‘China not a threat to US’: Singapore’s George Yeo on world’s shift to ‘multipolar’ order, Israel-Gaza war, Lee Kuan Yew

Singapore’s former foreign minister was speaking at a launch for his three-volume book series, titled Musings, at the University of Hong Kong

He gave his views on the world’s ‘transition’ from a US-led order to a multipolar one, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and on Singapore’s late leader Lee Kuan Yew: ‘he was not a sadist’

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Yeo with his wife, Jennifer Yeo, and former Chief Justice Andrew Li Kwok-nang (middle), who delivered the opening address. Photo: Handout/HKU

Published: 5:43pm, 23 Nov 2023

The current tensions roiling the world are not signs of decline, but part of the transition from a US-led order to a multipolar one, according to Singapore’s former foreign minister, George Yeo.

Yeo was speaking at a launch for his three-volume book series, titled Musings, at the University of Hong Kong on Wednesday night. Former Chief Justice Andrew Li Kwok-nang opened the event, which was attended by an international audience ranging from politicians to academics, analysts and students from across Asia and Europe.

In a wide-ranging speech and subsequent question and answer session, Yeo, who has remained a prominent voice on geopolitical issues even after retiring from politics, spoke candidly on topics from US-China relations to the Israel-Gaza war.

Musings, Yeo’s three-part book series, spans a broad range of topics from his political career and Singapore’s regional positioning to his personal views on religion, culture, and philosophy and development. Photo: HKU

He also gave his views on Hong Kong’s competition with Singapore – “Hongkongers are more bothered by Singapore than Singapore is by Hong Kong” – and on the coming Taiwan presidential election, which he described as “a sideshow”, as well as his observations of the late Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding prime minister.

A military officer-turned-politician, Yeo held several ministerial portfolios before heading Singapore’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs from 2004 to 2011. After losing his parliamentary seat in the 2011 general election, he moved to Hong Kong to join the private sector, becoming chairman of the Kerry Logistics Network and serving as a non-official member of the Hong Kong Economic Development Commission.

Edited excerpts of Yeo’s speech and his responses during the question and answer session are featured below.

Q: What do you see as the biggest reason for current global tensions?

A: I don’t think the world is going wrong. I think the world is in a great transition from a US-dominated world, from a Western-dominated world, into a multipolar world. And what we are seeing now – whether it is US-China relations, the Ukraine war, Gaza, West Africa, India – I think, are birth pangs of a new world emerging, the full shape of which is not clear, but the rough shape of which can already be discerned. It is fuelled fundamentally by the technological revolution, which has sped up the transmission of knowledge so that societies which once left behind are able to pole-vault ahead very quickly and catch up with their former masters.