Leninism, Asian Culture and Singapore (Part 8) posted on Monday, December 20, 2004
On election night of 1991, television showed a grim faced Prime
Minister of Singapore discussing the results coming in. Goh Chok Tong
had taken over from Lee a little while ago, and had been preaching a
kinder, softer style of leadership for the government to follow. After
receiving positive feedback about this new style, he called the
election two years early in the hope of benefiting from this supposed
goodwill, but instead of increasing or at least staying level, the PAP
vote went down to 61%. The PM is personally popular: the vote in his
own electorate was 80%, but the government's network of trust had
failed to do its job properly. It had, like any old bureaucracy, told
its leaders what it thought they wanted to hear. In fact, whereas in a
bureaucratic organization, formal rules and procedures could be
instituted to maximize the objectivity of information and opinion
(though making sure the rules are always followed is not so simple),
in a personal network the tendency to avoid being the bringer of bad
news is all the greater.
In the 1997 election the feedback machinery seemed to have done its
homework better, and the government was effective in identifying weak
electorates which were either incorporated into group electorates led
by senior ministers, whom opposition parties would avoid running
against, or were subjected to concentrated campaigns that, among other
things, promised heavy expenditures for local estate and transport
improvements,something rather reminiscent of western pork barrel
politics. A conscious effort was also made to recruit more candidates
showing the ordinary man touch, particularly people with trade union
background. After dropping for nearly two decades, the government vote
rose back to around 65%, following a hardhitting campaign, with just
two of the four incumbent opposition MPs (generally agreed to be the
more effective two) managing to keep their seats. The talk about a
gentler style of government has been quietly dropped and not revived.
The successful campaign was, however, quickly followed by a series of
law suits involving opposition candidates, and from there arose a
diplomatic row with Malaysia, but these need not be discussed here.
Coming back to the issue of governance, other similarities between the
informal network and an ordinary bureaucracy may be noted. Responsive
though it is to concrete initiatives directed from above, it has its
particular form of inertia in its manner of doing things. Perhaps an
informal system is even harder to change because there are no official
rules and hierarchical structures that can be redesigned by order.
Even when ost of its members might want to change, none can do so
individually without getting out of sync with the rest of the system,
resulting in confusion for himself and others. The structure also has
its particular forms of vested interests. For example, with the good
supply of educated manpower and high public sector salary, the
government could probably recruit enough officers without resort to
the cadetship schemes. Perhaps abolishing them would make everyone
feel more equal and reduce the "us"/"them" mentality. But if one
actually does this, there would be an outcry from high school students
and their parents who have spent a lifetime striving for good A Level
examination results in the hope of winning a cadetship and a headstart
in a good career. Factors like this make it difficult to envisage any
real change in the way Singapore is managed. The network of trust is
so essential a method of managing all parts of the country that no
Prime Minister can do without it, and the most he can hope for is some
small tinkering. Instead of asking for fundamental reforms, it is
preferable to seek out specific shortcomings and see how these could
be remedied.
It is sometimes said that Singaporeans are excessively materialistic
because the tightly controlled social system denies them the chance to
make spiritual self expressions, or that the system suppresses
creativity. However, such statements are virtually unverifiable, e.g.,
how does one measure "materialistic", or counter the argument that
Singaporeans simply have more materialistic opportunities? If
creativity is measured by number of scientific papers published or
visitors to be museums, then there are ways to improve these
"materially".
Instead, I prefer to make the more measurable assertion that
Singaporeans appear to be highly stressed: they grumble a lot about
small things, and are highly aggressive when there are "rights" to be
asserted, whether in drivers' road manners or bidding for condos (at
least during property booms), to the point that from time to time
official clampdowns had to be introduced to deal with road bullys,
excessive speculation, etc. All the employers complain of high staff
turnover, and normally a quitting employee would give no advance
information of job change, and would refuse to divulge his/her new
employer even after giving notice of resignation. The sullenness of
shop assistants is so commonplace that complaining about poor service
is rare - customers know that managers can do little about it. The
high suicide rate is another indicator of stress.
Contrary to the rather priggish image of the country, sexual mores are
far from conservative. Single American and European business
executives working in Singapore, while they may complain about other
things, rarely mention difficulty of meeting girls and getting sex,
and the preference of some girls for such boyfriends has produced the
term "Sarong Party Girl" to denote the type. Divorce rates, as high as
those in Taiwan, Hongkong and Japan, are rising. Abortion is available
on demand, with the number at nearly 15,000, in a country where live
births are under 40,000 per year. The number of abortions indicates
widespread pre-marital sex: since contraceptives are freely available
(in fact, packets of condoms are displayed at most supermarket
cashiers booths), one would guess that for every teenager that gets
pregnant, at least 10 would have used contraception. The prospect that
a large proportion of children are brought up in unstable family
situations raises serious questions about future social conditions.
In any case, Asian values have not prevented Singapore from joining
advanced Western nations in having a dropping birth rate. The problem
was already emerging in the 90s, and several financial incentives
for having children had already been introduced then and in 2000,
but by 2003 the number of births had gone below 35000, and yet another
measure, subsidized maternity leave, was introduced in early 2004,
with no clear promise that there would be an significant impact.
However, helpful the financial measures are, there is the separate
psychological need to heighten people's confidence in being able
to provide their children with promising futures. The retention of
new immigrates poses a similar challenge.
The past quarrel with the western media deserve a mention. The
Singapore government looks at media purely from the business point of
view: distributing publication in the country is an opportunity to
make money, and right to do so is only granted to those that promote
the national interest, and of course the government is the judge of
that national interest. The western journalists take a "human rights"
view: the duty of the press is, by definition, to propagate all
plausible points of view, including those that might prove to be
wrong, and any attempt to thwart such aims is considered
authoritarian. In view of the fundamental divergence between the two
camps, a settlement seems unlikely in the near term.
I see two practical shortcomings in the Singapore system: the
difficulty of finding imaginative leaders and its vulnerability to
infiltration by foreign agents. The system has the tendency to promote
conformity, and those who thrive in the system are people who are good
at conforming, or at least, at appearing to be conforming. The
cautious and the sly have a better chance of survival than the frank.
Such survival characteristics do not however associate with the vision
and real convictions that the system needs in leaders. Obedience is
not the same thing as loyalty, which often requires one to speak out
and point out problems. It is not surprising that, despite the vast
increase in the number of well educated people and the more effective
machinery and database for identifying candidates, the government has
often complained of the difficulty of finding enough good people to
stand for parliament, especially those with ministerial potential.
There is a security risk in the practice of recruiting cadets and
sending them for overseas studies before posting them to fast rising
career tracks, because a foreign government can easily identify
promising targets for agent recruitment. A combination of the cadet's
admiration for the host country, money, career assistance,
participation in exciting secret ventures, and blackmail since young
people living alone in a foreign country could easily commit
indiscretions, may be used towards recruitment success.
After the agent's return, the foreign government could well provide
help to enhance the person's job performance in matters related to
that foreign power. Further, the prevalent use of personal networking
makes it easier for the agent to place fellow agents of the foreign
power into positions of importance. While in the past Singapore might
not have been an important espionage target, in the post cold war era
industrial and financial intelligence is given greater emphasis, and
the economic growth of Singapore must draw interest to it.
Another problem likely to worry Singapore leaders in the years to come
is emigration, with citizens who feel unsure of a place in the sun,
whether for themselves or for their children, migrating to
resource-rich, low-population countries like Australia. Given the high
value of Singapore real estate and favourable exchange rates, a family
could usually live quite comfortably in such countries from the sale
proceeds of a flat, though the children would often return to
Singapore to look for jobs after completing university because of
better economic opportunities. Like expatriate workers coming here to
work for a period, the returnees hope to accumulate savings and
experience before going again to the more comfortable, but
economically less dynamic, countries and enjoy their fruits of labour.
Emigration was briefly a public issue in the second half of the 80s,
but it subsided after the start of the extended recession of the
western economies in the late 80s and early 90s. While the number and
qualifications of the emigrants were nowhere near those of pre-1997
Hong Kong, the possible recurrence of the trend has to be watched for.
From the perspectives of classical Chinese political philosophy,
Singapore is more Legalist than Confucian. While both assume the
existence of a hierarchical society with hereditary rulers,
Confucianism emphasizes the ideal that rulers and their educated
servants should act with moderation and self-restraint, always
following established procedures and setting good examples for their
subjects, who would stay in line with minimal application of legal
sanctions. In contrast, Legalism emphasizes the use of generous
rewards and severe penalties to keep people performing well and
observing rules, but its main problem is the tendency for rewards and
punishments to escalate: if officials making mistakes are severely
punished and also stand to lose their rewards, then office holding is
a risky proposition, so that only ever more generous rewards can
attract people to come on board; further, people who make minor
mistakes would try to cover up and avoid the severe punishment, thus
committing additional infractions that ultimately lead to even more
severe penalties.
Is the Singapore system worthy of imitation by other developing
countries? Or is it a unique case that cannot be successfully
transplanted to other countries? I honestly do not know. While I am
sympathetic towards the aims and objectives of the system, I also feel
that the system can be more "Confucian", the methods used can be more
kindly, courteous and pleasant, and the gap between "us" and "them"
can be reduced. This is what the new generation leaders are still
trying to work out, but I have no idea whether they can achieve this -
it is not clear whether the problems are endemic to the system or mere
shortcomings of implementation. The jury is still out on how green the
valley will be.
--
8. How Green Is My Valley?
On election night of 1991, television showed a grim faced Prime
Minister of Singapore discussing the results coming in. Goh Chok Tong
had taken over from Lee a little while ago, and had been preaching a
kinder, softer style of leadership for the government to follow. After
receiving positive feedback about this new style, he called the
election two years early in the hope of benefiting from this supposed
goodwill, but instead of increasing or at least staying level, the PAP
vote went down to 61%. The PM is personally popular: the vote in his
own electorate was 80%, but the government's network of trust had
failed to do its job properly. It had, like any old bureaucracy, told
its leaders what it thought they wanted to hear. In fact, whereas in a
bureaucratic organization, formal rules and procedures could be
instituted to maximize the objectivity of information and opinion
(though making sure the rules are always followed is not so simple),
in a personal network the tendency to avoid being the bringer of bad
news is all the greater.
In the 1997 election the feedback machinery seemed to have done its
homework better, and the government was effective in identifying weak
electorates which were either incorporated into group electorates led
by senior ministers, whom opposition parties would avoid running
against, or were subjected to concentrated campaigns that, among other
things, promised heavy expenditures for local estate and transport
improvements,something rather reminiscent of western pork barrel
politics. A conscious effort was also made to recruit more candidates
showing the ordinary man touch, particularly people with trade union
background. After dropping for nearly two decades, the government vote
rose back to around 65%, following a hardhitting campaign, with just
two of the four incumbent opposition MPs (generally agreed to be the
more effective two) managing to keep their seats. The talk about a
gentler style of government has been quietly dropped and not revived.
The successful campaign was, however, quickly followed by a series of
law suits involving opposition candidates, and from there arose a
diplomatic row with Malaysia, but these need not be discussed here.
Coming back to the issue of governance, other similarities between the
informal network and an ordinary bureaucracy may be noted. Responsive
though it is to concrete initiatives directed from above, it has its
particular form of inertia in its manner of doing things. Perhaps an
informal system is even harder to change because there are no official
rules and hierarchical structures that can be redesigned by order.
Even when ost of its members might want to change, none can do so
individually without getting out of sync with the rest of the system,
resulting in confusion for himself and others. The structure also has
its particular forms of vested interests. For example, with the good
supply of educated manpower and high public sector salary, the
government could probably recruit enough officers without resort to
the cadetship schemes. Perhaps abolishing them would make everyone
feel more equal and reduce the "us"/"them" mentality. But if one
actually does this, there would be an outcry from high school students
and their parents who have spent a lifetime striving for good A Level
examination results in the hope of winning a cadetship and a headstart
in a good career. Factors like this make it difficult to envisage any
real change in the way Singapore is managed. The network of trust is
so essential a method of managing all parts of the country that no
Prime Minister can do without it, and the most he can hope for is some
small tinkering. Instead of asking for fundamental reforms, it is
preferable to seek out specific shortcomings and see how these could
be remedied.
It is sometimes said that Singaporeans are excessively materialistic
because the tightly controlled social system denies them the chance to
make spiritual self expressions, or that the system suppresses
creativity. However, such statements are virtually unverifiable, e.g.,
how does one measure "materialistic", or counter the argument that
Singaporeans simply have more materialistic opportunities? If
creativity is measured by number of scientific papers published or
visitors to be museums, then there are ways to improve these
"materially".
Instead, I prefer to make the more measurable assertion that
Singaporeans appear to be highly stressed: they grumble a lot about
small things, and are highly aggressive when there are "rights" to be
asserted, whether in drivers' road manners or bidding for condos (at
least during property booms), to the point that from time to time
official clampdowns had to be introduced to deal with road bullys,
excessive speculation, etc. All the employers complain of high staff
turnover, and normally a quitting employee would give no advance
information of job change, and would refuse to divulge his/her new
employer even after giving notice of resignation. The sullenness of
shop assistants is so commonplace that complaining about poor service
is rare - customers know that managers can do little about it. The
high suicide rate is another indicator of stress.
Contrary to the rather priggish image of the country, sexual mores are
far from conservative. Single American and European business
executives working in Singapore, while they may complain about other
things, rarely mention difficulty of meeting girls and getting sex,
and the preference of some girls for such boyfriends has produced the
term "Sarong Party Girl" to denote the type. Divorce rates, as high as
those in Taiwan, Hongkong and Japan, are rising. Abortion is available
on demand, with the number at nearly 15,000, in a country where live
births are under 40,000 per year. The number of abortions indicates
widespread pre-marital sex: since contraceptives are freely available
(in fact, packets of condoms are displayed at most supermarket
cashiers booths), one would guess that for every teenager that gets
pregnant, at least 10 would have used contraception. The prospect that
a large proportion of children are brought up in unstable family
situations raises serious questions about future social conditions.
In any case, Asian values have not prevented Singapore from joining
advanced Western nations in having a dropping birth rate. The problem
was already emerging in the 90s, and several financial incentives
for having children had already been introduced then and in 2000,
but by 2003 the number of births had gone below 35000, and yet another
measure, subsidized maternity leave, was introduced in early 2004,
with no clear promise that there would be an significant impact.
However, helpful the financial measures are, there is the separate
psychological need to heighten people's confidence in being able
to provide their children with promising futures. The retention of
new immigrates poses a similar challenge.
The past quarrel with the western media deserve a mention. The
Singapore government looks at media purely from the business point of
view: distributing publication in the country is an opportunity to
make money, and right to do so is only granted to those that promote
the national interest, and of course the government is the judge of
that national interest. The western journalists take a "human rights"
view: the duty of the press is, by definition, to propagate all
plausible points of view, including those that might prove to be
wrong, and any attempt to thwart such aims is considered
authoritarian. In view of the fundamental divergence between the two
camps, a settlement seems unlikely in the near term.
I see two practical shortcomings in the Singapore system: the
difficulty of finding imaginative leaders and its vulnerability to
infiltration by foreign agents. The system has the tendency to promote
conformity, and those who thrive in the system are people who are good
at conforming, or at least, at appearing to be conforming. The
cautious and the sly have a better chance of survival than the frank.
Such survival characteristics do not however associate with the vision
and real convictions that the system needs in leaders. Obedience is
not the same thing as loyalty, which often requires one to speak out
and point out problems. It is not surprising that, despite the vast
increase in the number of well educated people and the more effective
machinery and database for identifying candidates, the government has
often complained of the difficulty of finding enough good people to
stand for parliament, especially those with ministerial potential.
There is a security risk in the practice of recruiting cadets and
sending them for overseas studies before posting them to fast rising
career tracks, because a foreign government can easily identify
promising targets for agent recruitment. A combination of the cadet's
admiration for the host country, money, career assistance,
participation in exciting secret ventures, and blackmail since young
people living alone in a foreign country could easily commit
indiscretions, may be used towards recruitment success.
After the agent's return, the foreign government could well provide
help to enhance the person's job performance in matters related to
that foreign power. Further, the prevalent use of personal networking
makes it easier for the agent to place fellow agents of the foreign
power into positions of importance. While in the past Singapore might
not have been an important espionage target, in the post cold war era
industrial and financial intelligence is given greater emphasis, and
the economic growth of Singapore must draw interest to it.
Another problem likely to worry Singapore leaders in the years to come
is emigration, with citizens who feel unsure of a place in the sun,
whether for themselves or for their children, migrating to
resource-rich, low-population countries like Australia. Given the high
value of Singapore real estate and favourable exchange rates, a family
could usually live quite comfortably in such countries from the sale
proceeds of a flat, though the children would often return to
Singapore to look for jobs after completing university because of
better economic opportunities. Like expatriate workers coming here to
work for a period, the returnees hope to accumulate savings and
experience before going again to the more comfortable, but
economically less dynamic, countries and enjoy their fruits of labour.
Emigration was briefly a public issue in the second half of the 80s,
but it subsided after the start of the extended recession of the
western economies in the late 80s and early 90s. While the number and
qualifications of the emigrants were nowhere near those of pre-1997
Hong Kong, the possible recurrence of the trend has to be watched for.
From the perspectives of classical Chinese political philosophy,
Singapore is more Legalist than Confucian. While both assume the
existence of a hierarchical society with hereditary rulers,
Confucianism emphasizes the ideal that rulers and their educated
servants should act with moderation and self-restraint, always
following established procedures and setting good examples for their
subjects, who would stay in line with minimal application of legal
sanctions. In contrast, Legalism emphasizes the use of generous
rewards and severe penalties to keep people performing well and
observing rules, but its main problem is the tendency for rewards and
punishments to escalate: if officials making mistakes are severely
punished and also stand to lose their rewards, then office holding is
a risky proposition, so that only ever more generous rewards can
attract people to come on board; further, people who make minor
mistakes would try to cover up and avoid the severe punishment, thus
committing additional infractions that ultimately lead to even more
severe penalties.
Is the Singapore system worthy of imitation by other developing
countries? Or is it a unique case that cannot be successfully
transplanted to other countries? I honestly do not know. While I am
sympathetic towards the aims and objectives of the system, I also feel
that the system can be more "Confucian", the methods used can be more
kindly, courteous and pleasant, and the gap between "us" and "them"
can be reduced. This is what the new generation leaders are still
trying to work out, but I have no idea whether they can achieve this -
it is not clear whether the problems are endemic to the system or mere
shortcomings of implementation. The jury is still out on how green the
valley will be.
--