The Second China Card

20 years ago the mantra of the day was to have a China Card.  Major western manufacturers must have a production base in China to take advantage of cheap labour, cheap land and the skilled Chinese workforce to lower production cost. This China Card gave the international manufacturers an unassailable advantage to compete in the world market. The European and American manufacturers have become uncompetitive against the Japanese, South Koreans and Taiwanese and the Chinese in producing goods for international consumption due their high labour and production cost at home. Having goods manufactured in China allowed the western manufacturers to regain the comparative advantage to sell to the world.

This old China Card no longer works like before. The new world market, the largest consumer market, is in China. 1.4 billion Chinese are moving up the economic ladder to be consumers of better quality goods and services. The growing middle class is creating a huge demand for higher end goods and services. The buying powers of the Americans and Europeans have diminished and so is the buying power of the Japanese. The big consumers are the nouveau riche Chinese in China. The current wave of China tourists buying overseas would not last for long when China is making all the goods they desired.

The new China Card is to produce in China and sell to the growing affluent Chinese market. Many western and Japanese manufacturers have the foresight to seize on this opportunity to be in China to sell to the Chinese consumers. There will be more and more joint ventures with branded high value foreign manufacturers partnering Chinese businesses to manufacture and produce for the Chinese market. Without this ticket many of the western manufacturers would go the way of the dinosaurs, uncompetitive and without a big enough market to sell to.  The Americans can try to produce at home and sell to the Americans at American prices but would not be able to export anything to the world at a competitive price.

The new China Card is the way to go to survive.  The new China Card is the passport to the world’s biggest consumer market. A new partnership to make and sell to the world’s biggest consumer market in China will mean profitability or heading towards oblivion for the manufacturers of quality consumer goods and services. This is the new challenge and new normal of the 21^st Century.

Who says there will be no qualified Malay candidates for the EP?

There have been talks everywhere that there will be no qualified candidates for the Malay EP election. Some say there will only be one candidate put up by the PAP and since there would be no other contestants, it would be a walkover just like the times of SR Nathan.

I briefly run through my mental computers and could easily churn up such a long list of eligible candidates that is unbelieveable. Top among them would be Halimah Yaacob, Yaacob Ibrahim, Masagos Zulkifli, Ahmad Mattar, Othman Wok, and if ministers of state and Parliamentary Secretaries are eligible, the list would be a few pages long. What about non political candidates? Does it matter, when all the best Malay talents available are in the list mentioned above?

Now who say there are not enough Malay candidates for the EP election? You want three corner fight or four corner fight also got.

One thing for sure, there will be no Second Chance. The EP election is likely to be a straight fight or a walkover, depending on who the PAP will be putting up for the election. Or it could be like a repeat of Ong Teng Cheong versus Chua Kim Yeow in the first election for an EP where only one candidate willing to run and no one really wants to run.

It is a little too late to appoint a Malay talent to head a $500m GLC to qualify for the EP election. It would be difficult if the appointee has to be in an executive position, not just chairmey. Oops, I mean chairman with no executive power.

WP presented with a Godsend gift for 2017

The happenings in the Ang Mo Kio Town Council are outrageous. I am not going to elaborate as the details are everywhere. The similarities between the AMKTC case and the AHPETC case are unstintingly unmistakable. What is the WP waiting for? Silence is golden as usual, or worried about sub judice?

A simple thing the WP could do is to table the same list of questions, objections, problems and recommendations thrown at them to act on. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Everything that needs to be said about this AMKTC case has been said in the KPMG report. Everything that has been alleged to be bad has been alleged. Everything that is supposed to be about poor management, inappropriate, unacceptable, everything that is supposed to be a violation of rules, good practices, unethical, immoral, unprincipled and against the law, has been said and written in black and white.

All the WP needs to do is to pull out the old copies of letters and reports  that were sent to them, the reports in the media, and compile them in a nice file, and send them to Parliament for an airing.  Then they can all sit back and relax and hear the replay of everything that was said, in defence of what were said and alleged about AHPETC. So simple!

Actually a simple way is to send all the documents and letters back with the words AHPETC changed to AMKTC will do. Oh, the names of people involved should also be changed.

What a piece of cake for the start of a new year. There is no need to say anything new, no need to crack the grey matter. Just do exactly as what was said or done before, would be better if they can hold a press conference and hope that the main media would print exactly what they had printed before.  Would that be nice?

One advice for the WP, do not do what I do, for what I can do you can’t do. What I do is right and good, but when you do what I do, it is wrong and bad.  Understand?

This is an example of a comment in TRE, and there were many more of such brilliant comments that the WP can quote, from ministers and MPs.

PREACHER SHOULD PRACTICE:

January 2, 2017 at 10:48 pm  PREACHER SHOULD PRACTICE(Quote)

IN 2015 – KHAW BOON WAN ON WP’S AHPETC LAPSES, quote:

“By law, the MPs and councillors are ultimately responsible for everything in the town council. They cannot simply DELEGATE their responsibility away to ther managing agent or others.
Unfortuately, throughout the saga we have found the MPs running AHPETC to be evasive, unresponsive and misleading.” (my capitalized ‘DELEGATE’)

Medical Centres across the Causeway to benefit Singapore

Thomson Medical Centre is going big in Johore Bahru. So were many other hospitals from around the world. JB is going to be a boom town, with the best medical facilities without the outrageous charges in Singapore. JB is going to be a threat to Singapore’s medical hub if things go on as planned.
There is really no competition if JB can bring in the best doctors to helm the medical industry and will provide a good alternative to Singapore and Bangkok as the region’s medical hub. It has all the comparative advantages to make medical industry a success in JB. Get the formula right, the quality of the medical professions and the services, and JB will be on its way to replace Singapore. There are conditions to overtake Singapore and it is not a given.
Patients from all over the world would have a good alternative to the Singapore brand at a more affordable price. Singaporeans too would stand to benefit from this option. The only drawback is transportation. Sinai Airport would be pushed to the limits with medical tourist arrival. It needs better connections to other parts of the world, even to/from Singapore.
Singaporeans would have a little problem accessing the medical facilities in JB. In non critical cases, when time is not a problem, JB is a good choice. For critically ill patients, there is a caveat. They may not survive the jams at the Causeway, stuck for a couple of hours or more could be death threatening. Unless of course the JB govt could open a special fast lane for medical patients to pass, otherwise it is no go for critically ill patients to test their fate in the Causeway jam.
The jam and security and the causeway fees are obvious trouble in the way of the medical industry. It would be a pity if everything is in favour of JB, to flourish as a new international hub but be held hostage due to a few silly problems and failed.

Would Malaysia do anything to make JB a success or do silly things to ruin the hopes and dreams of many entrepreneurs that pour in their money to want JB to be the next commercial and industrial centre, including the next medical hub?

Welcome to the New Sick Man of Asia

Here is a post in the statestimesreview titled Ang moh threatens to kill Grab car 'driver'.
‘A caucasian man was captured by the car’s in-vehicle recording unit slamming the window of a GrabCar driver.

According to the driver’s account, he picked up the caucasian’s family at 296 Beach Road Concourse Skyline on Tuesday (Dec 27) around 3.45pm. However, as he did not have an infant seat, he told the caucasian’s family that he is unable to pick up the family due to traffic regulation requirements.

The man in the video was enraged and then stopped the GrabCar driver from driving away and proceeded to act violently and even threatened to “fucking kill” the driver. Throughout the incident, the GrabCar driver stayed in his car, locked his doors and called the police.’

When would the govt get rid of these foreign scums from our country before more Singaporeans are beaten up or threatened to be killed? No, no way, these are the talents that we need to replace the daft, no brain, no talent Singaporeans. More should be promoted to head GLCs, stats boards and even ministries. Their talents are more important and a bit of violence should be tolerable. Just turn the other cheek.

Singaporeans when faced with such violent foreign talents should just meekly lock themselves in the car like the Grab car driver and call the police. If cannot hide inside a car for safety, run for your life. Do not attempt to defend yourself for good reasons. You may end up in jail for violence against these foreign talents.

Be safe, be meek, run or hide.

Tommy Koh had asked if we are the New Sick Man of Asia.  In the last century China had this reputation when China was invaded by hordes of western foreigners and Shanghai was cut out into pieces as foreign concessions. And the foreigners ruled Shanghai, bullying and beating up the residents at will, for their own fancy. And the weak govt looked at the foreigners haplessly,, unable to protect its own citizens. The rich and powerful slept with the foreigners to bully and cheat the residents.

Welcome to the New Sick Man of Asia where the foreigners feel so arrogant and free to beat up the citizens and the meek citizens could only wait to be beaten. At most the foreigners would get a slap on the wrist. And they would walk away sneering at the meek citizens that have become their past time punching bags.

This is now a sick place where the citizens have lost their pride and dignity. No one is there to stand up for the citizens to kick the asses of these foreign scums but begging for more to come. And more foreign scums are brought in to boss around with the citizens, replacing the citizens in good jobs, top jobs, and the daft citizens are told to go overseas, like their forefathers that came here, unable to find decent jobs in their motherland and unable to fend for themselves.

The similarities are no coincidence when the rich and powerful are fraternalising with the foreigners and thinking hell a lot of the great talents of the foreigners and despising the citizens as good only for low value jobs.

What is there to be happy about the new year and going forward when there is no pride and dignity?