SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: Former Singapore PM Lee Kuan Yew on the fundamental difference between American and Chinese society:**

Former Singapore PM Lee Kuan Yew on the fundamental difference between American and Chinese society:**

Why do America and China see the world so differently? Lee Kuan Yew argues it comes down to one thing: history.

"The difference in the core philosophy between the American and the Chinese... it's a reflection of your history."

He traces America's worldview back to its origins:

"You came over in the Mayflower. You were seeking religious freedom so much so that you refused to allow it to be taught in the schools. You believed in the individual as the creator of all things."

That belief in the individual shaped everything that followed:

"You captured the wild west. I mean, on horseback. New town, main street, you be mayor, I'm sheriff, you're saloon keeper. We build a gold rush town or cattle or whatever it is."

And then came extraordinary fortune:

"You have been immensely fortunate and successful. Two world wars left Europe in a shambles and you emerged as the undamaged technological and industrial power."

China's story, Lee explains, looks nothing like this.

"China has a completely different and a checkered history. 4,000 to 5,000 years of ups and downs. Long periods when there was no governments, anarchy, warlords."

He shares a personal moment that brought this reality home to him:

"I once had a Chinese masseur when I was in Beijing working my game shoulder and we were talking and I said during the war, Japanese time, what currency did you use? So Japanese currency if it's in Japanese controlled areas or other currencies in other areas. So I said how many currencies are there? Two, three? Says 14 or 15 depending on which warlord's area you're in."

So how did the Chinese people survive centuries of chaos, when the state itself kept collapsing?

"Why have they survived in spite of anarchy, disaster, floods, famines? Because there was a social network independent of government that sustained them. The immediate family, the extended family, the clan. You owed them an obligation. You cannot turn them away. That's how they survived."

This is the philosophical fork in the road. America placed the individual at the centre. China placed the family.

Lee describes the system Singapore deliberately chose to preserve:

"If we keep those family bonds, those traditional life raft systems not dependent on the state, which places the emphasis on family, extended family, and then the government, and not the individual at the expense of the family and the state, which is the American system."

He acknowledges what the American system produces:

"So you have Bill Gates or John Chambers of Cisco... you look up Forbes or Fortune or whatever and 50 of the best and the brightest and the wealthiest. That's your experience. That's not China's experience."

But the goal in Asia is different:

"Yes, we also now want to try and get our little Bill Gates going, but in the context of keeping our society solid so that we will survive as a people."

He closes with a sharp reminder of why these two civilisations may never fully understand each other:

"You have never been occupied. You have only had one civil war. So you will never understand what it is."

The takeaway is uncomfortable but worth sitting with: a society's values aren't chosen in the abstract. They're forged by what that society had to survive. Individualism is a luxury of stability. Family-first collectivism is the inheritance of centuries of collapse.