. They are good engineers, they are good economists. They don’t like to go to the factory floor and soil their hands. They don’t know what happens on the factory floor. So how can they order more efficient work? Our economics graduates have no idea of personnel management, human industrial relations – social science graduates, whole lot. And so the Singapore National Employers Federation and the German business group in their submissions to the National Productivity Board suggested that part of the training during vacation is to send them to the offices and the factories. And more important, to send their teachers – the assistant professors and the professors – so that they will understand what is the product that they are expected to produce in the students, what is he supposed to perform. There is no dovetailing at the moment. And of course, all this should start from the schools – team spirit, teamwork – and this should start with the teachers.

  The most disturbing facet of my discussion, reading their submission (this was a carefully considered, written submission), was that if we had to depend on Singapore entrepreneurs we would not have today’s Singapore.

  My meeting with the American, German, Japanese, Singapore National Employers Federation (which I am told is a group of British, Japanese, Germans and others, including Singaporeans) was most instructive. The most disturbing facet of my discussion, reading their submission (this was a carefully considered, written submission), was that if we had to depend on Singapore entrepreneurs we would not have today’s Singapore. It’s a damning admission for me as prime minister to tell you this. But I think you should know that.

  Rollei may have failed, but no Singapore firm could have run Rollei [the German camera company that set up shop in Singapore in 1971 and ran into trouble in the late 1970s], would have failed long time ago. We may have been traders, but we do not understand management. Our managers do not understand productivity. Otherwise how can I get a submission from the Chinese Chamber of Commerce telling me, “Yes, why should we confine CPF being managed by employers, to only big employers of 300 or more employees? We, small shopkeepers, can also handle it.” I don’t think they have the slightest clue what this is all about.

  I want to read to you extracts of four of the submissions, good ones. They educated me, they instructed me. I chose them in alphabetical order: Americans, Germans, Japanese and the Singapore National Employers Federation – A, G, J, S – because otherwise they may be invidious.

  The American and German View

  There is a certain candour about the Americans which makes them likeable, and they put this out in their press conference. I didn’t see it in the newspapers. Newspapers should have printed this in bold type. Fifth point: “The Singapore government in its desire to provide for its citizens have developed wage policies and social programmes such as CPF, which causes a worker to feel his future and security is dependent on the government rather than the employer.”

  That’s a very profound remark – “that the Singapore worker believes his future and his security is dependent on the government than the employer”. Then says the American Business Council, which should have been in bolder type: “Employers do not invest in Singapore to provide jobs and welfare programmes for the Singaporeans. Enterprises must strive for reasonable profit and control costs to ensure a competitive position in the market place. If this is not achieved, bankruptcy or receivership will surely happen.”

  You see, common sense. They go right to the heart of the
problem. Then they add, just by the way, they find the Singapore workers hardworking, positive, highly motivated but individualistic, like the Americans. So the Americans are not as critical as the Japanese are of our workers. But then the Americans are losing to the Japanese. But they point out, as the Germans point out, “Productivity Councils should also review conditions where many salesgirls are non-productive – department stores, hotels, restaurants and similar establishments.” The Germans made this point. He is a very shrewd man, Mr Puorroy. He says, “The Singapore paradox … it is well known throughout the world that the workers of Singapore are busy and industrious. One can easily see this when looking around the Kallang area – small marine wharves build ships with the highest skill. One finds this in any area where demand for performance matches the ability to perform and the worker concerned can identify with the fate of the enterprise involved.”

  Then he says, “Touring the shopping centres, factories, office buildings, one often observes that operators or clerks are not in the least interested in the fate of the enterprise; just chatting and being non-productive.” He is a German, you know. He is writing to me in English. He says, “To be successful you must instil a certain high-fidelity, feeling in something. That means a sense of loyalty, a sense of trustworthiness – high-fidelity.” And he puts it in an attractive and vivid way. He says, “Management’s problem is that they should not forget that not only the brains and the hands but also the hearts of people should be working for the company.” That’s well put – not only brains and hands but get the workers’ hearts.