Close Encounters of Cultures and Civilizations: To Live, Let Live and Celebrate
Singapore. The world is often a confusing place and at times it is a struggle to make sense of it. But every once in a while comes a book that sheds light and provides understanding of the forces at work that are shaping our world.
One such book is “George Yeo on Bonsai, Banyan and the Tao,” written by former Singapore politician George Yeo. The author sat down with GlobeAsia for a wide-ranging interview recently ahead of the book’s launch in Indonesia.
“Because of Our Diversity We Are One” was the alternative title George Yeo considered for his book that is being launched in Jakarta on Monday (28/03).
In the end the former Singapore politician and now chairman of Kerry Logistics Network chose “George Yeo on Bonsai, Banyan and the Tao,” as the title of the 619-page book which reflects his lively mind and his breath of knowledge and interests.
Covering a vast array of topics from Singapore and politics to culture and values to media and geopolitics, the book is a compilation of speeches Yeo wrote and delivered over his 23 years in public life. The book thus offers deep insights not just into Yeo’s thinking but the issues that affect the region and the world.
“When I left MTI [Ministry of Trade and Industry], they presented me with a compilation of my speeches made as trade and industry minister, which to me was quite good. Many speeches were made without scripts so they had to transcribe and clean up,” he told GlobeAsia at his Singapore office.
“I chose slightly less than 100 from over a 1,000 speeches, then I was hunting for old photographs, checking for dates, places and facts. It took two years in the end. If I knew it was so difficult, I would never have embarked on it.”
Readers will be glad that he persevered. “George Yeo on Bonsai, Banyan and the Tao” is an exceptional reading of the past, present and future of not just Singapore but Southeast Asia as a whole.
Apart from Indonesia, the book has already been launched in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Taipei. Later in April, Yeo will also launch the book in India and he is working on a Chinese edition.
Resonating with Indonesians
Indonesian readers will find the book both instructive on how Singapore manages its relationship with its neighbors and the future of Associations of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean). The book touches a lot on Singapore and Asean and Singapore and Asia across many chapters.
“It touches on the ancestral cultures which created us and which are also our links to the future. By 2050, many of the projections show that the world’s biggest economies will be China, US, India and Indonesia,” he notes.
“In Asia, Singapore is right in the middle of China, India and Indonesia. So what we are always partly reflects what they are. Singapore exists only in relation to the neighborhood. Asean is a major theme in the book and without Indonesia, there is no Asean.”
“I think Southeast Asia as a whole and Asean as an entity have to adjust to changes in the larger region, principally China, India — both of which are reemerging on the global stage — the US, Japan and Europe,” adds Yeo.
“We are where they meet. We have stayed neutral. They say we are in the driver’s seat not because we are the fastest driver or the most skillful driver but because we are trustworthy. We will not take the vehicle and our passengers in a direction they do not want. I do not think among the major powers, they trust anybody else to be in the driver’s seat.”
Such trust means that Asean member countries must respect the interest of the major powers while at the same time ensuring that their interests are also protected. This open access ensures stability for the region.
“The day when we stop adjusting and become divided, then they will all be forced to interfere and we will be Balkanized once again,” he says. “That would be a tragedy not only for us but I believe also for them. That has been the heart and genius of Asean foreign policy, which is to turn our weakness into our strength.”
Within Asean, Indonesia is the biggest country, so how the archipelago treats the association's fellow members is critical.
“President Suharto, from the beginning, understood that for Asean to prosper, Indonesia must be restrained and treat even the smallest countries with respect and dignity, which it has always done and that made possible Asean.” That policy and thinking still hold to today.
As Asean looks to the future, it must move toward greater integration but Yeo emphasizes that Asean cannot and should not pursue the European model in all its forms.
Trade within the Asean members is already relatively free and more can be done to remove non-tariff barriers especially with the advent of the Asean Economic Community (AEC). Increasingly, multinational companies (MNCs) see the diversity of the region as a strength because they can then distribute their activities and production facilities in different countries according to their competitive advantages.
But beyond that, Yeo does not see a European-style common market.
“I don’t see us extending visa free access to all our citizens. I don’t see us having a Schengen. I don’t see us having a common currency and I don’t see us having a big common budget for redistributive purposes,” he says.
“I am hopeful for Asean. As China and India become bigger and more influential in the world, the incentive for us to come together becomes greater and each of us by himself would have much less leverage than if we were to combine as a whole. As a collective entity, we cannot be ignored and indeed we are not ignored as we are seen to be the most successful regional community in the developing world.”
Common threads
Despite its wide range of topics, a common thread weaves through the book. According to Yeo, Banyan and Bonsai refer to Singapore with Banyan used as a metaphor for creating a livelier civil space within the city-state. The tree offers protection and canopy but at the same time it can suffocate life beneath it.
“So I said that tree should be judiciously pruned to let more light in. We still need the tree for without the tree there will be no Singapore,” he notes.
Bonsai is used to reflect Singapore as viewed from the outside.
“No matter how successful we may have been so far, what we do is unique to us. Others may come and learn from our successes and failures, maybe inspired or maybe troubled by what they see but we are a small country, a city-state. We should not exaggerate the importance of our model to the world.”
Yeo uses the term especially in respect to China because the Chinese sometimes look to Singapore as an experiment. With three-quarters of its population made up of people of Chinese ancestry, it is often seen as a microcosm of China as a whole.
“So they study us episodically, sometimes they say we are too small to be of interest but sometimes they say: oh there are similarities,” he says. The same also applies to India, another Asian giant that is projecting its culture and reach across the region.
“Singapore should always be a crucible for seed ideas,” he says. “We are not big enough to provide all the space to elaborate the expression of these seeds but we can always have enough space to grow and incubate all the seeds we want to a point in their growth. In can be in the arts, it can be intellectual, it can be R&D, it can be the breeding of fish fries, different kinds of plants.”
“The Tao is something which is a part of me which is always recognizing that there are forces bigger than us which we cannot control, which we must respect and work with rather than against,” he notes.
“So this keeps Singapore relevant and in a sense it applies to Asean as a whole in that we have to keep adjusting to changing global realities. We can only stay neutral and stay where we are by constant adjustment. Our position can never be static not only to geopolitical forces but also to geo-economic forces and to technological changes in the world, which are quite dramatic.”
Singapore’s place in Southeast Asia and the world is both a consequence of its geography and of its leaders' choices. From Stamford Raffles who established a British trading port to Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore and its first prime minister, Yeo says that Singapore is both an accident of geography as well as geopolitics and the monsoon winds.
“You can’t explain Singapore without Lee Kuan Yew but you also can’t explain Singapore without Raffles. You can’t explain Singapore without geography, the geography which brought jetsam and flotsam from China and India to the shores of Southeast Asia,” he notes. “You can’t explain Singapore without India, without China and without Indonesia.”
Transitioning from politics to business
After he left politics in 2011, Yeo embarked on the third stage of his life’s journey when appointed as the chairman and executive director of Hongkong-based Kerry Logistics Network as well as chairman of Kerry Group. But even his entry into the world of business seems to have been pre-ordained, as even before entering politics, he had an interest in the private sector.
Politics and business for Yeo are not too different and he says there is a great overlap. “We are talking about the same region, the same people. We are talking about analyzing trends. I was for five years trade minister, two years as second minister, seven years as foreign minister when a large part of the agenda was economics and I am going back to the same countries for Kerry Logistics and sometimes covering the same areas which at a higher level I covered as a minister,” he says.
“Of course there are differences. In business, you are much more focused on the short term and the bottom line is always important, but to me it’s just a different slice into the same watermelon.”
“When I took over as chairman, the emphasis was on greater China. Now we are putting much more emphasis on Southeast Asia and growing our presence in India and Central Asia. But like in economics and politics, the larger links to North America, Japan and Europe, to Africa and Latin America are also important,” he notes.
Growing nationalism
Yeo's book also touches on the great currents of history and geopolitics and the current rise of nationalistic sentiment across the globe. This is a phase that he says the world is going through because globalization has exposed us to a speed of change which many people find hard to cope with and they react against.
“So politics has to become more local before it becomes more global but that is the art of politics, how to be both, because you can’t solve local problems without having a global mindset and you can’t be effectively global without attending to local issues,” he says.
“This is a pendulum that swings back and forth. It is not new and we are not seeing it for the first time,” he adds. Globalization is unstoppable but Yeo emphasizes that one cannot as a result of globalization ignore local communities.
“So one of the themes in my book, which was a title I had considered, was 'Unity in Diversity' which is the state motto for Indonesia. Because of the differences we are one,” he adds. “It’s a false unity, which frowns on diversity because if you frown on diversity, you become oppressive. You are denying me my ancestry, my deep nature. So real unity is based on diversity and respect.”
"Diversity is part of Singapore as well as Indonesia. The only way diversity avoids being a zero-sum game is when people have bigger hearts and minds."
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