Lee Kuan Yew among foreigners honoured for helping China to open up
- China recognises statesmen, engineers, entrepreneurs and diplomats whose skills played a vital part in reforming economy and elevating country to powerhouse status
China honoured 10 foreigners on Tuesday, including Singapore’s late founding father Lee Kuan Yew, for their part in realising the policy of reform and opening up that propelled China’s economic miracle.
The recipients of the China Reform Friendship Medals are foreigners Beijing regards as having played a key role in helping China open up to the world economically and diplomatically.
Lee, once praised by Chinese President Xi Jinping as “an old friend of the Chinese people”, was awarded for leading Singapore to “deeply engage” in China’s reform and opening. The city state has been an inspiration for China on how to achieve economic prosperity under one-party rule.
Two Japanese – former prime minister Masayoshi Ohira and industrialist Konosuke Matsushita – made the list, lauded respectively for their contribution to normalising Sino-Japanese diplomatic relations and bringing electronics giant Panasonic to China’s newly opened market.
Maurice Greenberg, the former chief executive of American International Group, is also an award recipient. Greenberg was among the first American people to do business in China following Richard Nixon’s efforts to re-establish ties in the 1970s.
The other American on the list is Robert Lawrence Kuhn, a long-time adviser to Chinese leaders and the host of Closer to China with RL Kuhn on the state-run China Global Television Network, lauded for his devotion to “telling [the story of] contemporary China to the world”.
