Mahbubani was in Kuala Lumpur recently to promote his memoir 'Living the Asian Century: An Undiplomatic Memoir'. — Photos: RAJA FAISAL HISHAN/The Star
AS he rattles on about the geopolitical issues of the region and the world, it is hard to picture this urbane cosmopolitan as an impoverished, young boy in 1950s Singapore.
And that was one reason why he decided to talk about his humble past in his latest book, says former Singapore diplomat, illustrious academic and celebrated author Kishore Mahbubani.
“People look at me now and assume that I must have come from a very successful middle-class, upper middle-class family. But actually, as you can see in the book, I came from a very poor family.”
Mahbubani, 76, was in Kuala Lumpur recently to promote his memoir Living the Asian Century: An Undiplomatic Memoir.
He says when he turned 75 last year, he decided it was time to share his life story.
“Many Singaporeans today would not recognise the 1950s and 1960s Singapore I described in the book.
“And unlike my other books where my goal was to influence people and change the world, I had no major hopes and aspirations for this memoir. I just wanted to share my life story – about the ups and downs in my life, especially my difficult childhood.”
In some ways, he adds, he also wanted to send a message to the young people: “Don't be troubled by adversity.”
“In my case, paradoxically, the adversity I went through has proven to be a big asset, because the adversity, the poverty I had, has made me stronger and helped me get to where I am now.
“For example, at the age of six, I was put in a special feeding programme in school because I was technically undernourished. Most young Singaporeans now have had a very comfortable upbringing and they’ve never experienced that. They've never had to deal with much hardship.”
To his surprise, the memoir has become a hit – it was recently Number 1 on the Bestseller List in the Singapore Sunday Times for five weeks in a row.
“None of my previous books have ever been a number-one bestseller!” he notes with a smile.
'Living The Asian Century: An Undiplomatic Memoir' is now available at major bookstores.
The memoir is Mahbubani’s tenth book.
His first book was published in 1998, a collection of essays titled Can Asians Think?.
Other non-fiction writings include The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift Of Global Power To The East, published in 2008 and Has China Won? The Chinese Challenge To American Primacy in 2020.
The distinguished diplomat, who once served as Singapore’s United Nations representative and became the president of UN Security Council in 2001, is also known for his sharp analyses of regional and global politics, especially his take on the Asian Century.
While in Malaysia, Mahbubani also had an opportunity to meet young Malaysians and give a public lecture entitled "US–China Rivalry: Will Southeast Asia Come Out on Top?" at Taylor’s University.
“But what I've discovered from my memoir is that people are more interested when you tell stories,” he muses.
A difficult childhood
The second of four children and only son in a Hindu Sindhi household, Mahbubani grew up in a small terrace house on Onan Road in Singapore.
His family’s poverty was due to his father’s inability to keep a job for long because of his drinking and gambling habits. After heavy drinking, he would also become violent, getting into fights.
In Living the Asian Century, Mahbubani recalls the many times he had to drag his drunken father home from the kopitiam and streets. However, he was not violent at home although he did have raging fits that he took out on objects around the house.
Mahbubani recounts how after one of his drunken spats on the eve of Diwali, his father had thrown out all their festive stuff including their new Diwali clothes and even a brand-new television into the yard, before setting them on fire.
The huge bonfire, Mahbubani writes, is still talked about by his old neighbours as “the festival of lights, done rather differently.”
When he was 14, his father was jailed for nine months for criminal breach of trust after he gambled away some of his employer’s money.
“Even though my sisters and I resented (and sometimes hated) our father when we were young, I came to forgive him when I understood that life had dealt him a very bad hand,” he writes.
If his father was a traumatic figure, his mother was the family’s inspirational rock, Mahbubani says.
Her advice to her children was whatever troubles you have in life, never complain: “You just pretend all is well. You must be dignified. You must be brave.”
As he writes in his memoir, “In her words, ‘even if you are feeling hungry, don’t show it. Put butter on your lips and smile...For a large part of my life, I walked around with deep insecurities while smiling with metaphorical butter on my lips to give the impression that all was well.”
His mother’s resilience amid the adversities in their life when he was a child made him a stronger person, he says.
His mother was his family’s inspirational rock, Mahbubani says.
“My mother never broke down. So, how can I break down even with all the ups and downs I experienced in my life?”
While his personal travails shaped his early life, Mahbubani notes there were also larger national forces at play as he weaves his views on governance and international diplomacy in his memoir.
“The first stroke of good luck in my life was to be born in Singapore,” he writes.
“Looking back to my childhood, I can see clearly how a well-governed state affected my life.”
He tells Sunday Star, “You see, I have first cousins who grew up in Guyana, Surinam in South America; in Ghana and Nigeria in Africa; in Japan; in Hong Kong; and of course, in India. Many of them went into business and were very successful – some of them were very prosperous.
“But most of them didn't have the advantage of going to university as I did. If I hadn't gotten a scholarship from the Singapore government, I would never have been in university, and I would have never been where I am.
“Therefore, Singapore played a key role in my ability to escape from the clutches of poverty and enjoy a rich life of diplomacy and learning.”
A diplomatic life
Mahbubani says he got into diplomacy “by accident”.
“I got the President’s Scholarship in 1967 to study at the then University of Singapore by accident. And when you get a scholarship, you are bonded to the Singapore government. So, I was obliged to work for the Singapore government for five years after I graduate, and they assigned me to the foreign ministry.”
Luckily, I took to diplomacy like a fish to water. I enjoyed it enormously, studying international relations. It was completely new for me at the time.”
Originally, Mahbubani, who majored in philosophy in university, had planned to stay at the foreign ministry for only three to four years.
“I wanted to quit after a few years and go back to university to study philosophy further. My dream was to become philosophy professor.”
As a Masters student at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, however, he discovered that academic politics was worse than bureaucratic politics in diplomacy. “And that's why I decided, oh, actually, bureaucracy is not so bad.”
Still, when he later returned to Singapore after his global journey in diplomacy, Mahbubani decided to join academia as he had earlier planned and became the founding dean of the National University of Singapore’s new Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in 2004.
After all, even as a diplomat, Mahbubani had remained ever the student – learning on the job about geopolitics and studying how great powers behave.
His philosophy education meanwhile gave him “a free and independent spirit to question conventional wisdom on all counts” as a diplomat.
“I used the logic of philosophy a lot (in debates and negotiations). I think if I hadn't studied philosophy, I would not have been as successful, either in diplomacy or in academia,” says Mahbubani who names Karl Marx and John Rawls as his favourite philosophers.
His other experiences as a diplomat were grittier, especially on his first diplomatic assignment overseas as the charge d’affaires of the Singaporean Embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 1973.
“Phnom Penh then was a city under siege from the Khmer Rouge forces and the city was shelled every day when I was there.
“I even came close to being bombed when a 500-pound (226.8kg) bomb fell on the palace of the President, which was next to my diplomatic residence.
“At the time, I was having a siesta in the afternoon, and the whole bed was lifted up into the air by the explosion and I was thrown off the bed.
“Luckily, I remembered people’s advice: ‘Get under the staircase, get under the staircase’.
“So, I ran down, and I got under the staircase just in time, because when the second bomb fell, it broke all the windows and sent shards of glass flying everywhere.
"That was lucky, because I could have died from the broken glass,” he shares.
As a diplomat, Mahbubani relished meeting world leaders and ambassadors from Ronald Reagan to Margaret Thatcher, Francois Mitterrand, Helmut Kohl and Henry Kissinger.
However, he says he learned most from Asian leaders, especially the Singaporean forefathers.
“Oh, yes. In my memoir, I describe how much I learned from three great men, Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Keng Swee and S. Rajaratnam.
“I always enjoyed talking to them, and I knew they were great men.
“I thought they were great men by Singapore standards but after meeting world leaders, I realised that they (Lee, Goh and Rajaratnam) were great leaders not just by Singapore standards, but by global standards. They were quite remarkable people."
He says Lee was incredibly shrewd in the way he analysed international development and current affairs, so he was brave enough to take big risks geopolitically.
“For example, in the 1980s, Mr Lee expelled an American diplomat from Singapore. Now, for a small country to expel the diplomat of a big country like the United States, it takes a lot of courage; it could have led to the US taking very strong action against Singapore.
"But Lee knew how to manage the situation, because he knew, in those days that the US needed Singapore against the Soviet Union. So therefore, he could take that sort of risk,” he says, calling Lee a very skilled geopolitical player.
“He knew how to take a risk in such a way without endangering Singapore.”
Mahbubani says he learned a lot from the Singaporean forefathers Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Keng Swee and S. Rajaratnam.
Mahbubani believes that Asia has been blessed with good, strong leaders.
“I think Xi Jinping is making China stronger. I think Narendra Modi of India is making his country stronger. And I think Joko Widodo has made Indonesia stronger.”
He also feels lucky to witness China’s rise and the growth of Asean.
“I believe that one reason why Asean succeeded is because we had good, strong leaders like Suharto, Lee Kuan Yew and Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad in the 1980s. Of course, you also had, unfortunately, a bad, strong leader like Ferdinand Marcos Sr, who was very corrupt. And that was why he had to run away from his country, sadly.”
And on the question of whether China has won, as he discussed in his earlier book, Mahbubani says, “Not yet.”
“But, in this race, the US does not seem to have a strategy while China does. So, a country with the strategy will win,” he says, before conceding, “Still, it is a huge mistake to underestimate the US. It’s a huge and successful country and anyone who underestimates it will be in trouble”.
He notes that the world is an imperfect place and that is also why he wrote his memoir.
"For one, there is inequality in the world. So, if there is inequality in the world, there will be inequality in the UN too, as the UN is a mirror to the world."
But young Asians especially those in South-East Asia should not be pessimistic, he stresses.
“The next 20 to 30 years are very promising for Asia. We are entering the Asian Century.
"And the centre of gravity of the world’s economy is moving towards this region, so, they should not become pessimistic for the future and look at all the opportunities."
Ultimately, the most important thing the South-East Asian youth need to do is to protect Asean, he stresses.
“The most important thing is to cherish Asean, fall in love with Asean.
"It is an incredible, wonderful organisation; no other region can claim a track record as successful as Asean.
"Asean is like a Ming vase that is very precious and we need to do our best to protect it,” Mahbubani advises.
* Living The Asian Century: An Undiplomatic Memoir is now available at major bookstores. Look out for more conversation with former Singapore diplomat and author Kishore Mahbubani in the next edition of the Sunday Star.
