PM Lee was addressing some 300 defence ministers, officials and security experts from 27 countries at a conference here last night.
They included Japan's Defence Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Lieutenant-General Ma Xiaotian, China's Deputy Chief of General Staff in the People's Liberation Army, Mongolia's Defence Minister Jamyandori Batkhuyag and Singapore's Defence Minister Teo Chee Hean.
In its seventh year, the Shangri-La Dialogue, organised by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, is an annual forum to discuss current geopolitical issues.
31 May 2008: Straits Times
AS ASIA takes its place in the sun, will its most important player, China, unsettle the international order, or peacefully integrate with the rest of the world?
The Beijing Olympic Games in August will help determine the answer, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong yesterday.
Referring to the protests that dogged the Olympic torch relay last month, he warned that 'more unexpected incidents could arise, even during the Games themselves'.
How China handles these, and how the world responds, will have a far-reaching impact: It will determine 'whether narrow interest groups will succeed in defining the international agenda on China, or whether China and the West can rise above these vexing issues to pursue the strategic opportunities together'.
This in turn would determine if China's emergence unsettles the international order, or integrates with it peacefully, he said.
PM Lee was addressing some 300 defence ministers, officials and security experts from 27 countries at a conference here last night.
They included Japan's Defence Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Lieutenant-General Ma Xiaotian, China's Deputy Chief of General Staff in the People's Liberation Army, Mongolia's Defence Minister Jamyandori Batkhuyag and Singapore's Defence Minister Teo Chee Hean.
In its seventh year, the Shangri-La Dialogue, organised by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, is an annual forum to discuss current geopolitical issues.
Compared to earlier years, the Chinese government now sends more senior representatives to the dialogue.
In his speech, PM Lee noted that the Beijing Olympics is China's coming out party.
'If carried off well, it will boost China's confidence, and help China to continue liberalising and opening up.
'But if handled badly, it will stir up deep and angry nationalist sentiments within China, and fuel fears and suspicions of China in other countries, with serious long-term consequences.'
He called on the global community to 'understand the strength of these gut emotions in Chinese society'. Meanwhile, the Chinese need to develop a sense of their place in the world and engage the West with measured confidence.
This process will take time on both sides, said PM Lee.
But there are optimistic signs. For instance, media coverage of the Sichuan earthquake has presented a different face of China to the world, he noted.
Images of suffering, and footage of Chinese soldiers alongside foreign rescuers, provide a 'sympathetic view of a country in transition, confronting enormous problems but also mustering huge energies and unexpected capabilities, as well as displaying a shared humanity'.
Said PM Lee: 'The Sichuan earthquake showed how much China has changed and offered a glimpse of its future: a more open and self-confident nation.'
The need for the developed world to accommodate a rising Asia and to engage it constructively was a theme Mr Lee returned to in the question-and- answer session that followed.
Responding to retired US ambassador to India Robert Blackwill's question about what might threaten stability in Asia, Mr Lee said:
'If attitudes towards globalisation change, America becomes inward-looking and protectionist, if the Europeans decide that they don't have a stake in a rising Asia, and therefore instead of the rising economies being integrated into the world system, they force their way in, that's big trouble.'
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates is scheduled to address the meeting today.
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