Transcription
And it was a display for the world to see, but principally for the Americans and for the G7 countries to see that that was the meaning. We are in a great transition to a multipolar world, and it's not going to go back to the past. Water doesn't flow uphill.
Then he thought he could push China. China looked the other way. China could not be pushed. Russia, of course, cannot be pushed, and even India has shown that it will not be pushed, or Brazil, or South Africa. So Trump will push where he can, will bully whomever he can bully. The US thought he had India on his side against China. India thought he had the US on his side against China. Then, when the Ukraine war broke out, America found that India is not going to disavow Russia, and after Paham, India realized that America is not going to denounce Pakistan. So now both sides know it's an adult relationship. We get together when it's to our benefit, otherwise we act in our own self-interest. So when Modi, Xi, and Putin were laughing, holding hands, part of it was for the camera to tell the Americans, "Yeah, of course you're number one, but you know, we're not that small, and you can't just throw us around."
What you just saw was a clip from an in-depth interview on October 15th, 2025, with George Yo, a veteran statesman, thinker, and Singapore's former foreign minister. For the past several years, the world has seemed to be unraveling. Wars, economic crises, and rising tensions between major powers. The old rules are failing, while new ones have yet to be written. We are at a deeply dangerous and uncertain crossroads. How are we to make sense of the chaos, and how can we find our footing in a world that is being remade before our very eyes? In the content that follows, we will hear Mr. Yo's profound diagnosis of our era. Like a seasoned geopolitical doctor, he will systematically break down how the old world order is failing. Why is the world's former leader beginning to act like a selfish bully? Why are once effective global institutions now paralyzed? And how is the very hard power that has sustained the global monetary system for decades now being shaken to its core? This is not just an analysis of the past, but a forecast for the future. He will reveal the new rules of survival that all nations, big or small, must learn in this emerging multipolar world. Let's continue. I'll start with an easy question. Um, following China's summit with India and Russia and their 80th anniversary parade with Russia, North Korea, and Iran, do you think China and its allies are set for a long-term adversarial stance against the West, or is there still a path to strategic coexistence?
Those images express what is happening in the world today. We're in a great transition, uh, to a different kind of world where the US, instead of holding the ring, has decided that there's little benefit in doing so. It is jumping into the ring itself to be a participant, and the result is, uh, consternation everywhere. It used to be Duanu described the US as a benign superpower. It maintained global rules in international institutions like the WTO. It took the lead, and I was for many years a trade wall. I know I, I was involved in trade negotiations, and without the US, we couldn't have made progress. But the US now increasingly feels that the institutions which it helped to create at the end of the Second World War, when it was 40% of global GDP, that these institutions no longer act in its interest, and therefore subverts them when it feels that they should be marginalized or distorts the operation in order to benefit itself. "America First" should be an embarrassing phrase. I mean, number one, you never say "me first." How can the leader, how can a CEO, how can a boss say "me first"? Of course, we know he's me first, but there is always a dressing up, almost a hypocrisy, which shows your aura, your strength. But now there's no embarrassment. America First. And says about bullying others. If you're Singapore, well, okay. So, it's better for Singapore to stay in the shadow and don't attract too much notice. If you have Panama in the limelight, frankly, you have no choice.
Then he thought he could push China. China looked the other way. China could not be pushed. Russia, of course, cannot be pushed. And even India has shown that it will not be pushed, or Brazil, or South Africa. So Trump will push where he can, will bully whomever he can bully. And the result is a reaction. Global financial crisis 2008. The G7 countries could not generate sufficient demand to pull the world out of a crisis. So George Bush Jr., he convened the first G20 summit. In the following year, Gordon Brown in London got the G20 leaders to coordinate fiscal and financial policy, and China introduced a 4 trillion Renminbi budget, and it really spent. In those few years, China bought more concrete than the US in its entire history. It helped to get the world out from the GFC. It could have been much worse. Now, imagine today if there's another global financial crisis, and the liquidity overhang today is much greater than it was in 2008. The G20 is not functioning because of the Ukraine war. The G7 collective GDP as a proportion of global GDP is much smaller. We're in danger. So people are signaling to the G7, you can't decide for the entire world. So breaks the SEO, they are posturing to show that look, hey, you are not what you were before.
The US thought it had India on its side against China. India thought he had the US on his side against China. Then, when the Ukraine war broke out, America found that India is not going to disavow Russia, and after Paham, India realized that America is not going to denounce Pakistan. So now both sides know it's an adult relationship. We get together when it's to our benefit, otherwise we act in our own self-interest. So when Modi, Xi, and Putin were laughing, holding hands, part of it was for the camera to tell the Americans, "Yeah, of course you're number one, but you know, we're not that small, and you can't just throw us around."
Then on September the 3rd, when China commemorated the 80th anniversary of the end of the war against Japan and fascism, he came out, Putin on one side, Kim Jong-un on the other side. But you should pan out a little bit more. It was Prabowo, it was Tokai F. Why Prabowo? Why Tokai F? After Tensing, Prabowo flew back to Jakarta because there were riots. So having calmed it down by facing the media with Megawati, Puan, Surya Paloh, and the others, he then flew back to Beijing just for the parade. Then flew back to Jakarta. Why did he do that? Because it was important to the Chinese. Why was it important to the Chinese? Because in 2013, August, Xi Jinping launched the Belt and Road Initiative in Astana, in August 2013, in Nazarbayev University. Slightly over a month later, he was in Jakarta launching it at the DPR. So these two countries, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, are the two key countries for the Belt and Road. People say, "Oh, Belt and Road is being de-emphasized." Not at all. Belt and Road is part of this new phase of history. And that was a full display. Prabowo knew it. He knew that was important to the Chinese. He wants China to help his program for economic development. And it was a display for the world to see, but principally for the Americans and for the G7 countries to see that. That was the meaning. We are in a great transition to a multipolar world, and it's not going to go back to the past. Water doesn't flow uphill.
What we have to try and figure out is what shape that multipolar world will be. Do you, I mean, you talk about China's great strength, um, but looking at the sort of financial standing of it at the moment, it really does need to drive its own internal economy, its own, uh, I think GDP. The domestic consumption is about 30% of its GDP, when normally mature countries are more like 60%. It's got, uh, 17-plus% youth unemployment. Um, a lot of commentators talk about, uh, too much spending on infrastructure, too much focus on key industries like EV cars or solar panels. So there's a great overcapacity there. Um, I'm, I'm relatively bullish on China being consistent in terms of economic growth. But am I being too, um, too enthusiastic about it? Do you see that it won't have the strength to assert its position?
There are many problems in the Chinese economy. There is fierce price competition, and the Chinese are trying to intervene in what they call involutionary nature, you know, where competition results in a downward spiral and is destructive. In a capitalist society, from time to time, there will be price wars, and after that, there'll be consolidation, but it's wasteful of resources. The Chinese government is intervening to prevent it from being too wasteful and really encouraging consolidation. So I was talking to someone from a very big solar panel manufacturer in China, and she told me that yes, because of government intervention, it's a bit better off for them. So it becomes a little oligopolistic. Too much of it is no good for China, but they don't want it to be too wasteful. The big problem was when they punctured the real estate bubble. It was getting ridiculous. When I was in Hong Kong, chairman of Kerry Logistics, all my middle-level managers in China, they were investing in property. Any savings you have, you throw in the property, you leverage it with mortgages, you did nothing to those properties. They were a one-way bet. And we know what happens to one-way bets. They lead to disappointment. They had to puncture it. Think about it. If China didn't puncture it when it did, and then they had this enormous property bubble when they were facing Trump, they would have been in a very weakened political position. But because they saw it coming, both Trump and the problems the bubble will cause, so they punctured it. And of course, this 30% of GDP is on everybody's balance sheet. Everybody felt poorer, and it affected consumption. And for as long as people couldn't see the bottom, they couldn't plan. Well, a bottom has formed. It's not going to get worse. And in fact, in first-tier cities, it's beginning to show improvement. You're in the real estate business, you would have got the feedback. In third, fourth-tier cities, it's still problematic. It will take some time, but there's a sense that it's rounded the corner. The state-owned enterprises, they will support the private companies. Well, they want their pound of flesh for people who've done wrong, for people who've gone too far. So they're restructuring, they're losing money, people have gone bankrupt, some have got to face the music. But I think the real estate problem has seen its worst. Consumption is gradually improving. Those of you who go to China often can see it for yourself. In Shanghai, I was there recently. I spent two weeks at Fudan University as a visiting scholar. There are more coffee outlets in Shanghai than in New York or in any European city. I never for the life of me believed that China, from a tea-drinking society, would have taken to coffee. When my, when I accompanied my parents to China in 1983 to Shantou, my father needed his daily coffee fix. We scoured the whole city. We couldn't find coffee, not even in a powdered form. The world has changed. And Starbucks is pulling out because there are too many Chinese coffee outlets, priced much more competitively, with innovations like malt coffee, which Starbucks can't go into. They are not deliberately stimulating consumption because it will lead to wastage, and they've kept the room cheap. No, China has been accumulating enormous surpluses. When COVID started, it was 500 billion, then it went up 600 billion, 700 billion. Last year, China had a merchandise trade surplus of $1 trillion. And China, together with Hong Kong, is the world's biggest creditor nation in the world. What's happening? The Chinese are buying up properties and assets all over the world where they are allowed to buy them. A little trickle comes to Singapore, and it creates asset inflation. Yes, we want them to consume more. They will, but they don't want to overdo it. And they see investing in infrastructure. Unemployment among young people is because of restructuring. China today accounts for more than half the robot births in the world. More than half the robot births in the world. In the Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta, many factories are dark. One reason why their cars are so well received is because they're made by robots. And the Americans worry that they're going to make missiles and drones using robots and rockets into outer space using robots, which means that the quality will be very consistent. And this is causing restructuring. So graduates who are used to jobs waiting for them, they don't want to do jobs beneath them. So they're doing Masters and PhDs, and parents don't mind their kids being at home because it's a one-child family. So yes, it's true the unemployment is high among fresh graduates, but you don't see hardship, and families are not completely unhappy because they don't mind having their kids at home to help, being around, helping their parents with various things, and working online. But there is massive restructuring going on.
Thank you. Um, maybe just a short, um, view on how you see India and its growth. Obviously, we heard that, uh, India's population surpassed that of China last year, albeit that the GDP is still at around $4 trillion, which is less than 25% of that of China. But how do you see it shaping, um, global trade relations?
GDP in nominal terms is, uh, is distorted by exchange rates. IMF last year put out the major economies by PPP. So nominally, the US is about $25 trillion, China is about $18 trillion. But in PPP, China is $40 trillion. The US is $30 trillion. Europe is $20 trillion. India is about $15 trillion. You've got to correct for the fact that with $100 euros, you get much more in China than you would in America or Europe. In fact, you get, you buy a lot of goods and services with $100 in China, much more than you would in, say, the West. So PPP is important, and India's PPP will continue to grow. You, it'll be, it will grow in a very different way from China. The urbanization rate is still much lower than in China, which is 70%. So India is still very much a rural economy, and if you have a bad monsoon, the GDP is affected. If you have a good monsoon, it gives a big boost to the GDP. And for India, any political party which mismanages rural politics will lose power. And that's the reason why India pulled out from RCEP because it was very worried about the rural sector. The Indian economy is actually doing reasonably well, and better from a year ago, but it's higgledy-piggledy, and it's very different from China. Li Keqiang used to say, you should never speak about India and China in the same breath because that deceives you into thinking that it's kind of a similar kind of growth. India is all over, but it's organic. And if you are in Gujarat, it's Gujarat. If you're in Tamil Nadu, it's Tamil Nadu. They are divided by caste, by language, by different cultures, by religion. Whoever operates in India must be prepared to get their feet wet and understand India, and not saying that from behind a screen looking at numbers that they can invest in India. That is very dangerous. If you want to be exposed to India, go to India. Get used to it. Learn to like the place, then do India. China is simpler, but not that simple either. To think that you can, behind a screen looking at numbers and alphas and betas and move assets around. You can do that for Singapore, maybe Hong Kong, US, Europe, but do that at your peril in Asia, because in Asia, the numbers do not tell the whole story.
Maybe slightly left field, and I'll go back to one of my optional questions. Um, obviously you mentioned the, um, Belt and Road Initiative from China, and they've been very, uh, aggressive expanding into South America and Africa, and there's been an emergence of an alternative financial system, the digital one. Um, are we going to, as businesses, have to start trading in alt currencies like the digital one?
The US took over from pound sterling as global reserve currency. The idea of a global reserve currency is an aberration in history. When Marco Polo arrived in China, he wrote about it in his memoirs. For the first time, he encountered paper currency. He's a Venetian. And Venetians only trusted gold. Paper? How can I, how can paper be a substitute for gold? But the paper had a big chop. It was the emperor's chop. And the emperor can kill you, which means that that paper has backing, right? So behind fiat currency is the ability to exercise power, raw power. The American dollar is maintained by 800 military bases around the world. Think about it. When the bases start to close because the deficit cannot get, is getting worse, and the interest servicing on American debt has already overtaken US defense spending, so it's not sustainable. So sooner or later, you'll come to a stark choice between guns and butter for American voters. At that point, bases will begin to close, just as British bases started closing after Suez. You grew up, son of an RAF flight squadron commander, near where I live, at Toa Payoh. Toa Payoh is where RAF Seletar had the quarters. Where I live, slightly uphill, was where senior officers had their bungalows, and the flag officers had the bungalows at Ferry Point, number one to number seven. They're still there. They're still there. All the area with SCF, they were something like 20-30% of Singapore's GDP in 1968. Harold Wilson announced pullback, evacuation from Singapore. Lee Kuan Yew was in a panic. He flew to London, pleaded for an extension, and was given three years. Three more harvests that mattered a lot to Singapore. At that time, bases are expensive, and at some point in time, can America sustain these bases? So he's telling the Europeans, the Japanese, Koreans, cough up, cough up. Okay, let's say the Germans cough up 5% GDP every year. After 20 years, you tell the Germans, you don't buy Russian gas, you do this, you do that. By that time, be very, you would be a very muscular Germany, and you will say, no, I don't think that's in my interest. The power is shifting. So this is the world we're entering. And when we talk about currencies, everybody worries that at what point will the US dollar break? We all know it will break one day, but it may not break for a few more decades, you know? So live on, we don't know when the cookie will crumble or how it will crumble. So we have cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, and gold is steadily going up. The Venetian instinct is coming back. Why? Because everyone worries about fiat currency. Bitcoin. I've been often asked about Bitcoin. Is there violence behind Bitcoin? No, there's no violence behind Bitcoin. Is there intrinsic value in Bitcoin? None. Can North Korea hack into Bitcoin? Yes. Therefore, can America hack into Bitcoin? Of course. Can Russia? Of course. Can China? Of course. So, I said, "No, no, no. I'm not going to Bitcoin." Stablecoins. Well, it's okay if you see it's backed by US dollar, but it's still US dollar. If it's backed by Renminbi, it's Renminbi. It just facilitates transaction. But it means that you can bypass SWIFT and American control. It's not just in a currency, it's in the settlement system, in the banking system. So digital currencies may well weaken the American stranglehold over the financial network. So these are risks which everybody worries about. People talk about it over whiskey. They say, "Ah, it won't happen yet. Don't worry." But then maybe it happens. So people kind of take precautions, and I think that's the right attitude to have. Take precautions.
Well, I think we might have to close early so I can sell my altcoin collection. Um, but we've, we've spoken about, um, tectonic shifts in the way that, uh, trade is being played, politics. We've talked about, um, digital currencies and the dominance of currencies may be failing. Uh, how, how can corporate leaders create an early warning system and plan for political and trade risk for what?
Um, how, how an early warning system for corporates? How do they, how do they structure something like that to try and plan? Um, obviously we can never plan for a black swan event, but we can certainly see some of the tectonic shifts in trade and politics. How do we plan for something like that as a business leader?
I think go back to, uh, geopolitical scenario analysis. Uh, there are no crystal balls. And if someone offers you a crystal ball, be very skeptical. It's a point of view. It's a lens. It's hard to predict the weather, but you have a sense of climate. So, this is September. It's going to get colder in the northern hemisphere. So, better get your winter clothing out of the cupboard. Air them. Because it's going to get cold. But next week, who knows, you may need your swim trunks. I was in Croatia and suddenly I had to go to the shop and buy myself swim trunks because I wasn't prepared for such warm weather, and it was too attractive not to get into the water. So the climate you cannot ignore. What's the climate? The climate is multipolarity, which means an old system is breaking up, not into chaos, but shaking down into a more complex network with multiple nodes. That's climate. Between now and then, in this transition, is weather. Can you predict Trump tomorrow, next week? No, you can't. But you know, he worries about the midterm elections because if he does badly in the midterm elections, the second half of his presidency will be worthless. So you can be sure that whatever he does, one eye is on the midterm elections. He will not say it, but that is a certainty. So that guides us as to our estimation of risk. Will he go into another war? He will threaten war to get a better deal. But will he actually go into a big war which will get Americans so upset that they will vote out Republican congressmen and senators? He won't do that. He won't do that. Look at Powell. He's so angry with Powell. Why? Because Powell worries too much about inflation. But inflation is a long-term concern. What he wants is to get rates down, get the economy going, and then bring in the vaults. But for us in the financial business, that's worrying because then the US dollar will eventually be affected. So that's, I think, the way we should approach risk. There are risks which are climate risks, and there are risks which are weather risks. And be clear which is which. Is China rising? There's no doubt. Is China's economy this year better than last year? Maybe, maybe not. Is the unemployment figure getting worse? Could there be problems in China? Yes. But if in 10 years' time, what will it be? It'll be a very big economy. In India, Modi may win the election, may not win the next election, but in 10 years' time, where will India be? It'll be a larger economy and one you cannot ignore. So that's how I would view risk in terms of time perspective.
Thank you. I'm still not quite clear how we're going to run Savills in Asia Pacific over the next five years, but, uh, we'll work on a plan next week. Um, maybe moving away from the corporate and more into Singapore.
If I can, sure, offer a view. It's not my business, but, but Savills maintains my apartment in Hong Kong. The middle classes in Asia are growing. That's for sure. China has been urbanizing. It's about 70%. You'll continue. India will urbanize rapidly. Southeast Asia will urbanize. They will have middle-class properties and middle-class needs. So this is a growth area for Savills. But every market is different. So you have got to be localized. That's good news. We have, uh, the largest strata management business both here in Singapore and also in Hong Kong. So, yes, we take that as wise words. But moving, moving back to Singapore, um, it, it's always prospered on how it's engaged globally. Um, it's been very pragmatic and pro-business in terms of its strategies. Um, but as these, uh, tensions rise, and God forbid, if it's being asked to pick sides, how do you see it's going to manage over the next coming years?
No, no one's going to pick sides if, if you can avoid it. If you have no choice, you have no choice. But otherwise, everyone will try to triangulate and keep all options open. And the US will increasingly itself get into that position. I was quite, uh, amused when, uh, the president, the Filipino president went to the White House hoping to get tariffs sharply reduced because of the military alliance against China, and Trump turned around and said, "No, you should better manage your relations with China. We're having better relations with China and reduce tariffs from 20% to 19%." So the US itself is triangulating. Trump, from leading the European charge against Russia, now wants to be a mediator, and he says he stopped seven wars where he's a mediator. He wants to be in that position, and that's rational because in a multipolar world, the best strategy of the US in game theory is just to move closer to everybody. And on every issue, by a slight shift of weight, you can affect the outcome. This is an optimal position. You move into a balanced position, then you're free to act. But if you think you can hold every other pole in a fixed position, you will exhaust yourself and you will fail. So without articulating it that way, Trump, by his action, is in fact now acting more rationally in a multipolar world by triangulating his position in every region of the world.
What we have just heard was an exceptionally clear-eyed, calm, and profound analysis of our turbulent times. Mr. Yo didn't offer simple answers. Instead, he painted a complex yet realistic picture of the world. He showed us how a world long dominated by a single superpower is irreversibly heading toward multipolarity. As he put it, water doesn't flow uphill. How nations are abandoning illusions to pursue more mature and more self-interested adult relationships, and why in the new global landscape, flexible strategies like triangulation have become far more critical than rigid alliances. This conversation is so valuable because it transcends the simple narrative of East versus West. It offers a global perspective from Asia that helps us understand the nature of this great transition, and it leaves us with some critical questions to think about. In an era with no single world police, will the balance of power between great nations lead to more dangerous conflicts? Or will it forge a new dynamic stability? As old ideology-based alliances become increasingly unreliable, will relations between states in the future be defined entirely by naked national interest? And finally, how much of the narrative we get from the mainstream media about the rise and fall of great powers has actually caught up to this new reality, and how much of it is already obsolete? If you found this episode valuable, please like, comment, share, and subscribe to our channel. Thank you for watching.