Fearing the straw man of tomorrow while sleeping with the devil

I enjoyed the one hour spent viewing Kishore’s lecture at the Kennedy’s School of Government in Harvard. While he was sharing the unpleasant truth of an Asian renaissance and the natural decline of the USA as the Number One hegemon in the 21^st Century, he also told the Americans that they were still stuck in their self reinforcing narratives of a benign hegemon showering the world with kindness and goodness. It was a hard truth that was delivered to the living rooms of America when the best intellectual minds dwelt. Perhaps his hard truth was too difficult to swallow that Vogel left just before the session came to a close. At least he sat through the lecture for one whole one hour and maybe something urgent needed his attention without showing disrespect.

 

Oh, Vogel wrote the book Japan as Number One. And this issue was raised during the Q&A that the Number Two economic power normally would overtake the Number One super power. But Japan did not and is now Number Three and will keep sliding down when India becomes Number Two. I think it was mentioned that Tommy Koh gave a lecture on this historical trend.

 

Anyway, with China rising, the same stupid question or mindset was floated again. What would China be when it becomes Number One? Would it be an expansionist country, a more aggressive hegemon than the USA? Kishore gave them all the proof that China would not be like the missionary Americans going all over the world to change regimes to make every country democratic, not necessarily rich and powerful. China too did not go around the world carry a gun, giving aids to countries to buy more weapons. China is out there all over the world, using its money and technology to rebuild a new world. It is all economics and infrastructure development and trade. No guns. Yes the Chinese did not carry their guns to the negotiating table when striking a commercial deal. The Chinese did not have more than 1,000 military bases all over the world, not even one outside its own territory.

 

Would the Americans be convinced that the Chinese would behave as badly as them as an evil hegemon?  Maybe, maybe not, as many Americans are very clear thinking and know what their American govt is doing to the rest of the world, stoking war, inciting war, destabilizing countries, bombing and killing people by the hundreds of thousands, and issuing threats after threats, even sailing across the Pacific Ocean to the South China Sea to show who is the hegemon. The Americans will see China differently over time.

 

But I am not too sure that Asian countries would see China differently. Many have been brainwashed and conditioned to see the world through the North American perspective. The countries that have the worse opinions of China are some in Asean that chose to sleep with the devil but fearing a China of the future that is anything but a self indulgence. For these few Asean countries that are calling China expansionist, they quote their disputes with China over some reefs and tiny islands. Actually they are the expansionist countries making aggressive claims against islands and reefs long claimed by China with centuries of precedents. They refused to see themselves as the aggressors and expansionists in the South China Sea.

 

The views of China’s neighbours in Central Asia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal and many others were very different. These people are not stupid. They knew that China was there to trade, to build infrastructure in exchange for natural resources on terms negotiated peacefully on the negotiating table, and often the terms were more favourable than the West would offer. But the West and the American viewpoint parroted by the unthinking Asian, especially in some South East Asian countries would put a negative spin on it, that China was not doing it for altruistic or humanitarian grounds but for the natural resources. Do they expect the Chinese to build all the infrastructures for free? How are these developing countries going to pay for the infrastructure developments and trade? Or were the Americans and the West so altruistic and kind to throw their money to their aid recipients for free?

 

What is more crazy, living in fear of an imaginary hegemon that has not done anything and did not carry a gun around, or sleeping with an evil hegemon that is bullying the world and starting and fighting wars everywhere, building military alliances and military bases all over the world?  The Asians deserved to be ruled by the West with their shallow intellect. The Americans told them China is bad, expansionist, oppressive, repressive, no human rights, no freedom and they swallowed every bit without thinking. They let the Americans think for them, on what to think, on who is good and who is bad.

 

Ask the 100m Chinese tourists that went all over the world, why did they return to an oppressive and repressive country that has no freedom and no human rights? Ask the hundreds of thousands of students China sent to the best universities in the West, why are they returning to China and not stay on in the West? Do these realities ring a bell?

Special breeds that do not need skill futures training

I once wrote about the politicians and their envious positions that come with instant skills and knowledge. Once a person is elected as a MP, better still made a minister, suddenly he knows everything. His intelligence and skills went up by several times. A doctor can become an expert in warfare, a soldier becomes an expert in education, a lawyer becomes an expert in terrorism or whatever permutations you can think of. But this sudden acquisition of intelligence and skill sets did not stop there. They are now perpetually intelligent and do not need any further training or skills upgrading. They become natural talents of all things under the sky.

 

The only time they displayed some modesty of their ability is when they decided to go overseas to learn from less talented people in other countries. And of course they did not learn anything from such trips as they are already the most talented, and who else could teach them and what else could they learn?

 

Now I just discovered that there is another exclusive breed that does not need upgrading courses or skills training, at least not at senior management and top management level. This breed also does not need to go for training courses. If you don’t believe me, check up with the training providers, you would not find anyone of them there.

 

I am referring to the foreign talents. Singaporeans all ran out of talent after some years working in the industries and their skills and experience became obsolete. They need to be retrained to work in lower skill and lower level jobs the more training they received. And the worse cases are those that freshly graduated from the universities and hit the wall. They are unfit for work, their skills are not relevant and not wanted in the industries on graduation. And they did not graduate from degree mills or from unknown or unranked half past six universities. They are graduates of the best universities in Asia and among the best in the world.

 

This is a new paradigm in Sin City and is really puzzling. But to many in Sin City, there is nothing wrong. It is the new normal. So more training institutions are set up to train the unskilled citizens who are no longer useful or irrelevant and the fresh graduates who somehow went to universities to learn nothing. No wonder training is such a big thing in Singapore. They called it life time training to get ‘stupiderer’ as they grew in age and experience.  And the govt is giving the people more money to get trained so that they can find jobs with lower pay.

 

I rather be a foreign here, with special talents and skills that would not need any more training, never go obsolete. And must also thank my village schools and unranked universities and degree mills for training me so well, better than the citizens of Sin City. While they furiously go to attend their upgrading courses to get a lower paying job, to downgrade, we foreigners will party and drink and make merry and wait for the next promotion, for our skills are perpetual skills that can only get better with no need for training. And if needed, just buy a degree from another famous degree mills that produced quality degrees would do the trick.

 

Sin City is heaven for foreign talents.

Kishore Mahbubani– What happens when China becomes Number One?

Kishore spoke at Harvard on the above topic at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University on 8 April 15.  The lecture is now available on you tube,      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzOHdvNFjrE

I spent one hour listening to this absorbing lecture and it was time well spent. His talk was only 25 min with the rest on Q&A with very engaging questions and answers. I would rate this as one of the best lectures delivered by Kishore.

I would highly recommend commentor, Chris Brickhill, to listen to what Kishore had said about the rise of China and the decline of the USA in particular and the rise of Asia versus the decline of the western powers in general. It is not so much as a case of whose culture is more superior, so people like Chris BrickHill need not feel uncomfortable or embarrassed that his western culture was shot down to pieces. It was all about the renaissance of Asian civilizations that have got back up on their feet and rebuilding their own countries by the sheer size of population and human enterprise and industry.

And many of the new realities mentioned by Kishore must have caught his mainly American audience by surprise, though simple truths but never spoken on, not wanting to see or know, very much like Chris Brickhill. One startling comment by Kishore is how isolated and ill informed the Americans were about world affairs to the point of ignorance built around arrogance, self deception and reinforcement of views they wanted to believe and not the realities.

It was an excellent lecture and the Americans in the audience deserved to be lectured by Kishore to look at the new world that has changed and leaving them behind without the Americans knowing it. By the end of the lecture they really appreciated what Kishore had told them, a perspective that hit them like a lightning bolt. And then there was light.

Jail verdict for City Harvest Church pastors and executives

All six were found guilty and sentenced to jail from 21 months to 8 years for Kong Hee. Chew Eng Han was given 6 years, Tan Ye Peng 5 ans ½ years, Serina Wee 5 years, John Lam 3 years and Sharon Tan got the least, 21 months.

The jail tem will start on 11 Jan 16 so that they can spend time with their families over Christmas and the New Year. The mitigating factor for the light sentence is that the money was returned and the CHC did not suffer any financial losses as well as the guilty did not benefited from it personally, maybe on Sun Ho, but she was not party to the crime. All the $50m involved in the round tripping was returned to the Church? So for those who think the punishment was too light, some may think it is too harsh since no money was lost. What about the expenditure to promote Sun Ho’s music career and the sum spent in the US? This one I am not sure.

Though the six were found guilty by a mortal court for committing a mortal crime, to the believers they are still innocent. What they did was unlawful in the courts on earth. The flock did not leave him and the CHC. 173 executive members of the church have submitted an appeal for clemency.

In a moot point, were their actions against God or in violation of God? Who knows? God has been silent on this. The courts of law and those who disapproved of their deeds have found them guilty of a crime of the state. The believers of their church would have a different view. So has God.

Different agenda in G20 Meeting

The terrorist attack in Paris undeniably took centre stage in the G20 Meeting in Antalya in Turkey.  All the leaders, without exceptions, condemned the killings of the innocents in Paris. The economic conference for world leaders and central bank governors to chart the direction of the world economy and international financial stability was eclipsed by the fight against terrorism with the Paris assault lending weight and urgency to world leaders to double their effort against international terrorism. 

Even before the Paris attack, the agenda of world leaders attending the meeting were mixed. The Americans came with Syria on top of their agenda. The host, Turkey, was more concerned with the refugee problems facing Turkey and the rest of Europe. China came with the agenda on how to cooperate and stimulate the world’s economy with more initiatives, innovations and cooperation among the countries of the world.

In a main article in China Daily, ‘Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sunday proposed strengthening coordination on macroeconomic policy, innovation-driven development and an open world economy as prescriptions for boosting global growth.

In a speech delivered at the first session of a Group of 20 (G20) summit, Xi said the G20 should work to maintain a stable economic growth in the short term, while seeking to inject new impetus into the world economy in the long run.’

On the other hand the thrust of Obama’s speech was about stepping up efforts to eliminate the Islamic State and prevent more attacks like those in Paris and about a regime change in Syria. The economic agenda for the world economy and financial governance have to share with international security and terrorism.

What would be the takeaways from this meeting in Turkey? How much of the message and proposals of Xi Jinping would end up on the table or be left unnoticed? The different agenda and priorities of the leaders would have missed out the Chinese initiatives and proposals, the very purpose of this G20 Meeting of world leaders and central bank governors.

China may look forward to the next meeting in Hangzhou to push through its economic and financial agenda more effectively than what is happening in Antalya, Turkey. Xi JinPing would then be in a better position to take the meeting in the direction that a G20 Meeting is all about, the world economy and world governance on financial stability.