Want China Times
Date: 2015-06-01
By: Staff Reporter

Singapore’s late founding father Lee Kuan Yew predicted back in the 1970s that

Lee Kuan Yew, right, meets the Chinese president Jiang Zemin in Beijing, May 18, 1993. (Photo/Xinhua)

China would one day try to manipulate countries in Southeast Asia to serve its interests, according to recently unsealed documents from the UK’s National Archives.

Lee, who passed away in March at the age of 91, told British ministers and members of parliament he met during a visit to the country in 1974 that China still needed about 10 years to establish effective second-strike nuclear capability. Once it achieved this, however, Lee predicted it would start to try to influence the world, especially its neighbors, to turn them into the type of countries it wanted them to be.

Even if China did not adopt an expansionist philosophy, it would try to manipulate neighboring countries and therefore Southeast Asian nations must keep Beijing’s interests in mind when dealing with China, he said at the time.     [FULL  STORY]