Am I amused?

I got this impression that foreigners are much more politically savvy than Singaporeans after reading an article in the ST yesterday. It was about the slowing down in giving PRs to new applicants. The rejection rate is growing and the criteria for acceptance have gone up. Official statistics said the number of PRs approved last year was down to 29,265, less than half of 2009’s 59.460, much less than 2008’s 79,200, and 2007’s 63,600. Nothing was mentioned about the comparative numbers for new citizens. I bet that must also have gone down. But I may be wrong. So more unhappy applicants are going to threaten to apply for PRs in other better countries? Horrors! How can we lose all these talents to other countries? Quick, quick, reverse the flow, accept more or else… they will leave. I can sense the panic of those clamouring for more talented PRs to join our workforce. Some applicants are more sanguine about the situation, or maybe smarter. They knew that it is the election year. No sweat. After the election things will be back to normal. The govt is now appeasing the anger of the people and closing the door a little. After the election they will apply again. Is this amusing? The foreigners know exactly how the system works here. They are bidding their time now and know that they will get their PRs in double quick time after the election. How come Singaporeans don’t understand or never understand how the game is being played? Things before an election and things after an election will be poles apart. Maybe they are hoping that the leopard will change its spots. Maybe this time it will be different, or from now on it will be different. So, who is smarter, the foreigners or the citizens?

Old and New PAP

When one put up a topic like that, it simply implies that there are issues between the new and the old. Definitely there are and many, both good and bad. What distinguishes the old from the new is that it was a highly respected party, with a few rough corners for making tough decisions for the people. It was a lean party and the people knew that whatever it did, it was really for the good of the party. And the leaders lived by the principles that they shared the woes of the people and would carry them and walked a long with them through thick and thin. The people might not be too happy with some of the policies but went along, and elected the party to power elections after elections. The leadership was impressive. Not that all of them were super talent material, but their hearts were together with the people. The ministers were well regarded, each a tower of strength. Any GRC that was deemed to be weak or facing tough opposition, just threw in a minister and the GRC would be as good as in the pocket. What is the situation today? The party is still doing a lot of good work for the people. I perceive that in spite of this, the ground has shifted. The people are angry, really angry. OK, not everyone is angry. There were many policies and decisions that were seen as bad and unacceptable. It may be only a perception, it may be real too. On the party side, it thinks and sincerely, honestly believes that it is doing everything for the good of the people. They forget that it is the people that is the judge. Why is there such a big gap in the people’s perception and the party’s own thinking? An erroneous perception can be easily explained away with some effort. Bad decisions and policies don’t go away, no matter how much trumpet blowing, and will end up as sophistry. They said you cannot bluff the people all the time. Too many untruths propagated as truths would surely back fire. It is no longer palatable to take the position that the people are stupid and unthinking masses, can be easily manipulated, or unable to see the goodness of good policies. Our superb education system must at the least do some good, make the people more knowledgeable and critical of the things they see or are happening to their lives. They cannot be unthinking people with all the exposure to the world and the high educational level they have attained. Are the people with the new PAP? There are hard core supporters and oppositions on both sides. The important segment is the middle ground. Has this moved? If the anger expressed in the new media is true, forget about the views of the old media as we know what they are, then the writing is on the wall. But it is not just the perception of the people that has changed. The leadership in the new PAP is quite fragile to be polite. Many ministers today are liabilities to the GRCs they are helming to the extent that fielding them will guarantee that the GRC will be lost. I know some may read this point with eyes popping out. Believe me, quite a number of ministers no longer carry the ground. The only thing that has never changed is that the PAP, old and new, is still led by one man, the same one man that started it. Even though LKY does not hold any decision making position directly like a ministry, he is still the man. It is still his party, his Singapore. Can the man carry the party again one last time, really, that he will stand for one more election? Or is the party coming to an end together with the fading away of the man that is synonymous with the PAP from day one to his last days?

US lawmakers rip into Hu Jintao

MR HU GOES TO WASHINGTON: ‘MONSTER’:Members of the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs did not hold back as they focused on human rights abuses in China under Hu Jintao’s leadership By William Lowther / Staff Reporter in WASHINGTON Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) came under an unprecedented personal attack at a US congressional briefing on Wednesday at the very same time he was being welcomed with a 21-gun salute at the White House. Members of the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs referred to him as a “monster” and the committee chair, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican, said that it was estimated that his regime was holding close to 7 million people in labor camps. “It is as if the entire population of Switzerland were being held behind barbed wire,” she said. It is highly unusual for visiting heads of state to be subjected to such biting criticism while they are guests in the same city. However, analysts said that feelings were running so high about Hu’s human rights record that some US lawmakers simply couldn’t contain themselves. Representative Christopher Smith, a Republican who on Tuesday held his own conference on Chinese human rights abuses, said: “Who is Hu Jintao? In 1989, just a few months before the massacre in Tiananmen Square, Hu was Beijing’s iron fist in Tibet.” “This was the man who ordered the savage beating of Tibetan nuns and even children were pummeled to death. He presides over a gulag state — clearly a dictatorship. He has been directly responsible for the systematic detention and torture of millions of Chinese,” Smith said. “Cattle prods are put into prisoners’ armpits and at their genitals.” “I believe Hu ought to be at The Hague being made to account for his crimes rather than being treated with a state dinner,” Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican, said. “We should not be welcoming the world’s worst human rights abuser to our White House. It is wrong. We should not be granting respect to this monstrous regime,” Rohrabacher added. “I think the Chinese have a hidden agenda — world domination. We seem to be helping them in their goals. We just don’t seem to get it,” said Representative Albio Sires, a Democrat. “There is this monster developing right before our eyes.” The American lawmakers think that they were the saints of modern history. I am wondering how many of those named above were descendants of slave owners and Injun killers? Or were these small town law makers descendants of the Jeremiahs or the hill billies? Does anyone of them remember Kunta Kinte?

The 3 blind men and China experts

Every time I read an article from the China experts it never fails to remind me of the 3 blind men and the elephant. Yes they all claimed to know the elephant very well, a kind of expert. They have touched the elephant and smelt the elephant. One claimed that the elephant was like a tree trunk. Another professed that it was like a snake. And another swore that it was like a rope with loose ends. The beauty of it all is that they all believe that they were right and the elephant is what as they described. If only they could go pass beneath the skin of the elephant, if only they could look at the whole picture. But China experts are plentiful and of different degree. Then again, most of them are just like the 3 blind men. The betterer part is that they are propounding their theories of what China is all about and trying to con everyone of their expertise. Put it in another way, how about a Malaysian asking a Singaporean who visited JB once on where to buy cheap and good Malaysian local products? And the Singaporean happily went about explaining like an expert of Malaysian local produce and where to get the best deal!

Bodyguards and Assassins 2

The movie has many angles to look at, and lessons to be told. The Qing Dynasty was decadent and had lost the mandate to rule. But the Dowager was bent on keeping the Dynasty going for as long as possible, and with all means and resources available. Suppressing the opposition at all cost was her only way. The Dynasty had run out of ideas on how to rule the country. The country was in disarray and controlled by foreigners. The foreigners were calling the shot. It was a pathetic scenario, even in modern society, should the foreigners ended calling the shot in a country. The dangerous part about this ‘foreigner’ thing in modern history is that they could pass themselves off as citizens by simply acquiring a citizenship. And overnight people believe that they are one of them, no longer foreigners. Instant trees and instant citizenship have their merits and dangers. The Qing Dynasty was oppressive and deadly. They just killed off any opposition. Under such a political culture, when the rulers were ruthless and ready to demolish anyone trying to stand up to voice their opposition, the patriots could not hope for a peaceful change of the power elite. They were compelled to meet force with force, a rebellion. But for such an endeavour to succeed, there would be many sacrifices of lives. For every martyr that was taken down, more must stand up to replace the fallen. It was a bloody time. The unassuming doctor in Sun Yat Sen stood up. And so were many pen pushers, academics and students, all wanting a new China for the people. Many were mowed down by the soldiers who wielded the sword and the gun. The pen pushers provided the leadership and ideas, the brain. And the soldiers provided the muscles and the brawns to take on the ruthless Qing regime headed by an ageing Dowager. The rest was history. An empire of several hundred years, with all the elite in power, with guns and money, was overthrown by the will of a desperate people. History repeated itself. No empire can survive forever, no matter how powerful, how long it stayed in power, and how ruthless is the suppression of the people’s will. There will always be a new dawn and a new era.

Bodyguards and Assassins

I like this movie. It was set at the dying days of the Qing Dynasty. Sun Yat Sen was a rebel, outcast by the Govt in Beijing. The movie was about his visit to Hongkong to organize a revolt against the corrupt and decadence Qing Govt. And HongKong was a British outpost occupied by foreigners and foreign talents. The Qing Govt was dead against the rebels challenging its authority to rule but closed an eye while the foreigners flourished in the country. The Qing Govt might not love the foreigners, but it was a case of not ruffling feathers. As long as the foreigners were doing their own business and not involved in the politics of the day, the Govt could live with it. Curbing the rebels and their cause was the main priority, to extend the rule of the Manchus. The Qing Govt sent a band of Imperial Guards to assassinate Sun Yat Sen in HongKong. The Imperial Guards were led by a devoted and loyal Commander called Yan XiaoGuo. His loyalty and conviction to the Govt of the day was unquestionable. He sincerely believed that exterminating the rebels was the right thing to do. His zeal was admirable if one does not make any subjective judgement on which side was right or wrong. Civil servants of such nature were exemplary and deserved every cent paid to them. And the Qing Dynasty was able to extend its corrupt ways for much longer than necessary at the detriment of the country and its people. The change and overthrow of a corrupt govt was made to take a much longer time with more bloodshed, misery and loss of life. Thanks to such loyal civil servants that pledged blind loyalty to the dynasty without question. In the case of Yan XiaoGuo, his loyalty was not blind loyalty but full of conviction that the Govt then was legitimate and good for China. Overthrowing the Govt was against the mandate of heaven. He died for his belief and in the execution of his duty as a loyal civil servant. But his zeal and devotion to his master nearly killed a patriot and prolonged the decadence of a bankrupt dynasty. And in the cause of following the ruthless order of his masters without questioning, many citizens were killed or maimed as a result.

Human rights a major issue in Hu Obama Summit

With billions of dollars of chips on the table, the most important issue to the Americans will be the jailing of Liu Xiaobo. The Americans are pulling their hair off their heads at the dismal human rights record of China. And they are flabbergasted that the Chinese were unable to clear up their human rights problems after so many years of pressure from them. Obama may want to help the Chinese by giving Hu a recipe on how to clear up the dissidents once and for all and don’t have to look back again. The two worst human rights violation in the history of America that outshone the rest of the world must be slavery and the genocide against the true natives of America, the Red Indians. What Guantanamo? What Abu Ghraib? And the Americans handled these two problems so well that the survivors of these two abominable human rights violations against humankind are living happily without protesting. I am not too sure how the African negroes have been appeased and no longer pursue the violation of their self respect and rights as a human bean, but how the Americans dealt with the Red Indian issue were all well documented in the history books and the movies of Hollywood. From what I have read, the recipe to ensure that there will be no protest or grievances from those whose human rights were violated is very simple. Execute a ruthless campaign of genocide, make sure that the wipe out is as complete as possible. The Americans were extremely successful in exterminating the Red Indians that not many survived the ordeal to become dissidents today. What ever few that were left, send them to the reservations in no man’s land. With several millions of the Red Indians, young and old and womenfolks included, shot by the US cavalry, the human rights issue of the Red Indians is history. There must be a complete whitewash, and not to be spoken of again. The second part of the recipe is exactly this. Just keep attacking other countries’ human rights record so that they have no time to think about what had happened in America. Yes, the arrest of Liu Xiaobo is an earth shaking event that must not be forgotten and must be taken out regularly to be aired. Ssssssh, don’t say a word about the abhorring human rights violations against the Blacks and the Reds in America. No one must know or remember. How about Hu Jintao raising a wine glass and toast to the Blacks and Reds in the state dinner? The nation with the most abysimal record of human rights violation is chiding the China for human rights violation!

Santa Claus coming to America

Or shall I say the wise men from the East coming to visit America and bringing gifts for the baby? Hu Jintao is in America on a 4 day visit and a summit with Obama. And he does not come empty handed. In his wagons were loads of gold and silver, all ready to be dispensed to the hungry Americans. Several hundred millions have already been given and more to come, to the tune of billions, if America is willing to be a nice boy. Even before the visit there were threats and threats from the American elite, including Hillary Clinton. And the stupid woman still rabbled about human rights in China and that the Chinese must change their social and political system to suit the Americans. Why should the President of another country go to the US to listen to someone complaining about his domestic affairs and how to run his own house? Maybe China should do more homework and insist on talking to the Americans about compensation to the Red Indians and the descendants of former slaves. Actually, there is no need for China to indulge in the same gossips as a housewife. Go to the White and talk politics, about bread and butter and guns. If the Americans insist on talking about human rights and all that nonsense, just pack up and go home. No need to waste more time on unproductive and destructive distractions. The important issues are economics and how to give the people of both countries a better life. The gangsters and the Al Capones can go on and talk to whoever they want about gangland warfare. China should rise above the occasion and avoid being dragged into gangsterism. Santa Claus does not have to pour out his bag of goodies if the children misbehaved.

Low TFR, foreign talent help needed

Our Total Fertility Rate has sank to a historical low of 1.16 last year. This is way below the replacement level of 2.1. We need help and foreign talents are needed in this area. Yes foreign talents will increase our population to sustain our economic growth and also improve our gene pool. What is the problem with our men, or our women? Is it their problem or is it the social cost that is too punitive for them to reproduce? If it is just biological, the problem can be solved much easily. If man is the problem, set up a sperm bank, get the virile men, local and foreign also can, and start inseminating our women. If woman is the problem, maybe a little tweaking in our laws may help. Allowing the men to have more wives would solve a lot of social problems, including single old maids. SDU would not have to work that hard. Allowing men to have more than one wife due to infertility problem has historical and cultural precedents. Our Muslim comrades have understood this problem since time immemorial and the religion has a provision for it. If the problem is social and financial cost, then the problem needs to be addressed at the national level. If young couples find it prohibitive to raise children, whose fault is it? Many young couples are thinking people and know how costly it is to raise kids in this high cost hot house. How about the govt taking over the role of bringing up kids, only the financing part? The last Parliament there were talks of govt taking over the care of children from parents who could not afford to bring them up properly. So why not take this further and make it a national service by the govt? I am very sure productivity will go up so high that the govt will have to put in stops to prevent couples producing too many children. It is all about being able to pay for the upbringing up children, Watson! No need to think too hard. The young couples have thought through the whole process and understood what it cost. And for being thoughtful and responsible, they are punished for not producing. And the thinkers and planners are still lost as to why they don’t produce. On the contrary, the irresponsible and unthinking will keep on reproducing and the govt has fallen into the trap of raising their children for them. Come on, do the simple thing. No need to covet for foreign talents and their bodies. Just provide the finances, and of course all the rulings about how many children will be supported, and the children will come. No need to kpkb everyday that our TFR is going lower. Stare at the problem. Don’t look away, don’t look outside our borders. This is the same attitude as in bringing in foreign talents to replace our healthy, well educated local talents.

It’s a big gamble

Goh Eng Yeow wrote an article about Bold Ambition and Big Gamble in the ST last week. SGX is taking a big gamble to turn itself into a New York or London in the finance industry. It is pulling all the stops, all the strings, putting money where it is to bring in the giants, the big funds and their big machines, high speed computers, to turn SGX into a world class bourse. In his comment he said, ‘The SGX has wagered a lot of time and money with no guarantee it will pay off.’ He concludes by saying that ‘the greatest irony of the SGX approach: For all its initiatives and innovations, the fate of its ambitious strategy now rests with the aussie politicians.’ Another irony that I may add is that the aspiration also rests on the small pool of small investors waiting to be eaten up by the big funds and their mean machines. The question I like to ask is whether Singapore has a big enough base of investors, with the dough, to be a world class stock exchange? Or does a world class stock exchange need a pool of small investors or just the big funds and their machines will do the trick? Another question of moral responsibility. In the madness to be big, are there considerations and systems put in the protect the small investors. Or the small investors are just collateral damages for the goal of being big for the sake of being big?

The Crooks accusing a Whistle Blower

A Swiss whistleblower, Rudolf Elmer, will be charged in the Swiss court for breaking Swiss banking secrecy laws. Rudolf will be turning his compilation of bank data showing money laundering and tax evasion to WikiLeaks. The data is proof of the banks misdeeds and those of its officials and their customers. Rudolf was the COO of Julius Baer bank in the Cayman Islands but was fired for stealing the information. This is what he said. ‘The one thing on which I am absolutely clear is that the banks know…that money is being secreted away for tax evasion purposes, and other things such as money laundering.’ The bank’s reply is that Rudolf’s aim was ‘to discredit Julies Baer as well as clients’ by spreading “baseless accusations” and passing on “unlawfully acquired” documents to the media and WikiLeaks.’ If Rudolf is speaking the truth, then we have a bunch of criminals suing an innocent man. Accepted technically that he breached the banking laws, but what if the laws were abused by the banks? Would that absolve Rudolf of his crimes? The second part is that the bank has taken the position that Rudolf is lying and falsifying documents. The bank has thus taken a stand and can be hanged for it if it is found to be telling lies instead. The other frightening thing is that states could pass anything as laws, in this case banking secrecy acts, so that they can do criminal and immoral things. And breaking the laws becomes a crime. How neat. It is an open secret that many criminals and robbers parked their money in Switzerland and are protected by these laws. Who should be hanged then? When laws are for wrongful purposes, then the laws are a crime in itself.

Perfect solution to the stock market farce

Asian stock markets are being coerced to cut down their lunch breaks, and better, no lunch breaks to increase their productivity and facilitate cross border trades. The latest victim is Hongkong halving its lunch break from 2 hours to one hours. Tokyo too will have its lunch break cut. Singapore is contemplating of doing away with the lunch break completely, which is likely to happen on 1 March. One of the solid reasons given is to reduce the advantage/disadvantage of differences in trading hours. By doing away with lunch breaks and to extend the trading hours, stock exchanges will now operate with at least similar trading hours or overlapping hours. That will ease off a lot of the disadvantages. To me this is a little foolish. As long as the stock markets across the world are operating at different hours because of the different time zones, no amount of time adjustment or no lunch breaks can be of any great help. The advantage is minimal but the price paid by the stockbrokers is not small. There is a perfect solution to all the farce about different trading hours and trying to bring them as close as possible. Actually there are two answers. One is to operate stock markets on a 24 hour basis. The second is to use Greenwich Time and all stock markets shall operate at the same hours. See, all the farce will go away. Stupid problems need to be solved by stupid solutions. Red herring problems can be solved by applying twisted logics.

We need more cooling measures

The latest bout of cooling measures to curb property prices is touted as a very well thought out plan. The previous three measures thus must be not too well thought out. And if this one does not work out, the next betterer thought out plan will be rolled out. Curbing high property prices is not the only area that needs cooling measures. We need cooling measures for COE prices, university tuition fees and of course medical fees. There were some hints of curbing high legal fees in the private sector. That is also an area that many cannot afford to pay to the top legal eagles. They are so good that they could even demand an arm or a leg from their clients. And affordability is never an issue. So far the only real cooling measure that works is the salary of workers. Real cool man.

NTUC Dental Care

Lee Wei Ling wrote an article in the Sunday Times today complimenting Singapore doctors for not doing unnecessary medical tests and cutting down medical cost. I had an experience last week at NTUC Dental Care when I was coerced in a way to have two Xrays taken or else no treatment. I went just to repair a tooth filling that was chipped off. A simple removal of the existing worn filling and refilling it with new amalgam should do the job. The dental surgeon insisted that two Xrays must be taken as evidence of the state of the tooth and should the hole be too big and necessitate a root canal treatment, then she would be protected in case I complain that it was her fault. I want to say 'f'. This really pissed me off. I was at the verge of sitting up and walk out of the clinic. But I held back as it was a small matter and did not want to waste more time since I had already made the appointment and sitting on the dental chair. The reasoning for the extra two Xrays was unacceptable as it was done for her own protection against complaints by unhappy customers. Here she assumed that I would be an unreasonable customer, that the hole in my tooth could be bigger and required canal treatment, and I would complain against her. So I kenna paid for two Xrays for her protection just in case. At the end, after the treatment, there was no big hole that required canal treatment except a big hole in my pocket that was unnecessary but for her own good. And now, I am complaining for a different reason. I actually did not want to raise this minor issue until Wei Ling's article reminded me of how medical cost can go up for all the wrong reasons. And if my experience is the norm, then many NTUC members or NTUC Dental Care customers must have been made to pay for unnecessary tests. NTUC being an organisation to protect the welfare of workers should rethink this stupid practice and save the workers some money. No, I am not going to complain to Swee Say about this. Too tedious and time consuming. But any NTUC leaders or members reading this may want to take note and bring this up to him. It will save the workers some money and avoid being abused by such arrogant attitude of some practitioners.

Singapore University Education quality up

The tuition fees for Singapore universities and polytechnics will go up in the next academic year. The reason given is that the cost of providing quality education is going up. The fee hikes range from 3% to 6% for universities and 2% to 3% for polytechnics. The increases for NUS and NTU were 4-6% which are higher than SMU’s 3%. At the rate it is going the quality of education in NUS and NTU will improve tremendously over that of SMU. And I can presume that SMU will have to improve its quality next year by higher fee increases just to catch up. Students in NUS and NTU will be celebrating in the increasing quality of their education. Students in polytechnics will have to make do with only 2-3% improvement. If university fees were a guide to the quality of the education provided, then the fee increase must be accelerated. Then it will only be a matter of time when the quality of our university education be betterer than the top universities in the West. And students who can afford to pay more for quality education will be flocking to this education hub for world best university education.

What high COEs will mean

If a taxi cost another $50k, you can bet the taxi will go up accordingly to cover the extra cost. If school bus is also in the scheme, you can bet that bus fees will go up. At $50k more and a 7 year life span for a taxi, it simply means $7k more to write off a year or $600 pm more to charge to the commuters. The school bus will have to apportion the increase to the 20 to 40 kids in a bus. The goods and delivery vehicles will have to be cost in which means ultimately everything will be cost in. Don’t think it will only affect the car owners or ex car owners. The multiplier effect will quite widespread. And anyone buying a $100k car will not park it in the car park for show. It is too costly to waste away. And insurance companies will be laughing to the banks with car values going up. More people changing to public transport means the public transport system will have to take on heavier load. More buses and trains, more sardines, and more cost. Somehow, whichever way, the cost is still up. Why like that? COEs, ERPs, public transports, no matter which button is pressed, commuters got to pay more and bear with bigger inconvenience.

A brilliant American analysis on rift in China leadership

A REUTER report quoting Pentagon official’s comment about the maiden flight of China’s stealth fighter aircraft is simply brilliant. It said that Hu Jintao and other top Chinese leaders did not know about the test flight, implying that they were kept out of the loop. So there is possibility of a rift in the Chinese leadership, between the civilian leaders and the top brass in the military. I am impressed with the quality of the analyst and the value of this report. The readers must now all believes that the Chinese leadership will soon fall apart and a coup is taking place. My simpleton layman observation is that Hu Jintao and his comrades were too busy with their preparation for Gate’s visit and all the briefings they were given were forgotten, or they did not pay any attention to them. Or perhaps the reports were all on their tables but they got no time to read as they were thinking of how to make Gates happy during his visit to China. So no miscommunication. Just a slip of the mind, or too busy. I think my analysis is equally brilliant in a way. But the Americans and the western media can keep on hoping that China will collapse or a leadership struggle will take place and breaking up China like the Soviet Union. PS. This American view is news worthy woah.

What is good leadership in govt?

There are many aspects about govt and leadership to talk about. Let me just say a few things about what good govt and good leadership mean from a micro perspective or from a single factor. A good govt leads by bringing the people with them, through persuasion and education. It educates the people and encourages them to think, to make rational decisions for the good of people and country. A govt that does not educate, talk down on the people and threatens the people with all kinds of negative scenarios, gimmicks and abuses the law is never a good govt. It is more like a dictatorship, a kingship or a totalitarian state. Mature and democratic countries must not only have democratic institutions but also a mature and educated people who are ruled by reasons and persuasion and who participated actively in the politics of the country. A nation of well fed people but unable to think independently, unable to decide what is best for themselves but being dictated and controlled in all ways is nothing but like a fat bird in a cage, feeling very well and comfortable materially but empty in spirit and restrained in freedom. What kind of leadership and society are we living in or do we want to live in?

The most stupid question being asked

With the US crying foul, that China is developing carrier killer missiles and stealth fighters, the most stupid question being asked over and over again is this, ‘What is the intention of China?’ And this question is not being asked by the layman but by military top brass, strategists, professoris and China experts. My answer is very simple. China is manufacturing them for fun. Or maybe China needs them so show to the world that it has come of age. Or the Chinese leadership, like the North Korean leadership, just wanted to fight to prove its manhood. No, not good answers. So what should be a good answer? Maybe asking the Americans why are they spending half of the world’s defence budget would be indicative of what is the real intent of China. Actually the silly question being asked reflects how stupid the questioner is. Then many will quickly jump to the conclusion, China has aggressive intention. China is preparing a war with the US. Another silly thought. Today, war between the super powers is obsolete. Only monsters and maniacs would ever think of a war between the super powers. The destructive powers of their arsenals are unbelieveable and when unleashed could wipe out both countries and the world together. Superiority in arms, whether on the side of the Americans or the Chinese or the Russians, has become meaningless. For any one of them can inflict enough harm to the other party to keep them away. Even the reckless and irresponsible nut called George Bush Jr would not dare to start a war with China when he wanted most. There will be no winners or survivors. This is the stark reality of super power warfare. So what is the intention of China’s military build up? The answer is simple. It is to prevent war, to prevent adventurers from attacking China. The fate of Iraq and other lesser nations are evidence for China to build a strong military to avoid the same fate. North Korea is doing the same and is saved by its nuclear weapons. Would the crazy Americans, South Koreans or Japan dare to strike the North Koreans? The Americans might at this moment, if they believe that the North Koreans are unable to launch an ICBM to American soil and any hit will be at the expense of Japan and South Korea. The latter two would be foolhardy to think of having a war with the North Koreans. As long as China maintains a military force that can wipe out the US should it try to do it to China, China is safe from war and foreign invasion. The thought of China building its military force to start a war with the US is mischievous and childish. For China to do so is courting its own annihilation. So, would anyone still want to ask the silly question of China’s intention? The only reason for asking such a question is to be mischievous, to create fear and to tag China as a war monger. Period.

Straight A1s everywhere or is it inflation?

The recent O level results must have made many parents very happy. The students themselves no need to say, must also be very happy with the fruits of their labour. The teachers and schools too must be proud too that their efforts in educating the students were a scintillating success. And the MOE too can tell the world that our education system is the best in the world. Maybe the students in Raffles, Hwa Chong and the other SAP schools would have a different kind of feeling. They have been robbed of a chance to own a piece of certificate that says, 10 A1s or 9 A1s. If they were to sit in the same exam, they may even get A1 stars. Being the crème ala crème of the cohorts, the MOE perhaps should devise something like an honorary certificate for them. If the students of these top schools were also graded, we could literary throw a stone in a crowd students and hit a 10 A1s. There will be so many 10 A1s to the country proud. It will be another feather in the Guinness Book of Records for the number of 10 A1s and 9 A1s in an O level examination. And every year we can aspire for the record to be broken. And we don’t have enough talents and need more foreign talents to improve our stocks. Aren’t our straight As students in the world’s best education system better than foreign talents from other countries? Maybe not. Many of the top students O level students are from foreign countries too.