Singapore's Strengths

By: Low92

The country seems strong on the surface... peaceful and prosperous... However, it seems that our advantage has been seriously eroded and we might be the last in the world to know that we are being left backwards in this new millennium.

I guess we excelled during a period when our neighboring countries had only a minority who could have proper command of the English language, while our education system had produced a generation who could speak and write English in much better standards than the other countries in the region. This enabled an influx of MNCs, which made use of this advantage we could give to better facilitate their operations.

Today, this advantage is long gone, with our neighbors having caught up with us since the 90s. Each city I have gone in Malaysia, Thailand and Laos, I could hear quite a sizeable amount of people communicating with me in English. Moreover, the post Cold-War Era has seen a shift in economic potentials, and regions including Eastern Europe, Minor Asia, and even South America have become the new markets to explore. English is no longer that useful and it is people who has good command of the Slavic, Latin and Arabic languages now who will excel in cutting deals with these people in the emerging markets. And to be honest, we have missed the boat this time round as there is almost none in Singapore who can reap the possible profits from these markets, which are what I consider as good markets as there are fewer competitions in these areas, unlike China and South East Asia.

The next thing I noticed all along from my life experience to date is that most of the post-65 generation has been conditioned to conformity. What can you say about the mentality of the general population when you have to be told (by media) to be more enterprising, or to be told (by media again) and taught (by schools) to be more creative? If anyone says it is due to our economic progress in the past which has resulted in a "softer" younger population today, I would seriously disagree as we cannot say the same of USA, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Finland, Switzerland etc. I think it is due to constant use of fear tactics via media propaganda that has resulted in this. Most of us have lost a certain degree of boldness, and to a certain extent, fighting spirit and the survival/killer instinct. Most of my friends want to go out to achieve something for themselves, whether material or spiritual, yet few have actually done so. We have been put down in such a way that most of us can no longer even handle success, not to mention failure.

The "conditioning" was very much necessary in the 60s to 70s as we needed a large pool of workers, as such everything we had to learn must be standardised. Yes, we have succeeded in producing workers, but I guess that should have been an easy task anyway, as long as a proper system is put in place. The system is obsolete in this age, and our "products" have become predictable, if not boring. What is needed now is commercialisation, or marketing, of products, not merely production, and until we have a pool of creative and innovative people to add value to products, we can no longer lead the pack in the economic race.

What I can put across now is very superficial and brief. This is typed at the spur of the moment, so I will be most welcome if there are any questions thrown at me.

Cheers.