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作者:李卖蚬 据早报的报道， 新中两国领导人达成了“大熊猫保育与研究合作协议”。 在此协议下，一对大熊猫明年将入住新加坡，为期10年，期间两国将合作提高公众的熊猫保育意识，以及推行一项繁殖研究计划。 报道没有提到租借大熊猫的要求是由哪方提出，以及租借的细节。但根据网上资料： ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 从1982年至1994年，因为中国将熊猫送给其它国家之作法有违1975年“濒危物种国际贸易公约”，中国乃改将熊猫做为商品短期租借给其它国家。但是此一作法使熊猫成为牟利之商品，危害到熊猫的健康与安全，而遭许多环保团体之批评，迫使中国停止为商业目的而出借熊猫。 因 此1994年开始，中国与其它国家以科学研究交换的方式，将熊猫租借给其它国家，租金并不便宜。以美国为例，每一对熊猫每年租金将近一百万美元，如果租借 期间生下小熊猫，每年租金增加五十万美元，而且两年之后要将小熊猫交还中国。此外，每个动物园每年另外支付一百万美元，作为美国和中国熊猫研究与保护计 划，合约时间一般是十年，年下来租用一对熊猫的代价大约两千万美元，不是一般动物园所能承担，当然发展中国家支付的租金会少一点。以第三种方式获得熊猫的 国家包括美国、韩国、泰国、澳洲、西班牙和日本等。 http://www.peaceforum.org.tw/onweb.jsp?webno=3333333551&webitem_no=1594 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 以下是一些虚拟民众对这消息的反应: A: 哇！如果每年租金是一百万美元，那和我们部长的薪金不相上下叻！一定是精英“熊”才。 B: 不是精英！是频临绝种的动物啦！就好像我们的部长们，肯牺牲赚大钱的机会来当部长，这种类型的在世间已快绝种了啦! 给他一百万美元已经算少了叻!.. C: 该给它们改个什么名字？ E: 明年动物园是不是举行大选吓？ F: 就叫“平平”与“衡衡”吧？ 动物园的一些老搞最近一直嚷着要有白种动物来平衡，这大熊猫整身白毛也算吧？！ G: Hmmm。。如果一年一百万美金，而且整天不用做事，还有免费竹笋供应。。羡慕死其他动物了！ H: 不如母的叫“娜娜”，公的叫“蛋蛋”，很可爱的名字，符合它cute cute的外形。 来源：大马华人网站  Read More →

By Lucy Hornby from Reuters When Chinese president Hu Jintao arrived in Singapore for a state visit this week, he announced China's favorite diplomatic gift -- two pandas -- but chose his words very carefully. Hu spoke of the two nations' "close friendship" and "cultural ties," but avoided any mention of a shared ethnic heritage in a nod to sensitivities in a region with long ties to China, and an equally long wariness of Chinese domination. The pandas would be a "fitting symbol of the close friendship and strong ties between Singapore and China as we celebrate 20 years of diplomatic relations next year," Singapore's foreign ministry said. It was not until 1990 that Singapore opened relations with the People's Republic of China, which it had accused of supporting Communist movements in neighboring Malaysia, Indonesia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Many ethnic Chinese Singaporeans descend from people who fled civil war and Communist rule in the 20th century. Now, Singapore and its neighbors are eager to build trade ties with China, but have no interest in becoming vassal states. A call by modern Singapore's founding father, Lee Kwan Yew, for the United States to remain engaged in the region ruffled feathers of nationalist Chinese in the mainland. "The size of China makes it impossible for the rest of Asia, including Japan and India, to match it in weight and capacity in about 20 to 30 years. So we need America to strike a balance," Lee said in a speech in Washington on October 27. Powerful currents pull the Chinese of Southeast Asia to greater engagement with China. Singapore's trade with China hit $52.4 billion last year, and its government promotes Mandarin teaching to help business ties. The ties are not just commercial, but strategic. Hu's trip this week to Malaysia and Singapore, the first by a Chinese president in 15 years, included a visit to Malacca, and a view of narrow Straits through which its energy supplies must pass. "The big change with China is that it got over being a stodgy, ideological player," said Ernie Bower, Southeast Asia program director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "Since the Asian crisis of the 1990s, it stepped up its game and came to Southeast Asia with a charm offensive." PANDA DIPLOMACY Part of that charm is panda diplomacy. The arrival in Singapore in 2011 of two Chinese pandas will help Singaporeans -- about three-quarters of whom are ethnic Chinese -- form a positive impression of mainland China. Since the Ming dynasty, Chinese merchants, especially from the coastal province of Fujian, have followed the shipping lanes south to wealthy tropical port cities. The voyages as far as Africa of the Chinese-Muslim admiral Zheng He marked China's greatest naval reach until the present day. Zheng He's treasure ships traded silks and porcelain for wood, spice and feathers, and also intervened in local politics. China has returned to the high seas in recent years, as its economy boomed. Its ships now transport oil, coal and copper from as far away as Africa and its navy protects convoys against Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden. Up to 80 percent of China's oil imports and 30 percent of its iron ore imports pass through the Strait of Malacca -- a narrow, congested waterway between Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. Natural gas and minerals are also shipped north through Indonesian sea channels and the disputed South China Sea. Singapore's Lee warned of China's military build-up, and ambitions in the South China Sea in waters that are also claimed by neighboring Southeast Asian nations. One difference between China's ties with Southeast Asia, compared with Latin America or Africa, is that the investment is a two-way street. From Singapore's industry parks in Suzhou and Tianjin to the Lotus supermarkets and chicken feed businesses owned by Thailand's Charoen Pokphand, Southeast Asian firms are deeply imbedded in mainland China. Chinese firms are eager buyers of natural gas, palm oil, rubber and wood from Southeast Asia. In Malaysia, Hu signed agreements on a railroad project, palm oil and timber trade, financial cooperation, and credit for a bridge to Penang. He also gave a nod to the heritage of the Straits Chinese, by visiting a museum dedicated to the Peranakan culture, descendants of Chinese traders who married local Malay women. - Reuters  Read More →

By Tan Keng Leng Mr. Prime Minister, We are a group of concerned Singaporean netizens, and we are writing in to you to express our unhappiness at the direction the country has been heading towards since the last General Election. As citizens, it is our birthright to decide the direction we want the country to take, to elect the national leaders who would lead the country in the direction we want, and to voice out our reservations if we are unhappy with the direction the country is headed. And now we strongly believe that the time has come for us to express our unhappiness to the government. First and foremost, there should be an immediate freeze on the number of foreigners allowed into the country. The country now has 5,000,000 residents give or take a few thousand, and the social infrastructure is now bursting at the seams. Before taking in anymore foreigners, the country’s infrastructure such as public transportation should be upgraded at these new arrivals’ cost, not at locals’ expenses; if they want to come here to earn a living, then they should contribute something to improving the country instead of simply taking from it. We are often told that foreigners are a buffer who will be the first to be retrenched in a recession. How true is that really? If anything, the reverse is true; tens of thousands of locals have lost their jobs, replaced by foreigners. After all, in a recession, who would the employer retrench, the foreign scholar whose education he paid for, or the local who paid for his own education? We are also told that it is in the country’s strategic interests that locals should work in such fields such as construction and shipbuilding instead of depending upon foreigners. Why is this so? Aren’t we always being told that foreigners do such jobs locals shun? And there’s a very good reason why locals shun such jobs too: they’re very dangerous, with high industrial accident rates. Furthermore, why are foreigners employed in such a strategically vital field such as the utilities industry? Can anyone imagine what would happen to the country should disgruntled foreigners decide to shut the country’s waterworks down because Singapore got into a major diplomatic spat with their homeland? The entire country will grind to a halt from lack of freshwater if that should ever happen. Next, the authorities should take a good hard look at the quality of the so-called foreign “talent” entering the country. Nobody in his right mind would object to someone of the caliber of Professor Stephen Hawking being given a job as an NUS lecturer. However, it’s entirely another matter altogether when the country takes in foreigners to fill up posts that can easily be done by locals. Why on Earth should the country take in HR managers from China, Malaysia or India when this is a post that any suitably qualified local can perform Moreover, there have been many complaints from locals that these foreign managers discriminate against them at work; what guarantees do we have that they don’t discriminate against locals in favor of their own kind? We are constantly being told that the country’s only resources are its people, so we should all continuously go for upgrading classes, almost always at our own expense. Even retrenched people for whom cash flow is a major concern are told to upgrade their skills at their own cost to improve their marketability, but what is the use of skills upgrading when all the good jobs are going to foreigners? Some of our national leaders have said that local professionals should seek their fortunes overseas as there are plenty of vacancies for them overseas, but good jobs available locally should be reserved for the foreigners as otherwise they would not want to come. In the first place, doesn’t the government always claim that Singapore is a meritocracy? If it truly is one, then why should good jobs be reserved for foreigners, or even elite scholars for that matter? Shouldn’t everyone compete for jobs on an equal footing instead? And for that matter, why should local professionals look for good jobs overseas so that foreigners can be enticed by good jobs that are reserved for them here? Why can’t the foreigners seek their good job opportunities elsewhere instead of here? We are often told that we should allow our parents to move in with us to keep the family unit intact; doesn’t forcing us to seek better prospects overseas run contrary to this? Or are we supposed to uproot our parents from their friends and the land they call home to settle someplace they are unfamiliar with? In the past, the government has often denounced locals who migrate in search of a better life elsewhere as quitters; that being the case aren’t the so-called foreign “talents” that the country is taking in also quitters? And why are our own people who seek greener pastures elsewhere being condemned as quitters when foreign quitters are welcomed with open arms, especially since it is government policies that are driving the locals out of the country?   Other parts in the series: >> Part 2: Foreign scholars >> Part 3: Foreign workers >> Part 4: Accountability  Read More →