Singaporean leaders framed Asia’s rise as Confucian virtue against Western decadence

Evidence

In the early 1990s Asian triumphalism was articulated anew in what can only be described as the “Singaporean cultural offensive.” From Lee Kuan Yew on down, Singaporean leaders trumpeted the rise of Asia in relation to the West and contrasted the virtues of Asian, basically Confucian, culture responsible for this success—order, discipline, family responsibility, hard work, collectivism, abstemiousness—to the self-indulgence, sloth, individualism, crime, inferior education, disrespect for authority, and “mental ossification” responsible for the decline of the West. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 293 (#expands, via linked claim)

Until the late 1970s relations between staunchly anticommunist Singapore and the People’s Republic were frosty, and Lee Kuan Yew and other Singaporean leaders were contemptuous of Chinese backwardness. As Chinese economic development took off in the 1980s, however, Singapore began to reorient itself toward the mainland in classic bandwagoning fashion. By 1992 Singapore had invested $1.9 billion in China, and the following year plans were announced to build an industrial township, “Singapore II,” outside Shanghai, that would involve billions of dollars of investment. Lee became an enthusiastic booster of China’s economic prospects and an admirer of its power. “China,” he said in 1993, “is where the action is.” Singaporean foreign investment which had been heavily concentrated in Malaysia and Indonesia shifted to China. Half of the overseas projects helped by the Singaporean government in 1993 were in China. On his first visit to Beijing in the 1970s, Lee Kuan Yew reportedly insisted on speaking to Chinese leaders in English rather than Mandarin. It is unlikely he did that two decades later. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 471 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Singaporean leaders mounted a deliberate cultural counter-attack against the West — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 293; Singapore’s government sought shared values to counter Western individualism — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 892; East Asian elites articulated a shared Confucian-tinged civilizational identity against the West — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 295 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Singaporean leaders mounted a deliberate cultural counter-attack against the West #expands (0.93) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 293
• Booming Chinese economy pulled ideologically hostile Singapore into bandwagoning alignment #complicates (0.76) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 471