SM Lee Hsien Loong at the Nazarbayev University Lecture Q&A

Question 1: Dear Senior Minister, 李显龙先生, very thankful you can be here, I am from China. My name is Wang Xuan. I am from a small village in China, only 4 million people, and I have a question which is I asked my classmates also, which is, can Kazakhstan be like Singapore or not? Because I think for many times you have said that there are so many similarities. For example, just as you mentioned, the involuntary independence from another nation. Second, that Singapore is connected to two big oceans, and Kazakhstan connects two continents, which brings markets together. And the third is that you all have a very multilingual people. In Kazakhstan, I saw my classmates speak Russian, English, and Kazakh, just like in Singapore you speak Malay, Chinese, and English. And also in Kazakhstan and Singapore, you also are going on a road to AI and also as a financial centre together. So in my opinion, I think you have so many similarities. So do you think that Kazakhstan in the next 20 years or 10 years will become the next Singapore of Central Asia, or even as a start, as a post-Soviet Union country? Thank you very much.

SM Lee Hsien Loong: Thank you for a very difficult question. There are great similarities– important similarities – between Singapore and Kazakhstan. You have listed some of them – we are multiracial; we connect two oceans, you connect two continents on land; you are focusing on human resources, you are focusing on AI, technology, upgrading your manufacturing, going into financial services, as Singapore has tried to do, and as I think many other countries have tried to do.

But there is also a very big difference between Singapore, being a small country with no natural resources, wondering “tomorrow do we have a future?”, versus being a state which is the ninth largest country in the world, blessed with enormous natural resources and all kinds of minerals and energy (reserves), now facing a different era and a different geostrategic external environment.

I think some of the principles which Singapore has applied and sought to guide ourselves as we make decisions on the way forward, I think these will apply to Kazakhstan or to many other countries. Human resources, making sure you have a good government, making sure you make sensible economic choices and structure your economy well, making sure that growth is inclusive, making sure that people feel that they have a stake in this and will work together to transform the country and take it forward. Countries which succeed in doing that will be the spectacular winners, the day after tomorrow. And we hope Kazakhstan is one of them, and I see the drive and the energy and the determination of the government, and I think you have a very good chance of making it succeed.

Question 2: My name is Madiar Shukbaev. I am a fourth-year Political Science and International Relations student here. Thank you for your guest lecture, it was very fascinating to hear. I have a question: Kazakhstan has a relatively small population compared to countries with bigger economies. So, Singapore faced a similar situation. How can young entrepreneurs from smaller countries build companies which can compete with big companies in the global economy?

SM Lee: It is a challenge. I think many small countries encounter this. Their companies start off promisingly, and at some stage, if they want to become a unicorn and they want to make it big globally, they have to go beyond their domestic market and operate internationally. There are pathways to doing this. I think, first of all, the domestic environment, the ecosystem for entrepreneurship and startups, needs to be a good one. So that they can get started, and get onto a good, promising path. It must be easy to start companies – you must have the venture capital, you must have the angel investors, you must have the financing systems of each stage of development, and you must be connected to the global tech and capital markets.

If you are like that, then as your companies grow, you bring in not just Singapore or local capital. You bring in international investors and interest, and then you can have paths forward at some stage. You may be bought out by some established big tech firm – that is one path which startups take. Or you may really make it big and go to the New York Stock Exchange and have an opening gong. Some do, and many still like to go to New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq. And it is so for companies from many small countries, which are vibrant in their startup scene. The Israelis are like that, for example. And so, in Singapore, I cannot say that we have solved this problem of promoting entrepreneurship, but I think we have made progress in creating a good ecosystem, and we have had a few, small number of successes, and we are still trying hard to do more.

Kazakhstan actually is not so small compared to Singapore. Singapore’s population is 6 million, your population is 20 million. But on a global scale, if you want to change the world, you will (need to) aim to change more than 20 million people, and I hope you succeed and do it for the better.

Question 3: Good morning. My name is Arozhan Kaimoldina. I am a third-year political science student at NU (Nazarbayev University), and I wanted to ask you about Singapore's approach regarding youths. So I believe that young specialists, young graduates from Kazakhstan, they have a lot of potential skills that can be the next important step to contributing to the country's growth, and we have a lot of graduates who pursue their studies abroad and here, and they bring a lot of valuable knowledge. And how does Singapore create and foster an environment where young specialists come back to Singapore, to their country. How do they contribute and engage with their society and their government? Thank you very much.

SM Lee: There are two parts to the answer. The first is, there must be opportunities within the country – the possibility of the person who is talented, who has got skills and expertise, to come back and be in that country, and to have a good job, and to contribute, and to make a difference, and succeed for himself and for the country. If there are no opportunities at home, then it is not possible for you to keep your talent at home and say, “No, you are not allowed to go overseas, you must stay home.” Because they will say, “What can I do? I am here sharpening pencils or pouring tea. But I want to do research, I want to make a breakthrough, and I can do that maybe in an overseas university, maybe in an overseas tech company, maybe I can start my own business. And if I cannot start my business domestically, I may go and start it elsewhere.” So, you must have the opportunities. Your economy must grow, and as the economy grows, it must create the opportunities and the possibility for the human potential and spirit to be fulfilled. Then people will say, “Yes, this is a place I want to be part of. I want to be part of the story, and I think that I can do well here, I want to be here.” So that is, the first. It is a practical, utilitarian calculation, perhaps.

But the second part of it, is you must have developed in your young people a sense of commitment to the country. As they grow up, you are not just learning how to write, how to read, how to do your maths, understanding science, and mastering subjects. You are growing up as a citizen of a country, a member of the society which has invested in you, which has great hopes in you, which has helped you to succeed, and without which, you would not be who you are. And you owe something to the society, and you want to give it back to enable other people similarly to succeed like you, after you.

And if we can have that sense of a certain pride and loyalty and commitment, then there is a basis to say, “Yes, I can succeed anywhere in the world. I may spend time overseas. I may work in Silicon Valley. I may go to an Ivy League university. I may be in the international circuit for five, seven, ten years. It is part of exposure. It is part of the international network of Singapore. But my roots are at home. My family members, my family ties are at home. My heart is there. One day I will come back there.”

And then I think we have a good balance. And you have a home which is able to sustain itself, and in the next generation you can still be like this and better.

Question 4: Senior Minister Lee, my name is Yerbol Tulegenov. I am a graduate of the Graduate School of Business of Nazarbayev University. Also, I am a chairman of NU Alumni Union, and I am a part of a working group implementing block-budgeting reform in Kazakhstan, inspired partly by Singapore's experience. Last year, I visited Singapore with a government delegation organized thanks to Singapore Cooperation Enterprise. We studied at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and met Mr Lim Siong Guan, Ms Tan Ching Yee, and other senior officials. My key takeaway was that Singapore's model works not only because of good policies, but because of capable people, discipline, and trust in the government. But Kazakhstan is much larger and more decentralized, with twenty regions and thousands of cities and villages. So, building the same level of alignment is challenging. My question is, how can a large country institutionalise these qualities across government so that good governance does not depend on exceptional individual leaders. And where would you start, with people, institutions, or trust? Thank you.

SM Lee: I think you need to build all three at the same time – people, institutions, and trust. It is perhaps easier to do in a small country. You have one generation in a special situation, backs to the wall with good leaders. They say, “Let us do it”, and they did it. But it is not just one person. You need a team, you need to inspire the population, and then from the population, you can induct capable, promising people, bring them into the leadership team, and collectively make good things happen.

One of the things which Kazakhstan is doing, which I understand, was somewhat inspired by what Singapore did, was to send some of your most talented students overseas to study in the best universities in the world, by the thousands. You had a name for the programme, The Future. And we still do that. Every year, we send a couple of hundred students. The Government sends them and pays for their education. They come back. They serve the government for a period, and it is meritocratic. We choose the best students, not just (based on) your academic results, but also whether you care about the country, whether you care about others, whether you want to contribute and can make a difference to the team. And they come back. And therefore gradually we have built up the civil service where the quality, we try very hard to make it equal to the quality in the private sector. And with that team, you can work to make good policies happen. Without that team, you may have good ministers, but it is very difficult to translate visions, ideas into actual policies which are workable, and then to make the policies implementable.

So, what sustains it? Partly it is the social ethos that in Singapore, the right way to do things is to find the best person for the job and put him in the most important job. And that is something which is accepted as the way things are done in society.

I think there is also a sense in Singapore that the system is meant to work this way. And if something does not work this way, well, along the way there will be an eyebrow raised, whispers – more than whispers – and objections. And if you have not done the right thing, it will be put right.

I think also what enables us to do it, is that we take the approach that when you run a public service, you have to remunerate the officers properly. What is his value? What is his contribution? How important are the decisions he is making? What is the quality of person I want for that job? Then, what is a reasonable amount for him to be paid so that I get that quality of person to do that significant job? And therefore, compared to other governments in Singapore, our public officers, ministers, as well as civil servants, I think are paid well. Not better than the private sector, but something close to what is in the private sector. And that has helped us to keep up the quality of government in Singapore.

It is very hard to do that, even in a small country. I think in a big country, the challenge would be greater. But if you have a team of leaders who have a clear vision and can set the tone on the way things are done, over a period of 10, 20 years, I think you can change the ethos in the country, so that this is accepted. And it is a system which is able to sustain itself into future generations.

When we started doing this, nobody was sure whether it would last beyond the first generation. The first generation of leaders, they were special. But the next generation, we do not know yet. The first generation of population, they have a special experience. They have been through a lot to become independent. The next generation are the inheritors. Will they be the same? And yet, fortunately, we have been able to carry through from generation to generation. I was the third Prime Minister. We are now in the fourth Prime Minister of Singapore. And so far, we have been able to keep it working. But I would say, it is a continuing effort, and there is never a time you can say, “Let us relax, it will run by itself, autopilot is fine.” You look at very big and well-established countries, and you can see sometimes autopilots have gone wrong, and we want to make sure that never happens to our country.