Li Keqiang’s speech – What to make out of it?

Premier Li Keqiang has delivered his much awaited and most watched speech at the 12^th National People’s Congress and China watchers are busily trying to dissect every bit of his speech to understand what he was saying and where is China heading. The keynote address by the Prime Minister of China has gained stature internationally and would be closely watched by leaders of nations around the world wanting to understand China and its policies. Any analyst hoping and expecting something dramatic and earth shaking pronouncement in this speech is likely to be disappointed. Li Keqiang’s speech is best described by a few words, consolidation, stability and avoiding the risk that may come from domestic and external factors.

The tempo of the speech, covering almost every aspect of the Chinese economy and touching on the life of the Chinese people, is a sign of a leadership that is comfortable with what they have achieved and what they had set out to do. It is a speech that said China is on the right course and will continue to move ahead in a steady pace with not much haste.

China has initiated many big plans and projects internally and in the international arena in the last decades, particularly in the last few years. A distinct observation that everything is going on as planned, and doing well, is their absence from being mentioned in Li Keqiang’s speech.  What were not spoken were equally important if not more important like the AIIB and One Belt One Road international projects. The American rhetoric on the South China Sea were not worthy of mention as well. The anti corruption drive too did not find a place in the speech.

The whole emphasis of Li’s speech is about consolidation of what China has been doing over the years, economic development to bring about a prosperous China and better quality of living for its people. Improving the environment, clear sky, creating jobs and lowering unemployment and agricultural reforms to improve productivity took the main stage. The economy is targeted to continue to grow at a more leisure pace of 6.5%, a departure from the years of hectic double digit growth to ensure a more stable and sustainable growth.

The overall picture is a China growing at its own terms and dictates with no great concern or the need to take high risk. There is no worrying trends and development that could trip the progress of the Chinese economy and China’s growing prosperity. 

There are areas of concern but nothing unmanageable. Li Keqiang did raise the issue of independence movements in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and China’s sovereignty in the South China Sea. His message was simple, without being confrontational to unsettle the critics and doomsayers, that China would firmly and resolutely protect the One China policy, removing any doubts on what China would do when the One China policy and Chinese sovereignty are challenged.

Li Keqiang did not respond directly to the provocative rhetoric from the Americans and in a way keep the South China Sea on an even keel. The modest increase in the Chinese defence budget of 7% is also another statement that says threats to China’s national security would be taken seriously but not something the Chinese leader is unduly worried about. China is not in a hurry to over indulge in military spending or in an arms race with the USA to compete for military dominance and superiority. 

China has chosen the path of economic development, to continue to grow and develop in a measured and predictable manner to improve the lives of the Chinese people. Military adventure and supremacy are not China's cup of tea.

In summary, Li Keqiang's speech is all about economic development, prosperity and the well being of the Chinese people and for China to continue to grow as a sovereign nation.

PS. Posted this in China Daily

Public transport to raise fare?

When was the last fare hike? Is public transport a strategic asset, a scarce resource? If so it must be priced right to make the people feel the pain of higher transport fare so that they would not abuse taking public transport unnecessarily and wastefully. Building infrastructure for public transport is very expensive and new transportation system is not cheap, not when you need to build for another 2m people in an already congested piece of rock. All the costs have gone up. The public must be encouraged to travel at off peak hours or not to travel at all and make unnecessary trips to stress the public transport system. Do these kinds of reasoning sound right or idiotic?
 
With rising cost of public transportation and better quality of public transport, some media said service quality has declined so not sure which is right, it is only right to raise transport fare. The improvements over the years with each price hike did not seem to make the quality of service improved much. Maybe the increase is not high enough so not much improvement could be seen.
 
Would anyone think it is clever to raise transportation fee by 30% like water?  Someone must have been reading Machiavelli and the advice of Machiavelli must have gone into their heads. When making increases, make it big and painful, the public would soon forget the pain.  Don’t do it bit by bit. When giving out handouts, then do it bit by bit to milk as much good will as possible like wanting to give a 10c discount, give it in 10 times or 5 times, like 1c or 2c at a time at a time. The daft would be grateful for 5 or 10 times.
 
Are the public expecting to be slammed with another big transportation hike like the 30% water fee and comes the next GE all would be forgotten? Transportation hike got good reason, to improve quality of services. You want better services, pay more. So simple.

Air is also a strategic resource and a security concern

Water is a strategic resource and affects national security. What about air? We have taken free and clean air for granted. The haze season has given us a taste of what it is like when air is no longer clean and healthy to breathe. Air may not be a scarcity, but clean air is. Clean air is also strategic and scarce if not well managed.

Think of the great effort and funds applied to keep our air clean. Clean air does not come naturally anymore. Keeping the air clean is costly but many people have yet to know how costly this is. Just to keep the haze away, the govt has spent a lot of effort and financial resources to keep the culprits from continuing with their harmful actions. And there is also a political cost when relations with our neighbours can be agitated and aggravated and in the end affecting economic relations and trade.

The tree planting activities, keeping as much greenery in the island, using clean technology, policing anti clean air activities all cost money. It would not be long before someone comes up with the idea to make the people to feel the cost of keeping the air clean and healthy. If water can be priced on the basis of making the people appreciate that it is important, the same kind of logic would not be far fetch to apply to air.

How about levying some kind of free and clean air taxes for the money spent to keep the air breathable for Singaporeans?  Would some nuts in the future be thinking that this is a good thing, to make the people feel the price of clean air and how important and valuable is clean air? If it really happens, then cham liao.

Would some jokers be saying that this is to help the people and good for the people, for the people’s good?  Would there be free and clean air tax in the future?   Smokers be warned, you are contaminating the air with all kinds of harmful agents. You have yet to be made to pay for harming the environment, making the air unclean and the efforts to keep the air clean from cigarette pollutants.

But before free air is in the calculation, would power and electricity fall into the same category as water and be subject to the same strategic thinking and pricing? We don’t have natural power production sources and producing power and electricity is very expensive. Tiok boh?

MOM taking 50 firms to task

MOM has taken 50 firms to task for not giving fair opportunities to employing Singaporeans and another 250 firms put on the watchlist. Is this enough after letting in 500,000 foreigners, so called talents to take away jobs from Singaporeans and still happily employed while many Singaporeans PMETs are unemployed or underemployed or resigned to early retirement? This pathetic situation has been going on for the last 10 to 20 years!

Think of the pain and suffering thousands of Singaporeans have gone through. Think of how many families got into financial trouble or even broke up. Think of the emotional suffering of Singaporeans seeking jobs but got rejected and rejected or not even called up for an interview. Think of the number of dejected cases, depression cases, Singaporeans losing confidence in themselves, some even became IMH cases. Think of the disappointment of parents for raising their children and putting them through the expensive education system. Think of the disappointment of young Singaporeans after spending their parents’ life savings and unable to find a decent job, some were lucky to end up with part time job but not enough to feed themselves, how these young people felt, unable to repay the kindness and generosities of their parents, wanting to be filial but unable to, and feeling ashame and useless.

Are the MOM and the govt doing enough to help the Singaporeans suffering because of the 500,000 foreigners here and depriving Singaporeans from getting a job to feed themselves and to have some pride and dignity as an individual? Oh MOM is partnering foreign agencies to look for jobs for Singaporeans, where, overseas? If Singaporeans could not find jobs in Singapore, how are their chances to finding jobs overseas, to be what, cooks, gardeners? Seow!

What is wrong with this bloody system? Why are Singaporeans being forced out from their homes and country when there are 500,000 foreigners happily employed here? I look around Raffles Place and MBFC and at the young foreigners and cannot believe my eyes that what they are doing cannot be done by Singaporeans? There are easier solutions to helping Singaporeans to find a decent job than trying to send them overseas. Please stop doing nonsense and get the basics right. There is no need to teach million dollar ministers how to do their job unless they are unworthy of their million dollar salaries. It is time to be serious and do the necessary and the due diligence. If they still cannot think out of the mess, just think of immigration passes and quotas will do.  It is not difficult and it is only a responsible thing for the govt to do. I have wasted so much breath talking about this issue while so many Singaporeans are suffering and some people are happily tweedling their thumbs counting their millions and acting innocent.

How much more must Singaporeans suffer from this fate due to govt policies to bring in more foreigners at their expense? Singaporeans mismatched, misfits, foreigners from little villages with funny degrees are better fit and better matched?

Stupidity has no cure. Forsaking the Singaporeans is a crime against Singaporeans.

If no serious and immediate action is taken, if the govt is not going to provide the opportunities for Singaporeans to be suitably employed, Singaporeans will end up without the relevant skills, without the experience to move up the corporate and skills ladder for higher appointments. Singaporeans would become skill less, less experiencede and unemployable with foreigners getting all the on the job training and experience to boot in their CVs.

A good example is the CEO positions. Why give them to foreigners to gain the experience and not to Singaporeans? Soon no Singaporeans would be good enough to be CEOs, even in GLCs.

This is tragedy in the making and Singaporeans would become the dodo birds of the 21^st Century, in their own country. This is another kind of ‘Sook Ching’ in a way.

I read somewhere that Lim Swee Say was so emotional in Parliament when talking about the unemployment of Singaporean PMETs. Some were saying that he was shedding crocodile tears. I hope he really felt the pain and suffering of the unemployed or under employed Singaporeans and understood how ‘chek ark’ 折悪is such a policy of giving hundreds of thousands of jobs to foreigners but leaving Singaporeans in the lurch, in despair. I also hope that those MPs and ministers sitting in the Parliament also felt the same and would quickly start to do something to help Singaporeans instead of talking cock, to help the people that voted them into Parliament. They owe it to the voters not to foreigners.

Kim Jong Nam - Fake news and alternative truth

In the Kim Jong Nam case Malaysia has come up with its version of the truth. All fingers conveniently pointing to North Korea just like the NOT UN backed tribunal or kangaroo court in The Hague on the SCS dispute. Malaysia is walking around like a cock strutting its stuff. They have all the truths and evidence, like indisputable truths similar to the Choenan Incident. The North Koreans did it.

 

As more questions are being asked and more information is being produced, more holes are seen and the picture is looking murkier. With the Malaysians refusing to cooperate with the NK whom the victim is their people in the investigation, the NK has to conduct their own.

 

How did the Malaysians become so clever to narrow it down to VX nerve gas? The NK is demanding that the Malaysians produce the sample and let it be confirmed by an international body which the Malaysians strangely refused to do so.

 

For a victim to die within a few minutes, then the dosage used must be quite high, high enough to be inhaled by the two women who would thus become victims of the gas as well. The fact that the two women were harmless tells a story that either the dosage was so small or it could not be toxic when inhaled, ie not VX. And if the dosage was big, people around them, the toilet used to wash up would likely to be affected. Where is missing towel or gloves that could be very toxic?

 

NK has raised a point, that one or both women had made several trips to South Korea. Can this be verified? Sure it can if the SK wants to and if confirmed, what would it say of SK complicity?

 

SK and the Americans have in many occasions planted false flag incidents to tarnish the reputations of NK to blame NK for all kinds of silly things. This is a fact. Could this case be just another false flag incident hashed by the SK or the Americans?

 

If you look at the cctv clip, the guy looked like Kim Jong Nam. But his hair, the long shaggy hair behind his head did not. His mannerism and the way he walked did not. And for him to walk around to talk to police officers, to talk to airport staff after the incident did not show that he was a victim of a VX attack. There were not sweating, nauseating or vomiting as what would be expected. A Japanese cult member sprinkled himself with the gas and died only 10 days later in Tokyo.

 

There are many unanswered questions especially with the involvement of Vietnamese and Indonesians. The North Koreans are known to have little contact with other people and would likely work on their own if they would to commit such an attack. Hiring agents is a common trick of the West and western trained operators to cover their tracks and their involvement. The involvement of foreigners, reality shows, contacts with the two women looking like Japanese or Koreans must have raised a red flag. But these leads are not being pursued by the Malaysians. They are conducting a witch hunt in the NK embassy.

 

The truth is unfolding. Who gave the toxic substance to the attackers? What is that substance if not VX? Where is the evidence of the gas? Is the victim really Kim Jong Nam?

 

Why is Malaysia acting so strangely and so sure that it was the NK who did it like they knew MH370 ditched in the Indian Ocean? Who has been feeding the Malaysians with all the information or misinformation? Are the Malaysians so clever or so stupid?

 

From a rather straight forward case of investigating a crime involving foreigners, Malaysia is now having a diplomatic row with the North Koreans and acting so atas. Is it necessary and what is Malaysia benefiting from it?

 

Now after PNG the North Korean ambassador, the North Koreans are retaliating by not allowing Malaysians in North Korea to leave. Now would Malaysia up the stake and do the same to North Koreans in Malaysia?  Oops, Malaysia has responded with the same ban on North Koreans in Malaysia.

 

Where would this end? Is there a puppeteer behind all this? If the incident was not committed by the NK, the real culprits would be laughing themselves silly.

 

Stupidity has no cure.