TR EMERITUS

I read with much concern, of latest developments surrounding the Court cases of political dissidents/Opposition MPs and can’t help but recall the words of the younger Lee siblings alleging “abuse” of various State organs, with the subsequent passionate Parliamentary speech by MP Sylvia Lim to “protect our Institutions before it’s too late”. Is it too late now? Only 12 MPs in the House can answer! These “resumption” of trials and its adverse decisions arriving after the wake of GE 2020 will no doubt linger in the minds of all voters including PAP ones, if its “business as usual” or a ”permanent change” (for better or worse) as signalled by the PAP itself. For those born after the millennia, you may just be unaware of how many loyal sons and daughters of our Country who were coerced into exiled and in their void, have filled CECA immigrants who are alien to our Singaporean culture and way of life but have poured into our shores anyway. I’m saddened that 1 more will soon take this path and it’s no ordinary Singaporean but the grandson of our founding father himself! How many more such persecutions need to take place before we deem its enough? On the AHTC front, it cannot simply be argued that an ‘independent’ party is commencing action against duly elected MPs but such a decision arrived only after numerous saboteurs by the Minister, MND and AGO, culminating in the High Court’s decision to ‘appoint’ these executors who are unelected and whose loyalties we are unable to ascertain? Going by the words of K. Shanmugam who often utilise election results to ‘justify’ most undue actions of his government, doesn’t recent results in Aljunied scream that residents have lost faith in the Judicial system and are telling the government to back off their Constituency affairs? If anything, residents of Aljunied have reaffirmed their utmost trust in the MPs they voted for who’ve in fact, accumulated surpluses in their TC funds instead. Therefore, it baffles me much when unelected persons or bodies claiming to either act “in the interest” of residents or interpret “ground sentiment” for elected officials who “feel aggrieved”. Know ye not that a government does not have a reputation to uphold or upkeep? As opposed to popular belief, I’m from the “Merdeka” Generation and I can tell you my peers are concerned about Justice and Equality for the sake of our children, if not for ourselves. The close results in hotly contested GRCs can attest to that! Our forefathers have in past time, painstakingly built the fabric of our Nation and trust, incorruptibility has always been the true currency of Singapore but I’m afraid actions of late are not only polarising the entire Country but are also increasingly calling into question, the “impartiality” of our system. We need to give serious thought to this and other pressing issues on our 55th National Day and how we want to shape our population until 2025. Majulah Singapura and Country above Self!   Judy Tan    Read More →

This thing called the Trade War is a misnomer. At best it is a tactical move by US to initiate or compel a change in China to play “more fairly”. But I feel it is important for Singaporeans to at least be receptive to a grand seismic change in global order. And why this demands a retooling, rethinking and reinventing of Singapore political-economic system. [Relying on Yukon Huang , brilliant analyst] First, lets do away with the free trade argument. Is free trade good? Is globalization good? The theoretical answer would be in the long run for developed countries, it should encourage productivity, it should encourage innovation. It produces economic efficiency leading to savings , and a cycle of reinvestment to even better products. But it does not grow jobs, although it should provide for better quality jobs. And yes, there are losers and winners. It is clear by now, the capitalist model of the developed countries does not have the policies or institutions to deal with the fallout of a stagnating middle class and a growing working class living on edges of poverty. The above is the context of globalization as it evolved. Trade Deficit The trade deficit of the US has more to do with the role of the US dollar as world reserve and the US government deficit. Globally, people are holding US dollar as savings, RMB does not even come close, US dollar remains the trusted currency period. In simple terms, trade deficit happens when US dollar moved out but remains outside the country. Trade as a part of China’s GDP has been shrinking. Investments and consumption are China’s growth impetus, they are already moving away from manufacturing to services. Trade is less important for China. The hullabaloo by the Trump administration of US investments to China is just plain nonsense. US companies invest less than 2% of their total global investments in China. Why? They have no reason to. The biggest export to China is agriculture, and even wastes liked cardboards are high up the list, these exports don’t need investments in China. For very high tech products liked Intel chips, they are only made in US and Israel. Given the above reasons, what is the Trade War about? It is not about the Trade War. Clash of Culture US accuses China of subsidizing its companies, that is true, but so does US but in a different way. China opens its State resources and banking system to its companies. US incentivises companies through tax breaks etc. All are in fact subsidies in different forms. US is now threatening to delist Chinese companies in US stock exchange unless they conform to US accounting standards. But can China with a per capital ⅙ of US use tax and such regulations vs offering State resources of land and banking to help companies? Corruption This explanation by Yukon Huang for me, is the best of the lot. Against conventional wisdom, corruption in China works. Why? Because all resources in Communist China are owned by the State. But Deng knew that it was inefficient. Thus, they need to move resources to the private entrepreneurs, but that is against the Marxist ideology. The Communist party then accepted that to facilitate the State resources to private hands bribery becomes normalized. This is a win win situation that drove China’s economy. A comparison was made with India. In India, corruption hinders economic progress, because while resources are already in private hands, permissions/authorisations are with the State. The harder the State makes it for the private entrepreneurs, the bigger the bribe they receive. This gives the background of why President Xi cracked down on corruption, it reached an endemic level, and this has also seen an economic move from private to State companies. This is a conundrum China has yet to solve. And for me, the next decade, we will see greater effort to reconcile Rule of Law with political liberalization in China, otherwise China’s economic progress will stagnate. Thucydides trap It is not a Trade War. It is the Thucydides trap. Why is it happening in the last few years, this open confrontation? Is it a coincidence that the global production of US, Europe and China are now about equal? Bear in mind, 200 years ago China had 35% of global production, reduced to just 3% in late 1970s. This is a competition. US is not comfortable being challenged. But they have enough depth, diversity and institutions to peacefully negotiate this challenge. US is by far the richest country in the world. China will be the largest economy, but its per capital will lagged behind US. People talk about China’s technology. Is yes and no. For the Apple phone of USD$ 800, China gets USD$40, USD$350 goes to Japan/South Korea/Taiwan for their technological parts, the rest goes to Apple. Sony left the handphone industry and went into gaming and entertainment, making handphones is a low margin business that needs a low base manufacturing environment. Huawei 5G is exciting, but Samsung is already pushing for 6G in two years. Singapore The greatest problem for Singapore between the two giants, will be the issue of the South China Sea. This single issue has brought Japan, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Australia, UK into a loose alliance with the US to challenge China. It has also increased military spending in the region. Although, we are friends with all and enemies of none, we have relied on US security umbrella. And although we are majority Chinese, we live in a Malay geopolitical region. And although we are Singaporeans, we are of many races and religions. We have to be cognizant of the many forces that can tear Singapore apart with the opening of the Thucydides trap. We have operated in a multicultural philosophy, but it is also the weakest fault line when social cohesion is poor. Economically, we need to shrink our supply chain for essentials. We have to work more closely with Asean. Many Singaporeans identify themselves as part of OECD, although we are not part of them. We need to appreciate our neighbors and integrate with them more. In this complex opening gambit by US and China, nothing is more important than Singaporeans knowing who and what we are.   BK      Read More →

It’s National Day today and I spent the better part of the morning watching the parade, which thanks to Covid-19 was substantially subdued but never the less well executed and then the afternoon was spent catching up with old friends that I hadn’t seen for a while. It didn’t occur to me that I would have a topic to write about for National Day. It was only later in the evening when I was browsing through a friend’s Facebook page that I stumbled on a recording of Lee Kuan Yew reading out the proclamation of our independence that it occurred to me that there was something that needed to be said about National Day. The recording can be found here. I don’t want to demean the efforts of those who marched in the parade and I am thankful for having a public holiday every August 9 but I do feel that National Day in Singapore tends to obscure one crucial fact – namely the fact that Singapore was not supposed to be a nation let alone a successful one. If you watch enough of our National Day messages, you’re bound to get the impression that Singapore was a swamp that was dragged into being the successful ultra-modern metropolis that it is today by an all knowing and all seeing sage. While Mr. Lee Kuan Yew was well known for his intellect and much of the success that is Singapore is due to his vision and execution, the official version isn’t quite accurate. OK, in fairness, every country does pump itself up on its national day but the problem with the official version of history is that it becomes something of an excuse for official high handedness. Whenever I’ve said something about the government being like that or that, I’ve had people from developed countries tell me off for being ungrateful to the all wise and all-knowing sage that set the tone for this country. The first truth is that Singapore wasn’t quite the shit hole that the PAP government makes it out to be. While we had little in the way of natural resources or a hinterland, we had a port, which was the very reason why Raffles took interest what we call Singapore in the very first place. The second truth is that Lee Kuan Yew was not exactly all knowing. He was in his early days the ideal leader for a democratic society. He recognized the genius in others (they in return recognized that the key to survival was not having eyes on his job) and letting them get on with it. One of my first shocks was his admission during the funeral of his old colleague, S. Rajaratnam in 2006, that there were, in his words “furious” debates. I grew up thinking that the old man never tolerated dissent. The key to success was this simple, he took care of the politics and allowed Rajaratnam, who was more ideological to get on with building symbols like our pledge and Goh Keng Swee, a pragmatist with a heart for the people, to get on with building the institutions such as our military and education system. Dr. Goh was in turn smart enough to listen to the likes of Dr. Winsemius, the Dutch Economist who led the United Nations Mission to Singapore. The most important point is the fact that Lee Kuan Yew’s greatest success, namely the prosperous Singapore that we know today, came from his greatest failure, namely our ejection from the Malayan Federation. In his book, Lee Kuan Yew describes an “Independent Singapore” as a “Ridiculous Notion,” and what he fought for was a “Malaysian Malaysia.” The late Mr. Lee was an early champion of “Merdeka Malaysia.” The people of what we call Singapore, our British overlords who were planning to get out of the place and the Federal Government in KL didn’t want Singapore to be part of the Federation of Malaysia and yet, he somehow made it happen. Again, this is not to take away anything from the man and how the nation that has given me so much was built up. What I am saying is let us look at the real success story and celebrate that instead. Singapore was not a swamp that was brought into the modern age by a perfect sage. Our nation was built by a very clever man (and admittedly ruthless one) who knew how to read the situations not just on the ground but also in the larger nations around him. He was a man who respected talent in individuals and allowed them to challenge his views and when a consensus was reached, he gave them his backing. More importantly, he was a man who knew how to bounce back from failure. My hope for a National Day celebrated in the midst of a global pandemic is that we don’t get blinded by our success and instead we look to the reasons why we were successful. Mr. Lee’s ability to build a consensus and to back talented individuals and build from failure are the very traits that our society will need in order to continue being successful.   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 →