The Chinese civilisation, when the centre is strong, the country prospers. And the country prospers because the centre makes sure that everybody obeys the centre. In America it’s different. Nobody obeys Washington or New York. Anybody can start another centre if you’ve got money.”

each decides his literature is sacrosanct, cannot be given up, whereas when the Americans went to the new continent, they created new literature with great writers and scholars in English. So, Europe is caught in its past and its history.

You make this place work by looking towards and working for the future. If you continue to look backwards into time, we will fail. And having uprooted themselves from their countries to Singapore, they decided they must make a success of it and that was the strength that made my policies possible.

“If you want to succeed as a leader, then don’t think of yourself. Create a system where the others can make money and become rich. And you will remain an honest official and relatively poor.”

I said: “Before you have that, you must have independent judges who are prepared to give judgments against the government in a dispute between the citizen and the government, then you have the rule of law.” He said: “Never mind. You lend me those laws.” So I let him have the laws. They translated them. I don’t think they can implement them because the judges will do what the leaders want.

I would say in Asia, Mao (Zedong) would have been a disaster if he had lived on because he believed in a state of constant revolution. Here is his romantic idea that if you have stability, you become bureaucratic and lose that urge to reform and change the world.

The Americans became involved not because of democracy and human rights, but because they did not want to see a Europe which was under such a powerful ideology which would threaten them.

A leader has a mission. You seek power because you want to do certain things. A statesman is one who has not only sought power and done those things but is able to hand over to a good successor.

LKY: I think to be able to achieve anything, you must first gain the trust of the people – that you are not just making promises or pleasantries, that you mean what you say. And while you may succeed or you may fail, you will try and do what you have said. And that was the reason why I was able to succeed, because in several major instances, I carried out what I promised to do in spite of opposition. That created trust and after that, everything was easier.

Q: Any hopes for Singapore? A: Well, the hope is that it will keep a steady course and uphold all these institutions which make it different from the rest of the region.

Travelling overseas helps me widen my horizons. I see how other countries are developing. No country or city stays static.

I was going to China nearly once a year, although I am reluctant to go to Beijing now because of the pollution. But the leaders are there, so you have to go there to meet them.

I try not to meet only old friends or political leaders, but people from a variety of fields, such as academics, businessmen, journalists and ordinary people.

You must meet people, because you must have human contact if you want to broaden your perspective.

we have a responsibility towards our children and grandchildren to pass on to them a world full of hope and vitality, just as it was passed on to us.

The earth can only hold so many people without serious damage to our habitat and to biodiversity. How do we put a stop to the relentless growth? The key, in my view, lies in educating women – which causes them to want fewer children. The sooner we are able to do this, the sooner we will have a less populated world.

One of the lessons learned by Asian countries in that crisis was that the liberalisation of capital should not be done hastily, especially if the financial system is still fragile or if supervision by the central bank is still inadequate. Opening up to the world should happen only after a certain level of maturity and robustness had been attained.

When people invest in our companies and our new building estates, it is a sign of confidence.

But if you are young and talented and the world is beckoning, the temptation to leave would become irresistible.

However, I am certain of one thing. If, in the end, Singapore decides to move towards a two-party system, then we are destined for mediocrity. We will lose our shine and become nothing more than a dull little red dot, if we tell ourselves: “Look, never mind. Let’s just be an ordinary city. Why should we try to be better than other cities or countries?” I will be very sorry for Singapore if we ever went down that road.

A: It shows how skilful the Chinese are. They have dealt with foreign countries, or foreign barbarians, for thousands of years and they know how to play them one by one and to prevent them from coalescing so they don’t have to face a group. They buy them off one at a time.

Members of the Old Guard have earned their stripes in the party hierarchy during the war and presently occupy the positions of authority. Unfortunately, they rose up the ranks not because they managed the economy well or demonstrated a talent for administration. They did so by digging tunnels from the north of the country to its south for more than 30 years. What they have in common with China’s opening up experience are officials who have turned corrupt.

They did not understand that one happy investor would attract many more. Their idea was that when you had an investor ambushed in a corner, it was your chance to squeeze as much out of him as you could.

Vietnam’s older generation of communist leaders, I now believe, is incapable of breaking out of a fundamentally socialist mindset. They had initially agreed to embark on the journey of reforms because they could see that the country was not going anywhere. But they have not since come close to exhibiting the genuine determination to overhaul the system that one finds in China. These Old Guard leaders are keeping Vietnam stagnant. Until they pass on, the country will not make breakthroughs in its bid to modernise.