Praising the Singapore leader Lee Kuan Yew who died a few days ago, the diplomat Henry Kissinger pointed to his economic achievement. "Lee and his colleagues raised the annual per capita income of their population from $500 at the time of independence in 1965 to roughly $55,000 today. In a generation, Singapore became an international financial center, the leading intellectual metropolis of Southeast Asia, the location of the region’s major hospitals and a favored site for conferences on international affairs."