The United States may have less than half a century left as the
dominant global economic power before it will share top billing
with China and India, former Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew
has predicted.

"The first half of the 21st century, a large part of it, will still be the American," Mr Lee, 86, told the US PBS network. "But I believe the second half you'll have to share top places with China and also with India. Make space for them, too."

Mr Lee was the founder of modern Singapore and the country's prime minister from 1959 until 1990. He now holds the title of minister mentor in Singapore's Government. His son, Lee Hsien Loong, is the Prime Minister.

"In 30 years they'll have an economy, not per capita but in total terms, bigger than the USA", and China was now building political and strategic influence to protect its economic growth, Mr Lee said. "People already treat her differently, because they know that this is going to be a big fellow around the block."

China was handling its growing influence in a "very pragmatic, almost cold-blooded and clinical fashion", he said. "On the American side, there's been some vacillation: first China is a strategic adversary, then China is a strategic partner, then China is a stakeholder, and then China is not carrying its weight."

India would take longer to challenge the US position because it was more ethnically diverse than China, Mr Lee said. "If India were as well-organised as China it will go at a different speed but it's going at the speed it is because it is India. It's not one nation; it's many nations."

He said the wars that had bogged down the US in Iraq and Afghanistan were distracting it from focusing on its place in the global economy. "The 21st century will be a contest for supremacy in the Pacific because that's where the growth will be."