INDIA UPDATES INFO|COVID-19 CORONAVIRUS UPDATES|AUTHOR KISHORE MAHBUBANI SAID ABOUT CHINA|INDIA 2020
Channel: KNOWLEDGE INFO
Date: 2020-05-09

Kishore Mahbubani is a Singaporean academic and former diplomat. During his stint at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1971 to 2004, he served as Singapore's Permanent Representative to the United Nations and held the position of President of the United Nations Security Council between January 2001 and May 2002.
Mahbubani, a Singaporean of Indian ancestry, was born in Singapore to a Sindhi-speaking Hindu family who settled in Singapore after being displaced from the province of Sindh in the erstwhile British India during the Partition of India.[5][6] In his early years, he attended Tanjong Katong Technical School and completed his pre-university studies at St. Andrew's School. He was awarded the President's Scholarship in 1967 and graduated with a B.A. (first class honours) in philosophy from the University of Singapore in 1971. He received a M.A. in philosophy in 1976 and an honorary Ph.D. from Dalhousie University in 1995.[7]

Career
Public service
After his graduation in 1971, Mahbubani joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) as a foreign service officer. His earlier postings included Cambodia, Malaysia and the United States. From 1993 to 1998, he held the position of Permanent Secretary at MFA. Later, he served as Singapore's Permanent Representative to the United Nations. In that role, he served as President of the United Nations Security Council in January 2001 and May 2002.

Academic career
Mahbubani's academic career began when he was appointed as the Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. He is also a Professor in the Practice of Public Policy. In addition, he was a fellow at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University in 1991–92.[1] He currently also serves on the board of the International Advisory Council at Bocconi.[8]

Author
Mahbubani is best known outside Singapore for his books Can Asians Think?, Beyond The Age of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust between America and the World, and The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East.[9][10][11] His articles have appeared in newspapers such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Washington Quarterly, Survival, American Interest, the National Interest, Time, Newsweek, the Financial Times and the New York Times. His latest book, Has China Won?, was published in 2020.

In The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World, Mahbubani describes how the world has seen more positive change in the past 30 years than the past 300 years. By prescribing pragmatic solutions for improving the global order – including a 7-7-7 formula that may finally break the logjam in the United Nations Security Council – Mahbubani maps a road away from the geopolitical contours of the nineteenth century.[12] The book was reviewed, including in the Financial Times,[13] the Wall Street Journal[14] and the Washington Post.[15] The Great Convergence was selected as one of the Financial Times' books of 2013[16] and longlisted for the 2014 Lionel Gelber Prize.[17]

Mahbubani also writes regularly for Singapore's The Straits Times. In the lead up to Singapore's 50th anniversary of independence, he began a series on "big ideas" that he hoped would help Singapore succeed in the following half-century.[18]

Board memberships and honours
Mahbubani continues to serve in boards and councils of several institutions in Singapore, Europe and North America, including the Yale President's Council on International Activities, Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs, Indian Prime Minister's Global Advisory Council, Bocconi University's International Advisory Committee, World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on China, and Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize's nominating committee.

Mahbubani was conferred the Public Administration Medal (Gold) by the Singapore government in 1998. The Foreign Policy Association Medal was awarded to him in New York in June 2004 with the following opening words in the citation: "A gifted diplomat, a student of history and philosophy, a provocative writer and an intuitive thinker". Mahbubani was also listed as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines in September 2005,[19] and included in the March 2009 Financial Times list of Top 50 individuals who would shape the debate on the future of capitalism.[20] Mahbubani was selected as one of Foreign Policy Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2010 and 2011[21] and one