Ex-President of UN Security Council calls Singapore’s rise ‘one of the most remarkable stories of human history’

SINGAPORE: In a recent Bloomberg interview, Kishore Mahbubani, who served as President of the United Nations Security Council between 2001 and 2002, marvelled at the rise of Singapore’s economic fortunes, calling the city-state’s success “one of the most remarkable stories of human history.”

Mr Kishore, a former diplomat and Singapore’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 1984 to 1989, is currently with the Asia Research Institute. He had spoken to Bloomberg’s Mishal Husain about the relationship between China and the United States in light of the recently concluded summit between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump.

However, during one part of the interview, Ms Husain asked Mr Kishore, now aged 77, about his childhood in Singapore, where he had grown up experiencing extreme poverty and hardship.

Ms Husain observed that Mr Kishore had “lived history in a really interesting way,” as he had come of age at the same time Singapore had achieved independence from Malaysia.

Mr Kishore noted that when Singapore became independent, its per capita income was around the same as that of Ghana in West Africa. Today, it’s among the highest across the globe.

“No country in the world has gone from S$500 per capita to S$94,000 per capita in 60 years, or less than one human lifetime. Now that’s one of the most remarkable stories of human history,” he said, adding that it has been one of his “great privileges to travel this remarkable journey upwards with my fellow Singaporeans.”

Ms Husain, who cited one of Mr Kishore’s books, Living the Asian Century, noted that the feeling was not the same in 1965, when Singapore decoupled from Malaysia. At that time, there was “a sense of despondency everywhere” over whether Singapore could survive on its own.

Mr Kishore, who was 17 in 1965, said, “No one in Singapore celebrated our independence because we thought Singapore was doomed. And there was a simple reason why Singapore was doomed, because Singapore was a city, and when a city is cut off from a hinterland, which Malaysia was the hinterland for Singapore, it can die. Like taking a heart out of a body and expecting the heart to survive without the supply of blood.”

He went on to attribute Singapore’s success to “three remarkable geopolitical geniuses: Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Keng Swee, and Rajaratnam,” whom he called the best tutors he had in his life.

Mr Kishore’s Bloomberg interview may be viewed in full here. /TISG

Read also: Kishore Mahbubani predicts, “China will shake the world gently”, in his book ‘Has the West Lost It’