(Bloomberg) -- Since Deng Xiaoping visited in 1978, Chinese leaders have looked for lessons in stewardship from Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore, a city-state with 0.4 percent the population of China and a landmass about half the size of Shanghai’s Pudong district.

Countries around the world have lavished praise on the Singapore Model -- a state ruled by a single party, defined by robust economic growth, low crime and startling cleanliness -- that brought international renown to Lee, who died Monday. None took Singapore’s example as seriously as China, which sends hundreds of Communist Party cadres to the city-state every year to study it.

“They think that the so-called Singapore model, single-party rule maybe can provide them something to maintain the Communist Party’s rule without losing too much in the process,” said Huang Jing, who has taught classes full of Chinese officials as a professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.

Echoes of Lee’s influence are evident in China’s economic reform plans, announced in 2013, to allow a greater role for the market while maintaining the party’s grip on power, and in President Xi Jinping’s bid to eliminate rampant corruption. China is also seeking to emulate Singapore’s shift away from a manufacturing boom that put it on the path to growth.

Lee was an “old friend” of the Chinese people and pioneered the nation’s ties with Singapore, Xi said in a telegram to Singapore President Tony Tan, according to a statement on China’s foreign ministry website. “Mr. Lee Kuan Yew was the founder of Singapore, and a strategist and statesman who was widely respected by the international community.”

Chinese officials frequently express their admiration for Singapore’s blend of authoritarian state-capitalism, its low crime and cleanliness. Deng was the first senior Chinese official to visit Singapore, meeting Lee a month before he was formally named paramount leader at a party gathering in December 1978. It was at that event that Deng gave his backing to reforms that would lead to 30 years of economic growth.

David Fuller's view

All credit to China’s Deng Xiaoping and also current President Xi Jinping for their interest in what Lee Kuan Yew achieved with Singapore. 

However, Lee Kuan Yew had little time for communism and there is a very important message in his interview with Charlie Rose below.  Lee says unequivocally that China’s current command capitalism will be no match for America’s demand capitalism.  It is not difficult to understand why, and the big question is how China moves beyond the corruption of a command system which is subject to little external supervision or regulation.