Lee Kuan Yew should be a role model for nationalists across the West. He understood not only human capital, racial differences, and ethnic conflict, but navigated these realities to build a thriving nation for his people.

Singapore also practices what can be called biopolitics: policies that affect the biological character of the people through immigration, reproduction, and identity formation.

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Lee had no doubt that “talent,” including intelligence, had a significant genetic component. He cited Western IQ research and twin studies showing that intelligence differences between individuals are 50 to 80 percent genetic.

Lee understood racial differences. Observers had long noticed that Malays were easy-living and “lethargic,” while Chinese were driven and entrepreneurial. On trips to Europe, Lee remarked on the differences between efficient Germans and easy-going Italians.

Lee was also impressed by Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve. He said:

The bell curve is a fact of life. The blacks on average score 85 percent on IQ and it is accurate, nothing to do with culture. The whites score on average 100. Asians score more. These are realities that, if you do not accept, will lead to frustration because you will be spending money on wrong assumptions and the results cannot follow.

In an article for The Economist, Lee predicted that Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, coastal China, and Singapore would become very prosperous in the next century, while the rest of Asia would not. National differences were due to “a people’s culture, heredity, and organizational strengths.” Lee was right.

East Asia is the only region in the “global south” with countries that have been able to equal or even surpass Western standards of living. The rest, in the words of Francis Fukuyama, are perpetually trying to “get to Denmark.”