11/10/2015

China, the student that surpasses the master

With no due disrespect to China, in 1978 when Deng Xiaoping arrived for his state visit, China’s leaders were still caught in an inward looking mindset, wanting to do everything indigenously, to reinvent the wheel of modernization. What Deng saw in Singapore, the transformation of this island into a cosmopolitan city state, must have set him thinking of what China could be. Lee Kuan Yew rightly pointed out to him that what Singapore could do, China could do many times more and better given the same industrious population.

In less than 40 years after Deng opened up China and modeled it after the Singapore of 1978, China has surged ahead in all fields and left Singapore behind like a jaded master. Singapore’s pride in housing is nothing compares to what China has built in the last 3 decades and still building in grander scale. Every Chinese city is transformed into a modern and bigger city, bigger than the island of Singapore. But that is not all, China is the factory of the world, not just producing plastic flowers and earthernware. China is producing everything that the western developed countries are producing and is closing the gaps in high technology and high engineering industries. In 1978, China did not have any of these. Today China is a front runner in high speed trains and giving Japan a run for its money.

I read in the news today that a French company is going to build LNG plants in China. I was a little baffled. Then again, if one is to look at the bigger picture of what is happening in China, this is part of the normal process of learning new technology. Ford, GM. Toyota, Honda and many international brands of heavy equipment manufacturers are setting up operations in China. There is nothing new in having foreign investments and attracting foreign investments into China.

The big difference is that in a few years, China would be producing everything the foreign corporations are producing, with local engineers and technicians, with local brands producing similar but better products at cheaper cost. Chinese brands are starting to appear in the international scene. The Chinese are not reinventing the wheels but hitching a ride, borrowing and copying foreign technology and using indigenous talents and workforce to carve up new markets for themselves.

Creative Technology had many years of head start ahead of the Chinese. But with very little govt support, it is shrinking in market share, in products and recognition. What would local companies like Creative Technology be if the govt had invested fully into them, with finances and local talents? Would our lead in water filtration plants like Hyflux be a household name in the world market if the govt invests heavily into it and be ranked among the Hyundai, Matsushita, Panasonic, Ssangyong etc etc?

The big difference between China and Singapore is that the former believes in its own people and talent and wanting to produce and make products of their own. Singapore only believes in buying, like buying kindergartens. We do not believe in growing our talents and our own industries. We want to buy them and replace our local talents and industries with foreigners and foreign industries. Instead of investing in our own talents other than lip services, and local companies, we went overseas to look for foreign talents and buying failed companies or cheap low tech companies and committing the sin of giving up on our own talents and companies.

China sent out hundreds of thousands of their best to foreign universities to learn and to come home to rebuild their country and industries. What did we do with our talents? Become administrators or politicians or soldiers. And what about the talents needed in the industries? Just buy them, bring them in, open the door in the name of free market and free competition, we don’t need to grow our own timber. We buy and buy but allowed our own timber to go to waste. In another word, we don’t have faith in our own talents, we dismissed our own talent as no talents and covet other people’s talents. But the sadder part, the talents we brought in are in many cases fakes and frauds.

While China leapt forward to take on the world, moving bravely and confidently into the 21st Century, Singapore is slumbering in the past of 1978. Singapore has stagnated. Our top industries today are in food and services, in hawker food. Our banking and finance industries, IT industries have been overrun by foreigners, taken over by foreigners. Our health industry too has been overtaken by foreigners except for the top end. But this would not be long before foreigners take over the whole industry as well when citizens become a minority.

At least Malaysia is still trying to manufacture a national car. We are now promoting hawker food as the national icon, the industry of the future. And we don’t even know that in a matter of time, the hawker fare would be operated by foreigners as well. Our last bastion is the taxi driving occupation and maybe sublet rooms to the foreigners to make a living.  The plum appointments in the security industry are also filled by foreigners and our local PMETs would only be good to be security guards. Our so called talents would be only good enough as part time workers or working as temp staff.


The future is very bright. For who?

PS. A happy Deepavali to all our Indian brothers and sisters.

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

The PAP government is still the world best in producing the highest paid politicians and civil servants in the world.

And while the "no dignity" Deng Xiao Peng is willing to come to Singapore to learn from the Singapore model.
Our very dignified PAP leaders is unlikely to go to China to learn from the China model.

Anonymous said...

"The future is very bright. For who?"
RB

For PAP lah, of course. And as long as there is no future for the opposition to be strong, united and ready to be govt.

And who cares if the daft Sinkies future is not bright? With even the strongest opposition leader is only WP Teochew Ah Hia, any kind of Sinkie PAP candidate will have a 93% chance of winning an election. So PAP future bright or not, u tell me lah?

Anonymous said...

@ November 10, 2015 9:37 a.m

I agree.
The future is very bright for PAP and its extended families.
For the rest of Singaporeans ... not so much.

But who cares?
70% of Singaporeans say they don't care.

Anonymous said...

Haha.....

Rb must be out of his element comparing a 50 yr old fiefdom
to a over 5000 yr old civilization.

No fiefdom can last in the Modern
World, even Monarchy is anachronistic.

Anyway, despair not, 天生天滅, nature
shall take care of all. No worry.

Anonymous said...

I was Ngiam Tong Dow who suggested that half of our returning scholars could be released to the private sector to energize it. But no, our selfish PAP govt kept 100% of the scholars to become paper generals and administrators in public service and be paid S mllion salaries. They are like the the Mandarin scholars of old China and fed like mandarin ducks. SG is heading down the sewer to become a 3rd world country again! And the foreign talents will start leaving when other countries catch up on us.

Anonymous said...

The garment does not have a plan to replace the foreigners they brought in. They want them to say instead of training our talents to take over.

In the past, there were a few foreign talents recruited to be CEO of DBS. But without a conscious plan to get local talents to replace them, it became a musical chair game. One foreigner left, another brought in to replace the foreigner.

Now it is getting worse. They gave the foreigner a pink IC to stay for good. So no more chance for local talents to move up.

This policy of not training our local talents to take over from foreigners is also present in many govt organisations like the universities and A Star. No need to groom our own talents. Just keep bringing in foreigners. That is the policy.

Anonymous said...

No need to groom our own talents. Just keep bringing in foreigners.
Anon 11:14 a.m.

But didn't a whopping 70% of voters are OK with it? So what's the issue?

Goh said...

Aiyo, please lah.China open up and modeled Sin because of Teng's arrival? Stop khooning .They are just being humble and as among the 4 most intelligent being they know when to open up.
Dun thick skin lah.Not because if Sin.

The difference is China produce local talented citizens who are grateful and will sacrifice and work hard for the country but Sinkies work for money sake.
Grooming local talent may not guarantee they will be loyal. Tee kor liang tee kor cho.That is why you see people like Matilah who treat here as hotel.

With lazy , choosy or entitlement mentality so claim talents, how to compete without getting foreign talents' help,fake cert or not.

Anonymous said...

You talking like khongcum again. You think you cleverer than RB, why not write something intelligent and see anyone think you are not khongcum and want to print it?

Goh said...

Anon11.17pm
Who? Already got some being posted and being discussed in blog.
I must reserve some idea only to be reveal in 2019 to see whether to turn 70 to 90 in 2020
to ensure those chia leow bees cannot idle and kapo my idea and claim to be theirs:-)

Anonymous said...

@ November 10, 2015 9:58 a.m.

70% of Singaporeans live under the illusion that they are part of PAP's extended family.

Unknown said...

All countries must have the indigenous act to protect the original population else they will risk being overtaken by cheaper foreigners.

Anonymous said...

But what if the country is ruled by self serving traitors?
Will such a country have the indigenous act to protect the original population?

Anonymous said...

Complain for fuck haarrr?!?!? All you chao chee byes & your fucking mothers fathers all vote PAP liao. KPKB for fuck?!?! Learn to love it lahh!!

The said...

The other worthy student is Dubai.

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

We taught the Chinese how to build towns, like Queenstown and Toa Payoh town and industrial parks like Jurong in Suzhou.

China is now building cities bigger than Singapore with towns and industrial parks together. It is now building a new world starting with central Asia.

Vietnam has seen what China can do and has put aside its differences with China in the South China Sea and inviting China to rebuild Vietnam. If this Vietnamese policy is not scuttled by foreign interference, Vietnam will be the next economic powerhouse in Asean. It would outstrip Indonesia and Malaysia and Thailand using the Chinese model and investments.

Goh said...

//we taught the Chinese how to build towns//...
So next time if China built underground high speed train from Amoy to Changhua or Tainan are you going to say Xu learn from Singapore to build underground tunnel after his visit here?
Skin thick oso must have limit.Else become another Ah Pui or tee pak kuai:-)

patriot said...


The whole World is learning fr Singaporeans.
Or rather, Singaporeans are claiming that the World is learning or copying fr Sinkies.

Goh said...

Maybe only Uncle RB .
He make Sinkies think too highly of themselves.
He forgotten centuries ago Chinese like my grand ah Kong are already sent here to build houses.

Unknown said...

It is worse then this. If some SME or startup manages to come out with something viable, it would be swallowed up by the GLCs, either through buy over or through direct competition. So Singapore is not only not supporting and encouraging local companies, it is in fact actively stifling creative ideas, innovation, startups and SMEs.

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

Hi Anthony, welcome to the blog.
Yes indeed. And on the other hand they are saying they are helping the SMEs and promoting entrepreneurship.

Veritas said...

One of my colleagues commented in white man land, he work less, more idle and but he is more clever and productive but in Singapore, he and his team work harder but they are more stupid.

We sit down and try to fin the reason and realize that it is our corporate ranking system that screw us.

In that office oversea, there is no ranking. So everyone share and everyone dont backstab. And everyone got the expectation that no matter how hard they work, they may not be getting higher salary over the others, unless they really have good fortune.

But in SG, that colleauge (he is a manager) was told by HR that he need to rank his employee and try to abuse the laggers until the poor guys leave the company. He complain his team members are already quite hard working.

As a result of fucking HR policy, all his team members backstab one another and keep knowledege to themselves.

This ranking policies is first anchor when fucking Chok Tong took over, with support from Kuan Yew. Basically the civil service will abuse the bottom 10% and give top 10% (actually the top 10% are scholar no matter how fuck up performaners they are) promotions.

Private sector quick to follow.

Suddenly Singapore become a warzone.


Anonymous said...

Now the war is against the Sinkies.

Anonymous said...

Notice that the new Foreign Minister is not mentioned by name or included in photos of the "historic meeting"? Also forgotton is how Lee Hsien Loong insisted on a visit to Taiwan over the protestations of mainland China - with the net result that the Olympic torch never landed in Singapore. So much is deleted from the mainstream media!