Be Grateful You Are Mortal

 It’s generally not advised to talk about death when you’re talking about your birthday but since I spent my 46^th birthday lying in a hospital bed (I had a nasty pain in my knee and thought it was gout and a mater of just taking pain killers and gout medication, but then the polyclinic doctor noticed that I had a fever and decided that I needed to be sent to hospital), I thought  the topic of mortality was worth visiting.

It was probably not a coincidence but on 25 November 2020, one of soccer’s greatest players, Diego Maradona died of heart failure. The following day, when I switched onto my social media, I discovered that Mr. Ameerali Jumhaboy, former Chairman of Scotts Holding had passed away. While I was by no means close to the late Mr. Jumhaboy, we knew each other, attended the same talks at Institute of South Asian Studies (ISEAS – where we both gave a French Ambassador a hard time to making a big deal of Iranian nuclear proliferation but turned a blind eye to Israel’s obvious disregard for nuclear treaties). Then on the day that I got discharged from hospital, I got the news that my Dad had to be admitted into hospital for an operation. Social media feeds on Saturday also announced that FC Kholi, the first CEO of Tata Consultancy had died. Then, at the time of writing, I’ve just seen the news that Mr. Terry Hsieh, CEO of Zappos Group passed away on my birthday. He was 46.

So, with the death and illness of people who had somehow touched my life, either from personal contact or from their very reputations, while lying on my hospital bed, was a timely reminder of the fact that life is fragile. Sure, FC Kholi and Ameer Jumhaboy were old men and at the age where dying is an expectation. Sure, Diego Maradona didn’t exactly live a healthy lifestyle after his playing days. However, the point remains that men who were giants in their respective fields died and when you’re someone lying in a hospital bed, in the middle of a pandemic, reading about all these guys dying, you’re bound to start thinking a little.

For me, my delight was the fact that my daughter, who had turned 21 two weeks before seemed psychologically prepared for my incapacitation. She called her mum in Vietnam and kept in touch by text to get updates on how I was progressing. She wanted to know if I had eaten and how much phone battery I had and whether she needed to fetch me at discharge.

Quite often, we forget that we’re frail beings. We are also egotistical beings, who tend to create a personal narrative around ourselves. Somehow, our role in the success of this and that gets bigger while we down play the failures. If one has achieved a modicum of success, this process of developing a self-centred narrative gets worse. I have an acquaintance who is the habit of telling his staff that “If all of you collapse, I’ll still thrive but if I collapse all of you better worry.”

While I can appreciate the machismo of the sentiment, my acquaintance doesn’t quite realize that he’s underlying a personal failure. He’s forgotten about his own mortality and failed to prepare his people for the possibility of his demise. If he collapses, so does everything else around him.

Let’s take the example of the late FC Kholi, who was by all accounts very successful. However, he was aware of his mortality and built a business that could outlast him. Tata Consultancy Services was in the position to pay him tribute on his death because in life, he had seen to it that Tata Consultancy Services would thrive without him.

As I’ve said in an earlier posting, running an organization is like being a parent. You have to prepare people for the eventuality of living without you. I’m glad my kid showed that she was more than ready to manage without me. If I have become “useless” to her very survival, it’s a good thing because she’s ready to face the world without me.

The second point that lying in your hospital bed does is to make you appreciate the important things in life. Yes, your work is important because you need to earn a living and because, well hopefully it gives you some meaning in life. However, is any job worth killing yourself over?

Simply put, businesses can always replace you. First it was the reality of cheaper labour from China and India. Now, it’s artificial intelligence. Why, for example do you need five certified professional accountants looking through a set of bank statements over several months when a machine can do the job in a few minutes?

I still hear of too many people who think being overworked is a badge of pride. Sure, if you’re in your 20s and you can pull all night assignments 24-7, it’s a sign that you’re paying your dues and willing to work hard (one of the points that broke my first marriage). However, if you’re still doing that in your forties, it’s probably a sign of great inefficiency at the expense of your personal health.

Sure, its important to earn a living and to be able to provide for the family. However, that should not mean that one should still work without sleep in order to maintain one’s salary as a regular thing, you have to question the value of the job. For example, if you inform an employer that you’ve just been hospitalized and show him the medical leave certificate and you get greeted with all sorts of comments at 1045 at night about how you’re causing problems, then surely it’s a sign that you are better off working as a ditch cleaner rather than dealing with a businessman who celebrates personal incompetence.

We are human and we need to accept and prepare for our fragility as much as we enjoy celebrating our victories. Failing to acknowledge this will only cement our personal failures.  

You Are Who You Are

 

One of the stories that was going around the internet is a story of how our President Madam Halimah Yacob became the first person to make a donation to the Boy’s Brigade’s “Share-a-Gift” charity drive by scanning a QR code from a banking app. This would under normal circumstances be a run of the mill story. The President, in the Singapore context is a ceremonial figure, pretty much like the Queen in the UK. Like the Queen, she makes the news for simply being who she is and her role is pretty much, well limited to making public donations, waving to the public on special occasions and sitting there and looking pretty.

However, in this case someone decided to let the world know how much the President was donating. It turns out that this was a donation of $40 and it goes without saying that the Online media had a field day with it, pointing out that our president, who receives around $1,589,900 a year from the civil list (note that this is the President’s personal pay and not the other costs like staff and so on) was donating a mere $40. The story can be found at:

https://www.onlinecitizenasia.com/2020/11/19/halimah-who-earns-at-least-1-6m-donates-only-40-to-boys-brigade-charity-programme/

 

When the internet was set ablaze with the news of the President’s donation, there was a “clarification” the next day and it was reported that the president’s donation was “symbolic.”

https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/s40-donation-president-halimah-event-symbolic-not-actual-contribution-boys-brigade

OK, I’m going to avoid talking about the merits of her donation and focus on the inept handling of the media messaging. Simply put – the people handling media relations for this president should be crucified for allowing the President to be placed in a situation where the amount of her donation was disclosed.

While one might argue that what she donates is her personal choice, the fact of the matter is, the woman is the President and as they say, when you become a public figure, particularly a well-financed one, you effectively become public property. Everything you do is newsworthy and if you choose to get involved with “charity” you need to be seen to be genuinely interested in that said charity. The late Princess Diana was a master of this. She always looked good for the media – if anything she looked a bit too good for anyone who had has been working on the ground. However, she always appeared to care, doing things like shaking hands of AIDS patients that elected politicians wouldn’t touch. She spoke up about things like landmines. Once again, nobody seriously thought Diana was going to clear landmines but the fact that she “championed” the cause made her, appear genuine. Our President’s PR people by contrast, were, well to put it charitably – lazy. Look, it’s no big deal if the President makes a financial donation other than the fact that it’s the president doing it. However, the inevitable reaction after that is to check if the amount because, well that says a lot about how genuine the president is about promoting that particular charity. I will also stress the point that while it was the President’s personal money to give, the fact remains, the president is paid by the public, which in turn means that the public has expectations of how the president will spend that money.

Secondly, it looks like the president’s PR people are still living in a world of one-way communications. They send a press release and a few snaps and the mainstream media dutifully publishes whatever they’re told to publish.

Well, it might have worked in the old days but these days, there is competition from online media. If the mainstream doesn’t do something interesting with a story, the online media will. The media landscape is no longer about one-way communication. Online communication is a dialogue. I, for example, do read the comments whenever a piece gets picked up by TRemeritus. Sure, not all the comments are agreeable but I still read and engage because, this is the nature of the world we live in. Comments will be made instantly, unlike the mainstream, where readers will have to write letters, which go through editors and so on and so on.

It looks like the President’s PR people didn’t take the fact that online media exists. Surely, they would have been aware that the guys from the online media would be willing to pounce on things.

I remember telling General Electric Commercial Finance that it was better for them to spend $10,000 organising a charity event like a day out for kids with ailments rather than giving the cash away. The client made the point that this was still cash. My counter was the fact that they had to remember they were part of GE, one of the world’s super large and wealthy corporations, where a cash donation of $10,000 make them look cheap. My advice to GE would apply to the President.

Then there was the clarification of this being “symbolic.” Perhaps it was but it made the president look defensive.

Then there’s the fact that there are other ways to make a difference. While the President has very little actual power, she does have authority as a head of state. What’s stopping her from becoming a champion of a good cause? She has the opportunity to do good for society in a non-partisan and non-political fashion. Donating a few bucks and saying it’s just symbolic is, well, if I’m being kind – pedestrian. Not enough for a head of state. Nobody expects her to donate her salary but at least look like you’re trying.

Too many of the people controlling the image of our powerful people appear stuck in the 1960s. Its time they realized that things have changed and if they were really doing their jobs, they’d adapt and live in the present to build the future instead of harking back to an old rule book, which may no longer be relevant.

 

Bottom Up Works Best but the Top Needs to Show Who is Boss

 

As mentioned in an earlier post, “The Real Damage to China,” one of the biggest stories to go relatively uncovered, was the cancellation of the Initial Public Offering (IPO) of Ant Financial Group (“Ant”). The story was overshadowed by the results of the US election, and while the identity of the US President and his (they’ve always been men) policies are significant to the Asia-Pacific region, the story of the cancellation of Ant’s IPO was perhaps more so for the region’s wellbeing.  Not only does the Ant IPO involve the world’s second (and according to Purchasing Parity, the largest) economy in the world, the story also underlines the type of economic models for countries in Asia-Pacific should pursue.

How does Singapore fit into this debate? Well, while Singapore has been held up in the Western world as the great beacon of stability and safety for Western free market capitalism, Singapore has also been a role model for countries in the Asia-Pacific region that looked forward to getting rich quickly without giving up political control. The biggest fans of the Singapore model were non other than China’s Communist Party (CCP). Singapore’s founding Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew fondly recalls how Deng Xiaoping, who was then China’s Paramount Leader, visited Singapore and reportedly told him “If only all I had was Shanghai.” Lee Kuan Yew returned the favor and became a groupie of all things China, so much so that he was openly disdainful of the other Asian Giant (in part because he got snubbed by Indira Gandhi, who allegedly asked him “Where is Singapore on the map”)

While the Singapore-China relationship hasn’t worked out as Mr. Lee had hopped for (who can forget the royal screwing Singapore received over the China-Shuzhou Industrial Park Co, Ltd – which only turned a profit when the chaps in Shuzhou became majority shareholders), the CCP has been a keen understudy of Mr. Lee’s PAP and rightly or wrongly, China’ incredible success from changing from an economic minor contributing barely two percent of the world’s economy in 1979 to nine point three in 2010 ( https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/Lin.pdf). To his credit, Deng Xiaoping had perhaps raised more people outside of absolute poverty than anyone else in history.

It goes without saying that the CCP has grabbed the headlines for this transformation, pretty much in the same way that the PAP has done in Singapore. While Deng Xiaoping’s opening has undoubtedly raised millions out of poverty, it has created a slight problem – namely it made the case for strong authoritarian rule. The many Indian business people I’ve dealt with constantly point out that China succeeds because of its’ government, while the bits of India that function, do so despite the government. One of my favourite Indian executives said it best – “When you tell Indian authorities that you have $10,000,000 to invest and will create jobs, they’ll say “why,” but when you go to China, they will say “When”

One only has to compare the 2008 Beijing Olympics to the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games. Beijing put up an incredible show, Delhi couldn’t get toilet paper into the Games Village. Communist China gets things done while democratic India does not. The comparison is not lost in this part of the world. It also doesn’t help that the only other big democracy, namely the USA has been, for the last four years, a mess.

I don’t deny that a competent autocrat can do good. I live in Singapore, which, despite being increasingly expensive, remains relatively safe and clean and our currency remains respectable. While we may have a veneer of a democracy (there really is an election every five years), it’s sort of a “guided” one, where things are generally dictated by our founding father from his grave.

However, the problem with autocratic systems is that you have a situation where there’s no guarantee that that the proverbial top dog will remain benevolent forever or that the successors will remain so in perpetuity. In Singapore Lee Kuan Yew argued that he needed to step down because he wanted to prepare the nation for life without him, a matter in which he is correct. However, he didn’t quite let go and fade away and today, Singapore, while functioning well in so many ways, seems to have become a prisoner in its old business model.

Now, take that model and multiply it by many times when it comes to China. Deng Xiaoping had the decency to relinquish his titles and two of his successors (Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao) did what they needed to do and then gave up the top job after a decade. Sure, they have played politics but they’ve done so from behind the scenes. Now, you have Xi Jinping, who decided that he’s never going to stepdown. While Mr. Xi, has done some reasonable things like reign in corruption (I only describe it as reasonable in as much as it was probably necessary to reign in corruption, but it was probably also an excuse to purge the system of his rivals), Mr. Xi is the one Chinese leader, who bans Winnie the Pooh in China because someone on the internet compared him to Winnie the Pooh. This being the leader of a China that is supposed to be far removed from the dark days of Mao (who, for the record killed more people than the entire Second World War, due to his managerial incompetence).

The other area where the Chinese model appears to be the magnified version of the Singapore one, is in where the heroes are. Here in Singapore, the economic story is either about a multinational pumping lots of money into the country or a government controlled one doing all sorts of things to make Singapore Inc shine. In China the story of great economic success is inevitably about the State-Owned Giants that are competing with their American counterparts to climb up the Fortune 500 rankings.

While the giants have great turnover, the real success of China comes from small private enterprises in places like the Pearl River Delta that don’t have state resources and are starved of capital. As such, they have had to become innovative and creative in order to survive.

Mr. Ma’s Alibaba is what you’d call one of these small enterprises made good and “Ant” is what you’d call the very type of enterprise that China needs. Mr. Ma understood that Chinese banks, despite their size, don’t serve customers well and so he used technology to make life easier. While the State-Owned version of the financial system is generally speaking, awful, the private fintech version of the system founded by the two Mr. Ma’s (Jack Ma of Alibaba and Ma Huateng of Tencent Holdings Limited) works. Not only have China’s natives taken to using QR codes to skip the local financial system (so much so that the beggars in China prefer QR codes to cash), the system pioneered by the two Mr. Ma’s scares the American banking system.

Mr. Ma of Alibaba is the type of ant that China needs. Small and diligent enough to find creative ways to do things. It was of course all very well, when he stuck to building his business and giving folksy talks to the Western world.

However, things got a little different when he accused China’s regulators of running the banking system like a “pawnshop” and stated that “The game in the future is about innovation, not just regulatory skills."

https://fortune.com/2020/11/07/jack-ma-ant-ipo-suspended-china/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGzgpArH5AI

Let’s put it this way, good governance is an important element to creating prosperity. China is the prime example. It floundered under Mao but prospered under Deng. However, Mr. Ma has a point when he states that it is not the only element in creating sustainable prosperity and that good governance or good regulators are not much unless you have a culture of innovation and creativity. Entrepreneurs can emerge without good regulators (entrepreneurs for example pop up and get things done in the crappiest of places), while good regulators are pointless if you don’t have the people get things done. To most people, it would be an obvious point. To the CCP it was a point that said that Mr. Ma needed to be taken down a peg and Mr. Xi himself got involved.

The message should be clear to China’s entrepreneurs. No matter how clever you are or how much you create for the nation, you are ultimately subordinate the head of the CCP and this shouldn’t be limited to the CCP but to all authoritarian states who believe that authoritarianism is good for business.

Mr. Ma has made billions in China and let’s remember that his first IPO in 2014 was on the New York Stock Exchange. Did he, a member of the Communist Party, actually trust the Communist Party to protect prosperity?

The third world has plenty of small “Ants” who are hard working and creative. Increasing education means they have the ability to understand new technologies and to be innovative. This means that they have the ability to cut through the power of established enterprises that have a cozy relationship with the government. Is it something that authoritarian states can tolerate in the long run? This an essential part of creating prosperity.

Copyright Phnom Penh Post

Third World is filled with Ants are an essential part of raising prosperity

My job is to cover you – not fawn over you – Neil Cavuto – Fox News

 

It could be a coincidence but Armistice Day or Poppy Day as it’s often called in the UK came one day after the 20^th Anniversary of the Today Newspaper, which was the paper which I started writing commentary for. The significance of the anniversary of the Today Newspaper comes from the fact that it is the only newspaper that is not owned by Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), Singapore’s version of the most concentrated form on the Murdoch Empire. The history of papers not owned by SPH is rather grim. SPH regards its stranglehold on the market as a right and has been known to practice …..well, interesting tactics when it comes to maintaining its hold on the market. As a rule of thumb, non-SPH newspapers died in less than half a decade and so, Today stands out in as much as it is a NON-SPH publication that didn’t get crushed (Having said that, SPH did own a 40 percent stake in the Today Paper at one stage).

The significance of Poppy Day and the 20^th Anniversary of Today, is tied into one of the basic tenants of what Poppy day is about – which is the fact that the basic civil liberties that are enjoyed by people living in democratic societies was paid for in blood by a generation. It is a duty of citizens in such societies to have an interest in civic life in order to ensure that those liberties are preserved and one of the key fundamentals of preserving such liberties is from a strong and vibrant media scene, which provides citizens with a variety of views.

Today, was what you’d call the first form of “Alternative” media in Singapore. While Today was still held to the same “Responsible” (a phrase often used by government officials when reminding journalist of their role – though admittedly it’s not exactly spelt out who the journalists are responsible to) journalism that is prevalent in Singapore, there was an attempt to reach out to people beyond the usual stable of established writers. When I interviewed with PN Balji, the founding editor, he told me to start out by writing him a commentary piece. I wrote, I was published and I was paid. While he didn’t have the budget to hire me full time, an unemployed nobody was given a platform and dare I say, a chance to make a few pennies on the side.

This move to give the insignificant a voice, gave Today something different and suddenly, there was a semblance of competition. SPH management didn’t approve. As far as they were concerned, it was a sin to even look at a Today distributor in the MRT. However, we, the reading public liked having something else to look at and for those of us trying to pitch stories to the media, it was always good to have someone else to pitch to.

Singapore’s media scene has evolved even further. The heads of the media houses tried to convince he world that competition in the media business was not suitable for Singapore. So, while they did try to restore the duopoly which existed prior to 2000, competition arrived in the media scene anyway. Today, print media which was once regarded as a license to print money, now faces competition from the online media. Big media, which needs lots of advertising dollars to sustain itself is struggling to face competition from blogs and news sites, which are as a rule of thumb are running on nothing more but the owner’s passion.  Unfortunately, people are turning to the alternative for their sources of information. To make matters worse, the advertisers have noticed and the results are reflected very clearly in SPH’s balance sheet.

https://investor.sph.com.sg/company_announcement.html/cat/4919

In a way, this was a long time coming. The media, like many of the big local, government-controlled businesses ran as part of the government. In his book, “From Third World to First World,” Lee Kuan Yew, made it clear that he would never allow the media to “set the agenda.” Whenever the topic of control of the media came up, Mr. Lee had one standard reply “NOBODY ELECTED YOU.” This line continued under his successors. I remember attending the fifth anniversary of the Today Newspaper and got treated to a speech by then Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong. The speech was a dressing down for “alternative media.” I remember that Mr. Goh’s speech was very proud of the fact that Singapore, which ranks alongside the Nordics on most surveys of wellbeing,somehow ranked alongside places like Sudan. Mr. Goh also made the idea of the media being the fourth estate did NOT APPLY TO SINGAPORE.

Today was by no means a radical “everything government does is wrong” medium. Yet, its existence irritated the others. Government did make sure that editors knew who was boss and instead of allowing the media to evolve, stifled it. I think of Clement Mesenas, a veteran journalist (over 40-years) who led the last strike of journalist, who once opined at an event that the government solved the strike in such a way that the journalist would never upset the status quo.

I’ve often said that the status quo in Singapore is not bad. Unlike say, the USA, we don’t have major riots because the cops have shot someone. However, in order for the status quo to stay somewhat decent, it needs citizens willing to hold the powerful to account and the only way they can do that is if they are getting the facts from a source they trust.

Sure, Singapore’s editors are “responsible” in that they’re not known for sensationalizing things in ways which say, The Sun in the UK does. However, can it be taken an extreme where editors are so responsible that they are perceived as taking dictation from officialdom rather than reporting facts? The surge in online media as a news source might provide the answer that the powers that be would rather not see.

Sure, there is a reason why libel laws exist and nobody is against combating “fake news.” However, it cannot be at the expense of “covering” the facts. I think of Neil Cavuto of Fox News (a network infamously partisan in favour of the American right wing) who told Donald Trump (who used to be a big fan) that his job was to “cover you – not fawn over you or rip you.” Editors need to be allowed to do this freely without interference from anyone and if all parties were to understand that this is the role of the news media, Singapore would have a far more lively media scene, which in turn a better informed society and in turn a more secure economy that would be based on something other than government planning.     

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TKowTztB28

Being a Loser in the Free Market Open Door System Made Me Detest Anti-Immigrant Populism

 I make no secret that I detest Donald Trump. I was instantly turned off when he started going on about Mexicans coming across the border being “rapist” and how there was a need to build a wall to prevent horrible people from Mexico coming across to steal jobs from innocent Americans (read – the White variety), I wanted to vomit because, well that’s not true. I hated it when I saw people lap it up and what was particularly distressing was when you had people of colour in Singapore think of this as “speaking the truth,” (read if only we Singapore Chinese had a champion like Trump). 

I’m a “loser” of the open market system in as much as I had to take a blue-collar job in my late thirties so that I could pay my bill. My colleagues were predominantly Indian and Pilipino and I developed a good deal of affection for them. 

Maybe it’s just me but I can’t understand this belief that your job is being stolen. Whenever I’d hear “my people” complain about dark skinned Asians stealing our jobs and how Trump was really a great guy for proposing what he did with regards to the Mexicans, I’d look at the Kitchen Thambis and Pinoy waiters and ask myself planet these people were living in. The Kitchen Thambis and Pinoy waiters were the guys who had my back and yet the so called “concerned citizens” were supporting the idea that these guys were somehow my enemy.” 

Birthday with the Kitchen Thambis and Bruno’s Bistrot on Telok Kurau Road.

The same transpired when in my insolvency work. I was involved in a liquidation of a construction company. We had to sack or transfer over 30 workers who had not been paid. The receivables came in but somehow the bureaucracy was all about being fair to all creditors including financial institutions and so on (and to be fair to “my people,” the contact point in the financial institution we were dealing with told me privately that whenever a company went into liquidation, he’d always advise his side to write it off – his word were “You’ll pay me 10 cents on the dollar at most. It’s money that can’t interest me – get it to the people who need it the most). Somehow, paying the workers become less and less of a priority.

In that time, I broke the “rules” of working for an insolvency practitioner and extended money I didn’t exactly have to some of the workers. I remember a colleague telling me that I was breaking the “rules” as if this was the worst thing I could do. I was, as they say, “unprofessional.” It was even explained to me that “Indian and Bangladeshi” workers cannot be trusted.

I didn’t know how to explain to people who knew what I was doing that this was the right thing to do. Firstly, I wasn’t giving a handout but an advance on what they had claimed in their Proof of Debt form. Secondly, I also reasoned that although it was money that I couldn’t afford to toss about, it was money that I could make back by sitting in an airconditioned office for a few hours a day while these guys had to slog it out in the sun for the better part of a day so that they could provide “cheap” infrastructure to people like me and profits to slave traders like some of the creditors in this case.

Sure, I was open to accusations of being “unprofessional” and acting against the rules. How do you explain to people that if it’s a choice of being “human” or “professional,” its always better to be human?

I’m glad to say that when we did get round to distributing the dividends, I got paid most of my money and got to see the gratitude on the faces of these guys. One of them even felt that I was important enough to be the first guy outside his family to know his wife was pregnant with twins. He took me out for dinner the day he flew back to India.

Today, if you ask me about the moments, I feel most successful, I will inevitably tell you its when one of these guys remembers me. It makes my day when they send greeting cards or as one of them recently did, called me from India just to wish me well.

So, I detest anti-immigrant populist because from what I’ve experienced, they’re going after the people who I know to be for the most part, hard working and decent. Its like this, when a group of skin heads walk around town chanting “Jews will not replace us,” they make the case for why they need t be replaced. When someone like Sebastian Gorka gets on TV and talks about how the Proud Boys were started as a “Joke,” I’m tempted to think that Mr. Gorka should be placed at the wrong end of the Proud Boys activities and let’s see how funny he thinks it is.

Sure, I know these communities have their bad eggs but for the most part they are comprised of hard-working people trying to make a living. They are stealing jobs from the natives by doing the jobs that the natives won’t do.  Sure, I’m genuinely against the use of violence, however, when it comes to the nut jobs who chant “Jews (or any other ethnic group) will not replace us and think its OK to intimidate, I’m all for using whatever means necessary to eliminate the problem.

 

The Real Damage to China

 

As the world awaits the final vote count for the American election, I’ve heard a few people say that they hope that Donald Trump prevails for one very simple reason. He appears to be the only President who has stood up to China. Mr. Trump, to his credit, has openly spoken with the president of the other China (Taiwan – or the China with democracy and an open market but a lot less people) and has bolstered ties with the only other Asian nation that can match China in terms of population – India.

While the American election has caught the world headlines because it determines the holder of the most powerful office in the most powerful country, the real issue for China’s leaders is closer to home. American Presidents as is well known are limited to two four-year terms. If Mr. Trump wins, it’s a case of waiting another four years. If it’s Mr. Biden, it’s a case of working around another possible eight years.

Furthermore, while Mr. Trump has started a “trade war,” with China, he has been useful to them. His divisive rhetoric in domestic American politics, allows the communist party in Beijing to paint itself as a calmer, more stable force to China’s domestic audience.

So, while the story on the US election is grabbing the headlines, the more important story is in fact domestic. It concerns the suspension of the Initial Public Offering (IPO)of Ant Financial, which is controlled by Jack Ma, China’s most prominent tycoon out of China. The official reason for suspending what would have been the world’s largest IPO from the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchanges was because the regulators had “concerns” about the stability of the market. This sudden suspension of the US$37 billion sent Alibaba shares tumbling along with Mr. Ma’s fortune. More details can be found at:

https://www.ft.com/content/c1ee03d4-f22e-4514-af46-2f8423a6842e

The reasons for the suspension of the IPO look political. Call it a case of the Communist Party acting to remind Mr. Ma, that despite his international profile and vast wealth, who was boss. Whatever one might think of Mr. Ma, this move does not speak well of the Communist Party and China’s ambitions to replace the USA as the world power.

Mr. Ma, is in many ways, the ideal face of modern China. With a net worth of around US$53 billion, Mr. Ma is the richest person of Chinese descent, surpassing the former title holder, Hong Kong’s Li Ka Shing by some US$20 odd billion. Mr. Ma’s life story reads like a Silicon Valley entrepreneur rather than a traditional Chinese businessman, both in Mainland China and in the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia. Unlike the tycoons in capitalist Hong Kong, he’s more than a high-end property trader and unlike the tycoons in Southeast Asia, he didn’t make his fortune in commodities through an alliance with the local officials. Mr. Ma is from relatively humble beginnings, taught himself English and used new technologies to make life better for the Chinese consumer.  

More importantly, the key difference between Mr. Ma and the average Chinese tycoon (both in China and beyond) is that he’s got an international savvy. Unlike traditional Chinese tycoons who loath publicity, particularly from the Western media, Mr. Ma revels in it. He’s actually confident when communicating in English. He’s also politically savvy. When Donald Trump was elected in 2016 on platform of bashing China for not allowing American business to compete on an equal footing, Mr. Ma went all the way to Trump Towers to offer ways in which American SME’s could use Alibaba to sell to China.  

© South China Morning Post. 

Mr. Ma is the hero that China needs. Here is a home-grown entrepreneur, from relatively modest beginnings who built a great fortune by using innovation. What’s there not to like for a country that has global aspirations.

Unfortunately, the very things that make Mr. Ma so vital to a modern China and by extension a rising Asia, are the very things that piss off authoritarian leaders who depend on a population believing that they need authoritarian leadership to survive.

Mr. Ma is by no means a rebel. He joined the Communist Party and has never done anything to suggests that China should be governed by anyone other than the Communist Party. However, he’s known to be an open proponent of the free market system, something which may not always go down well in a communist society.

To be fair to China’s Communist Party, they have not done what Mohammad Bin Salman in Saudi Arabia did. Mr. Ma has not had to spend a day in any form of prison and been forced to sign over his property.

However, while this move might seem gentle and semi-legal on the scale of things, this is something that should not happen in a place that has aspirations of prosperity as it sends out a worrying message, particularly to the people like Mr. Ma who create wealth. The message is simple, no matter how much you create, you are still at the mercy of the government machinery.

China has risen by soaking up foreign investment. However, this latest move is a subtle reminder to the foreign investment community that the Chinese government can screw with them whenever it feels like it. Hence, foreign investment should be careful about investment in China and getting greedy at the prospect of the billion-person market.

More importantly, this message to aspiring entrepreneurs. That message is that no matter how much you create for the good of the nation, you will still be at the mercy of the communist party.

The story on Ant’s IPO should worry China’s business community far more than the results of the US Presidential election. China’s communist party can and may undo the years of prosperity of the last two decades if they believe that they need to increate their grip on power.   

The Problem with Genies

 One of the more interesting stories that has hit the global news pages today (2 November 2020) is the story of a doctor in India who is suing two men who fleeced him of a seven million rupees (around US93,000) for “Aladdin’s Lamp. It seems that the men promised him that they could control spirits that would make him wealthy beyond his wildest dreams and when it didn’t happen, he sued. The story has received quite a bit of traction and details can be found at:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/11/2/indian-doctor-duped-into-buying-aladdins-lamp-for-93000

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/south-asia/indian-doctor-duped-into-buying-aladdins-lamp-after-genie-show

I know it’s wrong to say this but I hope that the court acquits the scam artist because not to do so would be to empower scam artist though out the world. It would imply that people are merely dupes who are powerless in the face of a convincing story.

If you look at the basic facts of the case, you’ll see that the main fault lies with the doctor, who got carried away with his greed. How does a man, educated enough to be able to get people to trust him with their medical issues, fall for a story about how a folk tale that had become a Disney movie would be able to give him real wealth?

The Cartoon in Blue is NOT a qualified financial advisor

Copyright © Disney. Taken from momjunction.com

Having been in liquidations for half a decade, I’ve had the experience of encountering sad, scam cases. Scams are particularly sad and distressing when they involve a good number of elderly people losing their life savings.

What is even sadder is the fact that a good number of these elderly folk often “invested” in whatever scam was involved because they were persuaded to do so by a relative, or someone they wanted to help. That someone is unfortunately, a rational and educated person who lost all sense of reality when presented with some numbers exciting numbers. The old adage of “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is because it is,” should apply when presented with numbers that are exceedingly large.

I remember a potential case coming to see my liquidator, who wasn’t in. During the course of this interview, I asked the man for his profession (teacher) and whether the financial vehicle he was investing in was regulated by the authorities. He admitted that he knew that it wasn’t but the story he was being told sounded good. After getting him to repeat himself a few times, he admitted, “That sounds bad now that I’m saying it for a second time.”

Yes, scam artists are wrong to scam. However, if you’re a reasonably educated working professional and you allow your greed to get the better of you, you have nobody to blame but yourself.

It’s the same thing when it comes to medication. As awful as I think Donald Trump is for promoting bleach as a cure for Covid-19, I don’t think he can be blamed when people die from taking bleach. Surely, you’d have the ability to read the label and not take it?

Conmen don’t hold a gun to your head to get you to invest. What they do is to appeal to your sense of greed or your fear of missing out. Once you throw caution to the wind, you may even do the con job and recruit more people to the cause.

It is morally wrong to scam and it is rightfully illegal. However, there should be an onus on people, especially those who have some form of education and in many cases, years of professional experience. A person with education and professional experience should be able to apply common sense, rationality and if unsure, have the means of checking. Unfortunately, many people who fall for scams to the extent that they encourage others to join the scam are precisely the type of people who become the scams biggest supporters.

Falling for an obvious scam (things like let me have sex with you get ghost out of your vagina or banks borrow money from me at a higher interest rate than what they pay normal depositors) means that you have not applied brains. If you took away the right of people with brains to be victims of obvious scams, we’d have a lot less of them.

Let’s go back to the good doctor in question. It’s this simple, there is no scientific evidence to show that genies exist and if someone shows you a genie, don’t offer to buy it. If the guy really had a genie that could make him or her wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of avarice, why would they even contemplate selling it to you? Would you trust this man with your medical issues if he could fall for this?

“In This Country we Pledge Allegiance to the Flag, not to a Leader or to a Political Party.” – Carley Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett Packard

 

I’ve just caught a beautiful soundbite on Youtube from an interview on Fox News with Carley Fiorina, the former Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett Packard (“HP”). Since forced to resign from the top job at HP, Ms. Fiorina has taken on a variety of roles, the most noticeable of which was to be a Presidential Candidate for the Republican Party in 2016 (which she lost to Donald Trump).

Four years after her unsuccessful attempt to run for president, Ms. Fiorina has somehow gained attention in the current election by going on record to state that she is endorsing the Democratic challenger, Mr. Joe Biden as president. Fox News questioned her on why she chose to support Mr. Biden and among her reasons for supporting Mr. Biden in the current election was because it was her right as a private citizen to do so. She told the interviewer “In this Country, we Pledge Allegiance to the Flag, not to a Leader or to a Political Party.” The Fox News interview with Ms. Fiorina can be seen at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE8V39DRbzY

Leaving aside the complexities of the Presidential Election, Ms. Fiorina has made a point which often gets drowned out an increasingly partisan world – namely the fact that citizens of a country, particularly in those that claim to have a democratic system of government, are citizens of their nation first and members of political parties, ethnic and religious groups etc second and political leaders who win office are leaders of nations rather than political parties, ethnic and religious groups second.

While this should be a basic fact for nations that claim to be democratic, this has not been the case. America has been a famously divisive place in the last four years. Instead of being the “United States of America,” it has become a collection of squabbling groups that can roughly be described as “Trump-Loyalist,” and “Never-Trumpers.”

In fairness to Mr. Trump, the seeds of partisan extremism were sown into the system long before his arrival on the scene and he’s merely the most significant exploiter of divisions. Closer to home, there is Thailand, which was divided into the urbanites of Bangkok that loathed former Prime Minister, Thakshin Shinawatra (Yellow Shirts) and the rural folk who adored him (red shirts). Thailand’s only real unity that transcended Mr. Shinawatra was the reverence for King Bhumibol and a loathing for King Vajiralongkorn.

Further South, in Singapore, we have an interesting twist on things. Here’s its not a wealthy “outsider” like Trump and Shinawatra who are upsetting norms. Rather than rely on “outsiders” to disturb democratic norms, we have our own ruling party, which has quietly supported a culture of “You are either with us or against us.”

The divisions are not as obvious as in the American or Thai scenarios but extreme partisanship does exist, thanks to the ruling party’s inability to tolerate criticism of any kind, including from the people who are by no means opponents or dare I say critics of the powers that be.

Furthermore, unlike the polar opposition in Singapore is more diverse. Unlike America, Thailand or even Malaysia, there has yet to be a single charismatic force to unite and harness dissenting elements. Think of the opposition movements as a collection of tiny fragments.

In a way, the ruling party has it easy. It merely has to listen to the “opposition element” get to their source of grievances and find a way of keeping them happy. If you observe the online criticisms of the government long enough, you’ll notice that they are primarily with issues on policies that have affected lives and as Singapore’s election results have consistently shown, the electorate is pushing for the government to listen rather than to be swept away. There has yet to be a call for what Michael Moore calls “Political Molotov Cocktail.”

This hasn’t happened. We have a POFOMA bill which is officially meant to stop online falsehoods but is based on little more than what the minister considers a falsehood. Then we have the old-fashioned use of defamation suites and as various instances in Covid-19 showed – too many instances of the elite covering for the elite (think of the bailing out of dormitory owners and the rush to defend Liew Mun Leong after the verdict from the High Court exposed the extent to which he had attempted to crush his former maid).

The current political party has become synonymous with government and any challenge to it appears to be a challenge on the nation. Look at the way in which the national anthem is coopted into being a party slogan. Singaporeans sing “Majulah Singapaura” (Malay for Onwards Singapore). The ruling party is quite happy for call of “Majulah PAP.” Our Minister of Manpower, Ms. Josephine Teo used to the two in the recently concluded General Election as if PAP and Singapore the nation were one and the same:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuUfUU00Y78

The ruling party needs to stop coopting national symbols for its own and its leaders need to understand that they are national leaders first and foremost. Party affiliations should be a secondary concern.

The electorate have made it clear in the last election that it is willing to give more seats to the opposition if the ruling party does not appear to be listening. It’s best if the ruling party listened rather than engaged in acts that tie itself to the national core if it intends to stop the gradual loss of seats.

Rebellion vs Constructive Criticism

 Let’s get to the point, Donald Trump has been a disaster as president. Despite the obvious damage that the virus has done to America (world champion in number of cases and deaths), the Trump has continued to act in what can only be described as “Criminally Stupid,” Instead of differing to medical expertise, he has gone to war against medical experts, refused to wear a mask in public, encouraged large gatherings of his supporters and prescribed drugs that a non-medical professional has no business prescribing. He has admitted to knowing that the virus was highly contagious but then proceeded to make announcements that it was all a hoax.

In any normal country, this would have been grounds for a revolution. Yet, despite the obvious, his democratic challenger, Mr. Joe Bidden, the former Vice-President under Barak Obama has only held steady 10-point lead in the polls and despite the polling numbers, nobody is writing off the chances of the Donald to pull off an upset. This election will only be over until its actually over.

Part of the reason is simple. Mr. Biden has not exactly been an inspiring candidate. His speeches are at times, cringeworthy, as his “You ain’t black” remarks showed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhcgmwj3NAc

Mr. Biden has tried to take the proverbial high road and avoided talking about Mr. Trump’s obvious flaws, namely the various conflicts of interest between Mr. Trump, his children in the administration and his business interest. While admirable from a text book moral point of view, it has meant that the Biden campaign has not used its most effective tool in sealing the lips of Trump’s team when they’ve gone on the attack against Hunter Biden, the former Vice-President’s son, whom the Trump campaign has accused of corruption. While the evidence linking the former Vice-President to anything dogy is spurious at best, you actually have people thinking that its worth keeping Trump because Biden is corrupt. If only Mr. Biden had openly challenged the Trump about the role of his kids in the administration

Luckily for American voters, there is an “alternative” voice that is saying the things that Mr. Biden ought to say. This group calls themselves the “Lincoln Project,” and they have run some of the most devastating hard-hitting advertisements that one wishes Mr. Biden would run. The best part about the Lincoln Project is the fact that they’re all Republicans and you can’t accuse any of them of being part of a left-wing conspiracy. Samples of the ads run by the Lincoln Project can be seen at:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8xagIU9KfY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJTNs2dMisk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo1lDJrZKx8

In short, Mr. Trump’s worst enemy is not Mr. Biden, it’s the people in his own party that he’s pissed off. These are the guys who have only one thing in mind – getting rid of him at the ballot box.

Now, Donald Trump is in many ways an exceptional case. Like him or loath him, he has managed to stir emotions in a manner in which no other politician has been able to do. As such, one might be inclined to suggest that a Lincoln Project propping up anywhere else in the world would be unheard of.

However, while the Lincoln Project might only be an extreme example of what happens when there’s an ideological clash in a party, it does happen in places where the politics is less “interesting.” Take Singapore as an example.

Our political situation is less fragmented that the American one. We have been run by the same party ever since our independence some 55-years ago and I’ve stated that we have to be the only place where the opposition fights an election with the aim of being, the opposition. Unity in our ruling party seems pretty tight too. You will, for example, not hear of anyone from the ruling party posting anything on Facebook that remotely looks like a disagreement with the official line.

However, that might not exactly be the case as Professor’s Cherian George (who is incidentally the brother-in-law of a former minister) and Donald Low have argued in their latest book “PAP vs PAP: The Party’s struggle to adapt to a changing Singapore”

As a matter of disclosure, I have not read the book. However, based on the various articles surrounding the book, this not a Lincoln Project style rebellion against the ruling establishment. It is, instead a critique of the ruling party’s ability to adapt to the changing socio-political landscape. A report on the book can be seen at:

 https://theindependent.sg/what-is-holding-back-the-pap-is-within-its-own-mind-say-cherian-george-and-donald-low-in-a-new-book/

As the report from the Independent (a website that has picked up my postings), rather than being remotely rebellious, it serves a something as a “how to guide” for the ruling party.

It seems that writing books that suggests that the scenario on the ground isn’t the scenario that the ruling party says it is; is an act of rebellion and it bars you from participating in discussions, as both Professor’s George and Low found out when they were dropped as speakers on a webinar. Details can be seen at:

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/academics-cherian-george-donald-low-replaced-as-speakers-in-webinar-organised-by

Why is this happening? Surely, the ruling party does understand that both Professor’s George and Low are respected for their views in Singapore and might have a thing or two to add to the public discourse, particularly when they have suggested ways in which the ruling party can keep power in a changing political landscape.

The party’s ruling hacks need to sit down to watch the Lincoln Project ads to understand the difference between a rebellion by lifelong party members and constructive criticism from respected academics. This failure to recognize the difference between rebellion and constructive criticism is the best gift that the ruling party can give to aspiring opposition candidates.