中文版

Mr Tay Choon Chong, President of Stanford Alumni Club,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen:

Let me take you back 15 years to 1989.

The scene: A cold wintry night in a restaurant somewhere in a coastal city of China.

The CEO had just finished a 3-hour dinner discussion with a young postgraduate engineer - a steady capable man, with the skills and competencies that would fit his needs. Tried as he might, he could not persuade the young Chinese engineer to take up his highly attractive offer to leave China and start a new test facility in his organisation.

The CEO leaned back in his chair. He looked up at the red lanterns hanging in the ceiling. Months earlier, one of his research staff had come to him. Please, said this anxious research staff, please help bring his friend out from China. His friend had the skills which the company needed. He had graduated from the same overseas university and had gone back to China in early 1989, months before June 4th. Yes, why not, thought the CEO - he was indeed looking for someone with that specialization to start a new facility. Yes, why not take a look at him. And so the CEO ended up in a small dingy restaurant in China, on a cold wintry night, talking to this steady clear minded young man.

The young man thanked him for the very generous offer. But also said he could not leave China. China needed him. If he did not stay, who would? And where would the future be if people like him leave?

Thousands had fled China or did not return to China in the aftermath of June 4th. They feared China was closing its doors to modernization once again. But thousands more chose to stay, like this young man 15 years ago. Led by successive generations of bold, rational and capable leaders, these able, well trained and committed professionals brought new hope, new opportunities and a new future to China.

Today, the world continues to watch and marvel with some trepidation at the unfolding story of China’s modernization and transformation. China and the world have changed since that wintry night of 1989.

Interestingly, Singapore too had carved out its own dramatic path to transformation and progress. Starting 25 years earlier, a band of young men and women committed themselves to the ideals of a free, democratic and meritocratic society based on justice and equality, regardless of race, language or religion. They did not want to be colonial subjects, nor second-class citizens. The oldest among them was in his early 40s. They were led by a man in his early 30s. Hundreds and thousands of others, both Singapore- and foreign-born, also joined them, committing themselves to do their bit to build a home and a future for themselves, and to make a go at building a nation out of an untidy polyglot of clans, tribes and races. Like the young Chinese engineer, they too could have made a living elsewhere with their skills and talents. But they chose to stay on a little piece of barren rock and put their little red dot on the world map.

One of the drivers in Singapore’s transformation was her investment in social infrastructure. Social infrastructure in a country is much like a village common. In old England, every farmer is free to bring his sheep to graze in the village common. Each farmer thus wants to have as many of his sheep graze as much as possible on public land. With everyone doing so, the common green will in no time be bare and barren. Unless everyone bands together and agrees to common rules to keep grazing at a sustainable level, the common will be sucked dry and all will suffer. Such long term common good are often difficult for the free market to deliver. Market signals are immediate and short term. So a recognized and benign authority is needed to provide, nurture, regulate or referee for the longer term larger good. That is what governments are for – to provide good governance for the long term interest of the common good.

Singapore is a social democratic state with an unwavering commitment to provide and deliver sound social infrastructure. It leaves other parts of the economy to the free market. Unlike socialist states however, Singapore believes in the discipline of providing sustainable social infrastructure based on price mechanisms and market principles of individual choices and personal responsibilities. Nationalising services under the pretext of social good is one sure road to ruin, as shown over and over again all over the world.

Education, public housing, retirement savings plan, defence and security, as well as basic infrastructure and services form the core social infrastructure in Singapore. Of these, education is a powerful engine to close the income gap, and facilitate social mobility, giving each generation hope for a better life for its next generation.

But Singapore is not perfect. It is still very much a work-in-progress as a society and a nation. We are still on a journey of change.

For instance, the structural unemployment which is with us today, reflects the differences in educational opportunities in the early years of our independence. About half of those over 50 years old have less than secondary 2 schooling, often because of poverty. In contrast, more than 60% of those below 40 years old have tertiary education. These younger people have had the benefit of intense investment since the late 1960s, with crash programs to build schools and train teachers. Schools were run on 2 shifts to make full use of limited school facilities. My contemporaries and our elders who missed their schooling opportunities will be with us for the next 20-30 years. But their next generation, their children under the age of 40, have a much better future ahead, and are better able to support their parents. The ones without families are those we need to pay special attention as a society.

Another public good - home ownership - was started as a way to root an immigrant society. The massive and highly successful public housing program turned out to be a state dowry of sorts. A large majority got an asset uplift from capital appreciation as the economy grew. The only group left behind is probably the bottom 5% who could not afford home ownership and continued to live in public rental flats. This is also the group who could least afford to send their children to school, often compounding their problem with large families. Education for their children and continued training for themselves is one way to help them bootstrap out of the poverty trap, and prevent a permanent underclass from calcifying.

On the whole, Singapore was relatively fortunate over the last 40 years. We managed to find a living as a society, picking off the flows of the first wave of post-war economic globalization. This enabled us to industrialise successfully after a fashion. That in turn provided the earnings which funded everything else that we have been able to achieve, from housing to education to healthcare, from roads and zoos to public swimming pools and defence.

The next wave of globalization over the next 20-30 years however, will be quite different. Two billion people in China and India have now joined the global labour market at high speed. There are tremendous energies and opportunities released in Asia. However, there will also be tremendous pressure and threat to those who are lowly educated, poorly trained or poorly organised.

As a society, this is one big challenge for Singapore. The top levels are pulled towards global labour price for top lawyers and bankers. The unskilled wage levels are depressed by 1 to 2 billion of hungry, energetic, and often smart labour. Our large middle class too will have to adjust this way and that, depending on the flows of labour and intellectual value at any one particular point in time.

And so we come back to that steady young engineer and the problem of the village common. If that young post-graduate engineer and his contemporaries had not made the personal commitment to stay and help build China, China would not be the China of today. If leaders like Deng XiaoPing and his various successors had not had the wisdom and strength to take rational decisions for the greater good, and to make courageous and unthinkable changes when old thinking and policies proved wrong or irrelevant, China would not be the China of today.

What can be said of China’s development in hundreds of her cities is no less of what can be said of Singapore in her founding years.

The challenge of tomorrow’s Singapore is the collective challenge for her leaders and youth of today. Without leaders willing and able to make clear rational decisions, free from fear or favour, making bold changes without regard to face, misplaced self pride or ego, Singapore will be a has-been within the next 20 years. Without its youth, and particularly the trained, able, and capable professionals, willing to commit to make their future here, Singapore will be relegated to the backwaters of Asia.

All of us here tonight benefited from the fertile grass of the fair and free village common. We have had the fortune of an education.

If we believe that we are able to study and earn our degrees and make a living through our own efforts alone, then we have failed to recognize that others too have contributed to the opportunities for ourselves and our families. We will be like the farmers overgrazing the common green. If the majority of us can only think of taking as much out of the system, be it education or individual wants, if we lack the commitment to maintain and upkeep a sustainable village common for others and our future generations, the grass will not be able to rejuvenate, and the green will be bare earth in no time. We ourselves will end up the poorer in spirit and wealth.

Ladies and gentlemen, our future is in our hands, collectively and individually. We are poised in a world which has never been better, despite its contemporaneous woes. We can benefit from and contribute to its progress. Regardless of titles or positions, status or wealth, we can choose to do our bit, big and small, to re-fertilise the village common for ourselves, our fellowmen and our future generations.

[And that young engineer? He is now a successful CEO in one of the large companies in China. Quite something for a 40 year old. He continues to re-fertilise the common green, and is fast friends with the CEO who had made him that offer. It pays to fertilise your own garden.]

On this note, may I conclude with a favourite Irish blessing for all of you here this evening: As you set forth in your various journeys of life and learning, choice and change,
May the Road rise to meet you
May the Wind be always at your back
May the Sun shine warm upon your face
And may the rain fall soft upon your fields.

[And may all your gardens bloom for you under your tender care]