11/24/2015

The contrasting style of Modi and Deng Xiaoping

Narendra Modi is in Singapore on a 2 day official visit starting on 23 Nov. Globe trotting Modi has been awarded the Asian of the Year by the ST for having met the most leaders in his first year in office, his greatest achievement as a PM. By now he probably has met all the leaders of the world several times over and probably a Guinness Record is in order for this great feat.  Modi’s visits anywhere is always met by large crowds of the India diaspora and an air of great expectations with his eloquent speeches of great promises of India become the next superpower and an economic powerhouse.

Modi’s visit to Singapore is no different and a 100,000 diaspora is awaiting him at Chennai Business Park, oops, I mean Changi Business Park. He is like a rock star and will be received with all the pomp and pageantry of a rock star.

In contrast, Deng Xiaoping was like a hermit, a leader that hardly made any trip overseas. Deng also did not make spectacular speeches and though his visit to Singapore did not end up speaking to 100,000 Chinese diaspora, the media did give him a good coverage, but not in the scale of Modi. It was strictly business, he came, he saw and he noted.

In that strategic trip to Singapore, great ideas were formed in the minds of Deng. If Singapore could do it, China could do better. And in Singapore he saw a working model that could kick start a new China that he was opening up to the world. After his return from this rare trip out of China, he sent delegations after delegations of Chinese officials to study what Singapore did and took the blueprints home for more analyses. The rest is history.

From what he saw in Singapore, it gave him enough ideas and motivation on what he wanted to turn China into. The rest was true grit and execution. Not many people would want to acknowledge it, that a single trip out of China could have such a great impact on the redevelopment of China. To a good mind, it only takes a spark, to ignite a dream and turn it into a reality. That is the difference. Deng launched a powerful wave of reforms never seen in anywhere else for centuries.

Modi would still be travelling around the world to make eloquent speeches of great promises. Would this trip to Singapore ignite in him a spark to transform India into a modern nation like what China is today? Maybe Modi could do more, with many more ideas he collected from all this overseas trips and the inspirations from many more countries.

Apologies for those who think Singapore should take full credit for the modernization of China. No, Singapore was just a catalyst to spark a dream. The rest are hard work and due diligence to turn a dream into a reality, to motivate a nation of 1.3b people to work for the China Dream.  Only the Chinese could do this to rebuild their country to what it is today. If it is so easy, all the countries that wanted to emulate Singapore would also be great successful stories. Other than China, no one could do it the way China did, and in a scale unmatched over a mere 3 decades..

Turning a country into an economic powerhouse of modernity is not about eloquent speeches and copying a model. It is not so simple as that. When would Modi stop travelling, return to India and start working, to rebuild India into another economic powerhouse? Perhaps Singapore will be his last stop to build up all the ideas he needed to create another mammoth Asian economic giant.
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Prejudice and bias in our education system

An interesting article titled ‘ Time to look beyond the Western view of the Middle East’ by an educator, Koh Choon Hwee, appeared in the Today paper on 23 Nov.  such articles are rare in a system where everyone blindly get along with western views as the official and right views of events around the world, including domestic issues.

Koh Choon Hwee discovered through her teachings in the schools that our young have been set up with very simplistic views of the Middle East as a region of deserts, camels and veiled women. How so, and she explained everything in these few words:

‘After passing through an education system in which we are more likely to study Shakespeare rather than the Persian poet Hafez, we have inadvertently been imparted with an understanding of the world as viewed from the British Isles and an ideology of the current world order that is viewed from North America, with is associated prejudices and blind spots.’

Having such a viewpoint is not so innocent as it seems. It has far reaching consequences in the psychic and mentality of the people. What is good to the west, favourable to the west but bad or unfavourable to us, would get pass as acceptable if one does not take time to consider what it should be. If the Westerners said your father is bad, your gene is inferior, the unthinking will go on parroting the same silly stuff without knowing that they have been made victims and happily going along with it.

The fault does not lie just with the education system. It is the whole system that make the people think like they are westerners, transforming ourselves ‘into an Anglophone society, and there are logical consequences of these policy decisions.’ The main media(print and screen) is the biggest culprit if you look at the amount of silly articles copied from western media and passed off as the truth, the right things to read, the right way to think.

As a result, our people do not see the world in a balanced perspective and least of all in our very own perspective. We don’t have our own perspectives. Many open and close their mouths thinking and parroting views of westerners unconsciously and making a fool of themselves unknowingly.  The schools and the media have a heavy responsibility to educate our people to think for ourselves, to be discriminating, and to start thinking that what is good for the West is not necessarily good for us.

They even published stupid stuff and comments by foreign con men and women and fakes rubbishing our own people as stupid and no talents without questioning. In the same breath they are also rubbishing our institutions of higher learnings, the faculties, for wasting public money to produce waste. And none even notice this and simply agreed that our institutions are dysfunctional, only good for beauty contest. As a result we have turned our people into unthinking daft and accepting that we are daft submissively and apologetically. So everyone could only think about more training and attending more courses to be better. They forgot to structure a course to teach them how to think and how not to be stupid.

PS. This sickness, to see the world from the western perspective and to think and behave like Westerners pervade the whole society right from the top. Even academics, supposedly intelligent and critically thinking people, also act the same way and write their rubbish using western world views to look at things and events instead of from out own perspective and interests.
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11/23/2015

Singapore Fooled AGAIN by Bogus University Rankings


Singapore Top Universities Embrace “Beauty Contest” Criteria for Academic Excellence

The most remarkable outcome in the latest Times Higher Education (THE) 2015 World University Rankings announced last month was the phenomenal rise of two (of the three) Singapore universities, the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU), to 12th and 13th place respectively. Both Singapore Universities are now ranked above Yale, Columbia, EPF Lausanne and King’s College London.

This remarkable achievement was attributed mostly to high scores for the reputation surveys, the number of international students and faculty, none of which of course have any validity or reliability as indicators or measures of excellence in learning and/or teaching.  

Together with significant changes in the research citations component, the other another important factors for the rise of NTU and NUS were their continuing remarkable performance in the academic and employer surveys. NUS is at the top ten in the world for academic reputation and employer reputation with a perfect score of 100 respectively. NTU is 52nd for the academic survey and 39th for employer with scores in the nineties for both. This should not be surprising since NUS and NTU provide nearly 95% of Singapore’s fresh university graduates.   

This time, the skeptics of Universities Rankings are further proven right. The 2015 World Universities Rankings had made so many strange and implausible ranking shifts resulting in many universities rising or falling by dozens and hundreds from their previous rank.  Truth is, THE had tweaked their “methodology”, as with the other major ranker Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings, when it broke away with their data suppliers Thomson Reuters at the end of 2014 and announced the dawn of a new era of transparency and accountability. 

Readers should note that neither THE or QS have ever published the scientific basis of their “methodology”; especially the criterion factors selected as measures of “best” Universities, nor the population and samples of the respondents who participated in surveys purportedly conducted and whose “data” were used to compile the final annual rankings. 

The announcements of the 2015 World Universities Rankings therefore came like the results of a beauty contest with winners (those whose rankings have risen) congratulating themselves with much self-flattery, while the losers (those whose rankings have sank) are embarrassed into protesting only silently and wondering where indeed they have gone so wrong in the past 12 months.

For example, Cambridge and Oxford overtook and pushed Harvard into 6th place.  If THE were to be believed, it was all Harvard’s fault as she suffered a huge decline from 92.9 to 83.6 in THE’s composite teaching indicator (whatever this presumes to measure).  Whatever indeed happened in Harvard in 2014-2015 to “reduce” its teaching effectiveness and impact, according to THE indicators, by 10%?  Should Harvard students therefore demand such fee payback based on this information?

Overnight, or precisely in over just one year from 2014-2015, Asian universities suddenly became worse off, except the Chinese Universities. The University of Tokyo dropped from 23rd to 43rd place in 2015, as she saw her research citations indicator fell from 74.7 points to 60.9, together with her sister University of Kyoto who plunged from 59th to 88th in 2015 for similar reductions in the score for research citations.  For some strange unexplained reasons, the Professors of previous years in both top Japanese Universities could no longer produce the same sterling quality of well-cited research papers.

If THE Universities evaluation were continued to be believed, the top Korean Universities had also suddenly gone silly and stupid.  From the top, Seoul National University dropped 35 ranked positions and the Korean Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) 66 positions, due mostly to their significantly reduced scores for teaching and research. Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) also fell 50 places, losing points in all THE criteria, despite earning good income from industry which she served but this was deemed irrelevant for THE Rankings.

Can the same Methodology which had improved both NTU and NUS rankings so significantly be trusted to be robust, vigorous and sophisticated?

It should be increasingly obvious to any intelligent researcher that the 2015 World University Rankings have created its own rankings based on new, revised criteria such as to render it incomparable with all their previous 2009-2014 rankings.   

Specifically, if the Dutch University of Twente (ranked 149th by THE) deserved to be in the top 150 this year, then its 2014 ranking which placed Twente outside the top 200-225 could not possibly be valid.  And if KAIST should indeed fall 66 places from 2014, then either its 2015 rankings (148th) or its 2014’s (52th) were inaccurate, or they both were.  This conclusion applies equally to all the universities whose rankings may have ”improved”. 

Singapore Universities have devoted much time and resources since 2007 to satisfy the dubious criteria of bogus university excellence, including getting rid of distinguished and eminent local Professors to meet the World University Rankings preferential criteria for foreign faculty, as well as its preference for more foreign students which NTU and NUS attracted with hundreds of free scholarships (since the Criteria did not specify only paid students were counted). 

NTU and NUS managers and administrators, and their experts, should now carefully study the 2015 World University Rankings to discover what their critics and skeptics, many of whom included eminent University Professors, educators and the United Nations UNESCO, have been warning over the past years the Rankings were published – that the World University Rankings are bogus and misleading, since their indicators lack academic validity and have no scientifically-established construct and they utilize a highly questionable survey and data collection methodology to create information for dubious ranking results which could not survive due diligence or methodological and reliability scrutiny.    
Singapore universities should maintain our Integrity and be honestly professional, and reject using the spurious World University Rankings to position our great Institutions of Higher Learning because of their lack of validity and reliability in Methodology and questionable measures of learning and research excellence.

The 2015 World University Rankings is final and conclusive proof that claims by the rankers over the past 10 years that they have carefully calibrated indicators and a uniquely trusted and vigorous methodology are untrue and bogus at best. There is no reason why the Singapore government and Singapore university administrators and academic experts should continue to be fooled repeatedly by such scams and dubious products.

Singapore universities should no longer participate in any “World University Rankings” Fraud.  Singapore’s presence in the World University Rankings invariably lends our hard-earned Reputation for Authenticity and Honesty to mask their lack of credibility, validity and reliability. Our Universities must have the same high standards of integrity and authenticity as the rest of the Nation. 


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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 21st 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?
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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.
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