>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: do you care that they

say lee kuan yew has created a miracle in singapore, that he is authoritarian, he doesn't care about democracy. he does carry little about free press. that he knows what is right for singapore, what is right for the people, and that he is going to see in the way he believes it ought to be come hell or high water. lee kuan yew: let's put it in a more objective way. i have to govern down -- now, 4 million people. 3 million are singaporeans, one million are foreigners. to get jobs in singapore. and of that 1,100,000 are professionals. why do they come?

because it is a thriving economy that gives them jobs and their families are happy and safe. no drugs no muggings, no ratings. -- rapings. you can walk the streets 3:00 in the morning and you are ok. you won't see any policeman. you won't see soldiers lining the streets. every four years to five years, i have to renew my mandate. a free election. there are about five or six different parties that will spring to life one year before the elections and try their luck. the last few elections, they devised a new strategy. they knew that people wanted apap government but wanted opposition. so they say we will contest less than half. so the php has already formed

the government. and it worked. but what was the concessions they made that the people wanted a php government. why should i be authoritarian when i have the people with me? that is what the people wanted. they wanted a high quality of life low crime rate, good future for their education of children, and jobs. better homes, better hospitals, and a higher quality of life culturally. charlie: did you have an internal belief in markets that you had been convinced that market was the week ago and the competition with produce an economy that would be competitive? lee kuan yew: it wasn't that simple. by 1965i had traveled all

through africa. i have tried -- traveled widely in asia and europe. it is the region i have been to indonesia, malaysia. as seen what did not work. first, leaders became soft. a promised the world, follow me. in fact it there was a statue of the leader, and he called it lacked star square. there was a statue that said " seek ye the kingdom of politics and all will be unto you. " i thought it was blasted me. but it was it. and it wasn't awfulness. you can see it was not working. he had all of these symbols, marching troops, black square. we had defeated 2 million

people. how? agriculture was negligible. commerce was coming to an end. industry was in its infancy. so i had been to see hong kong, the nearest to us. they had a british government which had military defense and security. i had none of those. i thought taiwan, they had an american alliance. so somehow i had to get this thing going. we tried many things. we brought manufacturers from hong kong and taiwan, textile

mills, started glass factories, with our own cash lately did not have been silicon to make those. we sold it later. trial and error. finally, i had spent one term. charlie: right, in the 60's. lee kuan yew: the fall of 60's -- 1968. i was also the following the revolution in china. i met a undp expert. he came to see me one day. he said why are you looking worried? i am enough spot. he said, imagine how much more difficult in a spy he would be if you had 100 million japanese as your neighbors instead of indonesians. [laughter] that set me thinking.

think what you can do or what they would do to you. they would take you over. so i said, there are 100 million arabs that refuse to train. they leapfrog. they go in winter to europe. starting with very simple agriculture. in my term at harvard, and that many people. economists who taught me. i also met many businessmen. and i decided we would leapfrog a different way. we would get american

multinationals to export to the world. as luck would have it, the cultural revolution made them bad pass taiwan, hong kong, they came to singapore. texas instruments hewlett-packard, you name it. they all came. he became the biggest manufacturer of disk drives in 20 years we were the center. the center for computer parts. we never looked back. that the other side of the coin -- i came up with the idea that people would come here and explore the region. a dangerous reading -- region with pestilence, malaria typhoid. here in singapore, we will create a first world oasis out

of this island. it was a third world island. we will create a first world condition. so that they can base camp here and reach out. when they are think they can come back. so we had first world standards of infrastructure roads, airports seaports, communications, health schooling personal and public security. later we added concepts, but the basic was first world. that was easy. the difficult part was getting the population behaving like a third world to start behaving like a first world. charlie: that is what i want to know. how did you do that? lee kuan yew: people use to make fun of us because foreign correspondents used to watch us

with this campaign. they would say stop spinning. let's do it differently. you can do things like before because, you want to be host to first world. so you can't bp -- be peeing all over the place. we installed special instruments that would stop the moment you did that and we would apprehend them. [laughter] it was real. then they opened a list door and peed from the outside in. [laughter] we installed a camera that would catch them from the outside. so it went on.

it improved. i am not saying we are there but if you want terrorism you have to have public toilets. and we did not have that. so we had to get a campaign saying flush it you stupid man. it took some doing. we are not there yet, but we are getting there. we still have people with mobile phones at concerts that go drink. charlie: what do you do to stop that? lee kuan yew cap all of them. charlie: you also have one of the highest rates of capital punishment. you think drugs deserve to be treated with the maximum punishment. lee kuan yew: if we could kill them a hundred times we went. because you just -- we would. because you destroy whole families.

your drug dependent, you steal treat -- cheap, rob-year-old parents. it is so destroying. they come in knowing death is there. but the rewards are so great. very unusual people, women from africa come to sell clothes. in between the clothing is he was of -- kilos of herion. anything beyond 10 grams, you hang. charlie: if you are convicted of bringing in more than 10 grams of heroin, you hang. a judge listens to the evidence. and said if you are guilty, you hang. lee kuan yew: yes. and they still come.

unbelievable. charlie: do you believe capital punishment is a deterrent? lee kuan yew: without that it would quadruple. and our internal consumption would go up by a multiple of 10. charlie: do you leave in the idea of a free press? lee kuan yew: i believe in the truth. i don't believe in putting a spin on things. i think we should print the story and editorialize separately. and not skew it with headlines and sub guidelines. charlie: do you believe if someone said singapore, this modern state that pretty much escaped most of the asian economic crisis that plagued

japan, thailand, indonesia, malaysia. you are relatively immune. lee kuan yew: yes, not immune but our damage was collateral. when money was pulled out of the region, they pulled it out of singapore as well. charlie: you seem to believe not in the individual, but in the state. you seem to be much more of a statist that someone who is such a fan of free markets. lee kuan yew: that is a profound difference in the core philosophy between the american and the chinese. it is a reflection of your history. you came over on the mayflower you were seeking religious

freedom so much though he refused to be allowed to tie in schools. he believed in the individual as the creator of all things and you captured the wild west. on horseback, main street, ub mayor and i am sheriff. we built a goldrush town. or capital -- cattle or whatever it is. you have been immensely fortunate. to our worlds left the world in shambles and you emerged undamaged and technological and industrial in power. china has completely different history. 4000-5000 years and up and down. long eras where there was no

government, anarchy. warlords. i once had a chinese missile or -- mrs. -- messeuse. asset, during the war, what crazy did you use? japanese currency. i said, how many currencies are there? he said 14 or 15. depending on which warlords area you are in. why have they survived in spite of anarchy and disaster, floods, famines? because there was a social network independent of government. it sustained them. the immediate family, the extended family, the clan. you vote them in obligation. you cannot turn them away. that is how they survived.

i would be loath to believe that in singapore you will never have anarchy. there will always be government that will provide for social security. i'm not sure that will be singapore's experience. i think we are safer if we keep those family bonds, those traditional liferaft systems not dependent on the state. it places the emphasis on family, extended family, and then the government. not the individual at the expense of the family and state which is the american system. you have bill gates, forbes or fortune, 58 of the best and the brightest and wealthiest. that is your experience.

that is not china's experience. that is not our experience. we also want to try and get our bill gates going. but, in the context of keeping our society solid so that we will survive as a people you have never been occupied. you have only had one civil war. quite a dramatic experience. you will never understand what it is. i have been occupied during -- by the japanese. it did not represent me. there was no human rights. the first thing i saw two days after they came in when i went out to buy some food, to human heads on april -- 2 human heads on wa pole, and chinese

characters that said it you do not behave you will end up here. there was the highest building in singapore then and this medieval scene. the japanese never talk of human rights. because they understand that brutality and cruelty they infected bess inflicted on fellow asians who they came to so-called liberated, these are realities. why did they succeed? not because of individual heroism but because as a group they were a powerful force and they still are. charlie: you in fact believe that it is not impossible that they may once again be a powerful military force with

ambitions that could lead them to war? lee kuan yew: i wouldn't say exactly with ambitions, but i am quite convinced they can become a very powerful military force. if cornered again the way they were in 1941 with an oil embargo and no exports rather than curl up and die they will fight. it is in the nature of the culture. they are not people who will lie down and face the wall. charlie: would you fear the japanese more than the chinese? lee kuan yew: with americans around, i fear neither. i think there is a balance. the united states together with japan will be able to balance china. charlie: that is the way you see the future a strategic balance between united states and japan and then china.

lee kuan yew: absolutely. i don't think the chinese would be doing it alone. i don't think they can take china and japan. charlie: japan and china, it would be unlikely to happen. lee kuan yew: very. charlie: what do you regret most so far? lee kuan yew: so many things to regret. but i regret most is the years we spent building up the momentum from malaysia and breaking it off in less than two years. it never got a chance. if there was a stronger prime minister in malaysia, who was prepared to give a more equal balance to people in malaysia, the story might have ended differently. and it would have been better for all of us.

charlie: singapore combined with malaysia and all of that meant a much more powerful point of leverage. lee kuan yew: not for me but for the people. they would have had a better life. ♪

charlie: you and i had a conversation once about a whole range of leaders. he said to me that the menu must admired was xiaoping. he admired you to because he said -- he sent 30,000 chinese to singapore to see what you were doing. what were you doing? lee kuan yew: he was astonished when he came for the first time in 1978. to tell us to prevent vietnam from invading cambodia because they were doing it on behalf of the russians. then he found a singapore which was contrary to what he was given in a brief.

he found a prosperous, orderly society. everyone owning their own homes and with a job. he said, how did you get there? i said, we educated our people. and americans, japanese europeans ring technology and train our people -- bring technology and train our people. after a while we became general managers. managing directors. and we learned. and we become suppliers to them. so he said, you made use of capitalism to build a more egalitarian society. i will do the same. and he did. he did. he went back and created 12 economic zones. coastal cities.

charlie: he was the greatest menu government because he understood -- because the results? lee kuan yew: no, he is a member of the old guard. he chased the kmt out. charlie: he was a victim of the cultural revolution. lee kuan yew: yes. but he was realistic and he knew the system was not working. he knew that they were going to end up down in a deep hole. [laughter] and he decided against all of the advice of his fellow old guard. charlie: and he had the brains and power to pull it off. lee kuan yew: yes. and when they tried to stop him, he went down and said, learned from all of the countries in the world. most of all, learned from singapore.

the order is good and they are a very prosperous society. charlie: what is the most important change and significant change in your way of thinking about the world over the last 20 years? lee kuan yew: that the impossible can happen. i never thought that the soviet union would implode so easily. and i never thought that the chinese would abandon the communist system and move into the free market so readily. it was unthinkable 20 years ago. both has happened. charlie: and it is not clear exactly how it -- lee kuan yew: no, it is not

exactly clear when it will happen but it will happen in the long-term. charlie: in the center of gravity is shifting to asia. lee kuan yew: it must be because the population is there. 1.3 billion people, plus japanese and koreans vietnamese and others. they can matchup with america. they did not have science and technology or did not care. now everything that you do, they are doing. you go into stem cell research, we go into stem cell research. they have to in order to get into a field with where the chinese cannot compete. the chinese are in it in a very big way. a are watching you and whatever you do.

they say, we will do that. they are far behind but they will catch up. charlie: they are enormously curious. lee kuan yew: not just curious but enormously ambitious to catch up. charlie: for good reasons and good ends? lee kuan yew: [laughter] that you must ask them. but i think they have a sense of frustration that they were down for so long. let's make it now. we have a chance. charlie: the united states has to encourage them? lee kuan yew: no you don't have to encourage them. they don't want to be an honorary member of the west. unlike russia. they are quite happy to be chinese and remain as such. when you tell them you ought to do this or that, they say yes thank you. and in the back of their minds, we have lasted 5000 years, have

you? charlie: is there a different chinese attitude about the future than the united states? lee kuan yew: they do not believe that works -- what works for them works for other people. we have special circumstances that allow this to work. i am not interested in changing regimes. i deal with you as you are whether you are a dictatorship or tribal leader or whatever. i maintain good relations. i need your resources. let's do business. there is no evangelistic urge to change things. charlie: is america a proselytizing country? they want to sell their values? lee kuan yew: [laughter]

it always has been and always will be. that everyone wants to become like america. which i don't think it can be, but they want to try than the ahead. charlie: some people look at china and say there has been no google, no facebook developed. no microsoft. and that says something about the educational system. lee kuan yew: harley, but partly because they are controlling. but -- they do not like the established order to be grand. -- threatened. to allow something to be borrowed and tested out. why take the risk? let's play it safe. if you let one country -- 1.3

billion then you will have chaos. they are capable of thinking of new things. i will give you an example. i go on the computer for translations now. and it is all done free. the chinese had done it. you can do wonders with it. you can do anything you want to do on the internet. there is no need to go to google. charlie: a chinese search engine -- and a large one. what did you think of what chinese did to google? lee kuan yew: they did not want

google to become a vehicle for subversion. what they called subversion. the spending of -- spinning up ideas antithetical to the state. charlie: do you think they are paranoid? lee kuan yew: yes the government is run that way. it is a huge country. and you cannot control everything. you cannot microcontroller it -- microcontrol it. charlie: let's talk about singapore. you agreed to sit down with seven or eight journalists, and said don't talk about it. and then they published a book. did you do that because you were worried young people did not understand singapore and you wanted to get to them?

lee kuan yew: yes, i am worried they believe we can go on autopilot. it is not possible. the basis is several hundred kilometers and we built a hundred story edifice. and you keep that base you might be able to go up to 150. if you tinker around and believe it is forever, it might come crumbling down. remember, this base is narrow. margins for error arsenal. -- our small. make sure when you reach a decision you have a fallback. charlie: some people say that singapore has crystallized the

question, what price for prosperity and security? lee kuan yew: yes. charlie: that is the question that you have. how have you done that? lee kuan yew: i answered that by making sure there is no instability. the different races mixed together police -- peacefully. differing religions do not clash. disparate income groups mingled. there are no ghettos. i challenge you to find a ghetto. the division, other than superrich, they are all living in one million -- millieu.

the most important is schooling and housing. that has been achieved. i have also had to put restrictions on people on the same race together. they gathered together. malaysians will get together, indians will get to gather here it -- together. then we have a problem. so every block you have a quarter, and it reflects a percentage of the population of the many races. whether your neighbors are chinese or indian or will they -- mmalay, they go to the

same schools. it is a structure device a social device and social structure that fosters you to understand the different races and makes you put this together. charlie: where did you get these political ideas of yours? llee kuan yew: after two or three riots. they were poor and dirty, no sanitation. charlie: this was before 65? you began to form an idea that you thought you would like to see singapore become before

malaysia in 1965? lee kuan yew: we hope to make malaysia the same. but they wanted a malaysian society. they have a serious problem because the chinese and indians -- they are separate. they live in different places and go to different schools. they have different communities. we have one community. i'm not saying we are one nation yet, but we are one society. charlie: and you have made speeches including this year promoting the idea of the kind of social cohesion of multiple parties from multiple ethnic groups? lee kuan yew: yes, without that you get no progress.

if you are fighting, how can you get progress? charlie: but is -- do you worry that if there is more political discourse among the young that it will lead to racial politics? lee kuan yew: no, they can have all the discourse they like. that race, religion, and language need to be tracked carefully. you know that these are sensitive issues. it is a hornets nest. i said in that book, that i think that muslims from malaysia should be relaxed. and he together with the others. charlie: and it created a firestorm. and your son, the prime minister, differed with you. who was right? lee kuan yew: [laughter] he has to be right because he is the prime minister. charlie: but?

lee kuan yew: if you ask the average person then they would say, you're awesome. charlie: were you born in a well-to-do family? you went to cambridge to law school? did you then think you wanted to go into politics? lee kuan yew: yes, because i saw no reason why the british should run the place. i think given the chance we would do better because we knew the people that are then they went. charlie: you want to do be part of an anti-colonialist party. lee kuan yew: and we have done better than the british ever did . the british cap -- kept everyone segregated. from the time they built it up.

chinese live here, malaysians live here, aaron live here. -- arabs live here. in the 19th century they were very disparate peoples. they segregated them. but i have got to make one society out of this people. they have got to understand each other even if they don't like each other. charlie: that is why you think it is fragile. lee kuan yew: yes, of course. it is not in their dna yet. it is enforced. by sheer living conditions. physical living conditions. and every day intermingling. same schools same playing field, same shopping centers. same neighbors. charlie: when you were at

cambridge, you met and married your remarkable wife who died in october. she was a political partner of yours? she edited and listened and kept you with speeches? lee kuan yew: yes, she corrected me. charlie: and she raised the family as well. you described yourself as a kept man. lee kuan yew: which i was because she was earning more money than i did. charlie: as a lawyer. she was with you in 1965 when you actually cried on television. what were you crying about? lee kuan yew: i cried because an idea and ideal were shattered.

that we would have a non-racial society in malaysia and singapore. and we had already made moves and mobilize a large part of the population there. chinese, indians, and some allegiance. -- some malaysians. working for a malaysian malaysia. that was the end of our enterprise. charlie: you cried over the english that what might have been could not be? lee kuan yew: i had to leave behind all of the people that mobilized. charlie: did you dream it could be what it is today? lee kuan yew: not in the actual form it is, because the forms have been the physical landscape has been a result of technological improvements imported from outside.

as the globalized -- globalization allowed us all of the rest of it. we have an intermingled population, one society. that was planned. that was the aim.\ it is still a work in progress but we should continue that work. charlie: someone said that he built a first-class oasis in a third world regent -- region, and you have been praised for your efficiency and incorruptibility, but you had been accused of limiting political freedom and intimidation. lee kuan yew: how can you intimidate through libel lawsuits? that is ridiculous.

lawyers will tell you whether. charlie: you are prepared to be litigious. lee kuan yew: yes, rather than have to knock him down politically i would go to court. cross-examine me. as the plaintiff i am saying that what you said was a pack of lies. here i am know. charlie: you have also said that while you might have done things that you should not have done, you always did them for the honorable reasons. lee kuan yew: looking back, i think i might have done better. charlie: like? lee kuan yew: like not forcing the pace of getting people to change their languages. charlie: you made english language. lee kuan yew: yeah, we were

speaking in multiple times. -- tongues. chinese speaking dialects malaysians speaking three or four dialects. and english, a very bad form of english. charlie: this is why you were against what they call singlish? you still are, even though the code has their own language? lee kuan yew: you want a language which you can communicate with the world easily. if you speak your own patois you are disadvantaging yourself. i once went to jamaica for a commonwealth conference. and i will never forget this. they took over an american

holiday resort so all of the cooks and so on were blacks. good cooks. they spoke in a quaint accent. so i went out to watch the fishermen bring their fish in. asked him, what kind of fish? i said what is that? and i said oh that fish. that was the result of an amalgamation of many african dialects. we inherited the english language from the reddish. we decide -- british.

we decided to make it the working language. chinese, malay, inc. -- indian, the second language. charlie: are you worried about the declining birthrate? lee kuan yew: our lifestyle has changed. we are educated and independent. they don't marry until mid 30's. they are late childbearing. charlie: it is my impression that you, because you have shown results, believe that the prime minister became senior minister mentor, knows best. feels strongest about what is good for singapore. and worries most about threats against it. lee kuan yew: yes. what is best for singapore, that

they continue to thrive and prosper. and if you don't and you have migrants overwhelming the local population, we have not done that yet. migrants are 30%. and i think we should never allow them to become near 50%. then they will change us. charlie: what would you do to make sure it doesn't become 50%. how would you do that? immigration restrictions? lee kuan yew: yes, take in high-quality people. charlie: do you worried that singaporeans because of this prosperity -- are becoming a bit soft? lee kuan yew: no, not soft. they are becoming self-centered. they are hard-working and hard-driving, enjoying life and

have a good time. they work hard and they play hard. they are not going soft. charlie: you have said, with respect, that they don't feel the spur in their hide. lee kuan yew: that is because they don't think it is necessary to strive anymore. we are already here. we have arrived. charlie: so what is your message when they say that? lee kuan yew: this needs more than autopilot. you run three storms and air pockets. there is a pilot and copilot and a spare pilot that has to be on board. passengers need to be alive and awake and alert. charlie: i said -- since you are worried. lee kuan yew: i'm worried because if they are the new

leader is -- they do not realize the small basis on which it was built and they take liberties with it. then we could go down quickly. spiral down a vicious circle. charlie: quickly. lee kuan yew: yes. status of living will go up investments will disappear. charlie: your legacy is that you have presided over encouraged lead this prosperity. you're developing legacy is you want to make sure that it is sustainable. lee kuan yew: i want to make sure that this place always comes out with confidence. commands confidence. confidence brings in investments and talent. with investments and towns, we will prosper. that confidence should never be done for diced -- jeopardized by

commotion or strife. not necessary. charlie: can singapore -- will singapore, and can it, do you want to see a true democracy? lee kuan yew: american-style? charlie: yes. lee kuan yew: no. charlie: what is an american democracy? you can't have that? lee kuan yew: no, religion and race and culture are forbidden bidding and sensitive. it causes a stir and big trouble. charlie: that is the price you pay for prosperity and security? lee kuan yew: no, those are no go areas. charlie: do you wish you would

have a bigger fishbowl to achieve your miracle in? this is a small island. lee kuan yew: it is very difficult to have a little piece of comfort. charlie: what is it that makes you this strategic thinker, that people come to for advice? lee kuan yew: i do not believe people come to me to seek advice, they come to me to bounce ideas and test them out. charlie: but what is it you have? lee kuan yew: experience. i'm 88. i have lived long. and i have not forgotten my mistakes.

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mark: i am mark halperin. john: with all due respect to those who are tried to stop the affordable care act, happy fifth birthday obamacare. ♪ on the show tonight, the governor's elbow grease, john kasich conversation police and the karma police. first, joe biden's golden fleece. diamond joe putting out five -- vibes that hillary clinton may be vulnerable to a nomination challenge, and he may be the one to bring it.