Inconvenient Questions: Trust in our own Talents & Relations with China

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

From IQ Singapore


When I first heard about IQ “Live”, I hesitated sending in questions and attending the recording session. I told the production coordinator that if there was going to be censorship for such forums, I would rather not waste my time. I was assured that there will not be any censorship and I am glad that it turned out to be the case. A progressive civil society should have more of such civil discussions or even debates over issues that may seem “sensitive” to those in power.

Featuring guest panellist Masagos Zulkifli, who is Second Minister for Home Affairs (as well as Second Minister of Foreign Affairs), most of the questions at IQ “Live”, held on 28 April, were quite “localised”; whereas my prepared questions targeted foreign relations, following up on an interesting question raised by Jack Sim of the World Toilet Organization on support of local innovation beyond Singapore.

I pointed out that unlike South Korea and Taiwan — whose governments have strong support for local firms when it comes to innovation and the creation of valuable technology and branding — Singapore lacks such support for local inventors and innovators. Unknown to many, besides Creative Technology (which had its first success in US’s Silicon Valley), we had a company called Fusion Garage that created one of the first tablets in the world called JooJoo. Unfortunately, the company closed down after running out of money. Today, we have a Singapore company that designed and created the first smart phone-watch; it was financed by Americans. Not forgetting that we have our very own outfit Trek Technology that created one of the first thumb drives in the world.

The point is, we do not lack innovators and inventors in Singapore, but we lack people — especially those in government — who have trust in our local innovators and inventors. While Minister Masagos rightly pointed out that Singapore is a brand that is internationally recognised as trustworthy, the irony is that our own government and investors do not believe in our own people’s talents, in their ability to innovate to make investments worthwhile.
I was hoping the Minister would provide more insight into how we can change such mindsets in Singapore but was disappointed. Personally, I think the root of the problem is the way we construct our economic structures, which encourage speculations in property investment through the concept of “asset enhancement”. Such an economic strategy inevitably shifted funds into speculation in the property market, which creates bubbles — this is not very healthy if we want sustainable growth.

Germany, for instance, has strict controls on property prices to prevent excessive property speculation and to avoid having too much funding go into unproductive speculative financial activities. To me, this is why German companies are more successful in engineering, where a lot of focus and efforts are put into innovations that greatly increase industrial productivity.

I sincerely hope that the ruling party will rethink the whole economic strategy for Singapore’s future sustainability in growth.
While talking about sustainability and even the survivability of Singapore, my questions also focused on the issue of our diplomatic relationship with China in post-LKY era.

From my perspective, China’s relationship with us, under President Xi Jinping’s new leadership, has shifted from warm, early relations to a “cold shoulder” era. They have persisted and started to build the Kra Canal across southern Thailand despite the fact that the returns on investments for such an investment were really mediocre at best. China insists that building the Kra Canal was for strategic reasons more than economic ones. Such a move would inevitably threaten Singapore’s position as the trans-shipment hub of Asia; it will have serious implications for our economic survivability, as seen in Cape Town when the Suez Canal was completed.

Moreover, since President Xi came to power, he has avoided paying Singapore a visit, even though he has visited some ASEAN countries like Cambodia, Indonesia and Malaysia, flying past our corridors without coming in. Analyses from Chinese analysts show that China is expressing unprecedented animosity towards Singapore, accusing Singapore of being America’s ally, who is in turn all out to sabotage China’s emergence as superpower. The PSA’s management of Gwadar Port at Pakistan (see controversy here[WS8] ), which was built by the Chinese, was seen by some analysts as a deliberate act of sabotage against China’s strategic plan to transport oil supplies directly from Middle East to China, bypassing the Malacca Straits, seen as being controlled by Singapore.

Such a change in Sino-Singapore diplomatic relations and the seeming animosity demonstrated by the Chinese may have adverse implications for our vast investments in China as well as general political stability for the region, which we rely heavily upon for our economic growth.
I was hoping to gain more insight from Minister Masagos on how the PAP government would deal with such sensitive but important problems of long-term survivability for Singapore. What are the political and diplomatic strategies or approaches in mitigating this problem we are facing with China? I was disappointed by the replies Minister Masagos provided. He did not address the fundamental burning question of the strategic approaches we will be taking to improve the current situation.

Despite the answers, I enjoyed the whole session, where I learnt more about the concerns of those people who were present via the questions they have brought up. It gives a politician like me important insight on what really matters to the ground people and intellectuals alike.

This article was written by the author in response to IQ "Live" with Minister Masagos Zulkifli and does not necessarily represent the view of Inconvenient Questions.
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