I spent a fair portion or my early working life in Singapore and have a passing acquaintance with Lee Hsien Loong, Prime Minister since 2004. Lee is no slug. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and a masters in computer science from Trinity College Cambridge and a second masters in public administration from Harvard. He served 13 years in the Singapore Armed Forces where he rose to the rank of Brigadier-General before he entered politics in 1984. He’s a pragmatic politician who tells it how it is.
I was fascinated on his take on China when he was quizzed at the press conference held following a meeting between him and Scott Morrison who stopped off in Singapore on his way to the G7.
He made the point that China is not going away and cannot be ignored. That its close to being the dominant power in the Asia Pacific region. That China’s foreign policy will always be based on their national interest as opposed to scoring brownie points on the world stage (unlike certain other politicians).
In short China will do what it wants to do. You can push against that but you stand the risk of being walked right over. China today is the Pax Britannica of the 19th Century and the Pax Americana of the 20th. Interesting times ahead and I’m not sure we (the royal we) have quite figured it all out.
Napoleon had it right when he said ‘Let China sleep, when she wakes she will shake the world’. China’s awake and out of bed and striding purposefully towards its future as she sees it.
No Minister 
“……That China’s foreign policy will always be based on their national interest as opposed to scoring brownie points on the world stage…..”
Init funny how he could have been describing the much maligned President Trump?
Hmmmmmm
Those who criticize Trump (of whom there are many, some of them justifiably) should remember that he’s a symptom, not the disease. There’s a substantial section of the American population who feel left out and see no reason why they should work two jobs to support someone who doesn’t do one. That includes a lot of non Americans, hence the pressure on NATO to pay 2% plus. And remember that the border wall was actually popular. I think Mr Biden might regret some of the things his party is forcing him to do. All will be revealed come the mid-terms.
And back to the subsidiary topic. 2Lt to Brigadier in 13 years. Not bad. I wonder who his father was?
Errrrrrrrr … didn’t ‘our’ Leonard Thornton go from Lieutenant in 1938 to Brigadier in 1945 … 7 years.
China will certainly throw its weight around but it will still get old before it gets rich.
In any case this sounds like a setup for National to produce “pragmatic” reasons why nothing should be said or done to obstruct whatever China wants to do, up to and including absorbing Taiwan well before 2049. To that end I noted Karl du Fresne’s latest post, Mistress Tova’s latest discipline session.
Tova could clearly teach the Chinese a lesson or two when it comes to dealing with the National Party.
C’mon Tom … cheap shot. Its Labour that sez we need to understand them (read kowtow) to them. Do what Oz does and China retaliates. The reality is that NZL has a huge exposure to China, All I’m saying is that there is a path to be walked but that no-one (ACT/National/Labour/Greens) has quite figured out that pathway yet.
As for Taiwan … The only way Taiwan will submit to China is by force of arms. They look no further than HongKong to see what ‘peaceful’ reunification means.
C’mon Tom … cheap shot.
Really? If it makes you feel any better I have exactly the same low opinion of Labour on the matter of speaking up against some of the things that China is doing. As this Croaking Cassandra post, The PRC and all that, points out:
But then I recall that your former Cabinet Minister, Wayne Mapp, has explicitly dismissed the Anne-Marie Brady stuff.
Then there’s this from you:
The reality is that NZL has a huge exposure to China,
I already addressed this by contrasting the views of political scientist Paul Buchanan (who agrees with that) and economist Michael RIddell (who does not – his blog is Croaking Cassandra), in my post here at No Minister, The spoon is long enough.
Buchanan talks of exports to China being “30 percent of NZ’s trade”, but Riddell points out that:
As a result the impact of China getting nasty to us will be a hit on specific firms but that it won’t even amount to the hits we take during something like the GFC in 2008 or the Covid lockdowns last year. Riddell pointed out that even with Chinese retaliation occurring:
As I said in my post:
Isn’t that what any responsible Government is supposed to do – develop and enact policies that enhance the welfare of its citizens?
In 1900 Great Britain where the industrial revolution was born was the leading world power with her citizens enjoying the highest standard of living on the planet. the USA was adapting the technologies of the industrial revolution to suit their geography and catching up as was Germany, while China remained a fragmented Nation with an agrarian peasant economy
In the 20th century GB allowed itself to be drawn into 2 disastrous wars, from which it never recovered, the USA virtually unscathed from these wars took the best of the technologies from Europe, primarily GB and Germany and became a dominant world power
But they shifted much of their industrial production to the far East and in 2021 the skills to build useful things is concentrated in the Far East where about 25% of the world’s population live.
I was talking to a student last night, a single “young” man of 32 who was doing a masters in political science, to what end I don’t know. This is not atypical of the “educated” Western middle class.
I was talking with a young Chinese student a while back – this guy was a decade younger than his Western counterpart doing a masters in Engineering – his interest is in process engineering, that is setting up factories to manufacture reliable products cheaply. His father is a factory manager in china where the make small coreless electric motors by the millions and cost only a few cents each to make and these have thousands of applications from toys to medical equipment
We can’t do this anymore but we do like to be able to go down to Jaycar and buy a drone that uses four of these motors for not very much money to amuse ourselves while being essentially clueless as to how it was made or how it works
And in the time our best and brightest have been chattering about building a light rail link between Auckland central and the airport without one sod of dirt actually being turned China has built a high speed rail network of thousands of kilometers that run the fastest trains s in the world carrying millions of people from place to place – quickly and reliably
That says it all
I don’t know if you have noticed it yet but thus far in human history no society has achieved perfection where everybody is happy and there is no opposition to the status quo.
Probably the most repressive society on the planet is the Absolute Monarchy is Saudi Arabia and most nations including our own are happy to trade with them.
The USA has the highest percentage of incarcerated individuals of anywhere and their prisons are pretty grim places but we close our eyes to that
Another sorry statistic from the USA is that the murder rates in some democratic shithole cities are the highest in all of the Americas. Chicago or Baltimore are far more dangerous for their residents who are more likely to die a violent death than the residents of Bogota or San Salvador for example. – sad but true
It is easy to find reasons to criticize China and given it is culturally very different from the West natural xenophobia serves to amplify the feeling of wrongness – its the biblical “mote in the eye” thing
But New Zealand’s standard of living is almost entirely dependant on the export of primary produce and China is by far the biggest consumer of these exports – Tourism was a biggie but St Jacinda has all but ruined that. And a substantial portion of Tourist FX was Chinese in any case.
China is New Zealand’s largest trade partner like it or not, and furthermore we sell more to China than we import from them
Looking at it dispassionately with an unjaundiced eye its hard not to conclude the West in general and the USA in particular are on a downward trajectory with falling living standards for many and failing infrastructure while the East and China in particular are on an upward path with rising living standards and awesome new infrastructure like the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge
And your railing against China comes across as sour grapes to me
Andrei … if your point is that the Chinese leadership doesn’t need to factor in any sort of homegrown political opposition to their decision nor does it need to engage in virtue signalling then I guess I agree with you.
What is “virtue signalling”? Is it using a poppy as an avatar? 🙂
Tom … cheap shot in the context of ACT’s penchant for unloading cheap shots on National. Guess that’s part of your strategy for growing the vote … might just backfire one day. But there’s nothing but nothing in all your writings to suggest a pathway forward in our dealings with China …waiting.
I doubt if ACT is much better on this issue.
Your suggestion merits a post rather than a comment