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In the years after he stepped down as Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew’s insight and advice was still very much valued not just in Singapore but also around the world — and even in Hong Kong.
He was “also an adviser to Chinese and British politicians, as well as a visionary on politics in Hong Kong and on the mainland,” reports Tony Cheung on South China Morning Post.
“Apart from receiving an honorary doctorate in law from the University of Hong Kong in 1970, it is believed that Lee visited British colonial Hong Kong governors regularly, and met Margaret Thatcher before she started her dialogue with Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping on Hong Kong’s future in the early 1980s,” according to the report.
Lee also constantly had discussions with Hong Kong’s leaders, telling them that what the former Crown Colony needed was a “street fighter” chief; he has described himself as a “knuckle-duster” street fighter.
He described HK’s future heads Tung Chee-hwa and Donald Tsang Yam-kuen as either too nice or too weak to stand their own against Beijing.
Because of that relationship with China, Lee had described the role of Hong Kong’s chief executive as a thankless job — something he wouldn’t be interested in playing.
“That was the reason, according to Liberal Party founder Allen Lee Peng-fei, that Lee told him he did not want to rule Hong Kong,” says the report. Singapore founding father supposedly said that wouldn’t do it well because his master will be in Beijing, the paper quotes Allen Lee.
Photo: Lee Kuan Yew Facebook page
