Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his delegation made an official visit to China from Sept. 19 to 21, 2017.

The visit was widely reported in China, Singapore and around the world.

Thus, it came as no surprise when topics such as Singapore politics recently attracted interest on Zhihu, a Chinese user-generated question-and-answer website, which is China's version of Quora.

On a Zhihu thread called, "What do you think of Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong?" -- under the topic of "Singapore" -- a top answer that talked about PM Lee and the late Lee Kuan Yew has attracted more than 1,400 upvotes since it was posted on Sept. 22, 2017 -- which is considerably high for a foreign affairs topic on the site.

The thread has also garnered more than 1 million views so far.

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On PM Lee and Lee Kuan Yew

Here's what Li Jianqiu, a popular Chinese netizen who has over 60,000 fans and 5 million upvotes on his profile on Zhihu, wrote that placed his post as the top answer on the thread:

Translation: If you place a politician like Lee Hsien Loong in Europe, America or Japan, he would be the cream of the crop. So far, I’ve never seen a European or American leader who is better than Lee Hsien Loong.

If you don’t believe me, compare him individually with these leaders: Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Shinzo Abe — who’s better than Lee Hsien Loong?

Lee Hsien Loong was belittled by many, but the reason is not because Lee Hsien Loong himself wasn’t good enough. If we look at Lee Hsien Loong using our standards of measure on Western leaders, then what he has done is way beyond satisfactory. He has withstood a lot of pressure, especially the pressure of populism (populism has risen in recent years in Singapore under the spur of opposition parties). The problem doesn’t lie with Lee Hsien Loong, but with his late father -- Lee Kuan Yew was too outstanding, too outstanding that all of Lee Hsien Loong’s endeavours have been overshadowed.

But leaders like Lee Kuan Yew are rare. If Singapore happens to have one, then Singapore is lucky, and if Singapore doesn’t have one, it’s still normal. The fact that Lee Kuan Yew was able to pull a country out of the mires of colonisation and swiftly build one of the world’s most advanced countries in a matter of a few decades is almost as if a Hollywood scene was played in Singapore. All of this was accomplished because of an extraordinary leader like Lee Kuan Yew.

When Lee Kuan Yew made his predictions on various political matters, he was never afraid of being “politically correct”. Before China's economic reform and the opening up of the state, he resisted the politically correct thing to do and started to praise China. After 1989, he continued to support China. When Hong Kong was handed over, Lee Kuan Yew even ">criticised Chris Patten (the last governor of Hong Kong). But Singapore is a small country; you could very well put political pressure on Lee Kuan Yew and pressurise him into not speaking. Yet Lee Kuan Yew held onto his judgement. It’s regrettable that Lee Kuan Yew was born in a small country; if he was born in a large one, his abilities might be better demonstrated.

Even though Lee Hsien Loong is better than politicians from Europe and America, he’s indeed not as outstanding as Lee Kuan Yew, especially when he made a mistake in his judgment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the events that happened during the recent Lee family feud. But I will not dismiss Lee Hsien Loong just because he backed the TPP; he’s not even China’s leader. He’s Singapore’s leader, and what he did was right and proper. He may be a little rash, though, but after that he did prevent more losses in time. Isn’t that what a good politician does? Is there any leader who is completely blameless? Flawlessness doesn’t exist among leaders. Even Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping aren’t perfect.

I see that there are other comments on Lee Kuan Yew (on this thread), so I will say a little more.

Under Lee Kuan Yew’s leadership, Singapore had racial harmony, especially when it comes to handling Muslim affairs. I’ve never heard any problems on it. But has France achieved that? Has England achieved that? Has America achieved that? Has Germany achieved that?

Has the Heavenly Empire (China) achieved that?

Piecing together the puzzle

Li is one of the many Chinese netizens who is observing Singapore's politics in light of the recent high-level meeting between Singapore's and China's leaders.

And sure enough, discussions such as these have gathered interest on Zhihu since the meeting, with some of the more popular articles on the site commenting that our ties with China have been fluctuating, realistic, but understandable.

As for us, there is still much more that we can make sense of in our future relations with China, especially if we continue to observe China's state media, the various overseas media coverage, and our very own views.

But for now, nothing is set in stone.

States only have common interests. Let's hope they align.

Top image composite image via Lee Hsien Loong's FB and Wikimedia Commons