the singapore story: memoirs of lee kuan yewby lee kuan yew
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The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew by Lee Kuan YewReview by: Lucian W. PyeForeign Affairs, Vol. 78, No. 2 (Mar. - Apr., 1999), pp. 155-156Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20049255 .
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not that Israelis have dirty hands but that people in any polity must agree on
shared values and rules.
The Challenge of Fundamentalism:
Political Islam and the New World
Disorder, by bassam tib?. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1998, 282 pp. $29.95.
Tibi sees Islamic fundamentalism as a
dangerous totalitarian tendency that
neither represents the Islamic faith nor
appreciates Islamic history. At the same
time, he distances himself from those who
would paint Islam as the new post-Cold
War menace to the West. Instead, he
expresses empathy for those Muslims
struggling against despotic states at
home and against Western hegemony from abroad. Tibi presents his case while
conducting a very personal discussion
(and debate) with contemporary West
ern scholars, ranging from J?rgen Habermas to Samuel Huntington to
specialists on Islam. He also weaves
into his account the ideas of
diverse Muslim thinkers, past ,/*/'
and present. His discursive m('
style is most easily followed ?jM /(P~f by specialists, but all
-?\i\r ^? should relish chapters j/iiAuX W^/ seven through nine, ^v"! r**
where he introduces the //?^?\^ *rv^
ideas of representative ^/W^?tt^ Muslim fundamentalists T^f^^^L 1
and exposes in cogent ^'f^K
critiques their ahistorical S^'j -ndm^T -, r 1 1 "V///V ~^? CURSING -
and orten tautological '->/// -nograffiti -
1 A 1-1 1 ''' ~m GUM(
approaches. A liberal @E
Muslim scholar teaching ^r~^~~~*W? in Germany, Tibi radiates
^x^ "^p-1l
the mindset of the West- ^ ^^s-^
ern Enlightenment.
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Asia and the Pacific LUC?AN W. PYE
The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan
Yew. by lee Kuan yew. NewYork:
Prentice Hall, 1998, 680 pp. $25.00. One of Asia's most famous statesmen,
Lee Kuan Yew has long been renowned
for his crisp opinions and sharp analytical mind. With this first volume of his auto
biography, he also establishes himself as
an engaging storyteller. An outstanding student from a middle-class, English
speaking home, Lee's education was
interrupted by the Japanese occupation in World War II. After a stint as a black
market entrepreneur during the war, he
made his way to England following the Japanese surrender and convinced
Cambridge University to admit him. Upon
passing the British bar exams, he returned
to Singapore and soon became enmeshed
in the complex politics of independence _ while fighting?and sometimes ex
ploiting?the Communist Party. His story, told in vivid
detail, focuses on his dream
of uniting Singapore with
Malaysia. Lee bitterly recounts
his disappointment over
Malaysian Prime Minister
Tunku Abdul Rahman's decision to expel? Singapore from Malaysia. While gracious toward the Tunku, Lee harshly
appraises other politicians in
Kuala Lumpur. His remarkably M ?^?^ in-depth character analyses ^^ > mean that volume two?which
will describe a whole genera ^T tion of world leaders?will
FOREIGN AFFAIRS March/April i999 [*55]
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Recent Books
command great interest. Possibly mindful
of this prospect, 26 former presidents, secretaries of state, prime ministers, and foreign ministers have already
provided blurbs of unstinting praise for Lee. The praise is well deserved; the readers will come away feeling that
they have come to know an exceptionally
brilliant political man.
The Chan's Great Continent: China in
Western Minds, by Jonathan s pence. New York: W. W. Norton,
1998, 279 pp. $27.50.
Spence is unquestionably the best story teller of all historians of China, and he
never fails to come up with intriguing
topics viewed from original perspectives. This time he recounts the image of
China in the Western mind. From
Marco Polo in the thirteenth century to
Jesuit missionaries and Enlightenment
philosophers to contemporary China
watchers, Spence shows how Western
observers have used both positive and
negative fantasies of Chinese civilization
to reflect the state of Western civilization.
For some, China was a superior civilization
with elegant manners and ancient wisdom; for others it offered dark visions of cruel
rulers and hordes of devious tricksters.
Henry Kissinger was as awestruck on
meeting Mao as Marco Polo was before
Kublai Khan. Spence's interest is purely
narrative; he relates his 48 "sightings" of
China rather than advancing any theoreti
cal or moral lessons. His fascination lies
with each particular imagined China, not
with potential conclusions for the Western
mind?although China as a distant Other
has clearly served multiple purposes for the
Western psyche. Even today, exaggerated
swings in U.S. policy toward China reflect
American vacillation between images of
a "good" and a "bad" China.
Forging Reform in China: The Fate of State-Owned Industry,
by edward s.
steinfeld. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1998, 300 pp. $44.95. Much has been written from a macro
economic perspective about China's
huge, inefficient, state-owned enterprises
(soes), which drain banking resources
and threaten to bring down the Chinese
economy. In contrast, this is the first
detailed microeconomic examination of
the firms' management. Benefiting from
remarkable access to three mammoth
steel corporations, Steinfeld illustrates
how the managers, confronted with an
array of irrational constraints, make
decisions that are logical from their
perspective but disastrous for the economy.
They may, for example, expand production of unneeded steel because they can use
the numbers to borrow more from the
state bank. Accountability is also missing: the enterprises are
technically "state
owned" but actually lack a clear
"owner" because decentralization has
meant that managers are not held liable
to anyone. Efforts at privatization further confuse the ownership issue,
while the general solutions for the
soes proposed by both reform-minded
Chinese officials and foreign observers
will not work without far more funda
mental changes. As no foreigner has
ever had such access to the soes before, Steinfeld's report is ground-breaking for all who have an interest in the Chinese
economy. The study also provides a solid
basis for theorizing about more general issues in transition economics.
[156] FOREIGN AFFAIRS-Volume 78 No. 2
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