TR EMERITUS

Around three days ago, SPH Media, the non-profit that took over the once thriving media business of a listed company called Singapore Press Holdings Limited (SPH Limited) announced that it had appointed a new CEO. The man who will be leading Singapore’s once powerful media monopoly is Mr. Chan Yeng Kit, former Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health and former Chairman of the Infocom Media Development Authority (“IMDA”). Mr. Chan will be taking over Ms. Teo Lay Lim, who ran Accenture before she was called over to run Singapore’s most prominent “commercialized statutory board.” More on the story can be found at [Here] To be fair to Mr. Chan, he comes to the top job with impeccable credentials. The cookie-cutter that is the Singapore civil service means that Mr. Chan would never have made it to permanent secretary or chairman of a statutory board had he not been sent to one of the best universities in the world and done exceedingly well there. If you consider the fact that the media business of what was then called Singapore Press Holdings Ltd, is now under a “non-profit” organization called SPH Media, where the tax payer is the major funder, you could say that Mr. Chan is simply moving from statutory board to another. As chairman of the IMDA he played a role setting the “vision” for the media industry in Singapore whereas as CEO of SPH Media, he gets to put that vision into action. So, if you look at it from this perspective, the announcement of Mr. Chan’s appointment as CEO of SPH Media would be like any other appointment of the top civil service jobs. Mr. Chan will undoubtedly be a competent enough manager of another statutory board. However, the issue is not Mr. Chan himself but a damming reflection of the government’s inability to grow what should be a dynamic and innovative industry that has the potential to create a decent number of high paying jobs for local Singaporean entrepreneurs. Let’s just look at how we compare what’s happening with the other “Asian Tigers,” (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore). All of us were manufacturing powerhouses. All of us built economic wealth by offering multinationals a well-educated and disciplined work force that could make things more cheaply than the “West” (which in this case, includes Japan). The only difference between Singapore and the other three is the fact that we never built a media industry that produced anything that anyone outside Singapore’s shores would consume. Korea has K-Drama and K-Pop, Taiwan has drama series worth watching and Hong Kong cinema was at one stage, the world’s third largest after the mammoth markets of Bolly and Hollywood. The inevitable excuse remains that Singapore is “too small” for a media industry to develop and since we live in a hostile environment, we can’t afford to throw resources into uncertain media industries. The other Asian tigers are living examples of the fact that this mantra is not true. None of them have particularly large populations and of the four, we actually live in the nicest neighbourhood – South Korea has nuclear armed North Korea that make no secret of its violent fantasies towards South Korea. Hong Kong gets publicly beaten up by China whenever China wants to prove a point. Taiwan also remains in China’s crosshairs and to all intents and purposes, Taiwan can’t even call itself an independent country. Sure, we may bicker with Malaysia and Indonesia from time to time and our people might have a bad experience or two – but by and large, we’ve not had a regional conflict since the 1960s. Like it or not, places that export media content, are actually places that produce innovative technologies and entrepreneurial uni-and-decacorns. Why is that so? Ironically it was best summed up by Singapore’s Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong who talked about having to “fix” the opposition instead of coming up with good policies. If creative people worry about “being fixed” they’re going to spend more time avoiding getting fixed than actually producing things that can be sold. If you have an environment which rewards being in a cardboard box cut-out and upstarts are going to get kicked in the teeth whenever the cardboard box cut outs need to feel that they’re human, smart people are simply not going to do anything. Even hiring people from elsewhere won’t work in the long run. Sure, you can offer the world’s best everything to come to Singapore and they’ll do it. However, sooner or later they are going to realise that they’re actually better off looking like they’re creating than actually creating. While I don’t doubt Mr. Chan is a competent enough manager, he’s not the man give Singapore the job-creating media industry it deserves. To do that, the government needs to make institutions like SPH Media and MediaCorp face competition or go bankrupt. The media houses that survive in a cut throat market will pay for talent, thus creating wealth. People will see street-level creativity and innovation being rewarded and work towards it. This isn’t going to happen if the media monopolies are nothing more than glorified statutory boards.   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 →

William Scott Ritter Jr. (born July 15, 1961) is an American author, former United States Marine Corps intelligence officer, and a former United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspector. Ritter served as a junior military analyst during Operation Desert Storm. He then served as a member of the UNSCOM overseeing the disarmament of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, from which he resigned in protest. He later became a critic of the Iraq War and United States foreign policy in the Middle East. He is a regular contributor to Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik. Lately, he has been active on Youtube, speaking out against the genocide in Gaza.    Read More →

Contrary to popular beliefs, many couples in China are unable to afford to get married. With the exception of rural villages, those in the cities mostly asked for hundreds of thousands in bride price (聘礼/彩礼). According to our techie who has been in China for over a decade, the bride price may include monies intended for the bride's family members. Example would be for her parent's old-age upkeeping, her brother's marriage, just to name two. As a result, most did not get to marry their "first choice". In this snippet of a video provided by our techie, the bride's family asked for RMB500,000 in bride price, resulting in the groom not being able to proceed with the marriage. The agreed bride price was not RMB 500,000 initially, it was adjusted at the last minute. If you were the groom, what would you do?    Read More →