Stephen Mayne is wary of the Singapore government’s disproportionately large stake in Australian businesses. How disproportionate, you ask? This disproportionate:

In accepting $4.5 billion of cash from Singapore Power for a suite of Australian electricity and gas distribution assets, Alinta shareholders will lift the total value of Australian business assets controlled by the Singapore Government to almost $30 billion.

This will exceed the value of commercial assets owned by our own Federal Government, which is surely an unprecedented situation for any First World country. How can a foreign power own more of Australia than our own government?

He follows that with a comprehensive account of the major takeovers of Australian businesses by Singapore’s government-linked companies, and raises concerns about Australian businesses being controlled by the “secretive, autocratic and undemocratic” Singapore government.

I’m no fan of the Singapore government, but I have to say that its autocratic and undemocratic nature is hardly relevant to its suitability as an investor in foreign assets. Secretiveness might be undesirable from Australia’s point of view, since there might come points at which Australians might want to look behind the scenes of their businesses, including the sources of their funds. But surely how the Singapore government treats its citizens has little, if anything, to do with how it would behave as a partner in or owner of an Australian business. Businesses are not democracies, and are not supposed to be democracies. Thus it is not clear how the Singapore government’s lack of democracy would count against its desirability as a business partner. Could it be that Mayne thinks a democratically elected government would somehow make better business decisions and would be more desirable as a business partner? But there is no evidence that the hoi polloi would tend to elect politicians who would make good business judgments.

The most robust objection I can think of to an undemocratic, autocratic foreign government investing in one’s country is that the objects of their investments would be indirectly abetting the continuation of autocratic rule. A moral objection, in other words. But given that Mayne’s entire article is framed to highlight the horror of Australia ‘losing control’ of its businesses, he seems to be mainly concerned about loss of power issues for Australia rather than the moral aspect of abetting a dictatorship. His concern is now likely to be shared by a signficant proportion of his readers, given that the article is No. 1 on the list of “Today’s Top 10 Articles” for The Age.

From a Today article on a school’s treatment of students who did not wear ethnic costumes on Racial Harmony Day:

Elsewhere, Environment and Water Resources Minister Yaacob Ibrahim highlighted the important role of schools in helping “our students recognise the multiple identities that we’ve developed”.

An old boy of Tanjong Katong Secondary, he said at his alma mater: “This recognition is important amid the shallow but increasing tendency to pigeon-hole people into neat boxes or categories, such as religion or civilisations … When we look for the commonalities and the similarities, we’ll see much more … When we constantly strive to keep one another connected, we will be a cohesive society indeed.”

I have always found the obsession of Racial Harmony Day organisers with costumes mystifying. How exactly does wearing a costume for a day help students recognise multiple identities? How does it stop people from pigeonholing others? I see no connection. If anything, I find something objectionable in encouraging people to wear ethnic costumes, for a costume is precisely a signal that pigeonholes the wearer as identifying with a certain ethnic group or culture. True acceptance of commonalities would be when the stickiness of costumes as ethnic labels reduces to the point that one can wear anything without being judged on one’s race or culture. When an Indian wearing a cheongsam will not draw stares because people no longer perceive that image as containing a mismatch. Wearing a sarong one day a year does not bring commonalities into sharp relief; it brings differences into sharp relief. Racial Harmony Day is like a billboard screaming ‘look how brightly we can smile about how different we are’.

Calling it framing is rather too generous, I think. Reporting on MOE’s correction of the admission rates of foreign undergraduates to Singapore universities, CNA quotes the provost of SMU on the benefits of a cosmopolitan student population, then writes the following:

Top universities in the world, such as MIT, have more than 40 percent foreign students.

The insinuation is that since a top university has such a high percentage of foreign students, having a high percentage of foreign students must be part of its formula for success. Nevermind the faulty reasoning here (generalising from a single example, for one, and inferring cause from correlation, for another). This is disingenuous, I say, because MIT has more than 40% foreign students only if one includes graduate students in that count. But MIT has a much lower proportion of foreign students in its undergraduate population. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 4114. Dividing by the four years it usually takes to complete a MIT bachelor’s degree, that’s about 1000 undergrads enrolling a year. However, this year it admitted only 119 international students. Not all of these will choose to enroll in MIT. Let’s say 100 do. That makes 10% of its undergrad population foreign. Cut it any way you like, that’s way less than 40%. So CNA can’t even get started on its insinuation, since it’s comparing apples with oranges. Almost no one is bothered by admissions rates for foreign graduate students. Their gripes are with universities admitting too many foreign undergrads over local undergrads.

I don’t usually read Newsweek, but this article on inequality in Southeast Asian economies is very good indeed. And not just by their usual standards.

Via The Online Citizen.

ST journalist Tessa Wong on living in Singapore as opposed to living overseas:

True, we still have a long way to go towards achieving a truly vibrant culture and more inclusive society, but frankly it is this prospect that appeals to me most as a young person.

I would rather live in an energetic place that is actively pushing its boundaries, rather than a place that has reached a plateau in its creative progress.

If so much has already been accomplished in 10 years, then I can only look forward to things getting better in the next 10.

By the same logic a young person should prefer being in a maximum security prison that is gradually being phased into a normal prison. “Plateau in its creative progress” — what a phrase to describe freedom with, and to imply that free cities are no longer ‘energetic’ or pushing boundaries.

Next, we have (what’s new) faulty reasoning in the ST Forum. A certain Dr Yik Keng Yeong points out that only 59 cases of maid abuse were reported to the Ministry of Manpower in 2004, whereas more complaints against doctors were lodged with the Singapore Medical Council every year. Since there are only 7000 practising doctors in Sg but 150,000 foreign domestic maids, he concludes that maids have less to complain about their employers than patients have about their doctors. Since no one thinks that medical negligence is a major problem in Sg, maid abuse, he argues, must also not be a major problem.

Dr Yik misses one glaring caveat: your typical Singaporean who is a victim of medical negligence is much more aware of how he can report that negligence, and far more able to report it, than your typical maid who is never or rarely let out of the house by employers, cannot speak good English (for Indonesian maids), has little or no information about how to seek help, etc. The maid, furthermore, risks losing her job if she reports abuse, and, in desperate enough financial situations, might feel that it is worthwhile to grit her teeth and take the abuse rather than report it and risk being sent back to her home country with loans unpaid. In short, we can expect much more under-reporting of maid abuse cases compared to medical negligence cases, so the two kinds of statistics should not be compared.

In Singapore, education in general, and gifted education in particular, runs contrary to the principles laid down by Fields medallist and former child prodigy Terence Tao. Competitions in order to improve oneself? No, it’s in order to improve your resume so that you can get into prestigious institutions and programmes! What, you’re rejecting Oxbridge for some unknown school that has the specific programme that appeals the most to your interests? What are you thinking, pursuing your interests instead of pursuing the most monetarily rewarding path? What, you don’t want to take part in this prestigious internship programme because you wish to pursue other interests? What a shame for our school, you can’t let us down like that! Let’s put you on the blacklist so that you will never again be allowed to take part in other similarly prestigious programmes! That’ll show you!

Don’t you know? It’s useless to be gifted if we can’t get to boast about you! Don’t waste the money we spent on you!