किशोर महबूबानी Kishore Mahbubani
Ideas
Asia is returning, not rising
For most of recorded history China and India were the world’s largest economies. Two centuries of Western dominance were the exception. Asia is going back to the centre, and the West has to accept it is no longer the dominant power.
NUS Asia Research Institute · Springer (open access)
MPH: meritocracy, pragmatism, honesty
His shorthand for why Singapore worked, taught to every incoming class at the Lee Kuan Yew School: choose the best people to lead, do what works rather than what ideology prescribes, and keep government clean. Apply all three, he tells them, and their countries can do what Singapore did.
South China Morning Post, 11 Aug 2024
One world, one boat
In The Great Convergence he argues that humanity no longer lives in separate boats. Nations are cabins on one ship, so problems like pandemics and climate change need a stronger UN and global rules, not just national captains.
They live in 193 separate cabins on the same boat.
Carnegie Council, New York, February 2013
Carnegie Council, Feb 2013 · Zurich Insurance Group board biography
America and China: a geopolitical contest, not an ideological one
China does not want to export its system and America has entered the contest with no long-term strategy. He argues the outcome will turn on economic and social performance rather than military power.
National Committee on US-China Relations · Economic Research Council
Is America a plutocracy?
At the Oxford Union he argued that American democracy now serves big business before ordinary citizens, and that this, more than China, is the real threat to American power.
ASEAN deserves a Nobel Peace Prize
Southeast Asia was once called the Balkans of Asia. ASEAN’s habit of patient, pragmatic consultation kept it at peace, and he offers that as a model for a world where the balance of power is shifting.
Lee Kuan Yew School · TEDxSingapore
Small states must think like small states
His 2017 column on Qatar argued that a small country, however rich, survives by prudence about great-power sensitivities. Singapore’s establishment pushed back hard. The full argument, and the replies, are under The debates.
The Straits Times column, 1 Jul 2017
What he says to India
He is bullish on India. Britain, he says, should give India its permanent Security Council seat, since India’s economy is now larger than Britain’s. He also says India erred by staying out of RCEP, should keep talking to rivals like China, and should learn China’s habit of thinking long term.
The British should be gracious about it.
On the UN Security Council seat, Singapore, 2025
Business Today, 8 Oct 2025 · ThePrint, 2020 · ThePrint, 2022
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