How Singapore Can Thrive In An Era Of Uncertainty - Ho Kwon Ping (4K)

It's about the idea that it is expensive, but it's not to show I have and you don't have. It's that it's expensive because it's a legacy. It's an heirloom you pass on to the next generation. I think that's a cool way of positioning luxury. It's expensive, but it's not to show off. And the ads don't show beautiful women, yacht settings, and so on. To show off, you own a PEX Philip not to show it off. You own this expensive jewelry to pass it on to your children.

This is Hoking. He is the founder and executive chairman of the Banyan Group, a leading global hospitality group with over 100 resorts across the world. He is also known as one of Singapore's most unfiltered and sagely business leaders. In this conversation, we discuss why cultural intelligence is more important than we think. Why we are headed towards a great civilizational reset with the recession of Pax Americana and what it takes for Singapore to remain relevant in this coming age.

One of the things that I really enjoyed about reading your books was that um I've kind of like discovered the the breadth of your kind of banyan tree empire. You've to a certain extent grown hundred over hotels all over the world. You have like Saudi Arabia, China, Vietnam, Japan, and I think the most recent one was like in Singapore, right? So the hundth one. So I I wanted to ask you, you know, like what what about being so global teaches you about cultural intelligence that you think maybe a Singaporean today might underappreciate?

Oh yeah, Singaporeans definitely underappreciate.

Yeah. What what what about it like if you like what about cultural intelligence do you learn by just building?

The most I think the biggest thing about cultural intelligence is um a sense of humility and an openness to what you can learn from others. And the reason why it's underappreciated in Singapore is that generally Singaporeans are very very judgmental about other cultures because we've been brought up to believe that what we have is the best. We are this, we are that, you know, and much of it is true. We are very good in many ways but it's insufficient to just look at what Singapore has achieved because some of it no doubt has been difficult because of its size but at the same time some of some of it has been very easy because of its size. And so we we go out there and Singaporeans are generally known by all our general managers when I ask them who's the most difficult tourist. Difficult is a word. Not the most rude, borish, violent, but difficult. They would say without a doubt Singaporeans because they're really you go and ask any one of our general managers, you would have some people who are violent and get drunk easily. Stereotype would be Russians and Brits. You get others who don't appreciate western culture and and basically still live in a very communal setting and use and trash your hotel room by cooking their own food and sometimes the Arabs and Indians do that. So these are stereotypes but have some truth. But the one that people say about Singaporeans is really over little little things. They won't let up.

Can you elaborate like when you see now like the little?

Complaining about small things um not demanding compensation which quite a lot of the angle files do because they're proficient in English. They know how to write complaint letters and they they claim they're going to sue you this and that. Singaporeans don't ask to be refunded. They're just very difficult to please.

I guess that's the word to use. Very difficult to please. Always complaining and complaining and complaining. Not complaining to the point of wanting a refund or thumping the table, but just very difficult to please. Like now, it's just always picking on little things, which is to me probably a lack of cultural intelligence. And that is less important for Singaporean tourists, but it's a real setback for a Singaporean who's trying to work as a business person or as an employee in a multinational in a foreign setting. If you're going to be difficult to please,

There is this uh quote I think when you say right back then it was like Singaporeans are hard workers but uh they're also world class complainers.

Yeah. Well, you know, there's a joke, I don't know about now, but there's a joke that whenever you get a Singapore delegation asen going anywhere else, people after a while would, you know, social night, they would start singing then singing songs and so on and Singaporeans would not know what to sing and so they ended up singing for he's a jolly good fellow and that's how they know what to do because they they are they're just not very comfortable uh in in in various millu.

How how does it hurt us as a country?

I guess there are two types of hurts. One is what I would call a more instrumental hurt meaning it doesn't enable us to get the things we want to get done whether as a nation or as individuals. The other hurt is is a deeper, more psychic one that it just doesn't allow us to enjoy things more, be more light-hearted, be more appreciative of the world rather than always looking at things to pick on. It just hurts us ourselves without even even an instrumental tone to it. That hurts us because it, you know, instrumentally it doesn't allow us to do the things we want to do. But it just hurts you as a person if you can't see the beauty of the world around you in poorer cultures in meeting people who may not be apparently so bright as you are or as achieved as you have been. Um, it just hurts our ability to appreciate what we have. And that's probably the the underpinning of it that it it hurts us because if we cannot appreciate everything that we have when we see the outside world then we don't I we also cannot fully appreciate what we have in our inside world in Singapore and our homes and so on.

So I guess then I would like to ask the inverse question which is now that you've been outside and you've seen the world, what is it about Singapore that you appreciate that you've come to find beauty and that maybe other cultures don't have?

I think there's a sense of pride that I appreciate, but as a maybe also because of the naess of Singaporeans, they're very hard to be intimidated, which is pretty cool. And I think most Singaporeans will not take being bullied by other countries. And you see what's happening geopolitically today. Uh a lot of countries are bending over well the Europe in particular has been just graveling. I hope Singapore doesn't will not grovel and I think most Singaporeans would not want to gravel because at least we been brought up with the mentality of being this little red dot at the nobody but we're tough little red dot. So this sense of vulnerability, this sense of being small has enabled us to be pretty spunky. So I think that's kind of good. You don't find that Singaporeans will allow themselves to be racially abused in another country, whereas some more polite people like Thai or Indonesians might take that kind of stuff from other people. I don't think Singaporeans are going to take that when they go overseas to be racially abused. Um, that's one aspect I suppose. One other aspect I've spoken about before that I liked about Singapore and still do, but it's unfortunately unraveling a little bit more is what I would call a ealitarian spirit, not equality. There's very high income inequality in Singapore. Um, there also is very high income inequality in the United States and the egalitarianism in the United States is breaking down very very fast with what's happening today. But in the last let's say over a long period of time there was an egalitarian spirit in the US so that even the super rich would not always go and exhibit that extreme wealth which unfortunately they're doing now. Um, but you would have a an egalitarian sense right? You know the difference between equality in and egalitarianism is in a way a a an attempt to to reduce the social frictions of of apparent inequality. Japan has a very egalitarian um culture. Uh and I think Singapore had that to the extent that I I know the jokes between myself and Hong Kong friends. In in Hong Kong, if you were rich enough to even barely afford a Rolls-Royce, you would buy one just to show off. In Singapore, the super rich would just drop drive a normal Mercedes because they don't want to stand out even though they can afford easily a Rolls-Royce. People would dress more plainly, perhaps also because of our weather. But now you see people in Singapore beginning to flaunt their wealth. But that was a something that I think the the PAP as a founding generation uh clearly created that egalitarian spirit. And most people forget today that PAP was born as a democratic socialist party. Clearly, clearly so. It was a member of the socialist international. It was quite radical and espoused a very egalitarian culture um which has in some ways still persisted but is eroding somewhat. the first generation of all Singaporeans I think had that sense. So whether you were uh Wo yo or you were um you know one of the Lee family people the the people who have passed on now the people of LK wise generation whether in business or in politics I think went through such hardships of colonialism and World War II and you see this also in Europe and America people have gone through hardships generally know how difficult life has been. There is no pleasure in flaunting wealth anymore when you've achieved it. And the achievement of wealth is not for the purpose of displaying it. The achievement of wealth is to prove that you can get out of poverty and hardship. Now wealth has become so easy for an entire generation of people and perhaps in Singapore it has worsened because we you see displays of wealth far more in a financially based economy than a manufacturing based economy and Singapore was very strongly manufacturing less so now bit more than before a bit more in the past less so now for various reasons. The financialization of the world economy after the global financial crisis in the US, in Europe and in Singapore has led to financial services being the main source of economic growth. And of course with financial services and the financialization of an economy, it's basically capital be getting capital and capital accumulation to obscene amounts to obscenely uh how should you say it segregated amounts so that you the flaunting of wealth is so clear. If you are a private equity guy who's made money very easily in ways which I don't particularly respect as opposed to somebody who's made money by manufacturing. Um, the the flaunting of wealth is far easier. the flaunting of wealth by second generation people, whether they're Indonesian rich kids driving Lamborghinis in Singapore or Singaporean second generation flaunting wealth a little bit less so but still quite a bit. It's beginning to fray a bit more now.

It's very globalized. So naturally, the kind of cultural influence you get from the other parts of the world are going to be much more obvious.

Yeah. Um, but the openness is what keeps the economy going.

Yeah.

But then how then the question that naturally arises is how do you actually filter out the parts that you?

And do we have a big enough core? I mean it's it is unfortunate like you say because it's not the just the wealth of private equity guys in the west. I mean, China has got a very strong culture of hard work. But the people who come from China, the family officers, the money launderers, the crypto guys, they they live lives of inequality far more than even the family offices in the west. Their displays of wealth is really truly obscene. Um, so it's we we get the because we are so welcoming and particularly they were welcoming not because of our agriculture or our mining but because of our financial services you get people with great amounts of capital only coming here whether they mean money launderers from China or or legitimate family offices or private equity firms it's all about capital.

And because of that um there there's a culture that develops around it right the pubs and the bars and the private clubs here and there and so on and we should have a strong underpinning of of a core which would be the Singapore heartland but we are very small so I look at us compared to say Dubai or Monaco and luckily we have a larger population than Dubai or Monaco because those are two examples of city states which are going in directions which I would hope we don't go. But because their local populations are so small and they have very little cultural um ballast of their own they become essentially hotels where the rich and famous come and play. Then you get other societies of similar population size as Singapore but far longer in history, far larger. Denmark, for example, Switzerland and so on. Our population is about their size, but they have a real core because they've been around for hundreds of years or or even longer. They have a hinterland which even if it's not populated, that hintterland gives them a sense of who they are.

So, we are rather odd. We are the size so-called I mean we're bigger a little bit but we're roughly the size of a Dubai or Monaco which means we're like a city but the population is much bigger. The the local population is much bigger than Monaco or Dubai. So we inhabit a rather difficult in between place.

And I think you add on to the layer that like we're relatively a young nation. And I think you alluded to that that just given the fact that we are to a certain extent a multicultural and multi-racial society uh in a very heterogeneous region.

That to a certain extent makes it harder for you to build a much more stronger core.

For sure. Because and this is where the government I think is correct. It would have been much easier to build a strong core if we wanted to be like a Hong Kong and just build up the Chineseeness of Singapore. Um, that would be a mistake. So, at a time when Singapore being so young, national leaders, I don't mean I say leaders because I think it involves more than just the PAP. You've got religious leaders, business leaders, the entire leadership elite of Singapore agree that we have to try to truly build a cohesive multicultural state otherwise we will fall apart. So on the the same time you're trying to build the sense of identity, you're getting outside influences which are not always positive. So it's not been easy.

How does that sense of cultural intelligence emerge?

I think there's a difference between cultural intelligence and cultural identity. Identity is a is an internal recognition of who you are. Intelligence is something that is manifest when you deal with people. So I think the the cultural identity of Singaporeans I think is moving in the right direction. a greater sense of who we are, which is not defined by shallow things like cuisine or or landmarks and so on, but just a greater awareness of who you are by knowing who you are not. That's not a bad way of defining yourself because Singaporeans when they travel overseas are more acutely aware that they are Singaporeans than they are here.

Because here you're more all your own. So you're just floating like other lots of little guppies. Yeah. But when you're a little guppy out in a big world, you suddenly realize you're a guppy and then you see another guppy, you bond. So I think the identity of Singapore is emerging. The pride, the national identity of Singapore is emerging after 60 over years. Cultural intelligence, however, is a different thing. It requires someone to have the selfawareness to know how to behave and how to think about other cultures. That one I think we're still lacking.

When you talk about the lack of egalitarian or the erosion of egalitarian culture in Singapore, you're also in that space of luxury, which I think it's a interesting paradox to hold because in luxury most people think you want to be ostentatious. You want to be kind of like showy, right? But you're offering a luxury service through your, you know, different resorts. How do you think of luxury differently from say the typical conception of it.

I think that's quite interesting because as I mentioned to you, egalitarianism does not mean equality. But to the same extent, I'm I make a difference between aspirational luxury and exclusive luxury. Um, and aspirational luxury is to me a little bit more like egalitarian luxury. Uh let me give you an example. Let's just say that an an Apple smartphone is more expensive than other smartphones in general. And they are I think I'm not sure but but I have an Apple so I don't know how much Samsung costs and so on. And you get all these young people who queue up for an Apple when when it when the new model comes out. Quite silly in many ways. But but and I would say that is in in a way a certain kind of luxury to buy an Apple phone as opposed to buying a a a Huawei or something cheaper. And people like to sort of show that they're it's Apple. But I would say Apple is a aspirational luxury and it's inclusive because their sense of luxury is not based on exclusiveness. It doesn't in fact people are quite happy that the Apple community is bigger and bigger and bigger. And when I have an Apple and you have an Apple and we talk about how great Apple is and we talk about the apps that it has and the features that it has and the the cool design of an Apple or something, we aspire to be part of that community and we kind of speak our own language and we're proud to be in that community of Apple users. Um, then you have the what I would call the total exclusive luxury which is one that we definitely do not think our values belong in. And for that I'll give you the example of all these fashion brands particularly let's say exemplified by the Hermes Birkin bag selling for €30,000 or whatever and the bag looks like any other bag. Its inherent value is not even anywhere near. But the sole value of that luxury item is not its quality. It's because it really pushes out the point I have. You don't have.

It builds and builds upon the have and have nots. Whereas Apple doesn't tell you to brag that you got an Apple and you only got a Huawei. You are happy to be in the world of the Apple community. Apple techies, Apple junkies because you love those features. You think Apple is cool and it's aspirational, but it's not built on exclusivity.

Yeah.

All the not all many fashion brands are not built on exclusivity either. They are they happen to be expensive, but they're built on aspiration. Some brands are built on sheer exclusivity. And that's where We clearly say we are very very different. We we have and it's it's a hard daily decision you have to make. I give you one example about ourselves. When we first set up Banyan Tree, we clearly said we did not want it to be luxury. Even now, I wouldn't call it a luxury brand. I think the brand is quite expensive because it's not easy to build beautiful villas and pool villas and so on. But we've always wanted to be aspirational and and we used to love it when we have these books where people write you know messages when they go to your hotels and we had that particularly in Bintan because it's so near to Singapore and people write in it or even today they write reviews through the internet about how they save up some money because it's just a young couple HTB and they saved up some money because they think Banyan is so expensive and they love to go and and so on so forth. We're proud of that rather than to show that we're only for the rich people. Now, when we first set up Banyan Tree, we had to have, you know, toiletry amenities and people would always saying, why don't you buy these Hermes uh soap or other kinds of branded fragrances and soaps and so on. And we refused because we said that doesn't make any sense. We're trying to build our own brand. Why are we borrowing other people's exclusive brands? Instead, we stand for certain values. We stood for the values of building communities. So, for example, my wife who was heading up Bentry Gallery would source and we would create soaps and fragrances and all these things from local sources. We would make small um ceramic jars rather than disposable bottles because that was good for the environment. And so now other people are copying us but we did those things out of conviction and we it just so happens that we need to be quite expensive.

Because it's not cheap to give that experience but we have never said we are about luxury.

Interesting cuz I think most people to a certain extent falsely equate price to luxury. So the more expensive something is.

Exactly. The more luxurious.

Exactly. I would equate it with quality.

Not luxury.

Yeah. And the aspirational versus exclusionary luxury. It's like it just makes me think about like this idea of status obsession, right? So I think one builds on that like building the the idea of like the inroup and out group. So by me having a certain product and that status is derived from the others not having.

Exactly. Exactly. But you see, even take the world of rich watches. Um um, the the if you look at how you position yourself right in terms of advertising I always thought it was pretty nice that Pitex Phipe has never changed their their their slogan for I don't know for decades. And that is you don't only you don't own the watch you only look after it for the next generation or something like that right? I mean it's it's about the idea that it is expensive, but it's not to show I have and you don't have. It's that it's expensive because it's a legacy. It's an heirloom you pass on to the next generation.

I think that's that's a cool way of positioning luxury. It's expensive, but it's not to show off. And the ads don't show beautiful women uh in really, you know, in yacht settings and so on to show off.

Yeah.

So, you own a PEX Philip not to show it off. You own this expensive jewelry to pass it on to your children and so on. So if you are a younger person and like your age and you've made a lot of money, you buy a Petrix Phillip because you actually wanted to pass on to your son. It's something of value. So it's expensive. Or you could have Cartiier Chanel watches which you which are bling bling that you wear to show off to other people what you're wearing.

Yeah.

Right. So you know that that status obsession is is very true and it is growing everywhere in the world. Maybe in this time of status obsession like Singaporeans should think more aspirationally rather than just to a certain extent be caught with this.

Well, they should just think more for themselves.

Okay.

It's like it's like I like buying Uniqlo because it really has value and I like its I like the values of the company that they position themselves as life wear not as fashion. Yet they have an ethos. They're not just like an American company like like Gap or or whatever that's just selling all kinds of junk and every year trying to change it. Uniqlo is not is cheap. Unilo I buy not because it's cheap and it's success. It's not just because it's cheap because the quality is good.

There's technology fabrics behind it. And there's a clear philosophy.

That they produce life wear, which is things that you wear every day, but you can mix and match and it can become pretty good fashion.

So I think every brand has to have its own values and what it stands for and customers resonate with that if you're very clear what you stand for.

Yeah. And we zoom out. It's not just relevant to a brand. It's like every family or every company, every country, right, should have a certain philosophy, value, system that they ascribe to and have clear conviction in. Yeah. Not not just because it's politically convenient.

Absolutely. I mean I don't like to people talk that too many I I find it's very fasile when people talk about brand America because what American values should have stood for and the values of liberal democracy is not just a brand anymore but definitely they are values they are cultural values they are civilizational values and and it's a it's complete and civilizational values brings into it you know values about family values about the individual values about governance and community.

If you want full access to the transcripts of every episode, just head over to ykeith.com and you'll get full and free access to each transcript. Now, back to the show.

You talk about civilizational values. One of the ideas that you have is this idea of this coming civilizational reset. I'd like for you to elaborate a little bit more about why this specific term of the civilizational reset. I was quite surprised but quite happy that I saw Donald Trump in his national strategy paper using the word I started talking about a civilizational reset quite a while ago maybe about two years ago when I started to argue that what was happening now is not the words that that I guess um other people like to use particularly political scientist s they like to use the word that we're moving from a bipolar world to a multi-polar world and I objected to that because I felt that that the that those terms are very much part of a cold war period when the bipolar and multipolarity and the polls that they talk about are really generally um quasi military security oriented in terms of polls and because it was set in the cold war period and in the cold war period you did not have a civilizational clash of values largely because it was not about the civilization of the west versus Russia and so on. The Soviet Union itself was not ever a civilization. Russia may have been but not the Soviet Union. Um, and Soviet Union was already a failed state. It had no values to speak of. It just had military power. So during the cold war, you talked correctly about bipolar, but what I observed already happening with the beginnings of of MAGA and so on was that it was actually the culmination of a process that had been long in play and that was the decline of Pax Americana which came after Pax Britannica. But that was clear that Pax Americana after 100 years pretty much 100 years since after the end of World War II up to about now the American civilization or American power politics has been dominant around the world. But a bigger thing that's been happening is the entire western civilization being dominant which is in fact the only thing we have known the whole world has known for 200 over years is that western civilization was the dominant civilization and therefore it was the reference point for everything. That's the critical part. Not about dominance in terms of it being oppressive. We had that under colonialism. We had very a very benign western civilizational dominance after World War II, right? The everything that was created was was quite benign to countries like Singapore and and many other countries. It was very benign. But that western civilizational dominance, what it did that we're not aware of is that everything made them the reference point. Now, you're beginning to see, particularly with the rise of China and the rest of Asia coming along with it, and the fact that China is a 5,000year civilization that has never been broken. Not like Egyptian civilization or Greek civilization. It's a continuous civilization with its entire sense of its own reference points to everything. China has its own reference points to family values, to the rights and responsibilities of the individual, to political governance even. It's not just Xi Jinping and an autocrat. China has had thousands of years of dynasties of wise emperors, unwise emperors, of good dynasties, weak dynasties. The Communist Party in my view happens to be the dynasty, you know, and you've got 5,000 years of successful dynasties and unsuccessful ones. And it's nothing to do with elections and non-elections or about democracy. So you have a civilization with its own wholly coherent set of values now after 200 over years really rising and western civilization I'm not saying at all that western civilization is going to go kaput but it clearly has peaked and now what I see happening is a reset the same and it's and and the other side of it that I find very interesting is that what I look positively as being a civilizational reset, meaning Western civilization beginning to be more muted with the rise of Asian civilizations. Donald Trump's own strategy paper refers to that same exact phenomenon happening from a totally different viewpoint. They talk about civilizational erasia. Right? You've you've heard read about that. The same words I use civilizational. I call it civilizational reset. The other side of the coin of civilizational reset is civilizational erasure because we, the western civilization, ain't going to be the single dominant one anymore because we are being erased by all these Muslim immigrants coming. We're being erased by all these China men going to invade Taiwan. We're being erased by other people, by black, by yellow. but no longer white or Christian. So, so the whole what what I find interesting is that there's a complete consistency between my view and the Donald Trump view except we come at it from completely different points of view. But there's a consistency. Their fear is that Christian white civilization is no longer going to be dominant. And they call it erasia. I'm saying exactly, you're right. Christian, white Christian civilization is no longer going to be dominant. You see it as Eerasia. I see it as a reset back to a few hundred years ago when when Christian white civilization was an important one, but not the only dominant civilization in the world. You had coexisting, as I've said before, a very uh vibrant Islamic civilization before it went to into its own crisis. You had a very vibrant East Asian civilization whether it be Japan and China, you know, it was East Asian with it own sort of values which then went into decline and is clearly up now. So clearly white Christian civilization can no longer be dominant. There are aspects of white civiliz western civilization which started with the age of enlightenment and with a lot of it started with age of enlightenment. It also started very well with the the secular state the breakaway from state and religion and a number of things it started with industrialization and with other things. So a whole series of things that historians can point to have resulted in a very a very positive confluence of events that led to white Christian civilization lighting up the future for the world. So it was not bad at all and all of us thrived for quite a while. And I would certainly hope that liberal democracy, which is much of what white Christian civilization has created for all of us. I would hope that liberal democracy is not going to go down the drain and you get fascism. But at the same time, liberal democracy is not the only reference point for good governance anymore. And for people to just look at China and say you know China is going to absolutely I mean you may remember that 20 years ago there were a lot of people writing books that China is going to collapse China's going to collapse either that or China is going to change and it's going to become like us both points have the same reference point that only we a liberal democracy can thrive either China becomes like us or China's going to collapse. China cannot be what it is, which is essentially an autocratic dynasty, but a benevolent autocratic dynasty, which we've seen with the Han dynasty, the Tong dynasty, the Song dynasty, no elections, uh, and emperors like Xi Jinping. But it's a governance system that has worked for China. And of course, certain times during the theQing dynasty, it completely the Manchun dynasty completely failed. But the point is the western world and western civilization is no longer the only reference point against which we measure and value everything. A lot of people can't get that through their heads including Singaporeans because they're all so western educated. To them western civilization is the only civilization they have known. and therefore to question the legitimacy of that or the supremacy of that.

Yeah, it reminds me of this quote that Wong will say in a public lecture. I think he said like America and China are both civilizations are both civilizations dressing up as countries and to a certain extent I think it's true like I think the way we see say for example the US and China it's like on one hand they are countries so you should understand them as states but on the more deeper levels that they have a certain form of civilizational aspects which are not just determined by by borders or boundaries.

Right.

Um, the the yeah so the the question I had that was percolating my mind you were like kind of articulating this change in reference point. It's just that with with now a multiplicity of views, you lose a sense of coherence. So in the past when you have like kind of the west as best mental model, there is a single, you know, ideal rightly or wrongly. Uh, but now you don't have that, right? It's going to be a much more confusing world.

That's why cultural intelligence is so much more important. Where do you see you know this um I guess areas of conflict being played out in terms of the the I guess conflict of ideas between those two civilizations or I don't even know whether two is the right number.

I I think the conflict you're talking about I think is arises from from different reference points give you uh two examples governance and territorial ambitions the reference point for western civilization and in fact quite a number of Chinese historians have written about this the difference in terms of the reference point regarding territorial ambitions And what they wrote about that I found quite interesting, I've forgotten the details of it, but the large picture was as students of history, of course, one tries not to ascribe um judgments to an action, right? So they talked the Chinese historians writing about uh western imperialism were not saying it's bad or good, but studying it as history. And they were saying that essentially you had outward territorial expansion in Europe for centuries even from the Viking times because these would be relatively hos climatically hostile places with relatively limited agricultural prospect and rapidly growing populations. That's the gist of it. So whether it be small Portugal or the small part of Norway that were the Vikings before that or it be the small or it be the small part of Italy that became the Roman Empire or even you know so so forth. It grew the examples that basically continental European civilizations outgrew the ability to to grow internally and that's why they went external and that's why a tiny little Holland could actually be controlling all of Indonesia. A tiny United Kingdom could be controlling the whole British Empire and so on. They were very small. They needed to expand. And with that reference point and even for the US, they were on the eastern seabboard and they had to expand with manifest destiny towards the whole of the rest of America. So whether it be through conquest of Asia or it be conquest of native Americans, the issue of conquest as a means of expanding your own peoples was is very much embedded in western civilization. Whereas they said that in history in Chinese history there's a lot of infighting a lot of fighting within China that was defined sort of south of the whole you know central Asia and that was because it was relatively flat and so on. It was one country for a long time already, one civilization largely one language but so many waring states so to speak that stability is the main governing principle for civilizational elites in China whereas expansion was overseas is the main governing principle for civilizational elites in Europe. So that's the two different reference points and that's where some of the Chinese historians are saying that you in the west got us all wrong because when you see a powerful country you immediately think of territorial expansion because of your own thousands of years of history. For us we don't think of territorial expansion. We think of the need for stability because within the same geographic area that has not changed for centuries, there has been so much chaos.

So that's one example of how different civilizational backgrounds can can determine your uh your view regarding territorial expansion. And the two cultures civilizations don't sufficiently understand that they have to look at each other understanding each other's different cultural reference points. The other one where I think a reference points are very very different uh would be about governance. Western society has progressed through um through highly through monarchies that were there and maintained their legitimacy simply because they were offspring of one another to another, right? And clearly oppressed people. So that the right of the individual became so important in western society also partly because of religion because of colos Catholicism and so on. So in in western society the right of the individual is is embedded in political thinking and therefore the right of one person one vote and the and the the omnipresent importance of elections as being a prerequisite for good governance is embedded in western thinking. In Chinese thinking, there has never been elections ever in Chinese society for thousands of years. But embedded in Chinese thinking is legitimacy, the mandate of heaven, right? And this and embedded in Chinese history is the willingness of peasants and others to overthrow one dynasty because it just failed without having to even have contortions about how the next emperor is related to the past emperor. Right? Whereas in western societies they they go through all kinds of contortions to have the nephew of this or that to come back and be the king. in in Chinese society, a general overthrows because he's lost the mandate of heaven and then he starts a new dynasty. So in Chinese history and for the communist party, they're good students of history. I don't think they care about elections, but they read Chinese history very closely to see that political legitimacy is critical. And if you don't have that legitimacy any more, you can be as suppressive as you want to be. You will still be overthrown. So the starting point for Chinese Communist Party is legitimacy and accountability. And that's why there all these anti-corruption campaigns because they recognize that if there is no internal self-revolution within the Chinese Communist Party, it was the inability for self-renewal and self-revolution that caused dynasties to fail. And that's why they're so laser obsessed with with self-revolution. Whereas in the west self-revolution is not so important because elections cause the self-revolution. So it's very very different very different mindsets that are civilizationally bound and if these two great civilizations of western civilization as manifest by USA but including the western the whole western Europe and the great Asian civilizations manifest by China but but of course in terms of national politics today not including Japan and Korea but in terms of civilizational values Clearly the East Asian civilization is is one going back long time. If if if both civilizations not aware of where each other each comes from and how the thinking of of each civilization is in fact determined by its own experience and you cannot get out of the skin of that own experience to understand where other people come from then I think you're going to have a clash of civilizations.

Yeah. It reminds me of this point I think Jou made in the past was like the idea of the tusidities trap in such a western frame.

Yeah, totally.

Right. So when when political theorists especially from the west talk about the tusidity trap they assume that to be a universal.

Kind of.

Everything in western civilizational thinking is assumed to be universal. That's what I meant about they they are always the reference point of everything. They are the reference point. everything is universal.

They're beginning to recognize now that many of the their values are good values but not necessarily universal and that's what they cannot wrap their heads around.

What are the implications of it for a small country like us or for like a for a society that has been for so long very much dependent on a western le world order right? So I think if you look at Singapore as an example it's like a lot of our growth was actually to a certain extent underwritten by you know American FDI American MNC's um western cultural uh import to a certain extent so h how do we make sense of this transition position cuz it's definitely going to feel much more messy and to a certain extent discombobulated.

I think it is at two levels you need to deal with. Um, one level is the more superructural level where our government has to navigate between the tensions that's happening between largely between China and the US and our not getting caught by one or the other. I mean this Trump board for peace is a ridiculous but childish really ridiculous but um real thing that's happening is a real test now and everybody including I would hope Singapore is smart enough to say let's just not say anything.

Right. You say no Trump will target you and levy 100% tariffs on you say yes and not it's not If you were to say yes, I would say it's not because of fear of China. If you if you were to say yes, you must be absolutely stupid to think this board for peace with Donald Trump as the chairman for life is something any any sovereign country except Middle Eastern regimes that are totally dependent on him and you know look up to him. Um, no other self-respecting sovereign country would ever want to join that. It's so so at that level how do you deal with these kind of things happening? So that one I think is what I would call is I I call it the superructural level. I would call it a droid diplomacy.

That we should navigate and we need to be a droid because there have been things that some of our government leaders have said that were purely innocent but has offended another country because we say something that off the top of our head etc. So we got to be very careful not to offend other people. That to me is I call super structural because it's just these are machinations of diplomacy and government. There is to me a deeper level that is I think requires us to have a completely different civilizational mindset or or a more broader not a deeper a broader civilizational mindset. And let me just give you an example of what I meant. And I said this before about how again a Chinese researcher talking about AI said that AI researchers in China would not be doing any favor to the rise of AI's impact on China if they were to just run along the challenge of uh making Chinese AI less dependent internal energy or faster or doing this or that um alone because that would be again using western reference points. And the point that this researcher no doubt the researcher was from social sciences not from science per se. The point that this researcher made was that to the extent that AI draws upon everything that is written about in the internet then you are always going to be biased by what the internet has in its greatest volume. So for example and this person I think was a political scientist saying that even Chinese political scientists trained in the west and they apply AI will only use western reference points. So, and there's been so so much written of western political philosophy, right, from James Stewart Mill to to well to everybody that's been written about. But AI would not look at the influence of Chinese political philosoph philosophers from the legalists to monu to other sources in China because much of this has not got onto the internet and much of this is out of the internet. So the point was if you if AI is to draw upon civilizational knowledge then it is incumbent upon Chinese or Asian AI researchers to try to increase the amount of access to non-western civilizational knowledge. And this has applications not just on political theory but even in the area of science and medicine. So that was I thought a very useful point and therefore the the relevance to Singapore and we have the potential ingredients for this because we are multicultural. We come from very We come from several deep civilizations particularly Indian, Islamic and Chinese civilizations for which most younger Singaporeans have only scratched the not even scratched the surface of their own civilizational knowledge but have only grown up through our own educational system, our political systems, our economic linkages. We've grown up only totally with this familiarity with western civilization. What we do have the potential for is to go back and understand and draw from what we have within our parent civilizations and

extract from that a lot more value. So you could actually make the argument that we have within tiny Singapore the basis for a very active AI community that tries to be intercultural and draw more from what we have in inside small little Singapore so that AI researchers who who want to work on India's wealth of knowledge not only on literature but even in medicine with Ayuveda with Indian science and so on and to try to draw lessons from there as we've seen you can draw so many modern things from old things and particularly let's say in medicine right through antibiotics and so on.

Now, Singapore could be a great center for let's say somebody who wanted to study or apply AI to non-traditional medicine to see whether we can have new pharmaceuticals coming from there. You could actually be in Singapore and you access a lot of information from India and China and Southeast Asian civilizations.

>> If you enjoy this show, please double check if you're subscribed. Every subscribe matters and it really helps us to better grow this show to serve you. Thank you so much for your support. Now, back to the show.

>> There is a need to kind of essentially diversify your data set or your data points. Right.

>> Exactly. I think it was Gita Jawan from Indonesia that told me that like if you look at the corpus of literature out there I think in Southeast Asia we're 14% of the global population but with less than like a few like a few% I think 9% in terms of the kind of tax output that you have in the world. So to a certain extent if you're just kind of taking the world as it is then going back to your point you just be very western.

>> Yeah. And and it's not just about political thinking because people think oh that's quite shallow though I I don't think it is because I think political philosophy is the lens through which we look at everything but if you just take something very tangible like say medicine I mean Indonesia has had traditional medicine China's had traditional medicine every old civilization has had its own traditional medicine but we've barely scratched the surface with the application of AI and looking back at how the centuries of of TCM or TM traditional medicine in all these old civilizations the application of AI has not been easy because even getting that source data has been difficult but it's all there.

>> You made a very good point about um the lens of political thinking will actually dictate the way you even conduct business or live right and I think one example that you've given consistently is this idea of communitarian capitalism which is to a certain extent I would say like a synthesis of like the west and the east right because in in the west from at least what I've seen is that like there is this almost unadulterated worship among say certain elites of capitalism itself and therefore it's created disillusionment among like a lot of for example young people whereas your view of capitalism is that you should have kind of it moderated by a sense of egalitarianism communitarianism.

>> Yeah, but I think to even use the word moderated by again uses Wall Street capitalism as if it's a reference point. If you look at it and this is why I've had some discussion with Chinese scholars who are communist party members. I mean they they argue quite correctly that economics is economics. Economics is a science. the law of supply and demand, the law of pricing and you know those are those are those are tangible facts and China today is hardly communism is actually a political system is really not a economic system right because it it just doesn't work in in economics so China has already completely abandoned communism as a as a political system China is a totally capitalist system in fact the whole world is capitalism in its in its fundamental sense of the laws of supply and demand and pricing and competition and you know all of that.

Okay. So, so the whole world is capitalist. I think again it is part of this whole western civilizational dominance and particularly Anglo-Saxon one because of the rise of the UK uh with with the British Empire as being the most powerful and then that being that having sort of morphed after World War II with the decline of Japan as a civilization and Germany as a civilization Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-American civilization became the the so called rules-based order was basically the anglophone world by America and the UK and Germany had and Japan had to suck up to it.

But um my my point is that if you look back now and you see that civilizational dominance by the west is is something you should clear your your eyes off, you notice that in fact capitalism has got multiple forms already. And I've referred to that in my book. You've got Nordic style capitalism. You've got Japanese style capitalism, which people all laughed at. But frankly, it hasn't done so badly for the Japanese people to have not gone through the wrenching, you know, bankruptcies and the poverty that you had in America with the market clearing mechanisms that they have and the creative destruction that they had. Japan didn't have that. But has it been so bad? I I wouldn't want to judge. But you can see that clearly capitalism has got many different forms. They've got the extreme laws of the jungle capitalism and then they've got the more muted communitarian capitalism. So the mere fact that we take as reference point Wall Street capitalism and say we need to moderate that is a reference point I reject.

>> Because I'm saying we should not see that they are the norm and we are the anomalies.

>> Yes.

>> And we should not say let's create an alternative an anomaly. They are the anomaly.

>> Yeah.

>> But to a certain extent I say that because I think we have invite or imported a lot of these things.

>> Of course we have in Singapore we have.

>> Therefore as a result and I think that's the natural implication of being like.

>> So dependent on American multinationals.

>> Yes.

>> Yeah. Absolutely.

>> So yeah that's why I say like a moderation. So I guess the question I have as a followup is like if you look at like for example the way we conduct business as companies or as people what are the mindset shifts that we need to kind of make a great living in this coming messy world.

>> To make a great living.

>> Or just I don't know to survive I guess.

>> I think we're talking many different levels. I mean.

>> Yeah, you're always talking at multiple levels, right? At a society, at an individual level.

>> And at a national level.

>> Survival is a different thing now. So, I mean, let's just let's just talk about survival and see because you can s I mean, I think you're you may be right to point to TR always pull it back to say let's not talk about so many team things like you know, cultural identity, civilizational values or all. fine and good, but as a normal Singaporean, what will make us enable us to prosper in the future?

Um, to me it's largely going to be economic because I think where our government has gotten it right from the very very beginning is that Singapore is no soft European state which basically sold its national defense needs to someone else and had the so-called peace dividend. We've spent a lot on on our sovereignty.

>> Uh and even though some people and this is the this is the wisdom of an LKY, okay? We refuse to ever be an ally.

>> We're not an ally of any state.

>> Uh we do not have American bases. We facilitate the Americans having a base so to speak, you know. and to us just to refuel and this and that because after after World War after the Vietnam war and the Philippines and so on, we encouraged an American presence here. So we give them something but but even though Singapore is so tiny, you could easily have imagined Singapore becoming like the Philippines which is a much larger country and the Philippines is totally allied to to America, right? A a huge country like Australia totally totally sold its soul to America. S tiny Singapore has basically said we will be a poisonous shrimp to everybody to everybody. So if Donald Trump wants to threaten to invade Singapore frankly I think we would say bring it on man. Of course you'll invade us but it's going to hurt you. You know you we'll fight you back with your own planes and so on and so forth. You can't go and you can't go and kidnap Lawrence Wong from the Istana like you did Maduro. You can't do any of those things. It will hurt you. So I don't think Singapore is at all physically threatened by anybody whether it be China or by America simply because we have no offensive needs. We only have defensive needs and we're so small nobody really wants to invade us. But it's very much like a Swiss concept. We're so small. We're neutral. But you tried, it will hurt you. So I don't have a for minute to doubt that our sovereignty is at risk. The question that I have that most Singaporeans more worry about is not civilizational values and so on. It's more about how long can this good life go on.

>> Being, you know, one of the wealthiest countries in the world on a per capita basis and so on.

Um, I think it can go on. The the thing is to me the questions is the questions that I think are going to be important is have we had sufficient discussion on the tradeoffs that are going to be necessary. Uh for example, one good direction that I think the government took was that we all want family officers here in Singapore. So we went pretty extreme in one way, welcome them by the hordes, giving them tons of benefits and not being very not being very scrutinizing. Then we had so-called family officers and others coming from China that were essentially money laundering. My own feeling is that if this were in a slightly different place like a Dubai or Monaco which is solely dependent on all of this, the government would just have pushed it under the carpet and not have made such a big deal about it because basically when you do when you make such a big deal about clamping down on on something like this, a lot of other wealth is not going to come.

>> Um and so I think if it's a Monaco, they would have dug it under the carpet. they would have swept it under the carpet in other places too. Lichenstein, Luxmbourg, the Singapore government made a big deal about it.

>> And it clearly has hurt quote unquote hurt us to the extent that a lot of others would not be coming here to Singapore anymore.

>> Because it's seen as being a bit much tougher than than it should be. But the government I think rightly took this decision and if it did not I think I would be concerned that we're going more and more to becoming a Dubai and a Monaco.

>> Where we are totally dependent on other people's money. We have to be basically a tax haven and so on so forth and nothing else. So I think the government made a really good decision. We have suffered for it probably the banks have suffered maybe less money coming in but that has preserved the Singapore identity a little bit more.

These trade-offs are going to happen all the time.

>> Yes.

>> And I think the trade-offs that hard decisions will be made. Um, certain areas we've wanted to go into, we've not been that successful. Uh, although I completely applaud the intentions, they have not been that successful. our intention to become an advanced manufacturing uh s um economy has not really been that successful. We've not been able to go into AI and robotics like the Chinese have done. We have not been able to turn a star except for a few cases that are quite bright but we have not created the unicorns that we wanted to do. The National Research Foundation has spent a lot of money on primary research, secondary research. It has not been able to be commercialized. That's through no fault of anybody.

Um, and I think it was necessary we try to do it. But can it be done? I don't know. And if it cannot be done, what do we pivot towards? And an area that is of obviously it's our geographic relevance that's important. Whereas for startups now we don't seem to have many indigenous startups but again because of Singapore's financial base uh we are now clearly one of the most important places in the world for startups to come to get financing. So a lot of venture capital companies PE companies have set up shop in Singapore and a lot of startups from India to China come here for funding. So that we have succeeded. So you know I I agree with the government that every day is a struggle to try to find a niche that we can we can be one of the top contenders in the world for in aviation. We cannot be in aviation manufacturing. We tried to with Rolls-Royce having its turbine repair center here because of our technology but importantly because of our IP protection. Uh, we may be doing more in avionics sophisticated aviation avionics. So the area of aviation is quite interesting. We have definitely Changi airport is definitely not clearly the premier airport in the world anymore. Dubai and the clusters there are getting are very strong but are we still strong in the world of aviation as a combined entity? Are we strong in aviation leasing? Are we strong in repair maintenance? Are we strong in manufacturing of complex but small um avionics? So you you have to build upon these clusters that we have and it's a daily exercise that's not easy to do and as long as we can do that I think we'll thrive.

Um, but if we don't uh we will then become a secondass um pretty mediocre society or mediocre economic state.

You when you're talking about the the price that you pay for sovereignty is something that remains underrated. I had a conversation with Tommy Co recently and he was talking about how Luanu always positions himself as a friend, never an ally because a friend can tell you the truth and an ally can't.

>> So an ally usually to the Americans means to a certain extent or large extent subservience.

>> Uh the second point was on the part about being a mediocre society. I think you talked about it before that you might become a first world or a minus or B+ city which is like good by the most part but perhaps in Singapore like what we should strive towards is to be exceptional not just to be mediocre. What would cause Singapore to be mediocre?

>> Largely its people.

>> Yeah.

>> Um and its government uh a government and its people that no longer are hungry. Now we are obviously no longer hungry in a material way. We have everything already in a material way. So that becomes more difficult because hunger is either hunger in your stomach or hunger in your soul. And if it's hunger in your stomach, then those societies that make the fastest climb are people who have hunger in their stomach because that is that is so powerful and imperative to economic growth.

>> Yeah. But when you are be when you are developed country like now do you have hunger in your soul? Meaning are there things that still unite the society as being some does that society have a vision and a goal as to what it wants to be.

Uh, ironically it is. You see some countries that seem to have lost their way and you see countries that have not. And I don't think it's due to size. Maybe it's due to tiredness, but I guess it shouldn't be either. I mean, I was going to say that you look at you look at Europe today, old Europe today, so exhausted and perhaps exhausted is one word. Maybe coddled is another.

>> That the people have no longer any national goals anymore. You just want your work week to be.

>> Changed from be protected more and more.

>> And and it's for good reasons. Of course, you're not going out drinking. You want more time, work life balance. I I believe in all of those too, but you also need a sense of who you are. Now perhaps the Nordic countries have a have the same amount of protections as Western European societies but maybe they have less of that divisiveness and I haven't been a sufficient student of northern European societies from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland as opposed to the UK, France, you know, Italy and so on. But it does seem to me that the social fabric in the northern European countries is fraying less rapidly than that in the Western European countries. Maybe that's a result of immigration. I don't know the full answer to that. But I think the the converse to this idea of a hunger in the soul, of a national ambition, a national vision, the converse of that is a fraying social fabric, right?

>> Because if your if the social fabric begins to fray, then uh it's impossible to to have a common vision for the future. So that's why I think probably the government spends so much time talking about national identity, national cohesion. Tamman spends a lot of time talking about all of that because if we start to even fray, we we will fray not only faster than other countries because of the relative youth of our society. We will fray very fast.

>> Yeah. But second to the fraying very fast is that it would be almost impossible to build up a common vision for Singapore. Then we clearly will become a capable mediocre um relatively prosperous society because of our reserves and because Singapore is small, educational system is good, people will still come here but you become mediocre. You'll find that the you you can sense that mediocrity. If foreigners come to Singapore and talk to Singaporeans and say they always talk about just little material things, they don't seem to have a vision for what they want the country to be.

>> Then you become mediocre.

>> And in in a world with the Singapore premium to a certain extent is eroding, I guess the cost of mediocrity would be higher.

>> Yeah. And the and the Singapore advantage is reducing. Singaporeans were very much among Southeast Asians very much wanted for multinationals by multinationals right for leadership roles. you're finding a lot of very well educated Indonesians, ties, Malaysians now who are working uh in multinationals to the same extent that you know Indian nationals because of the whole Indian economic system not being that prosperous. So the best and brightest of India went off to multinationals. Headed up many many of them Singaporeans not willing to travel comfortable always wanting to be just at best probably the head of a multinationals operations in APEC. Now with that changing all over many many multinationals I see not even basing the head of Apac in Singapore.

>> Right? They're basing them elsewhere now. And the head of maybe not even having head of APAC because the whole the the the hierarchies have changed with technology and so on. So you'll find that the position that Singaporean executives can become in multinationals will be maybe head of that multinational in Singapore because they don't want to travel and Singapore is not becoming more and more say a regional center. So our opportunities for for Singaporeans to to become multinational leaders also begins to shrink and those in interestingly those with a strong Chinese background like su from Tik Tok and so on they have actually a greater advantage than those who went to RA ACS.

>> You're one of the few um kind of outliers. I don't know whether it's it's fair to say that but clearly as a Singaporean you've built a global hotel brand that's brought it to the really traditional brands like your kapinskies IGS man orientals of the world you're pretty much seen in the same league or you're as good as them so to a certain extent you can speak to the idea of world class excellence um and escaping the mediocrity trap I wanted to ask you, you know, like if you look at the kind of uh work that you've done in building up your your business, how does a young aspiring Singaporean today look at that and say, you know, how can like how can I make my mark in the world? Like if I take if what are the right lessons I should draw from your example?

>> One would be always hungry and always ambitious. Hungary is probably more of it. I'm 74. We've got a 100 hotels and I think I've barely scratched the surface. I just we are doing a big deal now for something in another completely different part of the world that Singaporean company would never want to go to. I can't say it yet but when you find out about it you you would realize that when I say it's Singaporean company would normally go there. So one is to always always say in one sense it's a very odd phenomenon be always very humble and know how weak you are but always be hungry for more.

>> So this mixture of ambitious humility I guess is what has propelled me all along. That's one aspect of it. Okay. Meaning hubris I have said many times is the first source of collapse. When you think you are so great and you really ain't, you usually take on more things than you should be doing. So humility is something I think that is so critical to survival simply because you then realize how vulnerable and frail you are on one hand and on the other hand this ambition to want to break out and to be something meaningful is what you is what you also want to do. So there's this there's this tradeoff and this constant tension between knowing how small you are and yet wanting to do more. I think that's part of what has been one of the reasons for our relative success that I'm never content with where we are but I'm always recognizing that we are far from what we want to be. So never be content. The other thing I suppose is really recognizing that you have to especially in my world which is not like an app that I can just build but because I operate in so many different cultural environments it's the recognition that the world is a very large and very different place which is part of the reason why it's so exciting in terms of experential tourism but at the same time people are all the same so you cannot judge people.

>> I think one of the things I have ascribed to my relative success in this field that I'm in is the fact that I have always been an outsider in my life which I have often felt the pain as a younger person that I never belonged anywhere. Even in Singapore, I don't have friends except friends made when I was in my 30s and 40s. I never studied here, right? So, and I never I don't know friends from Thailand school days, US school days. So, I don't have a large network of friends. I don't feel comfortable anywhere. I I speak Thai. I grew up in Thailand, but I'm definitely not Thai. I'm as familiar with American politics, literature as any American is. I don't feel I don't feel I belong anywhere.

>> But that is liberating. It frees you to not be stuck in a particular mindset and allows you to actually look at everywhere you go to and say, I I can do I can be successful here. So that's probably what I would tell a young Singaporean. Be humble, be hungry, and at the same time be completely open to every place you go to and see the excitement and beauty of that place and don't bring along with it your own baggage of superiority.

>> You don't come to this outcome by just being a boss. you needed to be a leader and I think you talk about this dichotomy or this difference quite clearly like I'd like to get you to maybe share a little bit more about like when you think about leading right what's something that you think most people get wrong about leadership that you've come to realize in your journey of.

>> Oh I've said that many times I think I've said that there's a world of difference between leadership and and good management and most people generally assume the two are the same. And I've always said that management is is a science. Management is the art, not the science. Management is a discipline. It's a it's a skill. Sorry, it's a skill. Management is the ability to to um coordinate the minimal resources to for the maximum outcome, right? I mean, it's measurable. So good management is measurable. There are management tools. There's management education. All that is management. Leadership I think is more transcendental. Leadership is the ability to motivate people to aspire beyond themselves. Now with that definition you can clearly associate transcendental aspirational leadership blah blah blah with religious leaders right you can associate that clearly with political leaders. They're the ones who exhort people to go beyond their little selfish selves to do public good to do religious spiritual good. So they inspire people. People have this weird feeling that business leaders should not need to be aspirational. Business leaders do not need to tell you to aspire beyond yourself and you just need to be a good manager. And that's where I think has been the failing that business leaders see that the only role that they have to do in society is to make the most money for shareholders and to give the highest salaries or benefits if they want to be good to employees to make the best and most competitive product etc. Now that's all true but to the same extent that a political leader has to put food on the table for people has to provide education and all that a good a really good leader as opposed to a a political manager a political leader like a lieu didn't just deliver efficiency and so on he had a lot of that but other people did it but Lee Kuanu basically told us how we should aspire beyond the poor society that we were to become from third world to first world. We should aspire to not be afraid to be a small country. He gave a vision for Singapore. Now that's leadership. Now you hope our next political leadership can do that although it's not easy but my point here is more about business. Business leaders to the extent that it is business that drives societies. Right? So, why is it so odd that business leaders come out and speak on things? Why is it so odd that business leaders inspire their their employees about the job that they are doing? And I've spoken to many companies where I said you can always find something in the work of your business that is noble. And I talked to my own colleagues. The hospitality industry and tourism seems very sexy on the outside but on the inside it's it's tough. It's low paying is shift work. You get scoded by other people and so on. So what is it that you you as a leader what can I what must I do? There are two things. One thing is I must try to create an atmosphere, a culture within the company so that you as a lowly waiter wake up in the morning and you want to go to work. Number one, the work environment must be very very compelling to you to be there. Two, selfrespect is what we all want in life. So we've created this culture this slogan I am with you as being the service culture of banyan tree where you serve someone else not out of servitude but you serve that person because of empathy you understand where that person is coming from if that person is is nasty to you you try to understand why and you don't lose your self-esteem.

>> And the third one is are you in a business as noble as a as a doctor as a nurse It's easier to inspire doctors and nurses because obvious for obvious reasons even easier even just as easy to inspire soldiers but when you're working in a lowly industry to be your leader I have to tell you that I can create a good work environment for you. So the so little things like great food in the canteen is really important.

>> Um, then I have to make sure that there's self you have selfrespect and finally I must make sure that you feel you're not just working in a company that's just giving you a salary. So the company must be doing good. So we have values of sustainability. We have values of community building. We have values that tourism can actually be a force for peace because we bring people of different communities together and when they understand each other more there is a greater force for peace. So with all of that as a young 20some year old waiter in the company you're not inspired to religiously believe in Banyan tree but you do believe there is a purpose to this company and if there's a purpose in this company there's a purpose for you in the.

>> Are there other leaders you talk a little bit about your experience as a leader are there are there any other leaders in your lifetime you've seen and you're like wow this is a good leader.

I would say people who can build build and execute just build visions. Yeah. Build visions and achieve those visions to me would be leaders. I think Lee Kuanu was clearly a leader.

>> Um, in the world of business um I would say uh I would say Steve Jobs was clearly a leader. A leader doesn't always have to be a nice guy.

>> Huh.

>> Yeah.

>> I mean.

>> Many of them are not nice guys.

>> But it has to be a compelling vision.

>> Yeah.

>> Um, even well particularly I would say Elon Musk before he went crazy. uh he clearly to me is a genius for sure but on top of that probably also in some ways a good leader to motivate people to do the things but then because he probably has Asperger syndrome or other things he's gone off.

>> In his own weird way now.

>> To no longer inspire people anymore.

>> But um in the beginning I think he had very inspirational dreams about building Tesla and so on and space X and so many things but then leaders sometimes go off track too.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> I one person I really admire is like person I think he's a example of a great leader even as president.

>> Absolutely. I think so too.

>> Last question for you is uh you wrote this essay about Singapore I think in 2045 about the futuristic version of Singapore I think a while back in asking why where he was like talking about a new prime minister. We have like you know, it's a science fiction story. I don't know. I don't know. Did Did I do that?

>> Yeah, you wrote a story about it. It was like our first Malay Muslim prime minister and then we like invented microchips and stuff like that. Uh, it was really fun. Uh, I enjoyed that that short essay. I'll point out to you later. But I wanted to ask you what's your hope for Singapore like in the next 30 years? Like what do you think we can accomplish? Like what's your hope for Singapore by 20 56?

Well, I think the diversity in Singapore is is something um that I I value and I think we've got that diversity, but we have the ethnic diversity, cultural diversity. I'm not sure though that we have the what I would call the the intellectual diversity.

>> And intellectual diversity also has to come from greater political openness.

Um, I don't think we I think we have the government as a whole including Tamman is very very much part of that has been very successful in building a relatively cohesive society as opposed to one where identity politics is quite strong. I think for reasons best known to themselves, the government has not been building as creative and diverse and open a society as it could have. One can actually understand that from Ali Kwanu because of his nature and because of the baggage that he had to come from with fighting the communists and so on. But one wonders, hasn't time come for Singapore to be far more open, far more encouraging of of diversity in public opinion. Now you don't get jailed anymore for making statements that government disagrees with, but you still are ridiculed. You are put down.

Uh, and there is there is still to me not a flowering of the Singapore creative spirit.

>> That I think is the one thing lacking. When that creative spirit really is encouraged more and there's an openness in our youth, I think there will be some rebellious aspects of it. But I think Singapore is mature enough as an electorate to to and I think the Singapore electorate has shown it already by multiple times reelecting back the same government because of the sobriety with which this government governed Singapore. They have not turfed out the PAP and so on so forth. Populist uh demagogic populist uh uh political parties are just shunned at the ballot box. So I wonder why can't we be more open? Why why can't we be tolerant of diverse views? There's still a shutting out of diverse views. Not only anti- views, it's just the the narrowness the the the we group of people in a group of people that determine Singapore's future is still very very small. It could be opened up more. So in 30 years time we want a more open like much more open.

>> A much I would like to see a much stronger civil society which I thought frankly I had thought would be stronger than it is today.

Um, I would have liked to see much more openness much more diversity of views.

>> A great man who recently died and who was a good friend. Luter was not particularly revered because he was quite independent besides being chief planner and he you may or may not recall he made a famous comment at one time and after which there was everything shut down and he he he said let's have a debate as to what population size Singapore can have and I put forward 10 million people. He said that and that whole debate started and then the government shut it down. No discussion today as to an example. What is the possible size of a of population in Singapore? If you look at all the reclamation that's going on outside, if we look at building 45story buildings, if you do this and that, what can the population take? Now, there's absolutely no debate on that. All your think tanks don't talk about things like that which other countries talk about. Right? So, so you anything about the future which is not within the close scrutiny of what is acceptable or according to script is just not discussed about. So how can you have openness and we don't even talk about how many Singapore what is the optimal population for Singapore? That's not even discussable. It's off limits. That's hardly political, but Tiker brought it up and it was shut down.

>> So, it's a it's a pity we we don't have that kind of discourse now. It's just so in the future, the hope is that we have that more open space for discussion of such core issues to the country.

>> Yeah, I think Singaporeans are mature now enough. There are a lot of other issues I don't want to say here that I think we would all benefit with greater discussion. It could be Chattam House rules. I think there's got to be a greater trust between the governed and the governing to bring people into a sense of common vision. Right now we have a very competent, very capable government but there is distance still because the people involved I mean yeah the Singapore conversation goes on but there are more things that can be discussed than this and.

>> With that KP thank you so much for coming on.

>> Thank you very much.

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