TR EMERITUS

Can $4G can solve this problem or not? The shift to remote work carries an inherent risk. If a white collar job here can be done from home, it can be offshored somewhere cheaper. Could someone else do it more cheaply from KL, JB, Bangkok, Mumbai or Manila? No need for MNCs to employ overpaid, unhappy, lazy and ungrateful TOC or TRE reading PMETs in their regional HQs. Can sack all these ingrates and employ hardworking, cheap labour working in KL, JB, Bangkok, Mumbai or Manila. And they can save on FT salaries here: no need to pay condo rents for mamas who then give their employers a paid reputation by sneering at S’porean uncles and aunties for being poor. Juz saying. For the record, The 4G leaders failed their legitimacy test: Why PAP aiming for 65% of the popular vote. (Btw, written in 2018: Why even with 4G donkeys, PAP will retain power.) And based on what PM, Lawrence Wong and Shanmugan said the PAP is very aware that their legitimacy is waning: Legitimacy problem for the PAP as 9% of voters get smarter But the bad, sad news is how they are trying to fix the legitimacy problem. Instead of listening to Tharman’s views (see below), the PAP are trying to shift the goal posts, lowering the high water mark of success: now only aiming for 65% of the popular vote as their high water mark of popularity and success, not -70%+ mark of the past: How the PAP plans to fix its legitimacy problem. And we must be a more tolerant democracy, with greater space for divergent views, and a more active civil society, without the public discourse becoming divisive or unsettling the majority.It will be good for Singapore if we evolve in these three ways. They will each help ensure stability in our democracy in the years to come. And they will tap on the energies and ideas of a younger generation of Singaporeans and their desire to be involved in public affairs. Part of Tharman’s FB post   Cynical Investor Cynical Investor blogs at Thoughts of a Cynical Investor   .  Read More →

As mentioned in an earlier post, “The Real Damage to China,” one of the biggest stories to go relatively uncovered, was the cancellation of the Initial Public Offering (IPO) of Ant Financial Group (“Ant”). The story was overshadowed by the results of the US election, and while the identity of the US President and his (they’ve always been men) policies are significant to the Asia-Pacific region, the story of the cancellation of Ant’s IPO was perhaps more so for the region’s wellbeing. Not only does the Ant IPO involve the world’s second (and according to Purchasing Parity, the largest) economy in the world, the story also underlines the type of economic models for countries in Asia-Pacific should pursue. How does Singapore fit into this debate? Well, while Singapore has been held up in the Western world as the great beacon of stability and safety for Western free market capitalism, Singapore has also been a role model for countries in the Asia-Pacific region that looked forward to getting rich quickly without giving up political control. The biggest fans of the Singapore model were non other than China’s Communist Party (CCP). Singapore’s founding Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew fondly recalls how Deng Xiaoping, who was then China’s Paramount Leader, visited Singapore and reportedly told him “If only all I had was Shanghai.” Lee Kuan Yew returned the favor and became a groupie of all things China, so much so that he was openly disdainful of the other Asian Giant (in part because he got snubbed by Indira Gandhi, who allegedly asked him “Where is Singapore on the map”) While the Singapore-China relationship hasn’t worked out as Mr. Lee had hopped for (who can forget the royal screwing Singapore received over the China-Shuzhou Industrial Park Co, Ltd – which only turned a profit when the chaps in Shuzhou became majority shareholders), the CCP has been a keen understudy of Mr. Lee’s PAP and rightly or wrongly, China’ incredible success from changing from an economic minor contributing barely two percent of the world’s economy in 1979 to nine point three in 2010 ( https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/Lin.pdf). To his credit, Deng Xiaoping had perhaps raised more people outside of absolute poverty than anyone else in history. It goes without saying that the CCP has grabbed the headlines for this transformation, pretty much in the same way that the PAP has done in Singapore. While Deng Xiaoping’s opening has undoubtedly raised millions out of poverty, it has created a slight problem – namely it made the case for strong authoritarian rule. The many Indian business people I’ve dealt with constantly point out that China succeeds because of its’ government, while the bits of India that function, do so despite the government. One of my favourite Indian executives said it best – “When you tell Indian authorities that you have $10,000,000 to invest and will create jobs, they’ll say “why,” but when you go to China, they will say “When” One only has to compare the 2008 Beijing Olympics to the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games. Beijing put up an incredible show, Delhi couldn’t get toilet paper into the Games Village. Communist China gets things done while democratic India does not. The comparison is not lost in this part of the world. It also doesn’t help that the only other big democracy, namely the USA has been, for the last four years, a mess. I don’t deny that a competent autocrat can do good. I live in Singapore, which, despite being increasingly expensive, remains relatively safe and clean and our currency remains respectable. While we may have a veneer of a democracy (there really is an election every five years), it’s sort of a “guided” one, where things are generally dictated by our founding father from his grave. However, the problem with autocratic systems is that you have a situation where there’s no guarantee that that the proverbial top dog will remain benevolent forever or that the successors will remain so in perpetuity. In Singapore Lee Kuan Yew argued that he needed to step down because he wanted to prepare the nation for life without him, a matter in which he is correct. However, he didn’t quite let go and fade away and today, Singapore, while functioning well in so many ways, seems to have become a prisoner in its old business model. Now, take that model and multiply it by many times when it comes to China. Deng Xiaoping had the decency to relinquish his titles and two of his successors (Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao) did what they needed to do and then gave up the top job after a decade. Sure, they have played politics but they’ve done so from behind the scenes. Now, you have Xi Jinping, who decided that he’s never going to stepdown. While Mr. Xi, has done some reasonable things like reign in corruption (I only describe it as reasonable in as much as it was probably necessary to reign in corruption, but it was probably also an excuse to purge the system of his rivals), Mr. Xi is the one Chinese leader, who bans Winnie the Pooh in China because someone on the internet compared him to Winnie the Pooh. This being the leader of a China that is supposed to be far removed from the dark days of Mao (who, for the record killed more people than the entire Second World War, due to his managerial incompetence). The other area where the Chinese model appears to be the magnified version of the Singapore one, is in where the heroes are. Here in Singapore, the economic story is either about a multinational pumping lots of money into the country or a government controlled one doing all sorts of things to make Singapore Inc shine. In China the story of great economic success is inevitably about the State-Owned Giants that are competing with their American counterparts to climb up the Fortune 500 rankings. While the giants have great turnover, the real success of China comes from small private enterprises in places like the Pearl River Delta that don’t have state resources and are starved of capital. As such, they have had to become innovative and creative in order to survive. Mr. Ma’s Alibaba is what you’d call one of these small enterprises made good and “Ant” is what you’d call the very type of enterprise that China needs. Mr. Ma understood that Chinese banks, despite their size, don’t serve customers well and so he used technology to make life easier. While the State-Owned version of the financial system is generally speaking, awful, the private fintech version of the system founded by the two Mr. Ma’s (Jack Ma of Alibaba and Ma Huateng of Tencent Holdings Limited) works. Not only have China’s natives taken to using QR codes to skip the local financial system (so much so that the beggars in China prefer QR codes to cash), the system pioneered by the two Mr. Ma’s scares the American banking system. Mr. Ma of Alibaba is the type of ant that China needs. Small and diligent enough to find creative ways to do things. It was of course all very well, when he stuck to building his business and giving folksy talks to the Western world. However, things got a little different when he accused China’s regulators of running the banking system like a “pawnshop” and stated that “The game in the future is about innovation, not just regulatory skills." https://fortune.com/2020/11/07/jack-ma-ant-ipo-suspended-china/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGzgpArH5AI Let’s put it this way, good governance is an important element to creating prosperity. China is the prime example. It floundered under Mao but prospered under Deng. However, Mr. Ma has a point when he states that it is not the only element in creating sustainable prosperity and that good governance or good regulators are not much unless you have a culture of innovation and creativity. Entrepreneurs can emerge without good regulators (entrepreneurs for example pop up and get things done in the crappiest of places), while good regulators are pointless if you don’t have the people get things done. To most people, it would be an obvious point. To the CCP it was a point that said that Mr. Ma needed to be taken down a peg and Mr. Xi himself got involved. The message should be clear to China’s entrepreneurs. No matter how clever you are or how much you create for the nation, you are ultimately subordinate the head of the CCP and this shouldn’t be limited to the CCP but to all authoritarian states who believe that authoritarianism is good for business. Mr. Ma has made billions in China and let’s remember that his first IPO in 2014 was on the New York Stock Exchange. Did he, a member of the Communist Party, actually trust the Communist Party to protect prosperity? The third world has plenty of small “Ants” who are hard working and creative. Increasing education means they have the ability to understand new technologies and to be innovative. This means that they have the ability to cut through the power of established enterprises that have a cozy relationship with the government. Is it something that authoritarian states can tolerate in the long run? This an essential part of creating prosperity. Third World is filled with Ants are an essential part of raising prosperity.   Tang Li *Although I’ve been based mainly in Singapore for nearly two decades, I’ve had the privilege of being able meet people who have crossed borders and cultures. I’ve befriended ministers and ambassadors and worked on projects involving a former head of state. Yet, at the same time, I’ve had the privilege of befriending migrant labourers and former convicts. All of them have a story to tell. All of them add to the fabric of life. I hope to express the stories that inspire us to create life as it should be.      Read More →

Here are some details for those who have been following MRavi’s latest post on the defamation suit commenced by him against Remy Choo Zhengxi. Remy Choo and Peter Low were my lawyers for about 14 months (Dec 2012-Jan 2014). In those 14 months, they charged me close to a whopping $110,000. I had paid them around $70,000 and begun to realise something was amiss in the way they were handling my case. I decided to discharge them after considering all factors and they then proceeded to send me a Final Bill of $40,000. It was the first time they had provided a breakdown for an invoice and I was appalled to see dishonest indications in the invoice. I was also very disturbed by the fact that they had already invoiced me about $110,000 way before the trial stage, where many more procedures had yet to be dealt with. M Ravi then asked Remy and Co to go tax the $70k in Court that I had already paid, but they ignored the request. In 2016, Remy and Co applied to High Court to tax the Final Bill which remained unpaid due to the dispute. The Court taxed the bill to $18,000. ($40k to $18k is at least 112% overcharging.) Remy Choo and Christine Low were the Counsels representing their own case over the $40,000 Final Bill in Court. So when the judge reduced the bill to $18,000, I asked Choo and Low for the breakdowns of the earlier bills for which I had already paid the $70,000. They agreed, and this agreement was recorded in the Hearing Notes on 18 March 2016. (We are now in November 2020 and they have persistently refused to provide the breakdown of what they had charged for the $70,000.) Remy and Co persistently ignored my request and refused to detail the breakdown for the $70k, even after the Law Society told them to respond to me. On the other hand, they threatened to sue me for the payment of the $18k and associated costs. They eventually made good the threat and sued me for the $18k and some associated costs which they were not allowed to. I had no choice but to countersue them for negligence, dishonesty, breach of fiduciary duties etc.   * Facebook post by Jeanne Jeanne.      Read More →