He said the students should worry about the future of Hong Kong rather than how he had ruled Singapore.

"They ought to be having banners ready for Jiang Zemin or [Vice-Premier] Qian Qichen. Perhaps take a bus to Beijing and sit outside Zhongnanhai [party headquarters]. Then I'll say that's real courage," Mr Lee said.

Protesters shouted "shame on the dictator" when Mr Lee, former Singapore prime minister, received an honorary law doctorate from the Chinese University on Thursday.

Mr Lee, reacting to the protest at a luncheon Dec 8, said: "If it were not comic, then it's very sad and tragic." He said Singaporeans had been able to choose or remove their governments through elections since 1959 but the SAR Chief Executive was only elected by a group of 400.

"I don't have to be a dictator because I am freely elected. Anybody is free to contest me," said Mr Lee, who said Hong Kong students should be concerned about the territory's future.

"Don't worry about Singaporeans. Maybe Singaporeans are benighted, not as intelligent as Hong Kong people. Therefore they vote for Lee Kuan Yew. That's their misfortune. You are smarter, you vote for someone better than Lee Kuan Yew. So, good luck to you."

Mr Lee said the "hangover" of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement in 1989, which prompted more than a million people to take to the streets of Hong Kong, had encouraged more protests.

"Out of that has grown a culture of protest, I think, in particular, exploited or encouraged by the last governor and the Western media," he said. "There is a belief that what Hong Kong must get is a representative government - we'll elect our chief executive and we'll sack him, which was not what the British and Chinese agreed upon. There is almost an unspoken campaign to challenge and defy authority."

Chinese University student union vice-president Fung Ka-keung said elections in Singapore did not represent genuine democracy. He said student leaders had protested to Beijing, including sending a petition to the National People's Congress against the reinterpretation of the Basic Law in the right-of-abode controversy.