Power Tends To Corrupt, Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely
Tuesday, 24 December 2019
Sunday, 27 January 2013
Is Population Growth a Ponzi Scheme?
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ernie
Madoff's recent Ponzi scheme has drifted out of the world’s headlines.
However, there is another even more costly and widespread scheme —
"Ponzi Demography" — that warrants everybody’s attention.
While it may come in many guises, Ponzi demography is essentially
a pyramid scheme that attempts to make more money for some by adding on
more and more people through population growth.
While more visible in industrialized economies, particularly in Australia, Canada and the United States, Ponzi demography also operates in developing countries. The underlying strategy of Ponzi demography is to privatize the profits and socialize the costs incurred from increased population growth.
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As has been noted by Nobel laureate economists Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen as well as many others, current economic yardsticks such as gross domestic product (GDP) focus on material consumption and do not include quality-of-life factors.
Standard measures of GDP do not reflect, for example, the degradation of the environment, the depreciation of natural resources or declines in individuals’ quality of life.
According to Ponzi demography, population growth — through natural increase and immigration — means more people leading to increased demands for goods and services, more material consumption, more borrowing, more on credit and of course more profits. Everything seems fantastic for a while — but like all Ponzi schemes, Ponzi demography is unsustainable.
When the bubble eventually bursts and the economy sours, the scheme spirals downward with higher unemployment, depressed wages, falling incomes, more people sinking into debt, more homeless families — and more men, women and children on public assistance.
That is the stage when the advocates of Ponzi demography — notably enterprises in construction, manufacturing, finance, agriculture and food processing — consolidate their excess profits and gains. That leaves the general public to pick up the tab for the mounting costs from increased population growth (e.g., education, health, housing and basic public services).
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Due to population aging, government-run pensions and healthcare systems will become increasingly insolvent, according to advocates of Ponzi demography, thereby crippling the economy, undermining societal well-being and threatening national security.
Low birth rates, especially those below replacement levels, are considered a matter of national concern. Without higher fertility rates and the resulting population growth, the nation, it is claimed, faces a bleak and dreary future.
So Ponzi demography calls for pro-natalist policies and programs to encourage couples to marry and to have more children, which will lead to the promised sustained economic growth.
In addition to financial incentives and other benefits for childbearing, appeals are also made to one's patriotic duty to have children in order to replenish and expand the homeland: “Have one (child) for mum, one for dad and one for the country.”
In addition to measures to increase fertility levels, Ponzi demography also turns to immigration for additional population growth in order to boost companies' profits. The standard slogan in this instance is “the country urgently needs increased immigration,” even when immigration may already be at record levels and unemployment rates are high.
Among other things, increased immigration, it is declared, is a matter of national security, long-term prosperity and international competitiveness. Without this needed immigration, Ponzi demography warns that the country’s future is at serious risk.
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"Economic growth requires population growth" is the basic message that Ponzi demography wants the public to swallow. No mention is made of the additional profits they reap and the extra costs the public bears.
Attempts to question or even discuss Ponzi demography are denigrated and defamed to such an extent that concerns about population growth become radioactive. Politicians, journalists and environmentalists, for example, choose by and large to sidestep the entire issue.
When confronted with environmental concerns such as climate change, global warming, environmental contamination or shortages of water and other vital natural resources, the advocates of Ponzi demography typically dismiss such concerns as unfounded and overblown.
And they claim there is no scientific basis, or they obliquely stress “innovation,” ingenuity and technological fixes as the only appropriate and workable solutions.
Many are complicit with Ponzi demography or at least tacitly support its goals. Few politicians, for example, are able to resist promises of campaign financing, the appeal of increased numbers of supportive voters, prospects of increased tax revenues and the political backing of pro-natalist and pro-immigration lobbyists and special interest groups.
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Despite its snake-oil allure of “more is better,” Ponzi demography’s advocacy for ever-increasing population growth is ultimately unsustainable. Such persistent growth hampers efforts to improve the quality of life for today’s world population of nearly seven billion people as well as for future generations.
Moving gradually towards population stabilization, while not a panacea for the world’s problems, will make it far easier to address problems such as climate change, environmental degradation, poverty and development, human rights abuses and shortages of water, food and critical natural resources.
Fortunately, most couples around the world have chosen — or are in the process of choosing — to have a few children rather than many and to invest more in each child’s upbringing, education and future well-being. Nations need to make the same vital transition with respect to their populations.
The sooner nations reject Ponzi demography and make the needed gradual transition from ever-increasing population growth to population stabilization, the better the prospects for all of humanity and other life on this planet.
About the writer:
Joseph Chamie
Director of Research, Center for Migration Studies, New York
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In addition to completing numerous studies under UN authorship, he has written many studies in such areas as fertility, population estimates and projections, international migration and population and development policy.
Mr. Chamie received his graduate training in population at the University of Michigan.
Thursday, 24 January 2013
Workers' Party Got Talent
Professor Daniel Goh is currently teaching in NUS Department of Sociology.............intelligent, credible, talented and eloquent. Let him tell you why he join Workers' Party and what's wrong with MIW.
Tuesday, 15 January 2013
Should wealth creators or wealth managers lead the future?
17 May 2012
Mr Ngiam sharing his views on wealth creation
At the hour-long session titled "Leaders in wealth creation: Jurong vs Shenton Way?", the former top civil servant shared that Singapore has nurtured too many wealth managers and far too few wealth creators for the future.
Describing wealth creators, Mr Ngiam said that their singular strength is the ability to think outside the box, spotting opportunities where others only see obstacles. In the public sector, Dr Goh Keng Swee epitomised this spirit. During his appointment as Defence Minister, Dr Goh set up Sheng-Li Holdings to build Singapore's defence industries. Sheng-Li Holdings, to be renamed Singapore Technologies, was able to compete with international defence companies in the global markets.
To groom wealth creators, students should be taught to think outside the box. However, "I believe that Singaporeans and Asians in general think within the box because of our didactic system of education," opined Mr Ngiam. At NUS, he said that the Faculty of Engineering should be given more resources if wealth creation is to be encouraged.
Following the lecture, a spirited Question and Answer session saw Mr Ngiam sharing his views on issues which included the scholarship system, the distribution of talent throughout society, the nurturing of home-grown talents, and the attitude of competing among the best of the best.
On Singapore's position as a wealth creator vis-à-vis emerging markets especially those in Southeast Asia, Mr Ngiam said the country's economic structure has moved from being labour intensive to skills intensive. The future now lies in being knowledge intensive with unique Singaporean expertise to export such as the public housing system.
With a career in civil service over a period of 40 years, Mr Ngiam has served as Permanent Secretary in the Prime Minister's Office, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Trade, the Ministry of Communications and the Ministry of National Development. He was also the Chairman of the Singapore Economic Development Board and the Development Bank of Singapore.
Mr Ngiam is currently an independent director of United Overseas Bank, Singapore Press Holdings and Yeo Hiap Seng Ltd.
Ngiam Tong Dow -Lecture @ NUS
SPEECH BY MR NGIAM TONG DOW AT THE INAUGURAL FASS
(FACULTY OF ARTS & SOCIAL SCIENCES) LECTURE AT THE
LECTURE THEATRE, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE,
ON 26 OCTOBER 2004
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EDUCATION AND GROWTH
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Professsor Tan Tai Yong, dear friends and fellow alumni
Thank you for having me this evening as speaker for the
inaugural FASS Alumni Lecture. I am deeply honoured. I will speak on
“Education and Growth”, relying on the Singapore Experience during the
period 1960-2000.
1. Synopsis
In my view, education has three imperatives, namely the
economic, the cultural, and the political. Over the last forty years, 1960-
2000, the overriding priority of education has been economic growth.
Faced with a young and rapidly growing population, our schools,
polytechnics and universities were all geared up to teach literacy in
English and the mother tongue, technical skills, science and technology.
Literature and the arts, history, geography, were derided as soft options.
Even those who excelled in law in their professional careers later on in
life, struggled to obtain A’s in the hard sciences in school.
Now that the world is entering an era of knowledge based
competition, we are unsure whether our hard science education will
stand us in good stead. By neglecting the "soft options" of poetry, music
and philosophy, have we missed something? What has happened to our
imagination? Do we find it difficult to think out of the box? Why are the
majority of Singaporeans followers? Isn’t that true of all societies? And
not just Singapore? Politically, do we want to be a Sparta? Or an Athens?
Ideally, can we be both? Where do our political temperament and
instincts lie? I would like to invite you to join me this evening in debating
this proposition: While it is true that man cannot live by bread alone, can
he live without any bread at all?
2. The Three Imperatives of Education
Education has to serve society’s cultural, political and
economic imperatives. The priority and emphasis depend on a country's
time in history and its stage of development. In the case of China, the
political imperative was paramount during the period of the Cultural
Revolution. In contrast to Chairman Mao's ideological leadership, Mr
Deng Hsiao Ping, seeking truth from facts, brought the economic
imperative to the fore.
3. Historical Developments
At the end of the Second World War on the return of the
British colonial Administration to Singapore, English medium schools
funded by the Government were quickly re-established. During the brief
period of the Japanese Occupation (1942-1945), the Japanese civilian
administration used the private Chinese medium schools to teach
Japanese to youngsters like me. Japanese was taught whenever the
Japanese supervisor was around. Teachers and students reverted to
Mandarin the moment he was out of sight. In this way, I had one year of
schooling in Mandarin.
4. English Medium and Vernacular Schools
The British colonial government funded and staffed only the
English medium schools. Vernacular schools in Chinese and Tamil were
left to fend for themselves. They were financially supported by the
various ethnic clan and community associations. Teachers were poorly
trained and poorly paid. Most parents sent their children to English
medium schools, as school fees were lower and facilities better.
Being poorly paid, some teachers in Chinese schools
became embittered and taught leftist ideology to their students. The
Chinese Middle School Union was a powerful political force, which the
PAP Government had to contend with.
English medium schools on the other hand were apolitical.
The aim of the British Government was to teach English, so that young
Singaporeans can serve as clerks and bookkeepers, primary school
teachers and nurses, and policemen. The British Colonial Government,
supported by our own philanthropists, established the King Edward VII
School of Medicine and Raffles College. The two institutions merged in
1949 to become the University of Malaya, serving Singapore and
Malaya. The Law and Engineering Faculties of NUS were established
later in the 1960’s.
Colonial education policy was essentially aimed at oiling the
wheels of administration.
5. Jobs and Technical Education
On the attainment of self-government in August 1959,
Singapore had a population literate in English, an advantage over other
non-English speaking countries in attracting American and European
MNC’s. The population however possessed little technical skills.
Paradoxically, the Chinese-educated possessed more technical skills
through apprenticeship. This skilled labour went on to build complex
steel structures, such as jack up oil drilling rigs.
The indigenous skills however were not adequate for higher
end precision engineering and process industries. EDB was tasked with
starting up technical education in Singapore. We established joint
industrial training centers with MNC’s, such as Philips of Holland, Rollei
of Germany, Seiko and Yokogawa Electric of Japan. The industrial
training systems became models for our six polytechnics today.
6. The Economic Imperative
In the first three decades of independence, the economic
imperative was the driving force of our education policies. In our
schools, attention was focused on the teaching of science and
mathematics dubbed the hard sciences. All other subjects were derided
as soft options.
As a result, less and less students in English medium
schools studied English literature. Paradoxically, it was harder to score
an ‘A’ or distinction in English literature than in maths or science, simply
because English is not our mother tongue at home. Without studying
literature and history, whether in English or Chinese medium schools,
our literacy in both languages fell.
History is a neglected subject in all our schools. Politically,
we have been an independent country since 1965, hardly 40 years old.
In world history, we rate only a comma. Yet our multi-racial and multireligious
society must retain our roots. Without a sense of history, we
will become a people lost in limbo.
7. Singapore's Path?
In the first half of our short history to date, Singapore had no
choice but to embrace science and technology for economic survival. At
a very basic level, we established industrial training centers to train our
young school leavers in precision machining and mould making, still the
core skills for manufacturing industry. At the polytechnics, students are
taught process engineering and technical analysis. They also learn
finance and cost accounting. As our manufacturing and service
industries grew and became more sophisticated, there was a great need
for trained manpower who can go beyond the "how” to the "why" of
things.
8. Nanyang Technological Institute
When we had achieved full employment in the mid-1970’s,
our Economic Advisor, Dr Albert Winsemius, persuaded Prime Minister
Lee Kuan Yew to establish the Nanyang Technological Institute (NTI), to
train practice oriented engineers, to complement engineering science
taught in the University of Singapore. The EDB, nicknamed metal eaters
by Mr Lee, had boldly asked that our university, polytechnics and
industrial training centers produce 1,000 engineers, 5,000 technicians,
and 10,000 skilled workers annually to meet surging demand for
technical manpower.
The elitist establishment at University of Singapore baulked
at increasing the engineering enrolment, raising the spectre of
unemployed graduates. The professors had little faith at the ability of
EDB to attract high tech jobs to Singapore. Yet, even in the recent
recession, MNCs still find difficulty recruiting skilled personnel for tech
industries, such as wafer fab plants. As a result, a number of them are
relocating to China.
NTI was therefore established as a university of science and
technology. To establish its academic credentials, NTI was allowed by
NUS to award a joint degree with NUS. NTU now conducts degree
programmes in almost every academic discipline other than medicine
and law.
As someone who had a role in the establishment of NTU, I
hope my university colleagues will allow me the privilege to state once
more that the aim was to establish NTU as the MIT, and for NUS to
become the Harvard of South-east Asia. The goal of all academic
institutions must be excellence in both teaching and research. Simply
establishing new faculties and departments because the other university
has such a department will just distract the faculty and administration of
both universities from the drive for excellence.
9. Cultural and Racial Roots
Out of sheer necessity, we concentrated on the economic
imperative in education. Efficiency, rather than effectiveness, was the
name of the game.
Along the way, we also lost some of our cultural roots and
ethnic instincts. In the late 1960’s, the Government decided to drop
Chinese dialect programmes over radio and TV. There may be
compelling reasons for stopping Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka
and Hainanese programmes over the airwaves. One reason given was
that we wanted our children to concentrate only on learning Mandarin,
and not have their young minds confused with the various dialects
spoken at home.
Whether this hypothesis is true or not, we do not know for
sure. But, we do know that the grandparents who speak only dialects
and no Mandarin, were deprived of one of their few sources of news and
entertainment. As less and less dialect was spoken at home, the
communication gap between the young and the old widened.
Transmission of cultural values from generation to generation was
diminished. Our children and grandchildren had to learn to speak
Mandarin ab initio, and to study the Chinese language outside what was
our natural cultural environment.
Today, we cannot go back to the status quo ante. It will be
pointless to restore dialect programmes back to our airwaves simply
because the young grandparents of today do not speak any dialects at
all, growing up under the non-dialect regime. A back of the envelope
solution might be to encourage our English-speaking to read Chinese
history, literature, and even poetry, in English to enthuse their
grandchildren on their Chinese heritage.
Though translations will not have the richness of the original,
they do give the English literate some flavour. We can start by reading
Lee Lien Fung's Bamboo Green columns in the Straits Times.
10. Literature
With the neglect of English literature in school, young
Singaporeans do not have enough command of English to absorb the
essence of western culture. Hollywood is their western cultural diet.
At the same time, unable to speak to their grandparents, they
cannot relate what little culture they are taught in their Mandarin lessons
to their daily lives.
My generation, schooled entirely in the English medium and
speaking dialect at home, can at least get a flavour of Chinese history
and culture reading the English translations of All Men are Brothers,
Dream of the Red Chamber, and Lin Yu Tang's My Country and My
People.
11. Humanities and the Arts
In education as in any field of human endeavour, we have to
face reality. Our single-minded pursuit of economic prosperity has
brought us to a crossroad. In a knowledge-based global economy,
inputs of land, labour, and capital, are necessary, but not sufficient for
growth and prosperity. We have to learn to apply knowledge creatively.
A vice-minister of Japan's Ministry of Trade and Industry
once told me that knowledge is power, if applied with wisdom. Or, with
insight and creativity. How do we become a society with insight and
creativity?
12. Holistic Education
The short answer is a holistic education system. Such a
system will have to serve all the three imperatives of education, the
cultural, political and economic. We have successfully established
industrial training centers, polytechnics, and universities, to teach the
“how” but, in my view, not the “why” of things.
At the risk of being dismissed as an educational Rip van
Winkle, may I suggest the Ministry of Education revisit the grouping of
subjects for the O Level examinations. In 1953, when I sat for what was
then known as the Senior Cambridge School Certificate examination,
candidates were required to offer not more than 9 subjects, divided into
three groups of English and English Literature; Mathematics and
Science; History, Geography and Art. Latin and Religious Knowledge
were optional subjects.
A candidate has to pass in at least two subjects from each
group, graded into pass, credit and distinction. Your scores determine
your overall grading into Grade I, II, III. Only those with Grade I were
admitted into the Post School Certificate classes to prepare for university
entrance examinations.
13. Arts and Science
The curriculum required competence in arts and science. In
my view, a broader rather than a narrow curriculum is likely to produce
greater creativity in individuals, and society as a whole. The competition
for entrance into university is at the final stage of schooling. Streaming
at too early a stage is not only unfair to the individual student, but is also
less effective overall in terms of cost.
14. Becoming a Nation
The prosperity achieved from pursuing the economic
imperative in education comes with a cost. Mr Robert Kuok, the
Malaysian entrepreneur whom I know and greatly respect, once told a
private gathering at NUS that to survive beyond economics, Singapore
has to retain its Chineseness, and by extension its Indianness and
Malayness. It was not a rhetorical answer to a rhetorical question.
Because of our political history, Singapore embraced English
as the lingua franca. As English is also the language of international
commerce, science and technology, and the language of today's only
world superpower, the United States, our literacy in English gave us a
head start in attracting MNC investments. Our pragmatism led us to
adopt English as our first language, and our mother tongue, whether it is
Malay, Chinese or Indian, our second language.
Our legal system based on English law is understood and
accepted by international banks, shipping companies, fund managers,
and the rest of the international business community.
As Microsoft dominates the internet, software is largely
written in English. So those fluent in the English language, have an
advantage in writing software than those who are not. Hence, Indians
who are more literate in English have an edge over the Chinese.
15. Cultural DNA
But is language facility the only competitive criterion? Or is it
the cultural DNA of the Indians, Chinese, and Malays that will count
increasingly in the new millennium? Mr Robert Kuok is right in stressing
the importance of remaining culturally Chinese, Indian, and Malay.
16. The Future of English
MM Lee, in his memoirs, said he sang three different national
anthems living in Singapore. First, as a schoolboy he had sung God
Save The King in English, in the crown colony of Singapore before the
Second World War. Then, for three short years, he sang the Japanese
national anthem during the Japanese occupation of Singapore. On the
defeat of Japan, it was back to God Save The King. Finally, the
Singapore national anthem Majullah Singapura when we obtained selfgovernment
in 1959, composed by the late Mr Zubir Said, a Malay
Singaporean and sung in our national language, Malay.
The origin and language of the national anthem is
determined by the political power governing Singapore. Now that
Singapore is an independent country, the origin and language of our
national anthem is settled. Singapore however has still to evolve its own
national cultural identity.
17. China and India
Western civilization, which has spawned most of the major
discoveries in science and technology, has been in the ascendant for the
last 500 years. Before then, the Chinese, Indian and other civilisations
have been in the forefront of the quest for knowledge. Not being a
historian, I will stick my neck out and postulate that western civilization
overtook eastern civilisation because the peoples and societies were
more outward looking, including conquest and colonisation of foreign
lands. An outward orientation forced on us by necessity has enabled
Singapore to make progress.
Continental size countries, such as China and India,
stagnated because they considered themselves to be the centres of the
civilised world. China named itself as Zhong Kuo, center of the world.
There is a rock outcrop on the island of Hainan, my Chinese ancestral
homeland, facing south, which is considered as the spot where the
civilised world ends.
Similarly, my impression is that Indians consider themselves
to be morally superior to other people. Gandhi coined the slogan of
simple living and high thinking. But when India goes on to imply that this
is the only way to progress, it falls into the Chinese trap of
ethnocentricity.
18. Japan
Japan, like India and China, has supreme confidence in its
own culture. I once read in Japan Echo, which publishes Japanese
"think" pieces in English, that foreigners can never penetrate Japan’s
cultural barrier. The author, a professor in Japanese economic history,
held the view that while Japan can be forced to lower import duties,
remove quantitative restrictions, or reduce non-tariff regulations, the
cultural defence of buying Japanese first is a barrier other countries
cannot penetrate. Japan does not promote the study of English.
Instead, there is a huge translation industry publishing Western works in
Japanese.
Japan, unlike China and India, is not a continental country. It
is an archipelago of islands with the sea as the border. Though insular
by nature, Japan has no choice but to trade with the world. The
orientation is outward. Ezra Vogel, a personal friend of mine, who wrote
Japan As No.1, would have done the Japanese a great disservice if the
Japanese had believed him. My hunch is that the Japanese were not
taken in by the accolade.
Japan in the last fifty years has been successful
economically in the league of the United States. Now that China and
India have begun to embrace openness, how will Japan adjust to
compete economically and culturally?
19. Notes from a Very Small Island
In a speech delivered on 19 April 04 at a meeting of the
Association of American Universities (AAU), Professor Shih Choon
Fong, President of the National University of Singapore (the very small
island) and Chairman of the Association of Pacific Rim Countries
(APRU), posed a very intriguing question to his North American
colleagues: "Will the center of higher education remain in North America
or will move? (To China and India?).
He quoted a Goldman Sachs prognosis that the world in
2050 will face a tectonic change. In 2050, China and India, each with a
population far exceeding 1 billion, and the United States with a
population under 450 million, could be the largest economies in the
world.
In another forecast by an English applied linguist, David
Graddot, the English language will probably drop in prominence by
2050, ranking after Chinese, and comparable to Hindi and Arabic.
Although the United States has become the global education
universe in the 20th century, China and India now poised to become two
of the world's largest economies may aspire to become the new centers
of learning. They will strive for cultural and technological primacy. Can
they?
20. Harvard MPA
I attended the MPA course at the Graduate School of Public
Administration of Harvard University in 1963. On arrival at Harvard, midcareer
officers such as myself were told that while it was easy to pass,
having been carefully selected by Harvard, it would be difficult to excel,
as we will be among the best competing with the best.
The teaching method at Harvard was in stark contrast to the
University of Malaya (NUS). The professors assumed that, as we were
learning at a post-graduate level, we already know the subject matter.
I was startled at one of the first American-style lecture when
the professor began the course by asking a question. The student he
asked responded not with an answer, but with another question! The
process was a relay of questions rather than a round of answers.
Though strange at first, I soon learnt to navigate this system by thinking
of the whys rather than the hows. This is a more stimulating way of
learning.
21. Open Societies
Without a doubt, the wealth of human talent in China and
India can propel these countries and societies to intellectual and
technological prominence if, and it’s a big, big if, they can break out of
the mould of Confucian philosophy of the emperor knows best, and the
Indian caste system where some are preordained to be masters and the
others slaves.
For such large countries, because of endless cycles of war
and famine, stability was prized above everything else. In my view, it will
take decades, if not centuries, before Chinese and Indian societies will
be ready to embrace openness and risk chaos. Yet, they must.
22. Cultural DNA
In the view of Mr Robert Kuok, if we lose our Chineseness,
our Malayness, and Indianness, we would have lost everything. Having
only western DNA in our blood will lead us to a dead-end in an era when
China and India are in the ascendant. Without cultural DNA, our best
and brightest, schooled in the leading western universities, will not be
stayers. They will rationalise and migrate at the slightest tremor.
Though bright Chinese and Indians also migrate, they have
enough cultural DNA to leave their hearts behind. As China and India
become more open societies, the best and brightest of their people will
return to help build their own country.
Our size and diverse languages leave us in a no-man's land.
The present adoption of English as our first language has served the
economic imperative of education. But is economics the only
imperative? Can national survival depend only on economics?
23. Being Monolingual
Personally, I was schooled in the English medium. English is
my master language. In the world of the future, a monolingual person,
such as myself, will not survive whether he is English or Chinese educated.
Indeed, in a global knowledge based economy, an individual
has to be multilingual and bicultural to survive.
24. Bilingual and Bicultural
I am encouraged by recent Government announcement of
plans to set up a scholarship scheme to nurture a group of Chinese
students to have a deeper understanding of Chinese culture and history,
so as to be able to engage China in depth. The scheme will groom 100
to 200 Chinese students in every primary school cohort yearly. This will
ensure that Singapore could continue to have in depth exchanges and
close relations with China.
While we await MOE's proposal on how to accomplish this,
my guess is that such schooling will be at SAP plus level. This select
group of students will have to study both English and Chinese at first
language level.
Indeed, some friends of my generation, at the insistence of
their Chinese- educated parents, attended English medium schools in
the morning and Chinese medium schools in the afternoon. They were
schooled in both English and Chinese at first language level. As a
result, they were comfortable in both cultures.
Though it is tough to achieve, the Singaporean of the future
has to be not only bilingual, but also bicultural. It will be a challenge for
MOE, society and the family, to bring this about. It is a worthwhile goal.
Indeed, Singapore's very survival rides on us being multilingual and
bicultural.
Unlike China and India, Singapore has no other choice. MM
noted that language and culture were inseparable and the Chinese elite
of the new generation had to be like students from the Chinese schools
in the past who not only mastered the Chinese language. but also knew
the culture and history of China.
25. Singapore's Destiny
I began by postulating that the purpose of education is to
serve the cultural, political and economic imperative of a society.
Singapore's education system has focused almost exclusively on the
economic imperative. While it is true that man does not live by bread
alone, can he live without any bread at all?
26. Ideal Teaching Method
Finally, what is the ideal teaching structure? Is it to be
prescriptive like Confucius or Plato? Or, interactive like Socrates? Or,
divine like Christ? Learning and teaching will exercise the minds of men
forever. A society that stops learning and teaching will be dead and
fossilized like dictatorships.
But the worst dictatorship is dictatorship of the mind.
Societies which allow themselves to be trapped by political indoctrination
or religious fanaticism will ultimately self destruct. Singapore has to
change and evolve, breaking out of our present mould and mindset.
27. Continuity of Policies
Whatever the endowments of a country, the one single
aspect that foreign investors will not tolerate is lack of continuity in public
policies, whether economic and financial, social or educational.
I recall a conversation with a senior Chinese Communist
cadre in 1985 when I asked him about the Cultural Revolution. He
replied with great sadness that, leaving aside the immense personal
suffering of individuals, the greatest damage was the loss of a whole
generation of students. In the mid-1980’s, there was a lack of midcareer
cadres with the education, or the experience, to drive the
development process that China was then embarking on.
With its vast population and talent base, the wounds were
quickly healed. China today is on everyone’s radar screen. A tiny city
state like Singapore cannot survive even a mini-cultural revolution,
whether in the body politic or in education, in the schools, universities, or
society at large. Yet, we must change. How?
28. The PAP and Political Stability
Continuity of policies is only possible if a country enjoys
political stability. The post-independence (1965) generation, who are
now young parents themselves, have taken the political stability of
Singapore for granted. Without the leadership of Mr Lee Kuan Yew and
his first generation founding colleagues, Singapore could well be another
sorry third world story.
The older generation of our citizens born during the war
years will remember the Singapore of the 1950’s and early 1960’s,
wracked by religious and racial riots, and crippled by left-wing
communist inspired strikes.
The non-communist English educated leadership of the PAP
fought the chauvinists, racialists, and communists on their turf, and won.
It is not surprising therefore that the PAP which came into power in 1959
has won every general election since.
The political and economic prosperity wrought by the PAP
Government has to be jealously guarded. In such an environment, there
will be no fertile soil for the opposition to grow.
Only the PAP can defeat itself.
The greatest danger to the PAP, which has been the
governing party for the last forty years, is elitism and complacency. I am
glad that our new Prime Minister, Mr Lee Hsien Loong, wants to create
an inclusive society, not an exclusive ruling class. Complacency sets in
when the administration flies on auto-pilot.
29. Creating a Nation
As we know, the Jewish nation which is larger than the state
of Israel, is bonded by the Torah, the old Testament. As a multi-racial
and multi-religious society, this is not open to us. My personal belief is
that to build the nation of Singapore, we have to value human life and
respect the core of the person. As a Christian, I believe that God has
given each one of us at least one talent. In God's eyes, there is no
person who is completely stupid. Some of us may be cerebral with
abstract thinking skills. Some blessed with motor skills are good
practioners. Artists and great violinists are blessed with both.
So I believe that to become a nation, we as parents,
teachers, siblings and friends should search hard for the talent that each
child has inherently, and help him or her to grow and excel in it. In this
way, we can become a people with diversity of skills and temperaments.
In time, we will evolve into a nation.
Finally, the nation of Singapore will not just be the state of
Singapore. It will embrace all who have their hearts in Singapore.
--------The End--------
(FACULTY OF ARTS & SOCIAL SCIENCES) LECTURE AT THE
LECTURE THEATRE, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE,
ON 26 OCTOBER 2004
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EDUCATION AND GROWTH
---------------------------------------
Professsor Tan Tai Yong, dear friends and fellow alumni
Thank you for having me this evening as speaker for the
inaugural FASS Alumni Lecture. I am deeply honoured. I will speak on
“Education and Growth”, relying on the Singapore Experience during the
period 1960-2000.
1. Synopsis
In my view, education has three imperatives, namely the
economic, the cultural, and the political. Over the last forty years, 1960-
2000, the overriding priority of education has been economic growth.
Faced with a young and rapidly growing population, our schools,
polytechnics and universities were all geared up to teach literacy in
English and the mother tongue, technical skills, science and technology.
Literature and the arts, history, geography, were derided as soft options.
Even those who excelled in law in their professional careers later on in
life, struggled to obtain A’s in the hard sciences in school.
Now that the world is entering an era of knowledge based
competition, we are unsure whether our hard science education will
stand us in good stead. By neglecting the "soft options" of poetry, music
and philosophy, have we missed something? What has happened to our
imagination? Do we find it difficult to think out of the box? Why are the
majority of Singaporeans followers? Isn’t that true of all societies? And
not just Singapore? Politically, do we want to be a Sparta? Or an Athens?
Ideally, can we be both? Where do our political temperament and
instincts lie? I would like to invite you to join me this evening in debating
this proposition: While it is true that man cannot live by bread alone, can
he live without any bread at all?
2. The Three Imperatives of Education
Education has to serve society’s cultural, political and
economic imperatives. The priority and emphasis depend on a country's
time in history and its stage of development. In the case of China, the
political imperative was paramount during the period of the Cultural
Revolution. In contrast to Chairman Mao's ideological leadership, Mr
Deng Hsiao Ping, seeking truth from facts, brought the economic
imperative to the fore.
3. Historical Developments
At the end of the Second World War on the return of the
British colonial Administration to Singapore, English medium schools
funded by the Government were quickly re-established. During the brief
period of the Japanese Occupation (1942-1945), the Japanese civilian
administration used the private Chinese medium schools to teach
Japanese to youngsters like me. Japanese was taught whenever the
Japanese supervisor was around. Teachers and students reverted to
Mandarin the moment he was out of sight. In this way, I had one year of
schooling in Mandarin.
4. English Medium and Vernacular Schools
The British colonial government funded and staffed only the
English medium schools. Vernacular schools in Chinese and Tamil were
left to fend for themselves. They were financially supported by the
various ethnic clan and community associations. Teachers were poorly
trained and poorly paid. Most parents sent their children to English
medium schools, as school fees were lower and facilities better.
Being poorly paid, some teachers in Chinese schools
became embittered and taught leftist ideology to their students. The
Chinese Middle School Union was a powerful political force, which the
PAP Government had to contend with.
English medium schools on the other hand were apolitical.
The aim of the British Government was to teach English, so that young
Singaporeans can serve as clerks and bookkeepers, primary school
teachers and nurses, and policemen. The British Colonial Government,
supported by our own philanthropists, established the King Edward VII
School of Medicine and Raffles College. The two institutions merged in
1949 to become the University of Malaya, serving Singapore and
Malaya. The Law and Engineering Faculties of NUS were established
later in the 1960’s.
Colonial education policy was essentially aimed at oiling the
wheels of administration.
5. Jobs and Technical Education
On the attainment of self-government in August 1959,
Singapore had a population literate in English, an advantage over other
non-English speaking countries in attracting American and European
MNC’s. The population however possessed little technical skills.
Paradoxically, the Chinese-educated possessed more technical skills
through apprenticeship. This skilled labour went on to build complex
steel structures, such as jack up oil drilling rigs.
The indigenous skills however were not adequate for higher
end precision engineering and process industries. EDB was tasked with
starting up technical education in Singapore. We established joint
industrial training centers with MNC’s, such as Philips of Holland, Rollei
of Germany, Seiko and Yokogawa Electric of Japan. The industrial
training systems became models for our six polytechnics today.
6. The Economic Imperative
In the first three decades of independence, the economic
imperative was the driving force of our education policies. In our
schools, attention was focused on the teaching of science and
mathematics dubbed the hard sciences. All other subjects were derided
as soft options.
As a result, less and less students in English medium
schools studied English literature. Paradoxically, it was harder to score
an ‘A’ or distinction in English literature than in maths or science, simply
because English is not our mother tongue at home. Without studying
literature and history, whether in English or Chinese medium schools,
our literacy in both languages fell.
History is a neglected subject in all our schools. Politically,
we have been an independent country since 1965, hardly 40 years old.
In world history, we rate only a comma. Yet our multi-racial and multireligious
society must retain our roots. Without a sense of history, we
will become a people lost in limbo.
7. Singapore's Path?
In the first half of our short history to date, Singapore had no
choice but to embrace science and technology for economic survival. At
a very basic level, we established industrial training centers to train our
young school leavers in precision machining and mould making, still the
core skills for manufacturing industry. At the polytechnics, students are
taught process engineering and technical analysis. They also learn
finance and cost accounting. As our manufacturing and service
industries grew and became more sophisticated, there was a great need
for trained manpower who can go beyond the "how” to the "why" of
things.
8. Nanyang Technological Institute
When we had achieved full employment in the mid-1970’s,
our Economic Advisor, Dr Albert Winsemius, persuaded Prime Minister
Lee Kuan Yew to establish the Nanyang Technological Institute (NTI), to
train practice oriented engineers, to complement engineering science
taught in the University of Singapore. The EDB, nicknamed metal eaters
by Mr Lee, had boldly asked that our university, polytechnics and
industrial training centers produce 1,000 engineers, 5,000 technicians,
and 10,000 skilled workers annually to meet surging demand for
technical manpower.
The elitist establishment at University of Singapore baulked
at increasing the engineering enrolment, raising the spectre of
unemployed graduates. The professors had little faith at the ability of
EDB to attract high tech jobs to Singapore. Yet, even in the recent
recession, MNCs still find difficulty recruiting skilled personnel for tech
industries, such as wafer fab plants. As a result, a number of them are
relocating to China.
NTI was therefore established as a university of science and
technology. To establish its academic credentials, NTI was allowed by
NUS to award a joint degree with NUS. NTU now conducts degree
programmes in almost every academic discipline other than medicine
and law.
As someone who had a role in the establishment of NTU, I
hope my university colleagues will allow me the privilege to state once
more that the aim was to establish NTU as the MIT, and for NUS to
become the Harvard of South-east Asia. The goal of all academic
institutions must be excellence in both teaching and research. Simply
establishing new faculties and departments because the other university
has such a department will just distract the faculty and administration of
both universities from the drive for excellence.
9. Cultural and Racial Roots
Out of sheer necessity, we concentrated on the economic
imperative in education. Efficiency, rather than effectiveness, was the
name of the game.
Along the way, we also lost some of our cultural roots and
ethnic instincts. In the late 1960’s, the Government decided to drop
Chinese dialect programmes over radio and TV. There may be
compelling reasons for stopping Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka
and Hainanese programmes over the airwaves. One reason given was
that we wanted our children to concentrate only on learning Mandarin,
and not have their young minds confused with the various dialects
spoken at home.
Whether this hypothesis is true or not, we do not know for
sure. But, we do know that the grandparents who speak only dialects
and no Mandarin, were deprived of one of their few sources of news and
entertainment. As less and less dialect was spoken at home, the
communication gap between the young and the old widened.
Transmission of cultural values from generation to generation was
diminished. Our children and grandchildren had to learn to speak
Mandarin ab initio, and to study the Chinese language outside what was
our natural cultural environment.
Today, we cannot go back to the status quo ante. It will be
pointless to restore dialect programmes back to our airwaves simply
because the young grandparents of today do not speak any dialects at
all, growing up under the non-dialect regime. A back of the envelope
solution might be to encourage our English-speaking to read Chinese
history, literature, and even poetry, in English to enthuse their
grandchildren on their Chinese heritage.
Though translations will not have the richness of the original,
they do give the English literate some flavour. We can start by reading
Lee Lien Fung's Bamboo Green columns in the Straits Times.
10. Literature
With the neglect of English literature in school, young
Singaporeans do not have enough command of English to absorb the
essence of western culture. Hollywood is their western cultural diet.
At the same time, unable to speak to their grandparents, they
cannot relate what little culture they are taught in their Mandarin lessons
to their daily lives.
My generation, schooled entirely in the English medium and
speaking dialect at home, can at least get a flavour of Chinese history
and culture reading the English translations of All Men are Brothers,
Dream of the Red Chamber, and Lin Yu Tang's My Country and My
People.
11. Humanities and the Arts
In education as in any field of human endeavour, we have to
face reality. Our single-minded pursuit of economic prosperity has
brought us to a crossroad. In a knowledge-based global economy,
inputs of land, labour, and capital, are necessary, but not sufficient for
growth and prosperity. We have to learn to apply knowledge creatively.
A vice-minister of Japan's Ministry of Trade and Industry
once told me that knowledge is power, if applied with wisdom. Or, with
insight and creativity. How do we become a society with insight and
creativity?
12. Holistic Education
The short answer is a holistic education system. Such a
system will have to serve all the three imperatives of education, the
cultural, political and economic. We have successfully established
industrial training centers, polytechnics, and universities, to teach the
“how” but, in my view, not the “why” of things.
At the risk of being dismissed as an educational Rip van
Winkle, may I suggest the Ministry of Education revisit the grouping of
subjects for the O Level examinations. In 1953, when I sat for what was
then known as the Senior Cambridge School Certificate examination,
candidates were required to offer not more than 9 subjects, divided into
three groups of English and English Literature; Mathematics and
Science; History, Geography and Art. Latin and Religious Knowledge
were optional subjects.
A candidate has to pass in at least two subjects from each
group, graded into pass, credit and distinction. Your scores determine
your overall grading into Grade I, II, III. Only those with Grade I were
admitted into the Post School Certificate classes to prepare for university
entrance examinations.
13. Arts and Science
The curriculum required competence in arts and science. In
my view, a broader rather than a narrow curriculum is likely to produce
greater creativity in individuals, and society as a whole. The competition
for entrance into university is at the final stage of schooling. Streaming
at too early a stage is not only unfair to the individual student, but is also
less effective overall in terms of cost.
14. Becoming a Nation
The prosperity achieved from pursuing the economic
imperative in education comes with a cost. Mr Robert Kuok, the
Malaysian entrepreneur whom I know and greatly respect, once told a
private gathering at NUS that to survive beyond economics, Singapore
has to retain its Chineseness, and by extension its Indianness and
Malayness. It was not a rhetorical answer to a rhetorical question.
Because of our political history, Singapore embraced English
as the lingua franca. As English is also the language of international
commerce, science and technology, and the language of today's only
world superpower, the United States, our literacy in English gave us a
head start in attracting MNC investments. Our pragmatism led us to
adopt English as our first language, and our mother tongue, whether it is
Malay, Chinese or Indian, our second language.
Our legal system based on English law is understood and
accepted by international banks, shipping companies, fund managers,
and the rest of the international business community.
As Microsoft dominates the internet, software is largely
written in English. So those fluent in the English language, have an
advantage in writing software than those who are not. Hence, Indians
who are more literate in English have an edge over the Chinese.
15. Cultural DNA
But is language facility the only competitive criterion? Or is it
the cultural DNA of the Indians, Chinese, and Malays that will count
increasingly in the new millennium? Mr Robert Kuok is right in stressing
the importance of remaining culturally Chinese, Indian, and Malay.
16. The Future of English
MM Lee, in his memoirs, said he sang three different national
anthems living in Singapore. First, as a schoolboy he had sung God
Save The King in English, in the crown colony of Singapore before the
Second World War. Then, for three short years, he sang the Japanese
national anthem during the Japanese occupation of Singapore. On the
defeat of Japan, it was back to God Save The King. Finally, the
Singapore national anthem Majullah Singapura when we obtained selfgovernment
in 1959, composed by the late Mr Zubir Said, a Malay
Singaporean and sung in our national language, Malay.
The origin and language of the national anthem is
determined by the political power governing Singapore. Now that
Singapore is an independent country, the origin and language of our
national anthem is settled. Singapore however has still to evolve its own
national cultural identity.
17. China and India
Western civilization, which has spawned most of the major
discoveries in science and technology, has been in the ascendant for the
last 500 years. Before then, the Chinese, Indian and other civilisations
have been in the forefront of the quest for knowledge. Not being a
historian, I will stick my neck out and postulate that western civilization
overtook eastern civilisation because the peoples and societies were
more outward looking, including conquest and colonisation of foreign
lands. An outward orientation forced on us by necessity has enabled
Singapore to make progress.
Continental size countries, such as China and India,
stagnated because they considered themselves to be the centres of the
civilised world. China named itself as Zhong Kuo, center of the world.
There is a rock outcrop on the island of Hainan, my Chinese ancestral
homeland, facing south, which is considered as the spot where the
civilised world ends.
Similarly, my impression is that Indians consider themselves
to be morally superior to other people. Gandhi coined the slogan of
simple living and high thinking. But when India goes on to imply that this
is the only way to progress, it falls into the Chinese trap of
ethnocentricity.
18. Japan
Japan, like India and China, has supreme confidence in its
own culture. I once read in Japan Echo, which publishes Japanese
"think" pieces in English, that foreigners can never penetrate Japan’s
cultural barrier. The author, a professor in Japanese economic history,
held the view that while Japan can be forced to lower import duties,
remove quantitative restrictions, or reduce non-tariff regulations, the
cultural defence of buying Japanese first is a barrier other countries
cannot penetrate. Japan does not promote the study of English.
Instead, there is a huge translation industry publishing Western works in
Japanese.
Japan, unlike China and India, is not a continental country. It
is an archipelago of islands with the sea as the border. Though insular
by nature, Japan has no choice but to trade with the world. The
orientation is outward. Ezra Vogel, a personal friend of mine, who wrote
Japan As No.1, would have done the Japanese a great disservice if the
Japanese had believed him. My hunch is that the Japanese were not
taken in by the accolade.
Japan in the last fifty years has been successful
economically in the league of the United States. Now that China and
India have begun to embrace openness, how will Japan adjust to
compete economically and culturally?
19. Notes from a Very Small Island
In a speech delivered on 19 April 04 at a meeting of the
Association of American Universities (AAU), Professor Shih Choon
Fong, President of the National University of Singapore (the very small
island) and Chairman of the Association of Pacific Rim Countries
(APRU), posed a very intriguing question to his North American
colleagues: "Will the center of higher education remain in North America
or will move? (To China and India?).
He quoted a Goldman Sachs prognosis that the world in
2050 will face a tectonic change. In 2050, China and India, each with a
population far exceeding 1 billion, and the United States with a
population under 450 million, could be the largest economies in the
world.
In another forecast by an English applied linguist, David
Graddot, the English language will probably drop in prominence by
2050, ranking after Chinese, and comparable to Hindi and Arabic.
Although the United States has become the global education
universe in the 20th century, China and India now poised to become two
of the world's largest economies may aspire to become the new centers
of learning. They will strive for cultural and technological primacy. Can
they?
20. Harvard MPA
I attended the MPA course at the Graduate School of Public
Administration of Harvard University in 1963. On arrival at Harvard, midcareer
officers such as myself were told that while it was easy to pass,
having been carefully selected by Harvard, it would be difficult to excel,
as we will be among the best competing with the best.
The teaching method at Harvard was in stark contrast to the
University of Malaya (NUS). The professors assumed that, as we were
learning at a post-graduate level, we already know the subject matter.
I was startled at one of the first American-style lecture when
the professor began the course by asking a question. The student he
asked responded not with an answer, but with another question! The
process was a relay of questions rather than a round of answers.
Though strange at first, I soon learnt to navigate this system by thinking
of the whys rather than the hows. This is a more stimulating way of
learning.
21. Open Societies
Without a doubt, the wealth of human talent in China and
India can propel these countries and societies to intellectual and
technological prominence if, and it’s a big, big if, they can break out of
the mould of Confucian philosophy of the emperor knows best, and the
Indian caste system where some are preordained to be masters and the
others slaves.
For such large countries, because of endless cycles of war
and famine, stability was prized above everything else. In my view, it will
take decades, if not centuries, before Chinese and Indian societies will
be ready to embrace openness and risk chaos. Yet, they must.
22. Cultural DNA
In the view of Mr Robert Kuok, if we lose our Chineseness,
our Malayness, and Indianness, we would have lost everything. Having
only western DNA in our blood will lead us to a dead-end in an era when
China and India are in the ascendant. Without cultural DNA, our best
and brightest, schooled in the leading western universities, will not be
stayers. They will rationalise and migrate at the slightest tremor.
Though bright Chinese and Indians also migrate, they have
enough cultural DNA to leave their hearts behind. As China and India
become more open societies, the best and brightest of their people will
return to help build their own country.
Our size and diverse languages leave us in a no-man's land.
The present adoption of English as our first language has served the
economic imperative of education. But is economics the only
imperative? Can national survival depend only on economics?
23. Being Monolingual
Personally, I was schooled in the English medium. English is
my master language. In the world of the future, a monolingual person,
such as myself, will not survive whether he is English or Chinese educated.
Indeed, in a global knowledge based economy, an individual
has to be multilingual and bicultural to survive.
24. Bilingual and Bicultural
I am encouraged by recent Government announcement of
plans to set up a scholarship scheme to nurture a group of Chinese
students to have a deeper understanding of Chinese culture and history,
so as to be able to engage China in depth. The scheme will groom 100
to 200 Chinese students in every primary school cohort yearly. This will
ensure that Singapore could continue to have in depth exchanges and
close relations with China.
While we await MOE's proposal on how to accomplish this,
my guess is that such schooling will be at SAP plus level. This select
group of students will have to study both English and Chinese at first
language level.
Indeed, some friends of my generation, at the insistence of
their Chinese- educated parents, attended English medium schools in
the morning and Chinese medium schools in the afternoon. They were
schooled in both English and Chinese at first language level. As a
result, they were comfortable in both cultures.
Though it is tough to achieve, the Singaporean of the future
has to be not only bilingual, but also bicultural. It will be a challenge for
MOE, society and the family, to bring this about. It is a worthwhile goal.
Indeed, Singapore's very survival rides on us being multilingual and
bicultural.
Unlike China and India, Singapore has no other choice. MM
noted that language and culture were inseparable and the Chinese elite
of the new generation had to be like students from the Chinese schools
in the past who not only mastered the Chinese language. but also knew
the culture and history of China.
25. Singapore's Destiny
I began by postulating that the purpose of education is to
serve the cultural, political and economic imperative of a society.
Singapore's education system has focused almost exclusively on the
economic imperative. While it is true that man does not live by bread
alone, can he live without any bread at all?
26. Ideal Teaching Method
Finally, what is the ideal teaching structure? Is it to be
prescriptive like Confucius or Plato? Or, interactive like Socrates? Or,
divine like Christ? Learning and teaching will exercise the minds of men
forever. A society that stops learning and teaching will be dead and
fossilized like dictatorships.
But the worst dictatorship is dictatorship of the mind.
Societies which allow themselves to be trapped by political indoctrination
or religious fanaticism will ultimately self destruct. Singapore has to
change and evolve, breaking out of our present mould and mindset.
27. Continuity of Policies
Whatever the endowments of a country, the one single
aspect that foreign investors will not tolerate is lack of continuity in public
policies, whether economic and financial, social or educational.
I recall a conversation with a senior Chinese Communist
cadre in 1985 when I asked him about the Cultural Revolution. He
replied with great sadness that, leaving aside the immense personal
suffering of individuals, the greatest damage was the loss of a whole
generation of students. In the mid-1980’s, there was a lack of midcareer
cadres with the education, or the experience, to drive the
development process that China was then embarking on.
With its vast population and talent base, the wounds were
quickly healed. China today is on everyone’s radar screen. A tiny city
state like Singapore cannot survive even a mini-cultural revolution,
whether in the body politic or in education, in the schools, universities, or
society at large. Yet, we must change. How?
28. The PAP and Political Stability
Continuity of policies is only possible if a country enjoys
political stability. The post-independence (1965) generation, who are
now young parents themselves, have taken the political stability of
Singapore for granted. Without the leadership of Mr Lee Kuan Yew and
his first generation founding colleagues, Singapore could well be another
sorry third world story.
The older generation of our citizens born during the war
years will remember the Singapore of the 1950’s and early 1960’s,
wracked by religious and racial riots, and crippled by left-wing
communist inspired strikes.
The non-communist English educated leadership of the PAP
fought the chauvinists, racialists, and communists on their turf, and won.
It is not surprising therefore that the PAP which came into power in 1959
has won every general election since.
The political and economic prosperity wrought by the PAP
Government has to be jealously guarded. In such an environment, there
will be no fertile soil for the opposition to grow.
Only the PAP can defeat itself.
The greatest danger to the PAP, which has been the
governing party for the last forty years, is elitism and complacency. I am
glad that our new Prime Minister, Mr Lee Hsien Loong, wants to create
an inclusive society, not an exclusive ruling class. Complacency sets in
when the administration flies on auto-pilot.
29. Creating a Nation
As we know, the Jewish nation which is larger than the state
of Israel, is bonded by the Torah, the old Testament. As a multi-racial
and multi-religious society, this is not open to us. My personal belief is
that to build the nation of Singapore, we have to value human life and
respect the core of the person. As a Christian, I believe that God has
given each one of us at least one talent. In God's eyes, there is no
person who is completely stupid. Some of us may be cerebral with
abstract thinking skills. Some blessed with motor skills are good
practioners. Artists and great violinists are blessed with both.
So I believe that to become a nation, we as parents,
teachers, siblings and friends should search hard for the talent that each
child has inherently, and help him or her to grow and excel in it. In this
way, we can become a people with diversity of skills and temperaments.
In time, we will evolve into a nation.
Finally, the nation of Singapore will not just be the state of
Singapore. It will embrace all who have their hearts in Singapore.
--------The End--------
Singapore Must Achieve More With Less (by Ngiam Tong Dow)
IN THE aftermath of GE 2011, a new buzzword entered our political vocabulary. Political reporters wrote about the ‘new normal’ of Singapore politics. Being an ‘old normal’, I wondered what was new.
From third world to first: Like any other country in the world, Singapore now competes in a global economy. In such an economy, importing cheap foreign labour is no longer a viable strategy. It is a dead end.
That was until I spoke to NUS undergraduates at a ‘tea chat’ as a guest of the Master of Cinnamon College, one of seven new colleges forming part of NUS’s new University Town. I wanted to understand the mindset of the younger generation compared with the old mindset of my generation. Except for the few activists of the University Socialist Club, my contemporaries at university were politically passive but not naive. In the political environment we were then in, we thought it prudent to keep our thoughts to ourselves.
In contrast, NUS undergraduates today are more articulate. They have courage of their own convictions, expressing their views vigorously at tutorials or the cafeteria.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has to deal with an electorate that is vastly different from the old normal of his father’s generation. The command politics of his father no longer works. While Mr Lee Kuan Yew appealed to emotions, PM has now to appeal to reason.
In my synopsis, I posed the question: Though Singapore has held seven general elections, can Singapore be considered a democratic state?
Let me state what we are not. We are not a theocratic state like the Vatican or present day Iran. We are definitely not ideological states like North Korea, Cuba or China.
The western concept of democracy is government of the people, by the people, for the people. China’s emperors had to gain the consent of the people to earn the mandate of heaven to rule. In my view, the core purpose of government is to raise the livelihood of the people.
The People’s Action Party (PAP) has won every one of the seven general elections since independence in 1965. The PAP won the mandate to govern because it delivered jobs and housing. Singapore is almost a model state attracting some of the ablest people in the world to work here. Would they also live here and raise their families?
There are two competing strands in our body politic. The first strand is meritocracy. It is modelled on the Chinese imperial scholar system where the best minds compete in nationwide examinations presided over by the emperor himself. The Singapore President Scholar is akin to the Chinese Imperial Scholar. Both systems aim at identifying the best talent to serve the country.
The second strand relates to the system of selecting leaders. It is modeled on Plato’s Republic. In the Republic, peers select their own leaders until the philosopher king emerges. As the first among equals, he is accountable to no one but himself.
Over time, peer selection breeds a leadership that becomes complacent. Though our state is rooted in meritocracy, we must beware of the dead hand of peer selection. Elitism creeps in imperceptibly.
The recommendation by the ministerial salaries review committee to peg ministerial salaries to the median income of the top 1,000 income earners reflects an elitist mindset which is troubling. If the primary purpose of government is to raise the livelihood of the people, a better statistical measure of livelihood would be the median income of all workers, not just the top 1,000 income earners or the MX9 salary scale of the Civil Service.
Curiously, both the government and the Workers Party accept that ministerial salaries be pegged to high income earners rather than the median of the work force, which is $3,070 a month as at June 2011.
The term first world is the vocabulary applied to wealthy European countries in the early 20th Century. In the early 1900s, Argentina was considered a first world country. Dr (Henry) Kissinger praised Singapore for moving from third to first world. Singaporeans may agree with the first but not the second half of his compliment.
Singaporeans of my generation remember vividly the slums, joblessness, dirt and disease of the 1950s. Through dint of hard work and discipline, we moved rapidly from a labour to a skill-intensive economy. By the early 1970s, we achieved full employment with an unemployment rate of 3 per cent.
The great challenge for us today is that we have reached the limits of our skill-based model of growth. Nothing stands still. The BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) are rapidly catching up on the United States, Japan and Europe in the automotive industry. China and Japan are embarking on the design and manufacture of commercial aircraft. But it will take considerably more time to succeed in the production of jet engines, landing gears and constant speed drives – key components of an aircraft.
Singapore has to move from a skill to a knowledge-based economy. The products and services of such an economy are characterised by high technological content. To position ourselves for such an economy, Singapore devotes the greater part of our national budget to education and training.
When I was in school in the 1950s, only three out my O level class of 40 went on to university. Today, 30 per cent of a primary school cohort enrol in tertiary education. Raising our average educational level from primary to post-secondary should make a world of difference for our international competitiveness.
So I observe with some dismay that the manufacturing share of our GDP dropped from a high of 30 per cent in the 1980s to 20 per cent currently. We need to ask ourselves why our concentration on engineering and science-based education is not yielding dividends in productivity and innovation.
Instead, the employment share of low-wage, low-skilled personal services is rising. Are we overeducating our children? This is a heretical thought contrary to all my basic EDB instincts. In EDB, our article of faith is that the higher the education level, the more rewarding will our jobs become. Our total factor productivity should be rising not stagnating.
In my view, productivity and real wages of the bottom 20 per cent of our work force have not risen because our labour policies allow employers easy access to low wage foreign labour. In national accounting, low wage foreign labour may not be as low-cost as employers believe. If we add the cost of housing, transportation, health and other social services which employers have to provide for their foreign work force, they may be better off training and equipping their Singaporean employees to raise their productivity. Rising productivity enables workers to be paid more. Inflation sets in only when wages are raised without any increase in productivity.
Productivity can only be raised when CEOs leave their comfort zones and take direct charge of the production process. They have to be hands on, not resorting to outsourcing. Productivity should be the key KPI (key performance indicator) for the award of bonuses to CEOs and management.
At the national level, PM is the CEO. Bonuses for the Cabinet should be pegged to increases in the median income of the work force, rather than the GDP.
Like any other country in the world, Singapore now competes in a global economy. In such an economy, importing cheap foreign labour is no longer a viable strategy. It is a dead end.
The 2012 budget is politically adroit, replete with spending proposals which basically are income transfers from the taxpayer to the poorly paid, the disadvantaged and the aged. Income transfers are palliatives, temporary reliefs to abate rising social discontent. They do not help to raise productivity. The real challenge is to grow the economy by raising total factor productivity.
It is not easy. A Japanese scholar pointed out in an article in Japan Echo that the optimum rate of productivity increase achieved by his country averaged 4 per cent annually. We need to remember that the Japanese are one of the most diligent people in the world. Singapore is already straining at the seams with a current resident population of five million. We are embarking on a crash programme to build more MRT lines, hospitals, HDB flats, schools and universities to accommodate the sudden surge in population.
The economic assumption is that we can increase our GDP if we can accommodate more people. In my view, even doubling our population to 10 million people will not make things better. More likely, a larger population can only make matters worse.
We have to grow through raising productivity, not higher headcount. We need to be smart enough to produce more with less. Our higher education levels and superior infrastructure enable us to compete in knowledge-based industries and services. We transformed ourselves in the 1970s from a labour to a skill-intensive economy.
There is one reality our younger generation has to face. In a global economy, you will be competing not only with friends and classmates but with the best and brightest of your generation in India, China, Brazil, Russia and Eastern Europe.
University graduates in China and India are willing to work for a tenth of what our young engineers and scientists expect. If we fail to raise our total factor productivity, Singapore would just be an also-ran in the race to be a knowledge-based economy.
When Sir Stamford Raffles founded Singapore in 1819, his town planner demarcated the town into several ethnic enclaves. Kampong Glam (Malays/Arabs), Chinatown (Hokkiens, Cantonese, Teochews), Little India (Tamils), and Tanglin (Europeans).
Empress Place on the left bank at the mouth of Singapore River was the administrative and civic centre. The British governor presided from the Istana. The Istana where our President and Prime Minister have their offices is the seat of government.
Each racial group was free to conduct their own trades, practice their own religions, set up their own schools, and largely married within their own race and ethnic group.
The colonial government provided the overarching framework of law and order and schooling in the English medium. Being a British colony, the language of administration was English. Access to English medium schools was open to all races. English became the lingua franca acceptable to all the races as none has any in-built advantage over the other.
From 1819 to 1959 when Singapore was granted self-government, our different races lived lives of passive co-existence. Even then, Singaporeans witnessed at first hand the madness of three racial riots in the 1950s-60s. Learning from bitter experience, our government established the inter-religious council and enacted legislation to protect minority rights.
Income gaps
In 2012, what will be the threat to social stability? In a society that is racially diverse and practising different faiths, it is matter of pride for me as a Singaporean that we have learnt to treat our neighbours as our friends. Future social unrest will arise not from racial or religious differences but from the growing class divide caused by widening income gaps. The top 1,000 earn million-dollar annual salaries while the rest a monthly median income of US$3,070. The gap is untenable.
Paradoxically, this income divide is seeded in our deep belief in meritocracy. In the past, equal opportunities in education have provided the social mobility to enable the bright boy from a poor family to make good. The playing field was level for all students.
The spread of private tuition has changed the educational playing field. During my school days, only the academically weak students of rich parents take remedial tuition. Taking private tuition was not a badge of honour. Today, any parent who can afford the fees will send their children not for remedial but enhancement classes to give their children a head-start over their classmates.
Though there will still be the exceptional individual who triumphs against all odds, more and more of our state scholars will come from upper, middle income families with professional parents. There is no easy answer to the problem of an uneven playing field in our schools. In itself, private tuition is unalloyed free enterprise which society should encourage, not frown upon.
The challenge is to level up, not to level down. One suggestion I have is to make classes for academically weaker children smaller. The student-teacher ratio should be more favourable than in brighter classes so that the teacher can give more personal attention to each student, which is what private tuition is all about.
The elitist among us will invariably ask the question whether this is the right allocation of teaching resources. This was the very question I asked of my late EDB colleague Ong Wee Hock who requested more funds to expand our industrial training centres. The ITCs are the precursor of our ITEs. I had to eat my own words later when our ITC trainees with barely O levels went on to start their own factories producing parts and components for MNCs.
It is hard to find the university graduate who becomes a successful entrepreneur. The prevailing reward system drives our graduates to become bureaucrats/managers both in government and business. White collar jobs pay better than blue collar jobs.
In the early 1970s when we achieved full employment, some of us in the EDB began to ask the question about the critical size of populations. We did some desktop research and found that there were several industrialised European countries with population size of around 5-6 million. These were Israel, Norway, Sweden and Finland. Our town planners went to work and concluded that Singapore with a land area of 670 square kilometres can comfortably accommodate a population of 5-6 million.
Flying on auto-pilot, we allowed in one million foreigners in the last decade. As we arrive at our numerical target of five million, Singaporeans find themselves squeezed on crowded MRT trains and buses. Low wage foreign workers replaced older Singaporean workers in menial jobs.
As our births fell below replacement levels, we resorted to immigration as an instrument to top up the babies that young Singaporean couples are not having. There are also elements of political re-engineering. Submerged in our immigration policies is the belief that to maintain racial harmony, we need to keep the current population balance constant.
I have come to the conclusion that we have been peering at the wrong end of the population telescope. Since the 1970s when job hopping became a bottleneck, computer technology has made many manual operations in production obsolete.
The key is to produce more with less manpower. The window to raise total factor productivity through application of knowledge and training is fast closing with the opening up of India, China and Indonesia. Singapore has lost two decades relying on low-wage, low-skilled foreign labour to drive economic growth.
Our managers and administrators are among the best paid in the world. They will have to get off their high horse and personally lead the drive for higher productivity. Outsourcing is a bad word in my vocabulary. Companies and government ministries should figure out how to train their staff and redesign jobs and processes to achieve more with less.
Grants should not be given to management (consultants) to do a job they are already paid to do. Instead, interest free loans should be given to enterprises with clear roadmaps to re-equip and raise the productivity of their workers.
I am against job credits in any form because they are simply wage subsidies which do not raise productivity in any way. My personal observation is that job credits simply add to the bottom line for payment of bonuses to management who do not have to lift a finger to raise the productivity of their enterprises.
We failed to bite the bullet in the 1980s to restructure our economy. There may be no second chance the next time around.
The writer is a former permanent secretary who has served in several ministries and statutory boards, as well as corporate boards. This is the edited text of a speech delivered at an SICC luncheon talk yesterday. (19/3/12)
Wednesday, 27 June 2012
Aung San Suu Kyi -You're elected not because you're that good or that clever.
- QUOTE -
Don't get above yourself and don't get corrupted. Don't forget that you were elected because of the HOPES of the PEOPLE. Not because you're that good or that clever. And your function is to fulfill those hopes that you'd raised.
- UNQUOTE -
Thursday, 31 May 2012
Open letter to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong
Published on Thursday 25 March 2010. Updated on Friday 26 March 2010.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong
Prime Minister’s Office
Orchard Road
Istana
Singapore 238823
Prime Minister’s Office
Orchard Road
Istana
Singapore 238823
Paris, 25 March 2010
Dear Prime Minister,
A foreign news organisation has yet again been forced to
apologise to you and your father and pay you a large sum of money for
publishing an article you did not like. This time it is the New York
Times Co. that is a victim of this double punishment because of a
compliant judicial system that always rules in favour of you and your
family in all the lawsuits you bring against foreign news media.
Before the New York Times Co., you succeeded in
punishing the Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER), FinanceAsia.com, The
Economist, International Herald Tribune and Asian Wall Street Journal
for their coverage of the political and economic situation in your
country.
Threatened by a trial, the New York Times Co. apologised
to you and your father, Lee Kuan Yew, for the article “All in the
Family,” written by Philip Bowring and published in the 15 February
issue of the International Herald Tribune. As well as an apology, this
US media company had to pay 114,000 US dollars in damages.
Your lawyer, Davinder Singh, said Bowring’s article
violated an “agreement” between your family and the International Herald
Tribune, which was sentenced in 1994 to pay a large sum in damages for
an article entitled “The claims about Asian values don’t usually bear
scrutiny.”
The now defunct Far Eastern Economic Review agreed last
November, after a long legal wrangle, to pay you and your father 290,000
US dollars in damages. Despite a lack of evidence, Singaporean judges
ruled in favour of your family both in the original trial and on appeal
without a thought for media freedom.
Reporters Without Borders condemns the judicial
harassment which you and your father have practiced for years in order
to prevent foreign news media from taking too close an interest in how
you run your country. It does serious and lasting harm to press freedom
in Singapore.
Your government has repeatedly displayed a disturbing
inability to tolerate foreign journalists. Last October, for example,
Ben Bland, a British freelancer who strings for The Economist and The
Daily Telegraph, was denied a visa and permission to cover an APEC
summit in Singapore. “I was forced to leave Singapore after the
government refused to renew my work visa without any explanation,” Bland
told Reporters Without Borders.
But the censorship has above all affected local media
and local artistic production. In October 2009, for example, the
ministry of information, communication and arts upheld a ban on a
documentary by Singaporean filmmaker Martyn See about government
opponent Said Zahari. Watch the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOI2...
In response to the publication of the Reporters Without
Borders 2009 press freedom index, in which Singapore was ranked 133rd
out of 175 countries, your law minister, K. Shanmugam, described it as
“absurd” and “disconnected from reality.”
Unfortunately, the facts show that we are right.
In the six years since you became prime minister and
said you favoured an “open” society, we have seen very few improvements
in the situation of free speech.
We therefore think your government should take the following measures as a matter of urgency:
1. Put a stop to the libel actions which you and your
relatives have been bringing against Singaporean and foreign media that
cover Singaporean developments in an independent manner. As the UN
special rapporteur for freedom of expression recently said, the prime
minister, his minister and high officials must refrain from suing
journalists over their articles and comments.
2. Amend the criminal code so as to abolish prison sentences for press offences.
3. Amend the press law, especially the articles concerning the granting of publication licences. The current restrictions are preventing the emergence of independent media. The film law should also be relaxed.
4. Reform the national security law so as to abolish administrative detention, which allows the authorities to imprison people because of what they think.
5. Reform the Media Development Authority so that it is no longer able to censor and can solely make recommendations about TV programmes and films.
6. Allow government opponents and civil society representatives unrestricted access to the public media.
7. Guarantee the editorial independence of all the media owned by Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) and Media Corporation of Singapore (Mediacorp).
8. Transfer the money that your family has obtained in damages from foreign and Singaporean news media to a support fund for imprisoned journalists that Reporters Without Borders proposes to set up.
2. Amend the criminal code so as to abolish prison sentences for press offences.
3. Amend the press law, especially the articles concerning the granting of publication licences. The current restrictions are preventing the emergence of independent media. The film law should also be relaxed.
4. Reform the national security law so as to abolish administrative detention, which allows the authorities to imprison people because of what they think.
5. Reform the Media Development Authority so that it is no longer able to censor and can solely make recommendations about TV programmes and films.
6. Allow government opponents and civil society representatives unrestricted access to the public media.
7. Guarantee the editorial independence of all the media owned by Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) and Media Corporation of Singapore (Mediacorp).
8. Transfer the money that your family has obtained in damages from foreign and Singaporean news media to a support fund for imprisoned journalists that Reporters Without Borders proposes to set up.
We regret that you, the members of your government and
your father keep citing the need to guarantee Singapore’s stability as
grounds for controlling the media and maintaining its draconian laws.
Countries that show the most respect for press freedom, such as Finland
and Norway, are peaceful and prosperous democracies. Freedom of
expression is not a source of political unrest. Quite the contrary.
You have perpetuated your father’s legacy by continuing
to harass and intimidate news media. As a result, aside from a few
websites specialising in Singapore, no news outlet can publish
independent news and information about issues affecting the political
situation in your country.
We would be very honoured to be able to meet with you in
order to talk about our observations and our proposals for guaranteeing
press freedom in Singapore in person.
Respectfully,
Jean-François Julliard
Secretary-General
Secretary-General
Reporters Without Borders
Wednesday, 16 May 2012
Exposing The 6 Major Flaws In The PAP’s Immigration Policy
Posted by temasektimes on April 29, 2012
The twin issues of immigration and foreign workers have perpetually hogged the headlines since last year, an indication of how it has become a“national obsession” of Singaporeans. Despite the ruling party’s fervent attempts to assuage rising resentment, frustration and anger on the ground, Singaporeans remain unconvinced by their reasoning that foreigners are “essential” to Singapore.
To be fair to the PAP, there is nothing fundamentally wrong in Singapore recruiting more foreigners to boost its declining birth rate – the root cause of the problem lies in the way the policies are implemented which takes into little consideration the possible long‐term impact on the rest of the populace. Three questions come to mind immediately:
1. Why do we need immigrants?
2. How many immigrants do we need?
3. Who are we targeting exactly?
The first question has been addressed many times by the PAP leaders and academics – being a small nation without any natural resources, human resource is our greatest asset. Singapore’s birth rates has been declining to below the level needed to replace the population and if no measures are taken to rectify the situation, we will end up like Japan – an aging society with manifold repercussions for the nation.
Hence, we need immigrants to keep our population growing and to economy competitive. Unfortunately, the PAP appeared to have implemented the policies too hastily under their ambitious plan to increase Singapore’s population to 6.5 million people while neglecting the other intangible consequences of immigration.
Six major flaws of the PAP’s immigration policies:
1. Too many, too soon:
Singapore has been accepting immigrants since the 1980s and 1990s from Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Taiwan without causing much discomfort to the local population.
This is because the immigrants have come in smaller numbers and are similar to Singaporeans in terms of culture, language and beliefs and have few problems assimilating into Singapore society.
The pace of immigration picked up when Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong assumed office in 2003 and all of sudden the floodgates are opened to accept foreigners from all over the world especially China and India where the majority of the newcomers hail from. In the span of less than 5 years, foreigners now make up 36 per cent of Singapore’s population, up from 14 per cent in 1990. Of the remaining 64 per cent who are citizens, a significant proportion are new immigrants born overseas.
Does Singapore really need to let so many foreigners into the country within such a short period of time? In 2008 alone, there were over 90,000 PRs and 20,000 new citizens which is obviously stretching the nation’s infrastructure, such as public housing to accommodate all of them.
PM Lee now promised Singaporeans that the rate of immigration will be continued in a
“measured and calibrated” manner. Is this a tacit admission that the uncontrolled influx of immigrants between the years 2003 – 2008 had been a mistake?
2. Inadequate infrastructure such as public housing to accommodate newcomers:
It doesn’t take a genius to realize that with so many foreigners flocking to study, work and live in Singapore, one needs to increase the number of public amenities and upgrade the infrastructure to accommodate them such as public housing.
According to HDB financial report 2008/2009, only slightly more than 11,000 new flats were built between the years 2006 – 2008 when there were over 90,000 PRs and 20,000 new citizens alone in 2008.
The lack of foresight on the part of HDB to plan beforehand to build more new flats to house the immigrants is appalling and its failure to do so has led to sky‐rocketing HDB flat prices today. Due to the lack of new flats, especially those in the prime districts, Singaporeans have to compete with PRs in the resale flats which resulted naturally in the rise of the prices of resale flats. Public transport such as buses and MRTs are also poorly prepared for the increase in population as evidenced by the packed buses and trains every morning.
3. Targeting the wrong people:
Singapore should be targeting foreigners who can add value to Singapore and not open its doors indiscriminately to every Tom, Dick or Harry. Mainland China is one important source of immigrants for Singapore, but we are not getting their cream of the crop. According to a Gallup poll done in July 2009 among Chinese college students, their top emigration destination is the United States, followed by France and South Korea. Singapore isn’t even featured among the top five.
Why isn’t Singapore attracting the best Chinese talents? Instead of examining the cause we settle for their “lesser talents”, many of whom are uncouth peasants from the poorer inland provinces.
What Singapore is getting are not first class talents but economic migrants who cannot survive in their own countries and they are now competing with Singaporeans for limited jobs because they cost much less.
China is vast country with 23 provinces and more than 1 billion people of various races and religions. The ethnic Chinese in Singapore come mostly from the southern provinces of Guangdong and Fujian.
Singapore should be focusing on luring prospective migrants from these two provinces instead of allowing Chinese from all across the mainland to come here.
As they share the same dialect and culture as local Chinese, they will have fewer problems integrating into Singapore society as compared to Chinese from far‐flung inland provinces who come from a completely alien world altogether.
4. Ease of getting PR and citizenship:
Unlike countries, getting a PR and citizenship in Singapore is incredibly easy without any major restrictions. Most developed countries like Australia, Canada and U.K set an English proficiency test for immigrants and only those who pass the test are able to work and live there. In Australia, one has to live there three out of a period of five years before they are eligible to become PRs.
However in Singapore, the newcomers are “fast‐tracked” to become PRs and citizens without first familiarizing themselves with the country first and spending adequate time to make the decision.
A Chinese national and Singapore PR Zhang Yuanyuan who worked as a teacher in a private institution in Singapore revealed to the media that she became a PR within 2 months of application. Even construction workers, cleaners, masseurs and prostitutes are able to lay their lands on a Singapore PR, the stepping stone for citizenship.
According to the Home Affairs Ministry, two out of every three PR applicants are successful, an astonishingly high success rate for a first world country. Because citizenships are given out too soon to foreigners, there is insufficient time for both
parties to assess if they are really “compatible” with each other.
5. Lack of a comprehensive plan to integrate the newcomers:
Due to the large number of unsuitable migrants who are given citizenships too soon, we now end up with the problem of having to integrate them.
Again, the ruling party did not come up with a comprehensive plan to integrate the newcomers when they embarked on their ambitious plan to increase Singapore’s population via immigration way back in 2003.
It is now very difficult to integrate those who are already in Singapore because they have come in such big numbers that they tend to congregate within their own communities than to reach out to the rest of Singapore.
We are already seeing ethnic “enclaves” emerging in different parts of Singapore such as the Chinese in Geylang, Indians in Punggol and Filipinos in Tampines.
Furthermore, as they share few similarities with the Chinese, Malays and Indians though they may be of the same race, it is near impossible to expect them to assimilate into our society any time soon.
As usual, the ruling party comes up with a grandiose $10 million Community Integration Fund to throw money at the problem.
How does organizing tea parties, community events and free language courses help to
“integrate” the immigrants into Singapore is anybody’s guess when they should have done their homework first before opening the floodgates to immigration.
They will simply turn up for the free food and goodies before return to their own cliques as before – do you call this “integration”?
6. Neglect of native Singaporeans:
The key reason why many Singaporeans are so vehemently against the ruling party’s
immigration policies is because they feel they are not getting a fair deal as citizens from the elected government of the day. Dr Vivian Balakrishnan said the government cannot “shield” Singaporeans from competition, but they are the ones who forced Singaporeans to compete with foreigners on unequal terms.
Firstly, the Singapore male is already disadvantaged by having to spend 4 weeks away from work annually due to reservist obligations.
Secondly, there is no way Singaporeans can compete with foreigners in terms of cost because they do not have a family here and they can easily support them back home with their meager pay earned in Singapore.
While in the past only extremely qualified professionals and blue collar workers in sectors shunned by Singaporeans are allowed into Singapore, we are now seeing an increasing number of semi‐skilled foreigners on S‐passes and these are the group of foreigners who are competing with locals for jobs and depressing their wages in the process. To exacerbate the situation, there is a dearth of social welfare benefits for Singapore citizens who have to depend entirely on their CPF and medisave for retirement and medical expenses.
CPF is proving to be grossly inadequate to support Singaporeans through their twilight years and many have to continue working just to feed themselves and their families.
With so many grouses bottled up inside, it is only natural to expect Singaporeans to blame foreigners for their woes, whether rightly or wrongly.
Had the ruling party taken the necessary measures to ensure that Singaporeans are well taken care of first before they let the foreigners in, there will not be so much anger against them now.
Conclusion:
Instead of focusing solely on the benefits of immigration, which is namely to sustain the population and economy, the government should look at the entire problem from a holistic perspective.
Immigration has its pros and cons. We must evaluate the potential problems bring about by uncontrolled immigration first before deciding on the number of immigrants to accept each year.
Note: This article was first published in the old Temasek Review in March 2010
The twin issues of immigration and foreign workers have perpetually hogged the headlines since last year, an indication of how it has become a“national obsession” of Singaporeans. Despite the ruling party’s fervent attempts to assuage rising resentment, frustration and anger on the ground, Singaporeans remain unconvinced by their reasoning that foreigners are “essential” to Singapore.
To be fair to the PAP, there is nothing fundamentally wrong in Singapore recruiting more foreigners to boost its declining birth rate – the root cause of the problem lies in the way the policies are implemented which takes into little consideration the possible long‐term impact on the rest of the populace. Three questions come to mind immediately:
1. Why do we need immigrants?
2. How many immigrants do we need?
3. Who are we targeting exactly?
The first question has been addressed many times by the PAP leaders and academics – being a small nation without any natural resources, human resource is our greatest asset. Singapore’s birth rates has been declining to below the level needed to replace the population and if no measures are taken to rectify the situation, we will end up like Japan – an aging society with manifold repercussions for the nation.
Hence, we need immigrants to keep our population growing and to economy competitive. Unfortunately, the PAP appeared to have implemented the policies too hastily under their ambitious plan to increase Singapore’s population to 6.5 million people while neglecting the other intangible consequences of immigration.
Six major flaws of the PAP’s immigration policies:
1. Too many, too soon:
Singapore has been accepting immigrants since the 1980s and 1990s from Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Taiwan without causing much discomfort to the local population.
This is because the immigrants have come in smaller numbers and are similar to Singaporeans in terms of culture, language and beliefs and have few problems assimilating into Singapore society.
The pace of immigration picked up when Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong assumed office in 2003 and all of sudden the floodgates are opened to accept foreigners from all over the world especially China and India where the majority of the newcomers hail from. In the span of less than 5 years, foreigners now make up 36 per cent of Singapore’s population, up from 14 per cent in 1990. Of the remaining 64 per cent who are citizens, a significant proportion are new immigrants born overseas.
Does Singapore really need to let so many foreigners into the country within such a short period of time? In 2008 alone, there were over 90,000 PRs and 20,000 new citizens which is obviously stretching the nation’s infrastructure, such as public housing to accommodate all of them.
PM Lee now promised Singaporeans that the rate of immigration will be continued in a
“measured and calibrated” manner. Is this a tacit admission that the uncontrolled influx of immigrants between the years 2003 – 2008 had been a mistake?
2. Inadequate infrastructure such as public housing to accommodate newcomers:
It doesn’t take a genius to realize that with so many foreigners flocking to study, work and live in Singapore, one needs to increase the number of public amenities and upgrade the infrastructure to accommodate them such as public housing.
According to HDB financial report 2008/2009, only slightly more than 11,000 new flats were built between the years 2006 – 2008 when there were over 90,000 PRs and 20,000 new citizens alone in 2008.
The lack of foresight on the part of HDB to plan beforehand to build more new flats to house the immigrants is appalling and its failure to do so has led to sky‐rocketing HDB flat prices today. Due to the lack of new flats, especially those in the prime districts, Singaporeans have to compete with PRs in the resale flats which resulted naturally in the rise of the prices of resale flats. Public transport such as buses and MRTs are also poorly prepared for the increase in population as evidenced by the packed buses and trains every morning.
3. Targeting the wrong people:
Singapore should be targeting foreigners who can add value to Singapore and not open its doors indiscriminately to every Tom, Dick or Harry. Mainland China is one important source of immigrants for Singapore, but we are not getting their cream of the crop. According to a Gallup poll done in July 2009 among Chinese college students, their top emigration destination is the United States, followed by France and South Korea. Singapore isn’t even featured among the top five.
Why isn’t Singapore attracting the best Chinese talents? Instead of examining the cause we settle for their “lesser talents”, many of whom are uncouth peasants from the poorer inland provinces.
What Singapore is getting are not first class talents but economic migrants who cannot survive in their own countries and they are now competing with Singaporeans for limited jobs because they cost much less.
China is vast country with 23 provinces and more than 1 billion people of various races and religions. The ethnic Chinese in Singapore come mostly from the southern provinces of Guangdong and Fujian.
Singapore should be focusing on luring prospective migrants from these two provinces instead of allowing Chinese from all across the mainland to come here.
As they share the same dialect and culture as local Chinese, they will have fewer problems integrating into Singapore society as compared to Chinese from far‐flung inland provinces who come from a completely alien world altogether.
4. Ease of getting PR and citizenship:
Unlike countries, getting a PR and citizenship in Singapore is incredibly easy without any major restrictions. Most developed countries like Australia, Canada and U.K set an English proficiency test for immigrants and only those who pass the test are able to work and live there. In Australia, one has to live there three out of a period of five years before they are eligible to become PRs.
However in Singapore, the newcomers are “fast‐tracked” to become PRs and citizens without first familiarizing themselves with the country first and spending adequate time to make the decision.
A Chinese national and Singapore PR Zhang Yuanyuan who worked as a teacher in a private institution in Singapore revealed to the media that she became a PR within 2 months of application. Even construction workers, cleaners, masseurs and prostitutes are able to lay their lands on a Singapore PR, the stepping stone for citizenship.
According to the Home Affairs Ministry, two out of every three PR applicants are successful, an astonishingly high success rate for a first world country. Because citizenships are given out too soon to foreigners, there is insufficient time for both
parties to assess if they are really “compatible” with each other.
5. Lack of a comprehensive plan to integrate the newcomers:
Due to the large number of unsuitable migrants who are given citizenships too soon, we now end up with the problem of having to integrate them.
Again, the ruling party did not come up with a comprehensive plan to integrate the newcomers when they embarked on their ambitious plan to increase Singapore’s population via immigration way back in 2003.
It is now very difficult to integrate those who are already in Singapore because they have come in such big numbers that they tend to congregate within their own communities than to reach out to the rest of Singapore.
We are already seeing ethnic “enclaves” emerging in different parts of Singapore such as the Chinese in Geylang, Indians in Punggol and Filipinos in Tampines.
Furthermore, as they share few similarities with the Chinese, Malays and Indians though they may be of the same race, it is near impossible to expect them to assimilate into our society any time soon.
As usual, the ruling party comes up with a grandiose $10 million Community Integration Fund to throw money at the problem.
How does organizing tea parties, community events and free language courses help to
“integrate” the immigrants into Singapore is anybody’s guess when they should have done their homework first before opening the floodgates to immigration.
They will simply turn up for the free food and goodies before return to their own cliques as before – do you call this “integration”?
6. Neglect of native Singaporeans:
The key reason why many Singaporeans are so vehemently against the ruling party’s
immigration policies is because they feel they are not getting a fair deal as citizens from the elected government of the day. Dr Vivian Balakrishnan said the government cannot “shield” Singaporeans from competition, but they are the ones who forced Singaporeans to compete with foreigners on unequal terms.
Firstly, the Singapore male is already disadvantaged by having to spend 4 weeks away from work annually due to reservist obligations.
Secondly, there is no way Singaporeans can compete with foreigners in terms of cost because they do not have a family here and they can easily support them back home with their meager pay earned in Singapore.
While in the past only extremely qualified professionals and blue collar workers in sectors shunned by Singaporeans are allowed into Singapore, we are now seeing an increasing number of semi‐skilled foreigners on S‐passes and these are the group of foreigners who are competing with locals for jobs and depressing their wages in the process. To exacerbate the situation, there is a dearth of social welfare benefits for Singapore citizens who have to depend entirely on their CPF and medisave for retirement and medical expenses.
CPF is proving to be grossly inadequate to support Singaporeans through their twilight years and many have to continue working just to feed themselves and their families.
With so many grouses bottled up inside, it is only natural to expect Singaporeans to blame foreigners for their woes, whether rightly or wrongly.
Had the ruling party taken the necessary measures to ensure that Singaporeans are well taken care of first before they let the foreigners in, there will not be so much anger against them now.
Conclusion:
Instead of focusing solely on the benefits of immigration, which is namely to sustain the population and economy, the government should look at the entire problem from a holistic perspective.
Immigration has its pros and cons. We must evaluate the potential problems bring about by uncontrolled immigration first before deciding on the number of immigrants to accept each year.
Note: This article was first published in the old Temasek Review in March 2010
How Uncontrolled Immigration Can Destroy A Nation
A comparative case study of the Korean kingdoms of Balhae (渤海) and Silla (新羅)
Posted by temasektimes on May 1, 2012
Immigration is a double-edged sword – it can build a great and powerful nation like the United States, but can also plant the seeds of its eventual downfall too as in the case of the Western Roman empire.
Great civilizations like Tang China might have enjoyed a relative period of prosperity brought about by its open-door policy to immigrants, yet it soon declined and descended into chaos following a massive rebellion led by a barbarian general An Lushan.
Using history as a mirror, Singapore should reflect carefully on its present immigration policy which has resulted in dissatisfaction and discontentment among native Singaporeans.
While Singapore must remain open to the world, we must be extremely selective on the immigrants we accept. Unfortunately, the seemingly uncontrolled immigration in the last few years has led to many foreigners being given Singapore citizenship without truly understand what it means to be a Singaporean.
Singapore has accepted too many immigrants within too short a period of time such that there is no time at all for them to be integrated properly into local society.
Furthermore, Singaporeans have less a racial or cultural identity than the Chinese, Indians, and Filipinos and it would not be easy to assimilate them especially when there are so many of them here causing them to congregate within their own communities.
Uncontrolled immigration can easily destroy a nation as exemplified by the Korean empire of Balhae (渤海).
Balhae (698 AD – 926 AD) was founded in 698 AD from the remnants of the Korean state of Gorguryeo (高句麗) after it was conquered by a joint invasion from Tang China and Silla (新羅), another Korean state which occupied the Korean peninsula.
Balhae became a major empire in Northeast Asia and occupied southern parts of Manchuria, Russia’s Primorsky Krai, and the northern part of the Korean peninsula.
This area was a volatile region with several ethnic tribes of which the Koreans were one of them. Due to historical animosities between Balhae and Silla, the Balhae kings banned the inflow of Korean immigrants from Silla and relied on immigrants from other ethnic groups instead.
(Balhae blamed Silla for “conspiring” with Tang China to destroy its predecessor state Gorguryeo)
As Balhae was a newly founded country, it adopted an open-door policy to immigrants from neighboring kingdoms and tribes including the Khitan (契丹) and Malgal (靺鞨).
Large numbers of Khitans and Malgals were allowed into Balhae and the Koreans became an ethnic minority in their own country in less than a hundred years.
Unlike the Koreans, the Khitans and Malgals were Tungesic nomads and it was impossible to integrate them fully into Korean society though the Balhae kings had implemented policies to assimilate them such as allowing inter-racial marriages between the two groups.
While the Koreans retained control of the central government and aristocracy, the administration and military became dominated by the Khitans and Malgals which soon led to social conflicts and civil wars between them.
During the last years of the Balhae kingdom, it was wrecked by endless internal turmoils, ethnic strifes and civil wars between the various races in the empire and it was eventually conquered by the Khitan kingdom of Liao in 926 AD.
Like Singapore, Balhae was a country built out of nowhere. Though its southern portion was a remnant of Gorguryeo, its northern territory were entirely virgin lands not ruled by any state before.
The Balhae kings realized that their fledging nation would not stand a chance against its powerful neighbor China or its more populous Korean cousin Silla if it did not open its door to immigrants to increase its population.
Unfortunately, they failed to appreciate the fact that while immigrants may spur economic growth and increase a country’s military strength within a short period of time, social unrest and strife will ensue if the newcomers are not wholly integrated into local society.
Though Balhae was able to achieve rapid growth and prosperity a few decades after its founding due to the influx of immigrants, it sowed the seeds for its eventual demise.
Balhae was the largest and perhaps one of the richest states in the history of Korea, but also its shortest-lived, existing for barely more than 200 years when compared to other more ethnically and culturally homogenous states like Gorguryeo (700 + years), Baekje (700 +), Silla (900 +), Goryeo (300 +) and Joseon (600 +).
Silla (53 BC – 935 AD) was a nation of immigrants like Balhae and Singapore too, built by gradual conquest and assimilation of neighboring statelets and tribes but at a much controlled pace than Balhae which explained its political longevity of nearly a thousand years.
[Three Kingdom era of Korea 53 AD - 668 AD, Source: Wikipedia]
The name of Silla in Hanja – 新羅, means to “cast a net far and wide to
accept talents from all over the world”. From the beginning of its
existence, Silla was one of the most open nations in East Asia at that
time.Being the weakest and smallest state on the Korean peninsula compared to Gorguryeo in the north and Baekje (百濟) to the west, the Silla kings had long realized the importance of immigration in order to survive.
Though Silla was able to grow and prosper by keeping its door open to immigrants, it practised a highly selective immigration policy unlike that of Balhae.
Silla welcomed only certain ethnic races which were closer to them in terms of language, culture and bloodline and not those who were further apart.
For example, when the Gaya confederacy (加倻) was conquered in 562 AD, its people who were closely linked to the Silla Koreans were completely accepted as Silla citizens and they eventually become assimilated into Silla society, one of whom became the great Korean general Kim Yu-Shin who conquered the other two kingdoms and united Korea.
However, the Japanese (Wa) and those with mixed Silla/Japanese heritage were evicted from their settlements along the southeastern coast of Korea and sent back to Japan as they were deemed “culturally distant” and “unsuitable” for permanent residence in Silla.
Furthermore, while Silla maintained an open-door policy to Korean immigrants from Baekje and Gorguryeo, Chinese, Khitans, Malgals and other races were deliberately kept out. They were allowed to trade with Silla, but could never become its citizens.
Such a targeted immigration policy enabled Silla to increase its population via immigration and ensuring the “ethnic compatibility” of its people at the same time.
Though there were many ethnic minorities in Silla, they were culturally and linguistically linked to the original Silla Koreans thereby maintaining a largely homogenous society.
There were few ethnic strifes or conflicts during Silla’s long history unlike Balhae whose fault-lines were exposed within a hundred years of its founding leading to political instability and its eventual downfall.
Balhae was the last Korean state to hold any territory on Manchuria. There are still a sizable number of ethnic Koreans living in northeast China and Russia’s Maritime province today, but few will remember the existence of Balhae.
Will Singapore end up like Balhae one day? We are now fifty years old. When Balhae was fifty years old, it was a major economic powerhouse in the region (northeast Asia) like Singapore (southeast Asia) and it was also the same period of time when it became swarmed by immigrants.
If a country the size of Balhae which was about the size of France could implode and destroy itself in only 200 years, why not Singapore?
Singapore should learn from the targeted immigration policy adopted by Silla and focused on getting immigrants who can integrate more easily into our society such as those from the southern provinces of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan of which a basic command of the English language is a must instead of accepting everybody indiscriminately like Balhae without studying if they are culturally, ethnically and linguistically compatible with native Singaporeans in the first place.
History has given us one important lesson of how uncontrolled immigration can destroy a nation. We must take heed before it is too late.
Thursday, 27 October 2011
Chen Show Mao 1st Parliamentary Speech
Chinese:
在今年的两次选举之后，我们许多领导人都提到团结的重要。全国人民现在必须上下一心，步伐一致地向前迈进。
他们有人认为新加坡有政治分裂，不利於团结与将来发展。但是各位想想，这分裂是怎么造成的？ 是因为社会出现了不同的声音，还是因为不能包容不同的声音才会造成分裂？
English:
Mr Speaker, Thank you, and congratulations.
Following our two elections this year, some commentators tell us that Singaporeans’ political differences are rising to the surface. Many of our leaders have expressed their concerns about the differences. They warned of divisions and called for unity. I’d like to remind us that differences are not divisions. It is the intolerance of differences that will be divisive.
在今年的两次选举之后，我们许多领导人都提到团结的重要。全国人民现在必须上下一心，步伐一致地向前迈进。
他们有人认为新加坡有政治分裂，不利於团结与将来发展。但是各位想想，这分裂是怎么造成的？ 是因为社会出现了不同的声音，还是因为不能包容不同的声音才会造成分裂？
English:
Mr Speaker, Thank you, and congratulations.
Following our two elections this year, some commentators tell us that Singaporeans’ political differences are rising to the surface. Many of our leaders have expressed their concerns about the differences. They warned of divisions and called for unity. I’d like to remind us that differences are not divisions. It is the intolerance of differences that will be divisive.
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