Sit down with George Yeo

hello mr yo now let's start off by discussing what's on everyone's minds the u.s china relations now you mentioned in your book game theory she said that china prefers a win-win situation but if the u.s forces its hand into a win-lose situation then china is prepared to move to the loose-loose quadrant given the heightened economic and political tensions between the two powers do you foresee both sides moving into a lose-lose zero-sum situation china will not push the u.s into a winning rules quadrant because it doesn't want to escalate he knows it's getting stronger and that his relative strength vis-a-vis the u.s will improve over time so its strategy is not to escalate but at the same time to show with no weakness so when the us tries to push china into a we lose squadron china will then move into those rules instead to put a cost onto the us so that eventually over time it will see advantage in moving to the win-win quadrant so this the way the chinese uh are playing this for the u.s it's not one player there are many players with their own agendas and sometimes this creates confusion particularly at a time when the leadership in the u.s is weak and you know with this other u.s congressional visit you know to taiwan so soon after speaker nancy pelosi's visit what do you think the u.s is trying to achieve by this and what's your assessment of how china has responded i think these congressional delegations what they call cordell's are not new i think they've always sent them to taiwan but coming so soon after the pelosi visit naturally assumes greater significance and almost seems as if it's a deliberate escalation i'm not so sure because these things have been arranged months in advance the u.s there are some people who just want to irritate china want to bring down china's prestige in the world if they can uh there are others who who may be beating china to do something silly then they can respond vigorously i think the u.s their number of players on the chinese side they're quite unified it's the tradition of centralized statecraft in china but the u.s have always had divisional powers and sometimes this leads to a certain incoherence in the actions which china has got to take into account when it does its calculation what do you think china would do now well china is very clear it's made it unambiguous that if the u.s supports taiwan independence then china will use all means to prevent it from happening and they will create the very outcome which some the u.s claim they do want to see which is violent reunification but by actional inaction the u.s may may actually create a very outcome which did not like to see but in the end it falls back onto the military balance of power and without nuclear weapons i think it's hard for the u.s to be confident that it can prevail in a war over taiwan because the u.s is far away whereas it's at china's doorstep so the the theater of operations favors china even though taiwan is still quite a distance away from from the mainland but nevertheless if for china is 1 200 miles away for the u.s is thousands of miles away so it's much harder for the u.s to sustain conflict over taiwan without the new the use of nuclear weapons so the u.s will always try to make that a direct indirect threat to which china has to have a response which is why i think they will increase the number of warheads and which is why the south china sea is so important because of china's strategic submarine fleet in the south china sea in 1991 he likened the state to a banyan tree which needs to be pruned in order to enable civic discourse to flourish 57 years since singapore's independence do you think civic discourse has flourished in singapore and how should the new generation of leaders engage with this space the relationship between what i described as a banyan and the growth beneath it's not unilateral i think is is is dynamic it's it's almost an interaction a conversation between the the ferns and the other creepers and the banyan and together creating a symbiosis singapore can succeed if it is without clear decisive leadership the world doesn't wait for us with the adjustable world which means it dangerous more quickly if the opportunities strike quickly so singapore requires a certain unity of purpose and decisiveness of action but at the same time we can only do this if we have a genuine unity which is not force which is not procrastinate but which results from continuing conversation and most importantly relationship of trust has it changed since i made that speech in the early 90s oh yes profoundly i think singapore is much more variegated now it's almost a garden beneath the banyan tree and all kinds of wonderful flowers and growths but nothing is static we have to keep adjusting adapting and what's in your view are the key challenges that the 4g leaders will need to deal with amid this flourishing garden but there are two things one is clarity about the way the world is going as best we can the voice going through profound changes there will be a protracted struggle between the u.s and china and to a certain extent between the west and the rest because for the first time in a long time uh the west and the us feel that oh they're not necessarily top dog in the world and asians and the chinese are prepared to look them in the eye at eye level i said no i disagree you can't do this they may not be used to it but they'll have to get used to it so during this period there's bound to be tension responsibly conflict i describe it as an intertidal period and it's not static from time to time there appears to be a surface calm but i come is ephemeral is because one tide is now resisting the other type but the tests continue with the old momentum and one day you move in the opposite direction and in between there could be turbulence there could be whirlpools and we have to be very careful and position ourselves early in the right places because if we find out too late that these are the causes of the currents women have time to get into get into the right position you just be sucked down so i think clarity about the external environment is critical as best we can and this clarity comes not just from information and watching what's happening i think it requires also an understanding of history and culture history and culture are enduring they don't change very quickly so these things create a nature to the types we are talking about i mean the tides don't move as they will they follow certain causes the types have abst and flowed in the past studied how they float in the past and therefore it gives you a fair sense of how they will rise in the future the key is we must be united if we are united we'll be able to respond early and effectively but if we are disunited and then we spend all time calling over how the deck chest to be arranged on the deck while icebergs are looming all around us then we will very quickly be in trouble so i would say there's an internal dimension which requires a continuing effort at keeping singaporeans who are diverse together in this external environment which is going through a historic transformation and i found this quote of yours interesting is that um if we are insecure about our own identity then we become uncomfortable with the strength of other people's identity sometimes singaporeans are told you know you shouldn't be pro-china you shouldn't be pro-us you shouldn't be this you shouldn't be that so then the question some people ask you so who are we do you think after all these years you know we have strengthened our national identity and become more comfortable with who we are as a people let me say this that this internal debate will never cease if singapore is defined by what we can't be i think it's not a very attractive singapore if the common space is created by each of us being less of himself or herself then he may even be suffocating the hope i have as i expressed not only the first series but in all three series is that we have a big singapore that the unity is created not by how much each has to be treated to create some common space but how each by growing his heart and enlarging his mind can create a greater overlap so the bigger you are the greater overlap we enjoy singaporeans and that is a common space so one is a positive sum game there is a zero sum game we must create a positive some singapore then if you are chinese or indian you come to singapore see yeah here i'm bigger than what i was because in addition to being what i was i'm not expected to be more than that easier said than done but something worth striving for you'll make us perhaps a flickering possibility of what the future might be for others in the world we used to be homogeneous now we're diverse in london in new york and other places and you have your habits and have mine and each impinges upon the other but in singapore perhaps we can create a meta system a meta culture where in addition to who you are and what you are it can be more than that and therefore find a higher unity i like to say if one day let's say earth is under threat and we could send the noah's up nose up to mars and we're all drawn in different pairs from chinese india africa u.s era other places do we go to mars as chinese as indians as westerners or we go as human beings i don't think you can say we suddenly deprogram ourselves and download new programs and become generic human beings i don't think that's possible we don't even know what's inside us that we've inherited from our ancestors so the only way that we can be together on this voyage confronting common challenges if we have higher values which says yes you are indian you are chinese or jewish whatever but the additional lines of code like tcpip you know html xml or whatever which enables us to interconnect to find higher purpose and to cohere that is what singapore should be something larger than what we were before your name has come up from time to time as president can you recap for our readers why is it that you don't wish to run in next year's presidential election i'd like to give a clear definitive answer that i do not wish to run for the presidency and i gave my reasons for doing so because it is a very important institutional position and it requires great discipline you have powers but you also sometimes have to act under advice and you cannot lightly speculate on your views about things there has to be a certain discipline of thought and action do i fit this role i was asking 2011 do you remember when i lost the elections i i was not happy even when i considered it i asked myself am i happy i think no i'm not happy at the prospect i feel some pressure so you ask me that question i i give you the same clear reply that i have no intention of running for the election and i because friends asked me to reconsider and i tell them and i've thought over this deeply yeah and this is this is a fun position thank you mr yo my pleasure [Music] you

Channel: The Straits Times

Views: 59,554

Keywords: china, foreign relations, george yeo, singapore, us, singapore news, foreign minister, international relations, politics, geopolitics, taiwan, singapore president, nancy pelosi taiwan visit, south china sea, singapore identity, national identity, singapore presidential election

Id: ocowYWMDm7U

Length: 14min 55sec (895 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 26 2022