(Excerpt from Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World)
The Chinese have concluded that their best strategy is to build a strong and prosperous future, and use their huge and increasingly highly skilled and educated workers to out-sell and out-build all others. They will avoid any action that will sour up relations with the U.S. To challenge a stronger and technologically superior power like the U.S. will abort their “peaceful rise.
… The Chinese have calculated that they need 30 to 40, maybe 50, years of peace and quiet to catch up, build up their system, change it from the communist system to the market system. They must avoid the mistakes made by Germany and Japan. Their competition for power, influence, and resources led in the last century to two terrible wars…The Russian mistake was that they put so much into military expenditure and so little into civilian technology. So their economy collapsed. I believe the Chinese leadership has learnt that if you compete with America in armaments, you will lose. You will bankrupt yourself. So, avoid it, keep your head down, and smile, for 40 or 50 years.