Lee Kuan Yew: Singapore’s Controversial Father

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It was the era of great East Asian authoritarians. In China, Mao Zedong clung to power; in South Korea, Park Chung-hee mixed economic progress with an iron fist; in the Philippines and Indonesia, corrupt leaders Ferdinand Marcos and Suharto were plundering their nations’ treasuries. It was a time of strongmen—powerful rulers who dominated their nations. But not all of them would be awful. On a tiny island at the south of the Malay Peninsula, one man would forge a different kind of regime—a hybrid that mixed authoritarianism with democracy, oppressive laws with staggering wealth, and free-market capitalism with state control. Known as Lee Kuan Yew, he would create modern Singapore.

Coming to power at the end of the colonial era, Lee inherited a Singapore still scarred by war and riven with poverty and ethnic divisions. Yet he somehow managed to transform it into one of the richest and safest nations on earth. Controversial in his methods but brilliant in his results, this is the story of Singapore’s father.

Given that he is now famous for championing Singaporean independence, it can be surprising to discover just how much Lee Kuan Yew benefited from British rule. When he was born on September 16, 1923, it wasn’t into a world of poverty and depression, but into a family embedded among the colonial elite. As a fourth-generation Straits Chinese, the Lees were part of an ethnic group that had come to control the British colony decades before, mixing their culture with that of both the local Malay and the ruling British. For Lee, that meant growing up in a mostly English-speaking environment, where nearly everyone he knew called him Harry Lee. It also meant growing up in relative comfort with his solidly middle-class parents. Lee was able to attend the Raffles Institution, an elite school named after the port city’s British founder.

While he was certainly pampered, young Harry Lee wasn’t just coasting through life. Although part of the elite, his family’s background was more about striving to get into the top tier than being part of the one percent. This gave him a drive that many of his peers lacked—a desire to prove his worth. When Lee graduated in 1939, it was not just at the head of his class but ahead of any other student in the whole colony of British Malaya. This was a vintage piece of Lee Kuan Yew—a combination of searing intelligence, extreme determination, and a desire to show off.

Lee planned to study at a prestigious university in England, but the arrival of World War II forced him to stay in Singapore. He traded England’s green and pleasant land for a scholarship at Raffles College. While studying, he met his future wife, Kwa Geok Choo. Unfortunately, he was still in Singapore in early 1942 when the Japanese Imperial Army invaded. The Battle of Singapore began on February 8, after the fall of mainland British Malaya. The colonial authorities had destroyed the bridges to the islands and concentrated their forces, but they barely managed to hold off the Japanese for a week. Singapore’s governors surrendered on February 15, at which point the Imperial Army launched a campaign of mass murder.

As a Straits Chinese, the Japanese occupation was a complicated time for Lee. On one hand, the Japanese were actively hunting down and killing Chinese people on the island; on the other hand, he was part of the elite that the Japanese still needed to run their new territory. Family connections managed to get him a job at the Imperial News Agency, where he quickly learned Japanese. In the closing days of the war, Lee was forced to go into hiding, speculated to be passing information to British intelligence. He managed to stay underground until the danger had passed.

On September 12, 1945, British forces liberated Singapore, but Lee didn’t welcome them back with open arms. The easy surrender of Singapore had left many with a bitter taste in their mouths. From seeing himself as part of the colonial elite, he now viewed the British as people who had abandoned his home in a time of need. The war had left him determined that no one—neither the Japanese nor the British—had the right to push them around.

After working in the post-war black markets for a year, Lee managed to gather enough cash to get a boat to England for his studies. Living at the heart of the empire transformed his life. He developed a deep love for the rolling hills of the West Country but also discovered that many of his hosts could be unbelievably racist. This experience led him to question why they should be governing him, as he saw no reason for their superiority.

While in England, Lee married Kwa Geok Choo and became deeply involved in politics during the era of the Atlee Labor government. He began to embrace left-wing ideas, which he would carry back to Singapore alongside anti-colonial sentiments. Although he resumed his life among the wealthy as a young lawyer, he was aware that left-wing politics could mean more than just wealth redistribution; it was a chance to challenge the colonial administration.

Over the next few years, Lee honed his oratory skills, addressing strikers and defending activists in court, developing a punchy street-fighting style while keeping his distance from those who threw punches. He felt that activism had to come second to law and order, especially given the rise of communism. The creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 returned a generation of Singaporean Chinese into hardcore activism, determined to win elected seats. Lee was acutely aware that he needed this vast Chinese population on his side if he ever wanted to win elections, but he also detested communism.

His solution was the People’s Action Party (PAP), formed in 1954—a coalition of Singapore’s Anglicized left-wingers and Chinese-speaking communists who wanted to gain power. Lee brushed up on Mandarin and even learned Tamil to appeal to all of Singapore’s major ethnic groups. By the time of the 1955 election, he could communicate directly with voters in their own languages. Unfortunately, the PAP lost that year to the Labor Front, but this setback turned out to be a blessing.

The Labor Front, ruling as a minority government, lost control of striking workers, causing Britain to pause Singapore’s timetable for decolonization. Paranoid that this was the fault of communist agitators, the Labor Front launched a brutal crackdown targeting the Chinese. This resulted in an unpopular government that inadvertently helped the PAP by kneecapping its communist rivals. By the time of the 1959 election, the PAP was largely under Lee’s control, netting all but eight of the 51 contested seats. Just a few days later, on June 3, 1959, the British surrendered internal control of the island, and at age 35, Lee Kuan Yew became the first Prime Minister of Singapore.

However, Lee had no intention of leading his island to complete independence. The PAP had run on a platform of taking Singapore fully out of British control and into a federation with Malaysia. This plan would soon become Lee’s greatest triumph and his darkest nightmare.

Now, let’s take a moment to talk about Singapore. It really shouldn’t exist. At a little over 700 square kilometers, it’s a quarter of the size of Rhode Island, home to an ethnic mix with no natural shared language or culture, and a host of different religions. It’s also resource-poor, lacking even enough water to sustain itself. As Lee himself put it, to understand Singapore, you have to start with the fact that it’s not supposed to exist.

Since 1957, Malaysia had the resources and market for products that Singapore needed, and they were happy for their island neighbor to join. In 1961, Lee met with Malayan Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman to discuss a merger. A tentative agreement was reached, but this alone was enough to make Singapore explode. While many backed the PAP on Malaysia, many Chinese were terrified it could lead to their persecution. A splinter faction from the PAP formed to campaign against the merger, prompting Lee to call a referendum, which returned a solid pro-Malaysia majority.

However, when riots broke out, Lee decided to put an end to the opposition once and for all. Launched in February 1963, Operation Coldstore was perhaps the first time Lee showed just how far he was willing to go to maintain order. Over a hundred people, including all of the opposition leaders, were arrested and held without charge, effectively silencing dissent. This ensured Singapore would join the Malaysian Federation on August 31, 1963.

Just over two weeks later, Singapore ceased to exist as an independent state. Lee held a press conference to confirm that Singapore had left the federation. It was a shock, and many of Lee’s cabinet members hadn’t even been informed until less than 48 hours before the announcement. That afternoon, Lee seemed most shocked of all, asking his countrymen to stand firm and believe they could survive as an independent state. Later, he would call that press conference his moment of anguish.

For the first time in modern history, this tiny, overcrowded island was utterly alone in a dark, hostile world. Unless he wanted to be remembered as the man who destroyed Singapore, Lee was going to need miracles.

Since Singapore clearly didn’t implode into ethnic violence, we won’t structure this chapter like a narrative following Lee Kuan Yew’s struggles. Instead, we’ll dive into the details of his rule without regard for chronology to see how he held his city-state together.

One of the biggest issues the young country faced was its ethnic diversity, which had already produced two notorious race riots. With so many Chinese, Malays, and Indians crowded together, Singapore was always going to be multicultural. Lee surprised everyone by how far he leaned into this. Rather than favoring one language or culture over the others, he embraced aspects of all of them. Chinese, Tamil, and Malay were all made official languages, with English promoted as the lingua franca to bind them together. The calendar was filled with public holidays for all major religions.

Perhaps most surprising was the housing policy. The Housing and Development Board (HDB) became one of the most powerful government departments, eventually building homes for around 80% of Singaporeans. Many HDB blocks had strict ethnic quotas to reflect the demographics of the country, enforcing multiculturalism to prevent the formation of ghettos.

Another significant issue was poverty. When Lee assumed power, the people were poor, the streets dirty, and half the population was functionally illiterate. Fast forward to 1990, and Singapore would be the second richest nation in Asia. How did this happen? The answer lies in a unique blend of free-market principles and state control.

Lee embraced finance and the free market, with low corporate tax rates and incentives for international businesses. At the same time, he never forgot the lessons from the British Labor government. Certain sectors, like housing, were dominated by powerful state monopolies, with a level of government intrusion that would shock most conservatives. Lee employed a carrot-and-stick approach to curb public behavior, enforcing strict laws against spitting, littering, and other offenses.

For all its oddities, it’s hard to deny that these methods worked. Poverty rates plummeted, literacy skyrocketed, and the city became cleaner, richer, and more orderly than the British could have ever dreamed. Lee’s decisions were driven by a belief in putting the health of society above individual rights, leading to a high-wage economy and a compulsory savings system for healthcare.

Lee Kuan Yew’s time in power saw life expectancy increase, literacy levels soar, and GDP per capita rise to among the highest on the planet. While the system he left behind isn’t ideal, with ongoing issues of inequality and government censorship, it’s hard to argue that he didn’t play his hand spectacularly.

Lee Kuan Yew’s time as Prime Minister ended on November 28, 1990, when he handed the reins over to Goh Chok Tong. However, this wasn’t the end of his influence. He remained a significant power behind the scenes, first as the cabinet’s senior minister and then in the specially created role of minister mentor. He maintained a steadying hand on the tiller through Goh’s premiership and into the early years of Lee Hsien Loong’s ongoing reign.

Lee Kuan Yew died on March 23, 2015, at the age of 91, at the center of an island nation that had utterly transformed in his lifetime. Today, it’s hard to overstate the impact he had as the main visionary behind modern Singapore. The wealth, safety, and limits on free speech can all be traced back to him. While the system he left behind has its flaws, the results of his leadership are undeniable. Lee Kuan Yew was undoubtedly a visionary.