Be a person who loves learning and is willing to grow up with me
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Text/Yan Lingyang
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Singapore, the territory managed by Lee Kuan Yew, is really small and has a small population.
When we traveled to Singapore, we felt that the country was not as big as Guangzhou, and we all thought it was "easy to manage".
In China, Lee Kuan Yew is a secretary of the municipal party committee, but since Singapore is an independent country, Lee Kuan Yew has become the "father of the country" of Singapore.
The history of Lee Kuan Yew's counterattack is quite legendary. His ancestral home is Meizhou, Guangdong. Earlier, his great-grandfather went to Nanyang and settled in Singapore.
Li Yunlong, Lee Kuan Yew's grandfather, worked hard in Singapore, running a shipping company and rubber business, and became a big local family.
Lee Kuan Yew's father, Li Jinkun, is the eldest son in the family, but he is also a playboy, infected with gambling and other bad habits.
Lee Kuan Yew worshipped his grandfather and despised his father since he was a child. Fortunately, his mother was tough and his grandfather was strong. Therefore, even though his family came down, he received a good western education and was admitted to Cambridge University at the age of 16.
Lee Kuan Yew is a fourth-generation immigrant. His family speaks English and Malay, but can't speak Chinese. At that time, Singapore was still a colony, so he was discriminated against in the local Chinese community because he could not speak.
When World War II broke out, Lee Kuan Yew was interrupted in his studies and had to go home.
After Pearl Harbor, Japan invaded Southeast Asia and occupied Singapore, and Lee Kuan Yew was also tracked as an anti-Japanese activist. However, he is very clever. He took this opportunity to improve his Japanese, and by virtue of his fluency in Japanese and English, he became a Japanese translator in a newspaper. He can not only support his family, but also understand the world situation.
After Japan announced its surrender, Lee Kuan Yew went back to school to take the Cambridge University exam again, where he met his wife Ke Yuzhi.
Both of them were admitted to Cambridge and registered to get married in England in 1947.
Lee Kuan Yew studied law in Cambridge, and after returning to China, he opened a law firm in Singapore. At that time, Singapore was still a British colony, invoking British laws, and he became famous by helping people to go to court and accumulated a certain political prestige.
In 1954, Lee Kuan Yew founded the People's Action Party and served as its secretary-general. The following year, he participated in the legislative assembly election, but because he could not read and write Chinese, he was considered unqualified to represent Chinese voters.
Lee Kuan Yew was so angry that he made a crazy plan to learn Chinese. He learned Chinese like a thief and eventually became a legislator.
At that time, British colonial rule had weakened, and Singapore seized the opportunity to declare independence in 1959. At the age of 35, Lee Kuan Yew was elected as the Prime Minister of the first autonomous government of Singapore.
At the beginning of independence, Singapore could do nothing. It always hoped to merge with Malaya to form "Malaysia".
after many efforts, in 1963, Singapore and Malaya merged to form the Federation of Malaysia. However, after the merger, because the racial chauvinism in Malaysia led to the widespread exclusion of Singaporeans, Singapore left the Federation in 1965 and declared its independence.
Singapore's independence at that time was entirely due to the Malaysian authorities' fear of * * * productism and the anxiety of China's interference in other countries' internal affairs, which forced Singapore out of Malaysia.
At that time, Lee Kuan Yew and his People's Action Party petitioned many times to stay in Malaysia. After Singapore really became independent, Lee Kuan Yew cried bitterly.
At the time of independence, Singapore was a tiny place, with no natural resources and no industry. The traditional port trade was declining, and there were threats of ethnic conflicts and riots inside, alongside Malaysia and Indonesia, which could cut off Singapore's water supply at any time.
If you want to become an independent country in such a small territory, how can you survive on the earth with a powerful country like forest? If you are poor, you will change your mind. Lee Kuan Yew began to think of ways and vowed to build Singapore well.
Singapore is too small. If there is another war, it will be shot down in a few minutes. Therefore, Lee Kuan Yew first seeks recognition from the international community and joins the United Nations. In this way, if other countries attack you, it will be aggression and morally untenable.
Then, he put his arms around Britain's thigh and became a member of the Commonwealth. Although the Commonwealth is a loose organization, which country wants to fight Singapore must give old Britain some face, right?
He also learned management from Japan, which invaded this land.
Although Singapore has also been invaded by Japan, their feelings towards Japan are different from those of us in China, because they are immigrants themselves, and it is not their territory in the first place, and the Japanese aggression is not long and the intensity is light, so it is easier for them to forgive Japan.
At the same time, Lee Kuan Yew learned from Israel's national military service and formed the armed forces.
In terms of diplomacy, he learned from Switzerland, remained neutral in diplomacy, kept out of trouble and made no enemies in the international community, and devoted himself to economic development.
After several sets of combination punches, Lee Kuan Yew felt that the possibility of being invaded by a big country became smaller, so he started to develop the economy.
At that time, China was busy with the ten-year catastrophe. Lee Kuan Yew thought that learning from the west and getting closer to Singapore was the way to realize the counterattack. So he forced schools to carry out English education, canceled traditional Chinese teaching and began to develop light industry, foreign trade, finance and port economy.
During his administration, he paid attention to cracking down on corruption, and his rewards and punishments were strict. At that time, Singapore's politics were very clear, and such a thing as "never again" after breaking the law could never happen in Singapore, because those who broke the law would be punished as soon as they were caught, which made you afraid.
After all, Singapore is a small country with a small population. After this combination, Singapore has gradually become prosperous. Of course, the reason why the Four Little Dragons in Asia were able to prosper rapidly was mainly because they caught up with the opportunity of the third industrial revolution, and China at that time had not been reformed.
As soon as China was reformed, Lee Kuan Yew was keenly aware of the imminent rise of the great powers in the East, and immediately launched a campaign to speak Chinese throughout the country.
in less than 5 years, Singapore has not only solved a series of domestic and foreign troubles, but also completed the economic transformation from the third world to the first world, and even gained a great international status (Singaporeans go to more than 17 countries around the world without visas).
Singapore's sound legal system, social visibility and fairness, city livability and people's affluence are also impressive. At least I personally like this country.
Lee Kuan Yew can be regarded as a great entrepreneur, except that someone else started an enterprise and he started a country.
Of course, the reason why Singapore can create these amazing miracles cannot be attributed to Lee Kuan Yew alone.
a tiny place can create such a great miracle, of course, it depends on various factors such as the right time, the right place and the right people.
if the weather is right, the 5 years after the war would have been the 5 years of rapid development of various countries.
In terms of geographical location, Singapore has two advantages that other countries do not have, and it is difficult to be rich or not.
One is the annual passage fee of Malacca Strait and the port trade, which bring a steady stream of income to Singapore.
Another reason is that Singapore is surrounded by Muslim countries. In Islamic teachings, it is not allowed to charge interest on deposits and loans. Therefore, the funds of these countries always need to find a place with high security that can give annual interest. It happens that Singapore naturally becomes an international financial center because of its geographical location.
In terms of people and people, Lee Kuan Yew's political thinking is very westernized, and he has carried out a series of drastic reforms. In addition, Chinese in Singapore are in the majority, and these Chinese are relatively high-quality and very United and diligent. It is very easy for policy makers and people to work together to build this country with a small population.
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In 25, Lee Kuan Yew made his son Lee Hsien Loong the new prime minister (Goh Chok Tong, the second prime minister, actually listened to Lee Kuan Yew and was just a middle power transition).
this son, compared with his father, has a more general political structure.
Originally, for a small country like Singapore, not taking sides in international relations is the best choice. As a result, he openly chose to take sides with the United States and Japan on the South China Sea and the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, which was created by the United States and Japan to encircle China, but was later abolished by Trump), and had little relationship with China.
In 213, Lee Kuan Yew published his book Lee Kuan Yew's View of the World. In the book, he predicted several points:
First, the euro zone will disintegrate in the future;
second, the United States is no longer strong;
Third, Japan will gradually become mediocre,
Fourth, India's economy will not develop;
Fifth, it is normal for China to be strong;
sixth, I'm not sure whether Singapore will still exist.
Now we feel that his prediction seems to come true slowly-Singapore may still exist, but it may not necessarily exist in the form of "Lee's Singapore".
In 215, Lee Kuan Yew died at the age of 91.
In 216, China-Pakistan Gwadar Port officially set sail, and later it built a port with Malaysia in Malacca. Singapore used to rely on the port advantage of Malacca to "cool down" more than half.
Moreover, the wind and water turn, and the economic development momentum of the four little dragons in Asia is declining, while China is rising rapidly at a speed visible to the naked eye.
In 217, Lee Hsien Loong also had an inheritance dispute with his younger brother and sister, and the political reputation of the Li family in Singapore further declined. As for whether this infighting can cut off the political path of the Li family, let's see in the future.
Anyway, in my opinion, every dynasty is a family company.
when a powerful person makes rules and everyone is willing to abide by them, the family company will flourish. If not, it is easy to roll over.
whether it is a family company or a non-family enterprise, the world belongs to "smart people", not "people in the collective".
In other words, Lee Kuan Yew is called the father of our country in Singapore, but Chinese in Malaysia are very disgusted with Lee Kuan Yew, probably because of the psychological imbalance of Malays.
A generation ago, Chinese in Malaysia thought that Lee Kuan Yew abandoned Chinese in Kuala Lumpur and Penang to become independent, and later made Chinese in Singapore live so well, while Chinese in Malaysia, despite their wealth, had to live in a slightly worse country with Malays and Indians.
Most traditional Chinese in Malaysia and Indonesia are proud of China culture, but they are also contemptuous of Singaporeans who are already pale in traditional culture.
Of course, Singaporeans despise the traditional Chinese people in Malaysia and Indonesia, mainly because they are not as good as them.
Singaporeans are also ambivalent about China people who have become rich. On the one hand, they wonder how China people have become rich, and on the other hand, they don't think much of China people. In fact, three generations up, Singaporeans are just traditional Chinese who "wash their feet and go to the fields".
In fact, Singapore is also afraid of Malaysia, because its own land is too small, and food, fruits, vegetables and even water sources need to be supplied by Malaysia.
Perhaps it is also because of this sense of crisis that Singapore started to build dams to intercept the water of the Singapore River, so that it can be used as a drinking water source in the future.
In order to curb Singapore's port trade, China and Malaysia reached an agreement to jointly build a port in the Straits of Malacca. Singapore is disgusted with this, while Malaysians are glad and encouraged.
Chinese Malays hope that China will become stronger and stronger, and their own country will become stronger and stronger, so that Singaporeans will stop dragging their feet.
above.
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