BANGKOK – Earlier this month, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung in
Vietnam said that his nation must hit 7 percent economic growth in
the second half of this year to meet its full-year target of
6.5pc.
His remark reminded me of two things. One was an article just
days earlier in The New York Times about false claims and shameless
boosterism.
It related how the American company making Keds brand canvas
shoes with rubber soles, first introduced in 1917, claimed they
were so comfortable and quiet you could “sneak” up on your
boyfriend – and hence were the first shoes called “sneakers”.
Minimal research by The New York Times reporter, however, showed
that the name sneakers had been in use for similar footwear since
1887.
The article also noted that the Haggar clothing company claimed
it invented the term “slacks” in the 1940s for its casual trousers,
which were to be worn during “slack time”.
Yet a simple dictionary check showed that the term slacks had
been used in this context almost a century earlier.
Of course, it’s not only unscrupulous companies seeking to
embellish the pedigree of their products that engage in such
shenanigans. Many governments do the same.
Which brings me to the second thing Dung’s comment reminded me
about. It was a claim, fed to me soon after I arrived in Hanoi as
the bureau chief for The Straits Times of Singapore in 2006, that
Vietnam was the new Asian Tiger – so much so that it had “the
second fastest-growing economy in Asia after China”.
This mantra was regurgitated in articles about Vietnam, and in
official government statements, and it peppered lunch chitchat and
the banter at diplomatic receptions.
It was so universally accepted that I took it to be true. Then
one day, an article in the business section of The Straits Times
revealed that Singapore’s GDP growth for 2006 was 8.4pc.
I was stunned. Vietnam’s growth rate at that time was 8.2pc. So
how could it be the second fastest in Asia after China, if even
highly-developed Singapore had a faster rate?
A check of World Bank and IMF figures soon revealed that
Vietnam’s growth rate was below that of China, Myanmar, Cambodia,
Singapore, Laos and India. Yet the Keds-like canard continued to be
repeated, as it is to this day, appearing in articles by foreign
correspondents and even spouted in speeches by visiting Singapore
leaders.
But then, like other regional governments, Singapore itself,
despite a somewhat exaggerated reputation for rectitude, is not
averse to making similar false claims.
Consider the notion, oft-repeated, especially at election time,
that in its British colonial days, Singapore was a backward
settlement of shacks in a mosquito-ridden swamp with no natural
resources.
Then, hey presto, Lee Kuan Yew led his People’s Action Party to
power in 1959 and transformed the place into the gleaming,
ultra-efficient metropolis it is today.
It’s a good line, almost as sneaky and spurious as the one about
Keds or Vietnam’s growth rate.
Actually, Singapore was highly developed long before Lee and the
PAP took over. Indeed, called “Gibraltar of the East”, it was the
real crown jewel of the British Empire.
Winston Churchill himself wrote that during the Second World
War, “the worst disaster” of all was not Dunkirk or Dieppe or the
blitz of London, it was the fall of Singapore in 1942. Look at
photos of the victorious Japanese marching through Fullerton Square
between the elegant colonnaded buildings that look like Regent
Street in London.
Some swamp, some shacks.
This latterday PAP hyperbole does not alter the fact that
Singapore developed fantastically well under Lee and has become a
successful city state.
But it does reconfirm that when we are fed official guff, as we
were on May 6 when it was announced that despite economic downturns
due to the global financial crisis, trade between Cambodia and
Vietnam rose 30pc last year and is up 127pc this year, we must
treat it with caution.
Indeed, whenever leading politicians make similar high falutin’
claims, it pays to check them out, for it’s a good bet that they
are speaking through the backside of their slacks.
Roger Mitton is The Myanmar Times’ regional correspondent
for Southeast Asia and is based in Bangkok.