Singaporean scholar: Western perspective towards China 'distorted'

Recently, a video of a Singaporean scholar rebutting Western journalists' "smear-style" questions has gone viral.

In the video, which was shot during a forum on China held in Singapore in 2021, a Western reporter claimed China's success was based on "high-level repression" in his question. In response, Kishore Mahbubani, a Singapore-based scholar and former diplomat, said the question shows the "distorted perspective" of reality in the media's perception of China.

"If the Communist Party of China only relied on repression to stay in power, it would not create the most dynamic economy in the world. China is by far the most dynamic economy in the world and delivered the fastest-growing economy for 30 years," Mahbubani said.

Mahbubani explained that China's achievement came through educating the Chinese people to an unprecedented level, adding 129 million Chinese left China freely in 2019 and all came back — almost twice the population of the UK.

He also mentioned China's climate change policy is far more responsible than those of the United States, which has not once, but twice, withdrawn from global environment protocols, with the Bush administration leaving the Kyoto protocol and Trump administration leaving the Paris Accord. By contrast, the largest reforestation project in the world is being carried out by China.

He said that the West now wants China to pay the economic price for its carbon flow, yet the West does not want to pay for what it put into the atmosphere, given the US and Europe are historically the largest and second-largest emitters of greenhouse gases.

Mahbubani's remarks were highly acclaimed by some Twitter users.