I chose cctv-america for the irony.
Some argue that the Brits 'parachuted' LKY into Singapore to help them (the Brits) in their military struggle with Malaysian communists. (known as the Malaya emergency), it is now an almost forgotten sector of the cold war.
Australian Avro Lincoln bomber dropping 500lb bombs on
communist rebels in the Malayan jungle (c. 1950)
Whether that is true or not true, LKY jailed lots of left wingers in his first years in office. It didn't stop the insurrection though,
The Wikipedia entry comments:
The Malayan Emergency (Malay: Darurat) was a Malayan guerrilla war fought betweenCommonwealth armed forces and the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), the military arm of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP), from 1948–60.
The Malayan Emergency was the colonial government's term for the conflict. The MNLA termed it the Anti-British National Liberation War.[2] The rubber plantations and tin mining industries had pushed for the use of the term "emergency" since their losses would not have been covered by Lloyd's insurers if it had been termed a "war".[3]
Despite the communists' defeat in 1960, communist leader Chin Peng renewed the insurgency in 1967; it lasted until 1989, and became known as the Communist Insurgency War (Second Malayan Emergency). Although Australian and British armed forces had fully withdrawn from Malaya (by then known as Peninsular Malaysia) years earlier, the insurgency still failed.
So where's the irony? Simply that LKY's People's Action Party and its program for building Singapore to its present prosperity became a model for Deng Xiaoping's program in The People's Republic of China, once the Communist Party of China rejected Mao Zedong's socialist policies.
Lee's PAP and Deng's CPC are like peas in a pod.
