(First published on The
Online Citizen)
So the dust has now settled over Minister Mentor Mr Lee Kuan
Yew’s provocative call to Singaporeans to focus on learning
mandarin instead of their dialects. From a personal perspective, I
didn’t find Mr Lee’s call surprising, given the fact that he has
always championed Singapore’s role as the gateway to China. There
has been exhaustive discussions on the cultural impact of Mr Lee’s
remark but little attention is paid to the economics beyond the
dialects and languages.
As the fallout from the current global credit crisis continues,
there has been some talk of America losing its superpower status as
it reels from a double whammy – the collapse of its financial
system and the overstretching of its military in Iraq and
Afghanistan. And naysayers have further rubbed salt into the wound
by predicting that the US dollar will lose its world currency
status. The writing is already on the wall when OPEC (Organization
of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) countries started dumping the
dollars. Iran transacts in Euros with Venezuela following suit. And
after the dollars hit its lowest against the yen, the likelihood of
the former being knocked off its pedestal seems closer to
reality.
There could be a shift in the balance of world power, a
transition from one dominant entity to a few powerful entities. The
BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) nations seem the likely
candidates. China is poised to overtake America in terms of GDP by
2040. For ASEAN nations, trading volume with China is set to rise
with the establishment of the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area by 2010.
The value of ASEAN-China trade was forecasted to hit $200 billion
in 2008.
The Kra canal project, which is the planned waterway link
between the Indian ocean and the South China sea and cutting across
the Isthmus of Kra is in its revival stage. The Chinese will be
providing assistance for the project, and it is a move to increase
Chinese presence within the Southeast Asian region, particularly in
facilitating trade.
So the geopolitics shift and anticipation of increased trade
links with China within the region might make learning mandarin an
attractive posposition, no? Perhaps, there is use for learning
mandarin after all. However, wouldn’t it seem a little premature to
place the learning of our dialects into the backburner?
Those who speak cantonese amongst us might have a strong case
for arguement here. The cantonese make up 15% of the chinese
Singaporean population. Cantonese is spoken as a medium of
communication in Guangdong, a major business center in China. And
it will come in useful when interacting with business people from
Hong Kong too.
However, it is a fallacy to think that being chinese and able to
speak mandarin would eventually lead to a comparative advantage.
The initial failure of the Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP) serves as
an important reminder to all of us. SIP was initially conceived to
be the epitomy of Singapore-style industrial township – a showcase
of Singapore’s way of managing an industrial set-up. That wasn’t to
be, and Singapore transferred a major part of SIP’s ownership back
to the Chinese. What happened was that SIP was outgunned and
outfoxed by the Suzhou New District, despite the former enjoying
advantages ranging from political support from the Communist party
to freedom over planning and land use. Turned out that the
experiment to clone Singapore in China failed.
Thus, what Suzhou has taught us is that what works in Singapore
may not necessarily work elsewhere. Undoubtedly, learning the
language or dialect involved in trade communications is important,
but the key to survival is to be able to adapt to the prevailing
business conditions. This is the basic rule of evolution.
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