Serious Great Article, says Gay Loong is lost diplomatically, and our neighbours hate us.

[Papsmearer]

January 4, 2017 4:00 pm JST
Christopher Tremewan
[h=1]Singapore needs new diplomatic strategy[/h] Shifts in Chinese and American power have thrown balancing role into question

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte inspects an honour guard with Singapore's President Tony Tan at the Istana in Singapore on Dec. 15. (Reuters)


Singapore may get back its nine military vehicles that were seized in Hong Kong in November but whether it can regain credibility within Southeast Asia as a diplomatic leader is another question. Singapore's carefully crafted reputation as an advocate of Asian values and vigorous defender of its neighbors' sovereignty holding the line against an imperial West is long out of date.
China returned the U.S. underwater drone it seized on Dec. 15 within days but is making Singapore wait weeks for the armored vehicles impounded Nov. 23 as undeclared cargo from a transiting freight liner. The debate within the Singapore elite is whether this is a blip in a long-established friendship or if it indicates a "new normal" with a rising China that will require Singapore, whose populace is 78% ethnic Chinese, to show greater loyalty.
However the current standoff is resolved, there will be no going back to the old status quo. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's telephone call with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has given the region a serious headache as governments ponder what his policies toward Asia will be.
Singapore was already vulnerable. The city-state has been slow in adjusting its diplomatic strategy even as its Southeast Asian neighbors accommodate themselves to China's rising power. Singapore now has to adapt amid a highly fluid situation in which it has already been weakened by China's rap on the knuckles over its continued military links with Taiwan.
Can Singapore still perform its role as the preferred neutral broker for members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations? Can it keep up its balancing act between China and the U.S. and be the interlocutor for ASEAN while China raises the tightrope higher and removes the safety net? Is Singapore moving from interlocutor to itself becoming a mere bargaining chip?
As Bilahari Kausikan, a Singaporean ambassador-at-large, recently observed: "No one who is even minimally familiar with our neighbors should have any illusions... They mean to surpass us and put us in what they consider to be our proper place, which is not, believe me, where the sun shines on first."
He sees Singapore's strategy of military deterrence of its neighbors as the essential underpinning of its diplomatic leadership. Indeed, Singapore's military expenditure per capita is second only to the U.S. in the Asia-Pacific region and far more than that of any other country.
Kausikan's fear is that "the central organizing concept of [Singapore's] civil service is eroding the alertness, agility and appreciation of nuance that we will need to cope with a more complex external environment." He does not point directly at where the responsibility for this actually lies -- the leadership of Singapore's ruling party, in power since 1959.
New attitude
In July, China rejected an international tribunal's decision regarding its territorial claims in the South China Sea in favor of the Philippines. In August, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that his country had no claims in the South China Sea but added, "We do have a lot at stake and three things matter to us: international law, freedom of navigation and a united ASEAN."


He had just returned from a visit to Washington during which he was feted at the last state dinner to be hosted by U.S. President Barack Obama. Lee had every reason to be optimistic about the Trans-Pacific Partnership and continued U.S. backing for Singapore's prominent role in Southeast Asia.
In October, however, a senior Chinese military adviser said Singapore should be made to "pay the price for seriously damaging China's interests." Jin Yinan, director of the strategic research institute at National Defense University, said that Lee had focused his speech at the prestigious Shangri-La Dialogue on international security in Singapore in June mainly and unsympathetically on the South China Sea. He added that Lee's father, late elder statesman Lee Kuan Yew, had lost Beijing's respect over his support for Obama's pivot to Asia.
Since his U.S. trip, Lee has been confronted with an unravelling of Singapore's regional role at the hands of China and of some of his ASEAN partners. Not only has Singapore's primary defense partnership with the U.S. been sharply exposed but its ASEAN partners have been peeled off by Beijing. Mercurial Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and politically weakened Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak appear to have found solace in Beijing's embrace, further fragmenting ASEAN's response to China's expansionism.
Damaged reputation
What kind of leadership can a damaged Singapore with decreasing leverage offer?
Singapore's pragmatic foreign policy in ASEAN has been successful. Acting as banker to Southeast Asian elites and not challenging their failures in governance have assisted the city-state's transition from intermediate manufacturing and entrepot trade to a services economy. Now just as Singapore is losing its competitiveness in manufacturing, ease of doing business and attracting talent, it has to find a new diplomatic strategy for regional leadership.
Ethnic politics will play a big part. China sees Singapore as a Chinese country. So do its neighbors in the populous Malay archipelago. Singapore has maintained it is a multiracial meritocracy while bringing in at least 1 million mainland Chinese immigrants to shore up ethnic Chinese dominance. With 80% of its oil imports passing through the Malacca Straits, China is naturally sensitive to the geostrategic chokepoint around Singapore as well as the presence of the U.S. Navy.
China has many ways to bypass Singapore: its pending investment in Thailand's planned Kra Isthmus Canal; its own Belt and Road Initiative to develop infrastructure and transport connections to Europe and the Middle East; the opening of the Arctic route to Europe; and its joint development of the Gwadar deep-water port in Pakistan with road, rail and pipeline connections.
Undermining tiny Singapore will take time. The diminution of the city-state's regional leadership is likely to continue to be gradual, Trump willing, so there is time for it to recoup losses.
It is difficult to see how Singapore can deepen its leadership of Southeast Asia without stepping back from its rather arrogant exceptionalism. It has spent decades leveraging the weaknesses of its neighbors rather than assisting in the buildup of their institutions. It has taken a business approach to international relations as it has tried to become the Switzerland of Southeast Asia.
Having achieved that dubious aim economically, it is now tasting the fruit: an inequitable and predatory society in a region where it tries both to belong and to declare its superiority. The result, as Amb. Kausikan has noted, is that it is not loved by its neighbors and if social surveys are indicative, its own citizens have lost affection too. Yet as a society, Singapore has many strengths and could change tack with imaginative political leadership.
Singapore's low-key response to Hong Kong's seizure of its military vehicles may succeed in keeping the diplomatic temperature down. The city-state will probably get its property back after China has extracted more embarrassment.
We can then expect Singapore quietly to increase cooperation with the PLA and possibly gesture more strongly toward the Belt and Road Initiative. Singapore will maintain its high military spending, its hosting of the U.S. Navy and extend its offshore military training in Australia and elsewhere.
But the larger questions of Singapore's leadership within ASEAN, its own uncertain political succession and the contrariness of the incoming American leadership have given Beijing more than enough leverage to shift regional leadership in its favor.
In this context, there is little indication yet that Singapore, or anyone else, knows how to shore up the increasingly contingent nature of the three things that Prime Minister Lee said mattered: international law, freedom of navigation and a united ASEAN.

Christopher Tremewan is a research fellow in political studies at the University of Auckland and author of "The Political Economy of Social Control in Singapore."

 

[khunking]

What's there to hate when all sectors of our job market and education scholarships are open to Asean members?

 

[KuanTi01]

Incisive, persuasive and dismissive! The article clearly exposes LHL's utter lack of leadership and political acumen. Cosying up to the US blindly and sticking out like a sore thumb; blind-sided afterwards. PRC regards him as a running dog. In Hokkien, we call him "xiang tao juah" i.e. double-headed snake. Duterte and Najib seem to be more worldly-wise and grounded to the realities. Under his stewardship, this little city-state will be doomed into insignificance. High time for him to retire and enjoy his millions.

 

[Pinkieslut]

"In this context, there is little indication yet that Singapore, or anyone else, knows how to shore up the increasingly contingent nature of the three things that Prime Minister Lee said mattered: international law, freedom of navigation and a united ASEAN."

We are DEAD if Pinky continue to harp on and on about these factors.

"International law" is nothing more than just a political game rules of the strongest power(s).

"freedom of navigation" - Rubbish. China do not have problem with countries sailing their navy or merchant ships across SCS, unless war is officially declared.

"United ASEAN" is a JOKE. Even the more developed economies like Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand until now cannot create a truly integrated market.

 

[AsiaDK]

This chee hong wear until so casual is a disrespect for our Guards of Honor. Fold sleeves somemore

 

[scroobal]

I am not sure if the author knows about Singapore and China. In the last 30 years we bent over backwards in providing them access to URA, HDB, Port Operations, and nearly every aspect of our Civil Service except the Military and the Intelligence Services. We also sent over PA staff, PAP party members and even YPAP and told them how the PAP controls the country.

We have given them numerous scholarships for postgraduate educations and even paid for language courses for their senior military staff.

And in turn we were royally screwed by them repeatedly starting with Suzhou. We handed over everything for free and they took it for free with no shame.

I am not sure how far we need to bend over to get repeatedly screwed by them. At least the Taiwanese and the HongKongers are prepared to stand up to them.

 

[AsiaDK]

I am not sure if the author knows about Singapore and China. In the last 30 years we bent over backwards in providing them access to URA, HDB, Port Operations, and nearly every aspect of our Civil Service except the Military and the Intelligence Services. We also sent over PA staff, PAP party members and even YPAP and told them how the PAP controls the country.

We have given them numerous scholarships for postgraduate educations and even paid for language courses for their senior military staff.

And in turn we were royally screwed by them repeatedly starting with Suzhou. We handed over everything for free and they took it for free with no shame.

I am not sure how far we need to bend over to get repeatedly screwed by them. At least the Taiwanese and the HongKongers are prepared to stand up to them.

why like that sir?
Chinese only know how to bully chinese?

 

[zhihau]

How many Sinkie banks are in Laos?

 

[scroobal]

I think they feel that we owe some form of allegiance to the motherland. Our initial open door policy and pretty most favoured status was very much appreciated by them.

In the late 80s they began to prod us to drop Taiwan as a training ground and we resisted. They were not happy. In the past we used to bring Taiwanese Military advisors especially for the Navy and stopped that. We even told one of them who made his home here to move out and he went Frisco.

Old Man's World of China came crashing down when Deng personally told him that he cannot intervene in Suzhou.

Believe me Senior Civil servants knew that it will come to this. If we were not Ethnic Chinese as the majority we would not have this issue,

Here is a recent good article on their and our earlier love affair.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...of-lee-s-singapore-model-ran-deep-for-decades

China’s Love of Lee’s ‘Singapore Model’ Ran Deep for Decades
Bloomberg News
23 March 2015, 19:46 GMT+10:30 24 March 2015, 09:52 GMT+10:30

Lee Led Singapore Out of the Third World: Bremmer
Since Deng Xiaoping visited in 1978, Chinese leaders have looked for lessons in stewardship from Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore, a city-state with 0.4 percent the population of China and a landmass about half the size of Shanghai’s Pudong district.

Countries around the world have lavished praise on the Singapore Model -- a state ruled by a single party, defined by robust economic growth, low crime and startling cleanliness -- that brought international renown to Lee, who died Monday. None took Singapore’s example as seriously as China, which sends hundreds of Communist Party cadres to the city-state every year to study it.

“They think that the so-called Singapore model, single-party rule maybe can provide them something to maintain the Communist Party’s rule without losing too much in the process,” said Huang Jing, who has taught classes full of Chinese officials as a professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.

Echoes of Lee’s influence are evident in China’s economic reform plans, announced in 2013, to allow a greater role for the market while maintaining the party’s grip on power, and in President Xi Jinping’s bid to eliminate rampant corruption. China is also seeking to emulate Singapore’s shift away from a manufacturing boom that put it on the path to growth.

Lee was an “old friend” of the Chinese people and pioneered the nation’s ties with Singapore, Xi said in a telegram to Singapore President Tony Tan, according to a statement on China’s foreign ministry website. “Mr. Lee Kuan Yew was the founder of Singapore, and a strategist and statesman who was widely respected by the international community.”

‘Early Days’

Lee died at 91 and his body will lie in state at Parliament House from Wednesday after a private family wake, the Prime Minister’s Office said Monday in a statement. A state funeral service on March 29 will be followed by a private cremation ceremony.

Chinese officials frequently express their admiration for Singapore’s blend of authoritarian state-capitalism, its low crime and cleanliness. Deng was the first senior Chinese official to visit Singapore, meeting Lee a month before he was formally named paramount leader at a party gathering in December 1978. It was at that event that Deng gave his backing to reforms that would lead to 30 years of economic growth.

Deng toured Singapore with a 36-member delegation, visiting the country’s Housing Development Board and Jurong Town Corporation to see firsthand Singapore’s public housing and industrialization program.

Xi also praised Singapore in November 2013, when he met with a group of intellectuals in Beijing.

Rigorous, Systematic

“He did mention that China learned from the Singapore experience in the early days of reform and opening up,” former Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo said after attending that meeting. Yeo left the Singapore Cabinet after losing his parliamentary seat in a 2011 election and is now vice chairman of Kerry Group (HK) Pte.

A 2012 article in Study Times, the journal of the Communist Party’s Central Party School, spelled out the reasons China liked the Singapore Model so much. It detailed how Lee’s People’s Action Party set up a system to select talent in a “rigorous, systematic way” and formed grassroots organizations to keep “in close contact with the masses.”

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Lee turned Singapore into one of Asia’s wealthiest nations by emphasizing efficiency and incorruptibility, which helped the city lure multinational companies to build a manufacturing sector focused on exports. The government also maintained tight control of major companies, with state-owned investment company Temasek Holdings Pte. holding strategic stakes in businesses from Singapore Airlines Ltd. to DBS Group Holdings Ltd.
China Roots

Ethnic Chinese make up more than 70 percent of the former British colony’s 5.5 million people, and include Lee, whose great-grandfather emigrated from southern China in the 19th century.

Lee’s own attitude toward China was mixed. In the 2011 book “Lee Kuan Yew: Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going,” he voiced support for Deng’s decision to unleash the military on unarmed protesters during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. In his 2013 book “One Man’s View of the World,” Lee put Xi in the same class as Nelson Mandela.

Yet he also said China’s creative output would never match that of the U.S. because the Communist Party doesn’t allow the free exchange of ideas. And he chided its leaders for telling others to be more respectful.

“They tell us that countries big or small are equal: we are not a hegemon,” Lee said in the book. “But when we do something they do not like, they say you have made 1.3 billion people unhappy...so please know your place.”

Idealistic Image

In 2012, Singapore’s Straits Times newspaper reported that China Central Television was preparing a 10-part series on Singapore’s governance. It cited unidentified sources as saying that Xi had personally endorsed the project.

Bo Zhiyue, a senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore, said he was approached by the filmmakers to chat and told them the notions they had about Singapore no longer held, especially after a 2011 ballot in which the PAP won re-election by the smallest margin since it split from Malaysia in 1965.

“They have this idealistic image of Singapore that does not exist in reality,” Bo said, adding that when he told that to the filmmakers, they never contacted him again. “The Singapore model is actually in decline.”

‘Singapore Fever’

Chinese state media have themselves grappled with that question. An article in the Chinese state-run People’s Daily newspaper acknowledged that China had seen “waves of Singapore fever.” It said Singapore is too small for its model to be copied wholesale.

Nonetheless, the 2012 article left little doubt about China’s respect for the Singapore Model.

“Singapore’s appeal is not restricted to China,” Beijing-based freelancer Huang Shuo wrote. “The person seen by many as having created the economic miracle, Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, is seen by many developing states as their superhero.”

— With assistance by Nick Wadhams

why like that sir?
Chinese only know how to bully chinese?

 

[Pinkieslut]

I am not sure if the author knows about Singapore and China. In the last 30 years we bent over backwards in providing them access to URA, HDB, Port Operations, and nearly every aspect of our Civil Service except the Military and the Intelligence Services. We also sent over PA staff, PAP party members and even YPAP and told them how the PAP controls the country.

We have given them numerous scholarships for postgraduate educations and even paid for language courses for their senior military staff.

And in turn we were royally screwed by them repeatedly starting with Suzhou. We handed over everything for free and they took it for free with no shame.

I am not sure how far we need to bend over to get repeatedly screwed by them.

Aiya you feel hurt? Cock and bull story (what Ah Tiong "love" for sinkieland", teach them how to fish, etc) sounds like those lao Sinkie Uncles' ego kenna stroked by ATBs then bank account kenna drained of everything. Then sit around at a cheap HDB kopitiam ranting on to a stranger (who paid for coffee and kaya toasts out of sympathy) how he was con of love and $$$ by that charming Ah Tiong Spider.

This is politics ok? Realpolitiks for you. Not masak masak. Look at how LKY garner support in his path to power. And how he dealt with his rivals and later opponents. And he was staunch anti-Communists screaming about CCP and its moronic leaders. Remember those Ah Tiong has super super long memories.
In their eyes, only Pakistan (Muslim and South Asian country) is true friend. Pakistan was the first to recognised PRC, stick with it thick or thin.

Pakistan was the country to help go negotiate with Nixon to recognise PRC (and dump ROC).

After 1989 TAM, only Pakistan did not follow the interational trade sanctions. Singapore DID. Yes, despite the media here putting a good front with LKY that he supported the crack down. And do remember Singapore only have true official ties in 1991. Way behind all the other key ASEAN countries.

There is no free lunch in this world.

USA despite protraying itself as beacon of freedom and democracy, goes around the world, conquered countries like The Philippines, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, kill off their local activists, enslave the local economies with its multinational firms, turn them all into banana republics. In the end those like Puerto Rico and Hawaii are so dependent economically that they have no choice but join US as a full fledged state.

And the British Empire? Their double dealings in the modern world is endless, creating the mess today in Middle East, the mess in Malaysia, the mess now in Burma (Rohingya), the mess of Pakistan-India, on and on. And while they sell drugs to dumb down Chinese, they deal in arms with Chinese Qing government, then turn over to Japan, arm them, support them to invade China. All in the name of PROFITS.

WAKE UP PLEASE! LEE KUAN YEW IS DEAD, CREMATED INTO DUSTS! STOP DREAMING ABOUT YOUR SG50 OR WHATEVER PUNCH OVER YOUR WEIGHT ACCOMPLISHMENTS. THE WORLD DOES NOT WAIT FOR YOU!

If you have time go dig around for Wikileaks report on Xi JinPing. Super ambitious, ruthless, and determined. He acts like those machiavellian emperor in Chinese court dramas, expressionless, calm demeanour. Always strategizing and plotting. Not some tin pot dictator like that fat Korean guy.

Really dont play play ok.

For the Suchow debacle, go read this 2000 writeup by a successful Singaporean lawyer (now residing in Japan):

OPINION: John A. Tessensohn
June 29, 1999

Singapore's accidental multi-million dollar industrial theme park
Suzhou Park saga

THE art of spinning is very much alive and well in Singapore (Suzhou shows how 'different we are' Straits Times June 20, 1999.)
Several recent statements of Singapore's leaders over the flailing experiment to clone itself in China, the Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP), strikes me as some of the most provocatively fitting fig leaves that the PAP is trying to adorn over the naked truth of a misadventure.

None other than the architect of this excellent caper, Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew, has come out of the closet before a worldwide CNN audience, brandishing the veiled warning that Singapore investors may scale down the massive industrial park SIP in view of the irascible Suzhou municipal authorities rival project.

Lee railed that what the Singapore government "will do is complete one sector in the way we promised to do," and this sector would serve as an example of what the whole park could have been "if we had completed it."

Lee's thundering against local Suzhou "municipal shenanigans" may ring hollow because it exposes the Singapore government's tendency to be blindsided in it's overseas investment escapades. The PAP's pitiful and untrammeled destruction of its perceived enemies in Singapore and clamping on transparency of decision-making within our small island had given it a false sense of security, an inflated and self-illusory invincibility in itself that it can do anything, anytime, anyplace and to anyone that it wants. Which it can, but only in Singapore.

As noble the experiment was in attempting to clone itself (neo-authoritarian Singapore) in an alien environment (good old fashioned authoritarian PRC), the missing variable from the protocol from this groundbreaking experiment was that there was competition within that environment to the PAP which the PAP cannot crush or demolish.

The local Suzhou authorities were the perpetrators of those "municipal shenanigans" and they provided this competition. Perhaps SIP teaches the PAP a good lesson that when there's competition, you dance a different tune.

Maybe the PAP has become is much too pudgy and not too nimble in the face of real world competition - makes you wonder where is good old anti-government conspiracy to overthrown the Singapore state when you need one. This lack of being nimble and quick doesn't augur well with the PAP's current mantra to take on the world in the new global knowledge economy with IT and the Internet.

A better way of ensuring that white elephants like SIP do not occur in the future is perhaps to remedy the lack of credible parliamentary accountability and independent critical analysis over the executive branch's decision-making into such frolics of spending. Perhaps, no one really bothered or had the courage to ask why are we in SIP in the first place.

Flash back to those heady daze of the early 1990s with the PRC was white-hot magnet for investment. Just because everyone else is in PRC at that time, people chose to overlook the failures and lessons of other US and European projects who have invested far more and away than Singapore.

Actually, the Economist in a February 1998 article had unearthed some interesting information confirming the hubris of the PAP's SIP folly as the municipal sponsored Suzhou New District began fully three years before the SIP, as a way to move 130 or so industries out of Suzhou's city center. Therefore, Lee's cries of foul play of the local Suzhou New District was after the fact are questionable.

Perhaps a lot of the public hand-wringing and flagellation was for domestic consumption in spinning a tragic tale of the erstwhile good-intentioned scion of the Chinese diaspora returning to help an undeveloped Chinese city learn from Singapore about what works and works very well. But alas Singapore still got rather shabby treatment and ignored.

To complicate matters further, the same Economist article reported that Singapore chose not to join forces with the local Suzhou New District, deigning it to be too small for Singapore's plans. A couple of million dollars later, the ignominy of having been checkmated by a lowly local municipal authority, far and away from the epicenter of China's power - Beijing, really does show the depth of Singapore's competitive abilities in the marketplace.

At least, no one tried to steal Singapore's business secrets or made hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign election contributions, no Singapore just spends lots of our money in the country that wants it, build up some infrastructure and Singapore threatens to walk away.

Fortunately, for us, Singapore will never accidentally launch a cruise missile at a PRC embassy. Apparently the PAP leadership was so assured in its belief, and is still so, that SIP will succeed notwithstanding Lee's final face-saving gambit of threatening to pack up and leave behind a tantalizing symbol of Pax Singaporeana (sic) in the PRC, a promise of what SIP woul-d have been.

Will the epitaph on SIP's gravestone be "Singapore tried its best but for these inscrutable municipal Suzhou types. So Singapore wins by showing you what you will be missing"

Is it only me but do others think that if Singapore and Singaporeans wanted to have a high-tech industrial theme park, there was no need to spend hundreds of millions for it or for the sake of that matter, building it in the PRC?

Surely, some more land could have been reclaimed from Sentosa and it could have even boosted our local tourism industry? Even so, if Singapore Inc., was to pack and leave behind what should have been in scenic Suzhou, I really hope that they charge pretty hefty admission fees for rides and amusements.

There could be like the Tower of Terror where thrill seekers can free fall from a CEO's office into several million one dollar bills (they have to be US dollar bills) to break their fall?

BG Yeo's latest spin on SIP is even more slick in "Suzhou shows how 'different we are'" in Straits Times (June 20, 1999) as he rationalizes that SIP is actually a blessing in disguise as it shows that what has been achieved in Singapore cannot be easily replicated elsewhere. Perhaps, BG Yeo must surely have overlooked Lee's public complaint that the Suzhou municipal authorities had learnt how Singapore did it and "they can always duplicate it and offer it at a lower rate of land."

The PAP should have known better than to want to teach the Chinese how to be rent-seeking in their backyard but then again mighty Singapore was only dealing with some lowly municipal underling.

The ultimate irony, of course, is BG Yeo's solemn observation that Singaporeans should draw some comfort from SIP "since it eases the competitive pressure Singapore would face otherwise."

As far as I recall, the perennial favorite ways out of a recession whenever we do get into one is to blame our competitors for being too cheap, land and wages being the two fixed mortal enemies to Singapore's competitiveness.

These factors will always be there and as I recall regionalization of the economy into South East Asia, India and even the PRC was supposed to develop our competitive abilities. The results have been abominably pathetic.

That being said, I wonder what do Singapore's woes with the SIP show about Lee's sought-after PRC expertise and insight in the West.

One would think that Lee's ability to assay and divine the innards of the PRC, Taiwan and the rest of Asia should come into question when all of the might of the Singapore government under his aegis cannot even effectively deal with some inconsequential municipal authority who is allegedly free-riding and ripping off a prestige showcase of bilateral national ties, the SIP.

Or perhaps, I would have spoken too soon and history will correct me. I certainly hope so.

Could SIP have been avoided with a more transparent and accountable executive cabinet or those indispensable well-compensated superscale civil service?

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

But there is definite culpability in the PAP's failure in provision of a more rigorous and transparent supervision of Singapore's investment into SIP.

The Singapore press regaled us for years that things were moving on track and that SIP was not a rathole of money and other rosy pictures of a thousand flowers blooming creating in more feeble investors' minds in snapping up residential investment property vehicles in PRC and we all know what became of that.

What is frightening is that the apparent collective amnesia of these civil servants, media and the cabinet are the very same protagonists who trumped that the PRC would be Singapore's next new frontier for Singapore's growth are now carpet-bombing Singaporeans about stories and exotic tales of the promise of the Internet, e-commerce and IT and how it would lead us to another promised land.

I really hope that for our sake, the promised land will not land on us. Now the latest sexy thing is Singapore becoming the IT center of the Asian universe notwithstanding the losing luster of dot com stocks on Wall Street. Are we too late to get on that fast boat to success?

 

[scroobal]

The PAP and the Old Man were taken for a ride by a bully that expected us to kow tow and John Tessonsohn's articles says the same thing. Not sure if you read it. He is not praising China. John is in Japan and not in China and do you know why?

This is politics ok? Realpolitiks for you. Not masak masak. Look at how LKY garner support in his path to power. And how he dealt with his rivals and later opponents.

There is no free lunch in this world.

USA despite protraying itself as beacon of freedom and democracy, goes around the world, conquered countries like The Philippines, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, kill off their local activists, enslave the local economies with its multinational firms, turn them all into banana republics. In the end those like Puerto Rico and Hawaii are so dependent economically that they have no choice but join US as a full fledged state.

And the British Empire? Their double dealings in the modern world is endless, creating the mess today in Middle East, the mess in Malaysia, the mess now in Burma (Rohingya), the mess of Pakistan-India, on and on. And while they sell drugs to dumb down Chinese, they deal in arms with Chinese Qing government, then turn over to Japan, arm them, support them to invade China. All in the name of PROFITS.

WAKE UP PLEASE! LEE KUAN YEW IS DEAD, CREMATED INTO DUSTS! STOP DREAMING ABOUT YOUR SG50 OR WHATEVER PUNCH OVER YOUR WEIGHT ACCOMPLISHMENTS. THE WORLD DOES NOT WAIT FOR YOU!

For the Suchow debacle, go read this 2000 writeup by a successful Singaporean lawyer (now residing in Japan):
2

 

[virus]

the japs have better table manners and certainly the sashimi (raw) impressed him

 

[frenchbriefs]

Most importantly this country has been turned into a land of shots,locusts and cockroaches,it disgusts me to even live here anymore.

 

[Pinkieslut]

The PAP and the Old Man were taken for a ride by a bully that expected us to kow tow and John Tessonsohn's articles says the same thing. Not sure if you read it. He is not praising China. John is in Japan and not in China and do you know why?

I am not praising China. I telling you the way the world is. Unless you are living as a hermit in some mountain, you know there is no 100% genunine partnership when it comes to power and money.

Not in the interstate relations, not in politics, not in corporate world, not in casual friendship, and even within blood family!

John was right in his appraisal. That our government thinks that these appointed scholars (loyal to the regime) can be successful in the business world.

And instead of truly investing and taking care of our own people, treat us as dispensable GDP producing digits. Can be replaced easily by imports.

And after all this Suchow mess, went on a mad spree importing people all over (not the best quality type), mad spree handling out scholarships and grants (to people with dubious qualifications).

The conmen are not only Ah Tiongs. Angmos, Ah Nehs, Pinoys, Malaysian Chinese, the list goes on and on.

Someone has mentioned before in this forum. The Taiwanese, HKies, Koreans never go into Ah Tiong's country to "teach them", to be "admired". They go there to "make money". Just like you go to KTV or Geylang. Pay money fuck the chio ATB, let her moan "lao gong lao gong" then move on.

Read these extracts taken out from John's article:

Lee's thundering against local Suzhou "municipal shenanigans" may ring hollow because it exposes the Singapore government's tendency to be blindsided in it's overseas investment escapades. The PAP's pitiful and untrammeled destruction of its perceived enemies in Singapore and clamping on transparency of decision-making within our small island had given it a false sense of security, an inflated and self-illusory invincibility in itself that it can do anything, anytime, anyplace and to anyone that it wants. Which it can, but only in Singapore.

As noble the experiment was in attempting to clone itself (neo-authoritarian Singapore) in an alien environment (good old fashioned authoritarian PRC), the missing variable from the protocol from this groundbreaking experiment was that there was competition within that environment to the PAP which the PAP cannot crush or demolish.

Is it only me but do others think that if Singapore and Singaporeans wanted to have a high-tech industrial theme park, there was no need to spend hundreds of millions for it or for the sake of that matter, building it in the PRC?

Surely, some more land could have been reclaimed from Sentosa and it could have even boosted our local tourism industry? Even so, if Singapore Inc., was to pack and leave behind what should have been in scenic Suzhou, I really hope that they charge pretty hefty admission fees for rides and amusements.

 

[Pinkieslut]

the japs have better table manners and certainly the sashimi (raw) impressed him

John is probably a smart guy. Knows this place is a fucktard sinking ship. He is probably much more appreciated as a FT lawyer in the very racist Japan than his own cuntry (over-run by angmo and indian foreign lawyers to the point locals including LSY's wife also cannot compete).

 

[yangtzejiang]

We should strongly back Indonesia as the leader of ASEAN. With Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam's support, it could happen.

Support the rise of the majapahit empire!

 

[JHolmesJr]

"…an inequitable and predatory society….."

Ouch…LOL.

Spot on, on both counts.

 

[virus]

We should strongly back Indonesia as the leader of ASEAN. With Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam's support, it could happen.

Support the rise of the majapahit empire!

can suppork PNG or laos arnot?

 

[winnipegjets]

We should strongly back Indonesia as the leader of ASEAN. With Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam's support, it could happen.

Support the rise of the majapahit empire!

If sinkapore will just submit itself to be a protectorate of Trump's USA ...all will be fine.

 

[winnipegjets]

I am not praising China. I telling you the way the world is. Unless you are living as a hermit in some mountain, you know there is no 100% genunine partnership when it comes to power and money.

Not in the interstate relations, not in politics, not in corporate world, not in casual friendship, and even within blood family!

John was right in his appraisal. That our government thinks that these appointed scholars (loyal to the regime) can be successful in the business world.

And instead of truly investing and taking care of our own people, treat us as dispensable GDP producing digits. Can be replaced easily by imports.

And after all this Suchow mess, went on a mad spree importing people all over (not the best quality type), mad spree handling out scholarships and grants (to people with dubious qualifications).

The conmen are not only Ah Tiongs. Angmos, Ah Nehs, Pinoys, Malaysian Chinese, the list goes on and on.

Someone has mentioned before in this forum. The Taiwanese, HKies, Koreans never go into Ah Tiong's country to "teach them", to be "admired". They go there to "make money". Just like you go to KTV or Geylang. Pay money fuck the chio ATB, let her moan "lao gong lao gong" then move on.

Read these extracts taken out from John's article:

Lee's thundering against local Suzhou "municipal shenanigans" may ring hollow because it exposes the Singapore government's tendency to be blindsided in it's overseas investment escapades. The PAP's pitiful and untrammeled destruction of its perceived enemies in Singapore and clamping on transparency of decision-making within our small island had given it a false sense of security, an inflated and self-illusory invincibility in itself that it can do anything, anytime, anyplace and to anyone that it wants. Which it can, but only in Singapore.

As noble the experiment was in attempting to clone itself (neo-authoritarian Singapore) in an alien environment (good old fashioned authoritarian PRC), the missing variable from the protocol from this groundbreaking experiment was that there was competition within that environment to the PAP which the PAP cannot crush or demolish.

Is it only me but do others think that if Singapore and Singaporeans wanted to have a high-tech industrial theme park, there was no need to spend hundreds of millions for it or for the sake of that matter, building it in the PRC?

Surely, some more land could have been reclaimed from Sentosa and it could have even boosted our local tourism industry? Even so, if Singapore Inc., was to pack and leave behind what should have been in scenic Suzhou, I really hope that they charge pretty hefty admission fees for rides and amusements.

Lots of PAP cronies made big money in those Chinese investments ...those were losing proposition, yet the PAP went all in.