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 21^st 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.