Lee Kuan Yew’s China: A Country Destined to Rise, but Not to Become the West

By Tom Published Jul 13, 2026 30 min read Society Lee Kuan Yew China

Rereading One Man’s View of the World to understand the power, costs, and limits of China’s rise

Will China overtake the United States? As its economy develops, will China move toward Western-style democracy? Is a strong central government the reason for China’s rise, or will it become a constraint on future development? Will nationalism strengthen China’s cohesion, or push its neighbors closer to the United States? Will Taiwan’s future ultimately be determined by public opinion, economic ties, or the naked balance of power?

In 2013, as he approached the age of ninety, Lee Kuan Yew addressed these questions systematically in One Man’s View of the World.

This is not a work of international-relations theory in the strict sense, and Lee was not a scholar observing from the quiet of a study. His judgments came from decades of political practice. He met many of the People’s Republic’s top leaders. From the Cold War and the Vietnam War to reform and opening and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, he witnessed the transformation of the East Asian balance of power firsthand.

That is why his way of looking at China was so distinctive.

He did not share the belief of some Western liberals that economic development would inevitably turn China into a Western-style democracy. Nor did he agree with those advocates of China’s rise who assumed that staying on the existing path would allow China to overtake the United States smoothly.

His judgment about China had two layers.

On one side, China possessed an enormous population, a complete state system, a highly capable bureaucracy, formidable organizational power, and a powerful will for national rejuvenation. Its rise was therefore close to unstoppable. On the other side, weak rule of law, personalized power, corruption, inefficient state-owned enterprises, insufficient incentives for innovation, demographic aging, and intensifying nationalism would determine whether China could convert scale into sustainable global leadership.

Lee’s real point was neither that “China will definitely win” nor that “China will definitely fail.” It was this:

China will not become an enlarged version of the West. It will rise according to its own historical experience and political logic, but how far it can ultimately go will depend on whether it can solve the institutional problems created by strong central authority itself.

1. The first key to understanding China is its fear of disorder

The first China chapter in One Man’s View of the World is titled “China: A Strong Centre.”

For Lee, understanding Chinese politics required looking beyond 1949. Centralization could not be explained simply as a product of communism. China’s reliance on a strong center predated the Chinese Communist Party and even the modern concept of the nation-state.

Across its long history, China repeatedly experienced a political cycle:

When the center was strong, the country was unified and social order was relatively stable. When the center weakened, regional fragmentation, warlord conflict, peasant uprisings, and foreign invasion followed.

That historical experience created a deep political instinct: rather than risk an unpredictable political system, first make sure the country does not descend into chaos.

Lee therefore believed that Chinese society’s first political demand was often not liberty but order; not the dispersal of power, but the prevention of national disorder.

This did not mean ordinary Chinese people cared nothing about justice, rights, or dignity. It meant that when those goals appeared to conflict with national stability, many people would instinctively place stability first.

Lee even regarded this as one of the central government’s most important sources of legitimacy. Chinese citizens might not approve of every policy, but they could still believe that a central government capable of controlling the whole country was safer than a weak government unable to control events.

Why local protests do not necessarily threaten the center

The book discusses the 2011 Wukan incident in Guangdong. Villagers protested land seizures, collusion between officials and businesses, and grassroots corruption, but tried to direct their anger at local officials while insisting that they were not opposed to the central government.

Lee saw historical continuity in this behavior.

Ordinary people often described injustice as local officials deceiving the center. They appealed to higher authority for justice rather than directly denying the legitimacy of the supreme authority. If the center punished some local officials and acknowledged some popular grievances, it could transform social anger back into trust in the center.

That also meant local protest did not automatically become a nationwide anti-system movement.

For Lee, the real test was not how angry the participants were, but three questions:

Had they formed an organization across regions?
Were they directing their challenge at the highest authority itself?
Had the center lost its ability to suppress, absorb, or resolve the problem?

As long as the center retained control over organization, information, the military, and resources, local discontent would struggle to merge automatically into a national political revolution.

2. China will change politically, but it will not copy Western democracy

Lee did not believe Chinese politics would remain unchanged forever.

On the contrary, he argued that economic development, wider education, the growth of the internet, and an expanding middle class would inevitably force political evolution. No system could remain fixed permanently. China could also produce a new generation of leaders who considered the old arrangements too rigid and in need of reform.

But he did not believe this evolution would culminate in American-style presidential elections or in more than a billion voters directly choosing the country’s top leader.

The changes he thought possible included:

limited village-level elections;
a wider choice of candidates in local legislatures;
broader candidate selection within the Party;
stronger systems for collecting grassroots opinion;
more policy debate and social feedback;
greater administrative transparency;
some degree of public participation.

All of this, however, came with one condition: supreme political control could not be surrendered.

In other words, he imagined a reform model that widened participation without giving up control, not multiparty competition and rotation in power.

What China really wanted to learn from Singapore

Lee believed China’s real interest in Singapore’s political system was not “one person, one vote.” It was how the People’s Action Party remained in power for decades while continuously monitoring social sentiment.

Chinese officials wanted to understand:

how government could discover grassroots problems early;
how petitions and neighborhood organizations could process grievances;
how to respond before dissatisfaction became a political crisis;
how to select and train capable officials;
how to maintain administrative efficiency;
how to correct policy without replacing the ruling group.

This was participatory governance, not competitive democracy.

People could voice problems, and government could solve them, but the public did not necessarily possess the power to remove the top ruling group through elections.

Why the middle class may not demand democracy immediately

Western modernization theory often assumes that economic development produces a middle class and that a larger middle class will then demand democracy.

Lee did not fully accept that logic.

During rapid economic ascent, he observed, migrant workers first wanted to enter the urban middle class. The urban middle class wanted to keep moving upward. Businesspeople wanted to expand their wealth, while professionals sought better jobs, homes, and education.

When most people’s lives were still improving, they had little desire to gamble on a political revolution that might destroy what they had already gained.

Only after the middle class had consolidated its wealth and position might it demand more strongly:

protection of property rights;
transparency of information;
stable law;
more public participation;
limits on government power.

For Lee, therefore, the stability of the Chinese system depended not only on coercive power, but also on an essential social expectation:

As long as most people still believe tomorrow will be better than today, revolution lacks sufficient momentum.

3. Lee did not endorse China’s system without reservation

Some readers see only Lee’s rejection of Western-style democracy and assume that he approved of the Chinese political system in full.

In fact, his criticisms were severe. They focused on three problems: personal power above institutions, weak rule of law, and corruption.

The person is greater than the office

Lee argued that in a relatively mature institutional system, an office itself should possess defined powers and boundaries.

The authority of presidents, prime ministers, judges, and military commanders should be set by law and institutions. Whoever occupies the position should not fundamentally alter those relationships.

One of the most important functions of mature institutions is that the state can keep operating even under a leader of ordinary ability.

But in Lee’s China, effective power did not always come entirely from formal office. It also depended on whether a person:

controlled the military;
possessed sufficient seniority within the Party;
controlled key appointments;
had the support of important political forces;
carried enough personal prestige.

The same formal office could wield very different real power depending on who occupied it.

This was one of the deepest weaknesses Lee identified: the institution behind the office was not strong enough, and the individual could become greater than the office.

A powerful leader could use this structure to drive reform, concentrate resources, and overcome obstacles. But when the leader made a wrong judgment, the same structure could transmit that error rapidly across the whole system.

Having laws is not the same as having the rule of law

Lee drew a sharp distinction between possessing laws and living under the rule of law.

A country could enact many laws without establishing genuine rule of law. At minimum, rule of law meant:

the text of the law had a stable meaning;
administrative bodies were also constrained by law;
courts could interpret law with relative independence;
signed contracts could not be casually altered when the balance of power changed;
changes of leadership should not change the basic rules;
citizens in conflict with government could appeal to relatively stable institutions.

Lee believed China faced fundamental difficulties in these areas.

Chinese governance was more accustomed to resolving problems through political needs, the real balance of power, and personal relationships. Rules mattered, but power, relationships, and context could matter more.

In the short term, that created flexibility. The center could mobilize resources quickly and bypass complicated procedures. But the long-term costs were equally clear:

businesses struggled to form stable expectations;
protection of property could depend on political relationships;
officials answered upward more than they answered to rules;
policy could shift with leaders;
large resources were spent maintaining relationships;
markets could not consistently allocate capital to the most efficient firms.

Lee was not saying China could not continue developing. He was saying that these institutional frictions would prevent it from operating at maximum efficiency.

Corruption may not destroy the system immediately, but it corrodes it slowly

Lee likewise did not assume that corruption would inevitably collapse the Chinese state.

The center could investigate senior officials, punish local corruption, and answer public grievances, thereby preserving trust in central authority.

But he doubted corruption could ever be removed completely.

When promotions, project approvals, land development, bank lending, and resource allocation were shaped by connections, long-term consequences followed:

the wrong people entered key positions;
efficient private firms could not obtain funding;
state capital was used inefficiently;
local governments formed interest alliances with developers;
wealth distribution became less fair;
society learned that success depended on relationships rather than ability.

Corruption might not bring the state machine to a sudden halt, but it would make that machine increasingly expensive and inefficient.

4. Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping

Lee did not judge Chinese leaders primarily by ideology. He used a simpler standard: did this person make the country stronger, more stable, and more prosperous?

Mao Zedong: he achieved unification, but not modernization

Lee acknowledged Mao’s historical role.

Mao won the civil war, ended prolonged fragmentation, restored China as a unified state capable of acting independently, and revived national confidence.

But Lee did not regard Mao as a successful modernizer.

In his view, the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution severely damaged China’s foundations for development. Had Mao’s line continued, China might have followed the Soviet Union toward rigidity, poverty, and decline.

His basic judgment was:

Mao made China stand up again; Deng Xiaoping set it on the road to prosperity.

Deng Xiaoping: the Chinese leader Lee admired most

What Lee admired most about Deng was his pragmatism.

When Deng visited Singapore in 1978, he saw how a small, Chinese-majority country with no natural resources had used foreign capital, management, and technology to build export industries and infrastructure while operating a market economy under political stability.

Lee told Deng that the ancestors of Singapore’s Chinese population had largely been poor, landless migrants from southern China, while China itself possessed a fuller talent base, scientists, and professionals. Whatever Singapore could accomplish, China should be able to do better.

Later, during his southern tour, Deng urged China to learn from the world and from Singapore. Lee saw Singapore as offering Deng a persuasive case:

A Chinese society did not have to become a Western-style democracy first in order to modernize through open markets, foreign investment, and stronger governance.

Of course, China’s reform and opening could not have been caused by a single visit to Singapore. But Singapore did demonstrate that strong government, a market economy, foreign capital, and international trade could coexist.

5. Why China was bound to become a top-tier power

Lee did not see China as a new country rising for the first time. He saw an ancient power recovering its historical position.

China would not be content to remain an ordinary member of an American-led order. It intended to return to the highest level of the global power system.

A vast population and market

More than a billion people meant:

an enormous labor market;
an enormous domestic consumer market;
a huge reserve of engineers and technical talent;
support for complete industrial supply chains;
the ability to spread enormous research costs across a vast market;
natural weight in trade and diplomatic negotiations.

Even while Chinese per capita income remained below that of the United States, sufficient productivity combined with its overall scale could transform the world balance of power.

A highly capable bureaucracy

Lee believed the Communist Party’s cadre system inherited some features of China’s traditional administrative system:

an emphasis on examination and selection;
an emphasis on administrative experience;
careers across multiple levels of government;
senior officials with substantial local-governance experience;
policy planning beyond short election cycles.

He did not think China’s post-reform leadership still truly believed in orthodox Marxist economic doctrine. In his eyes, they were first of all nationalists and pragmatists concerned with making China rich and strong.

Strong policy implementation and correction

After reform and opening, China demonstrated extraordinary state capacity:

creating special economic zones;
attracting foreign investment on a vast scale;
entering the World Trade Organization;
expanding local experiments nationwide;
building highways, railways, airports, and cities rapidly;
adjusting policy as the stage of development changed.

Lee believed China would certainly make mistakes, but unlike many developing countries, it possessed enough organizational strength to correct those errors before they moved entirely out of control.

Mastering strategic technology first

Lee foresaw that China would not be satisfied with producing clothing, toys, and low-end consumer goods. It would prioritize:

space technology;
navigation systems;
missiles;
naval power;
nuclear capabilities;
advanced manufacturing;
strategic technologies that reduced dependence on the United States.

Even a wealthier country could remain constrained militarily and diplomatically if its critical technologies were controlled by the United States.

China’s later industrial policy did indeed bind technological autonomy, industrial upgrading, and national security closely together.

6. The real danger to China’s economy is not the end of growth, but the failure of its growth model

Lee was broadly optimistic about China’s economy, but never unconditionally so.

He believed the first stage of catching up with the world was relatively easy. The real challenge was moving from a catch-up economy to a mature one.

The cheap-labor dividend would end

Early in reform and opening, China could draw on surplus rural labor, low wages, foreign capital, imported technology, export markets, and infrastructure investment to achieve extremely rapid growth.

But once those “low-hanging fruits” had been harvested, growth would have to come from productivity.

That required improvements in:

education quality;
technological innovation;
business management;
vocational training;
capital allocation;
intellectual-property protection;
market competition.

Lee therefore concluded early that China could not permanently sustain the extraordinary growth rates of the initial reform era.

State-owned enterprises lacked true owner incentives

Lee believed managers of state-owned enterprises could not behave entirely like private entrepreneurs.

A private entrepreneur’s wealth, reputation, and survival were tied to the company’s success. Managers of a state enterprise might still receive salaries, positions, and administrative protection even when operations were poor.

That created several problems:

losses could be carried by the state or state banks;
bank credit flowed first to state enterprises;
private small and medium-sized firms struggled for financing;
managers did not bear the full risk;
resource allocation was affected by political relationships;
truly efficient companies struggled to enter protected sectors.

Yet Lee also saw the danger of privatization.

Without stable rule of law and fair procedures, mass privatization could become the division of state assets among the politically connected, repeating the oligarchic outcome of the Soviet collapse.

China therefore faced a dilemma:

Without reform, inefficient state enterprises would drag on growth.
With crude reform, China could create crony capital and political crisis.

China had to move from exports and investment to domestic consumption

This was one of Lee’s most prescient judgments about the Chinese economy.

He believed that long experience of poverty and insecurity had encouraged a habit of high savings and low consumption.

Ordinary families worried about:

illness;
retirement;
unemployment;
their children’s education;
housing prices;
whether prosperity would last.

Without adequate health care, pensions, and unemployment protection, asking families simply to save less and consume more was unrealistic.

China’s move toward consumption-driven growth therefore required more than exhortation. It also required:

a more dependable social safety net;
better health care and pensions;
higher rural and inland incomes;
a narrower wealth gap;
better public services for migrant workers;
less household insecurity about the future.

As of 2026, weak domestic demand, property adjustment, local government debt, population aging, weak consumer confidence, and reliance on exports remained among China’s most important structural economic problems. That makes Lee’s diagnosis of the difficulty of changing the growth model remarkably accurate. The IMF’s latest assessment of China’s economy

Coast and interior, city and countryside

Lee also observed that China’s coastal regions enjoyed natural advantages from access to ports, foreign capital, universities, and international markets.

That produced a cycle:

talent moved from the interior to the coast;
leading teachers and researchers concentrated in major cities;
high-income employment clustered along the coast;
migrant workers entered cities without full public services;
inland consumption remained weak;
regional inequality widened further.

The household-registration system could stop major cities from being overwhelmed by migration in the short term, but it also generated long-term inequality.

Migrant workers supplied the labor that built China’s cities, yet could still lack equal access to education, health care, housing, and social insurance. If left unresolved, this problem would damage social fairness, the quality of urbanization, and domestic consumption at the same time.

7. Innovation: Lee saw the problem, but underestimated China

Lee once asked a sharp question: why were the iPhone, the iPad, and the internet not invented in China?

His answer was not that Chinese people lacked intelligence. It was that the institutional environment did not fully release creative power.

He identified several problems:

insufficient intellectual-property protection;
state resources tilted toward state-owned enterprises;
success closely tied to political relationships;
overseas returnees gradually absorbed by the system;
constraints on the exchange of ideas and information;
leaders unwilling to give up control for the sake of innovation;
entrepreneurs unable to gain the rewards and autonomy available to American founders.

He believed China could catch up, improve, reproduce, and manufacture at scale. It could also advance in space, missiles, and other fields sustained by concentrated state investment. But he doubted whether it could consistently produce disruptive original innovation.

Looking back, that judgment was only half right.

Lee correctly saw that:

institutional quality affects basic research;
the information environment affects open debate;
unequal financing for state and private firms distorts resource allocation;
China faces a real tension between innovation capacity and institutional conditions.

But he underestimated the innovative power created by the combination of Chinese entrepreneurs, engineers, local governments, and industrial supply chains.

China later built world-class competitiveness in:

electric vehicles;
power batteries;
solar energy;
drones;
telecommunications equipment;
high-speed rail;
mobile payments;
e-commerce and logistics;
applied artificial intelligence;
industrial engineering at scale.

In 2025, China entered the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Global Innovation Index top ten for the first time and ranked among the global leaders in knowledge and technology outputs, even while its institutional indicators remained notably weaker. WIPO Global Innovation Index 2025

That leads to a more complicated conclusion than Lee originally offered:

China is not incapable of innovation. Under continuing institutional constraints, it developed an innovation model driven by state industrial policy, intense market competition, complete supply chains, an engineering dividend, and applications at enormous scale.

8. Keeping a low profile was not weakness, but a strategy for rising

Lee believed Chinese leaders understood the failed rise of Germany and Japan.

Both challenged the existing order before their power was secure, provoked neighboring states into collective resistance, became trapped in world wars, and destroyed their own rise.

China’s most rational course was therefore to:

maintain external peace;
avoid making enemies on multiple fronts;
continue absorbing foreign capital and technology;
avoid rushing to claim global leadership;
remain modest while still relatively weak;
devote its main energy to domestic modernization.

That was Lee’s interpretation of taoguang yanghui: keeping a low profile and biding one’s time.

But he did not believe China would remain low-profile forever.

As its power grew, China would inevitably:

distinguish more clearly between ordinary and core interests;
exert greater pressure on neighboring states;
demand respect for China’s sensitive issues;
use market access, trade, and investment as diplomatic tools;
strengthen military control over nearby seas;
gradually restrict American military activity near China’s coast.

For Lee, a “peaceful rise” did not mean permanent gentleness or abandoning great-power ambition. It meant this:

China would try to avoid a war that destroyed its own development while converting economic and military power into political influence without launching a full-scale conflict.

9. Nationalism may become the greatest unexpected variable in China’s rise

Lee’s concern about nationalism among China’s younger generation deserves particular attention.

Older leaders who had lived through the war against Japan, civil war, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution had witnessed how bad decisions could pull a country into disaster. They were generally more cautious.

The generation born after reform and opening saw a different China:

cities modernized continuously;
the country grew steadily stronger;
foreign states paid China increasing attention;
China moved beyond the humiliations of the modern era;
national strength appeared only to rise, never to fall.

A generation that had not experienced national collapse, but had been taught continuously to take pride in national rejuvenation, could find compromise harder to accept than its predecessors did.

Lee worried that:

young people might overestimate China’s real strength;
online opinion might pressure government into a harder line;
leaders who wanted compromise might fear accusations of weakness;
nationalism might narrow diplomatic room for maneuver;
China might believe it had become strong enough before its comprehensive power was fully mature.

He predicted that China would be more willing to display power in the stage when it first felt it had “developed muscles.”

But assertive behavior would alarm neighboring states. The more insecure they became, the more they would seek American military and diplomatic protection, giving the U.S. presence in Asia renewed legitimacy.

The process formed a cycle:

China’s power rises
    ↓
National confidence and demands for toughness rise
    ↓
Neighboring states feel less secure
    ↓
Neighbors strengthen cooperation with the United States
    ↓
The U.S. presence in Asia expands
    ↓
China faces stronger external balancing

Lee’s warning was that China’s greatest diplomatic danger might come not from an American decision to contain it, but from China’s own behavior creating a regional coalition to balance against it.

10. U.S.-China competition is unavoidable, but war is not destiny

Lee was certain that China would eventually demand a seat at the highest level of the global power system.

China would not be content to remain an ordinary member of an American order, nor would it accept permanent, overwhelming American military superiority in Asia.

China’s advantages

China possessed:

a huge population;
an enormous market;
a complete industrial system;
geographic advantages in East Asia;
military power concentrated close to home;
the ability to develop asymmetric weapons against American carriers and bases.

The United States had to cross the Pacific to project power near China. China was defending its own neighborhood, giving it a natural cost advantage.

America’s advantages

But Lee did not believe the United States would decline rapidly.

America possessed:

a global alliance system;
leading universities;
technological innovation;
the global financial system;
the international position of the English language;
the ability to absorb global talent;
powerful cultural reach;
a polycentric, competitive economy and society.

The United States could not only attract foreigners; it could turn immigrants into Americans and ultimately convert their talent into American national power.

Lee therefore did not imagine China simply replacing the United States. He expected instead that:

the United States would remain the strongest comprehensive global power;
China would become Asia’s dominant continental and near-seas power;
the cost of American operations near China’s coast would rise;
Asian countries would depend economically on China and for security on the United States;
China and the United States would together occupy the top level of the world power system.

Why the United States and China would not go easily to war

Lee believed direct war was not inevitable because:

both possessed nuclear weapons;
the cost of total war was unbearable;
the two economies were interdependent;
China needed American markets, technology, and universities;
the United States had no need to manufacture a permanent enemy;
China had embraced markets and was not another Soviet Union attempting to export global revolution.

Looking back, that judgment was half right and half in need of revision.

The two countries have not fought directly, which shows that nuclear deterrence, economic cost, and military risk still work.

But Lee underestimated the intensity of competition over technology, security, supply chains, and political systems. Economic interdependence did not automatically create strategic trust. Instead, it turned trade, semiconductors, investment, supply chains, and finance into instruments of competition.

11. Taiwan: Lee’s coldest realist judgment

Lee’s assessment of Taiwan was built almost entirely on power politics.

His core arguments were:

Beijing could wait for a long time;
mainland China’s overall power was rising;
deeper economic ties made policy reversal more costly for Taiwan;
Taiwanese support or opposition to unification could not determine the outcome by itself;
Taiwan’s future depended on the cross-Strait balance of power and whether the United States would intervene militarily;
no top Chinese leader could survive Taiwan declaring formal independence on his watch;
if Taiwan declared legal independence, Beijing would be highly likely to use force;
even if the United States could win an initial conflict, it might not be willing to fight China repeatedly over the long term.

This was one of Lee’s most controversial views.

He did not deny that Taiwanese people had preferences. He believed that in great-power politics, preferences became decisive only when protected by sufficient power.

What he saw correctly

Lee identified several structural realities:

Taiwan is the most dangerous potential flashpoint between China and the United States;
Beijing consistently links unification to national rejuvenation and political legitimacy;
American intervention is a critical strategic variable;
the military balance directly affects Taiwan’s room for policy choice.

What he underestimated

He clearly underestimated the role of identity and democratic politics.

Economic integration did not naturally produce political integration. Taiwan’s dominant identity continued to change, while Hong Kong’s experience strongly affected attitudes toward unification arrangements.

Taiwanese public opinion cannot determine war and peace by itself, but it affects:

elections;
defense spending;
the public willingness to resist;
external policy;
the political legitimacy of intervention by the United States and other countries.

Long-running surveys by National Chengchi University’s Election Study Center show that Taiwanese identity did not naturally move toward unification as cross-Strait economic ties increased. NCCU’s long-term survey of Taiwanese and Chinese identity

Lee therefore correctly identified the structure of hard power, but underestimated how political identity itself could alter that structure.

12. Why North Korea still matters to China

Lee believed China did not want the North Korean regime to collapse suddenly and be absorbed by South Korea.

The reason was not approval of North Korea’s system of government. It was North Korea’s value as a strategic buffer.

Sudden collapse could produce:

large refugee flows into northeastern China;
Korean unification under Seoul;
a unified Korea that remained allied with the United States;
American military power approaching the Yalu River;
the loss of China’s strategic buffer in the northeast.

Even if China disliked North Korea’s nuclear policy and external provocations, it would still provide food, energy, trade, and diplomatic support at critical moments to prevent sudden collapse.

China’s objective was not to make North Korea infinitely strong. It was to keep North Korea from collapsing and to keep it from dragging China into war.

That judgment still has considerable explanatory power.

13. Why China’s soft power would struggle to surpass America’s

Lee believed China’s hard power would rise rapidly, but its soft power would not grow with equal ease.

The global advantage of English

English is central to international business, scientific research, university education, the internet, and popular culture.

Chinese is harder for foreigners to learn and less widely used internationally.

Language affects not only cultural reach, but also the movement of talent. If foreigners cannot master the local language, they struggle to enter local commercial, academic, and political networks fully.

America can turn foreign talent into American power

America’s advantage is not merely attracting international students. It can enable foreigners to:

settle permanently;
start companies;
become citizens;
enter universities and corporations;
gain social acceptance;
convert their individual ability into American national strength.

China can attract foreign experts, but it has greater difficulty incorporating foreign talent into society on a large scale.

America is polycentric competition; China is strong-center coordination

The United States does not have only Washington.

New York, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Texas can all form independent centers of universities, capital, and research.

That polycentric structure means that if one place makes a mistake, others can keep innovating. If one idea is rejected, another center can still try it.

China’s strong center is better at concentrating resources on clearly defined goals, but may be less suited to producing breakthroughs that cannot be planned in advance or designated by the center.

Lee believed China could approach America in hard power, but would find it difficult to replace the United States completely in talent attraction, global culture, and international language.

His linguistic determinism may have been too absolute, but his comparison of immigration, universities, cultural reach, and talent absorption remains insightful.

14. Demography: one of Lee’s most accurate warnings

Lee warned early that China would one day pay a heavy price for maintaining the one-child policy for so long.

A single young adult supporting parents and multiple grandparents would create immense family and social pressure.

By 2025, mainland China’s population continued to decline:

7.92 million births;
11.31 million deaths;
approximately 323 million people aged sixty or above, or 23 percent of the population;
approximately 224 million people aged sixty-five or above, or 15.9 percent.

National Bureau of Statistics of China: 2025 population data

Population aging affects all of the following:

labor supply;
demand for housing;
health and pension spending;
household consumption;
willingness to start businesses;
local government finances;
long-term economic growth.

This may be among Lee’s most accurate and consequential judgments about China.

15. More than a decade later: what Lee got right and what he got wrong

Rereading One Man’s View of the World more than a decade later, we can see that not all of Lee’s judgments were accurate, but most focused on genuinely important structural questions.

Judgments largely validated

China would preserve a strong center for the long term;
China would not move toward Western-style party alternation;
China would become a top-tier power the United States had to treat as an equal;
China would expand military control over its near seas;
U.S.-China competition would intensify;
nationalism would rise with national power;
Chinese assertiveness would push some neighbors toward the United States;
China would need to shift from exports and investment toward consumption;
state-enterprise efficiency and private-sector financing would become structural problems;
the one-child policy would create a severe demographic burden;
North Korea would remain an irreplaceable strategic buffer for China.

Judgments only partly realized

He predicted that China would become the world’s largest economy. China has surpassed the United States measured by purchasing-power parity, but not in nominal GDP converted at market exchange rates.

He expected a gradual expansion of grassroots participation and internal Party choice, but this has not clearly expanded toward the highest political levels in the way he imagined.

He expected China to maintain a peaceful rise. China has not launched a full-scale war, but its foreign and security policies became more assertive than he anticipated.

Judgments that clearly need revision

He underestimated the innovative capacity of Chinese firms. China did not copy the American model, but built world-class strength in electric vehicles, batteries, solar energy, drones, telecommunications, and the digital economy.

He also overestimated the likelihood that cross-Strait economic integration would automatically produce political integration. Economic ties did not erase differences in Taiwanese identity; instead, they showed that economic interest and political identity can remain separate for a long time.

He emphasized the constraints imposed on democracy by scale and historical culture, but did not explain sufficiently that institutions are shaped not only by history, but also by new social classes, technologies, interests, and international conditions.

16. The value and limits of Lee Kuan Yew’s view of China

The greatest value of Lee’s analysis is that he rejected two simplistic narratives.

The first said that economic development would inevitably turn China into a Western country.

The second said that China would inevitably collapse economically if it did not adopt Western institutions.

Lee believed neither proposition fit reality.

China could continue rising without becoming Western, but that did not free it from institutional costs.

A strong center could provide:

long-term planning;
rapid decision-making;
concentrated resources;
infrastructure construction;
crisis mobilization;
policy continuity.

But the same strong center could also produce:

personal power above institutions;
delayed correction of mistakes;
distorted information moving upward;
law subordinated to political needs;
insecurity for private enterprise;
restricted space for social participation.

His main limitations

Lee showed a clear tendency toward cultural determinism.

He often explained Chinese politics through thousands of years of history, which could overlook diversity within Chinese society and turn “it has not happened before” into “it cannot happen in the future.”

He also tended to observe events from the perspective of leaders, bureaucratic systems, and national security. He gave less attention to individual rights, civil society, media freedom, and conflicts between state goals and private life.

His Taiwan analysis displayed this tendency most clearly: he placed enormous weight on power while underestimating identity, public opinion, and democracy.

Yet those limitations do not erase his central insight.

Conclusion: the strong center enabled China’s rise, and may also define its ceiling

In Lee Kuan Yew’s view, China was an exceptional country.

Its first political instinct was to prevent chaos. It believed strong central authority was the precondition for unity and prosperity. It would reform, but not merely to satisfy Western expectations. Its political legitimacy came from national unity, economic development, and national rejuvenation. It possessed extraordinary powers of organization, construction, and catch-up, and was destined to become a global power the United States had to take seriously.

But the real question for China’s future was not simply whether it could build more high-speed railways, factories, and warships, or when its GDP would overtake America’s.

The real questions were:

Could institutions become more dependable than individuals?
Could law constrain power?
Could China release social creativity while preserving state capacity?
Could private enterprise gain stable expectations?
Could the economy shift from investment and exports to domestic consumption?
Could China manage population aging?
Could it control nationalism rather than allow nationalism to capture foreign policy?
After becoming stronger, could it make neighboring states see more opportunity than fear?

Lee was certain that China would become powerful.

But becoming powerful and becoming a world leader are not the same thing.

A country can enter the center of world power through population, industry, and military strength. Yet it can truly lead the world order only if its institutions, culture, talent, and international trust are equally attractive.

This may be the most important warning One Man’s View of the World left for China:

Strong central authority enabled China to rise again. Whether China can move beyond the stage of rising will ultimately depend on whether it can solve the problems created by strong central authority itself.

Main references

Lee Kuan Yew, One Man’s View of the World, Straits Times Press, 2013
Lee Kuan Yew, One Man’s View of the World, Chinese edition, Peking University Press, 2017. Publication information and contents
WIPO Global Innovation Index 2025
IMF: 2025 Article IV Consultation with China
National Bureau of Statistics of China: 2025 Statistical Communiqué
NCCU Election Study Center: Trends of Core Political Attitudes