I'm a Third Culture Kid

Jan 23, 2011
THE EX-PAT FILES

By Niki Bruce

I almost missed my deadline for this column since I just got back from holiday. No, I didn't 'go home', that is, back to Australia for Christmas as many people had assumed; rather I took off for Tokyo for shopping and the cold weather.

On arriving at Changi - the new Terminal 3 is a breeze to use by the way, and being the holder of a trusty 'green card', I didn't even have to fill out an arrival form - I was relieved to finally be home.

Yes, strange as it may sound to some, I do consider Singapore my actual home.

I may have been here for only two years and I may not be a PR (permanent resident), but my mailing address is here, my worldly goods are here, my friends are here, my work is here and I can find my way around most places blind-folded. To me, that means 'I'm home'.

Sure, it may seem like I've given my allegiance willy-nilly and without much thought, but in fact this adopting of a new home as quickly as possible is something of a 'Third Culture Kid' trait.

What's a 'Third Culture Kid'? Well, it's the new definition for a large part of our mobile global population, of which I'm one. Basically, we hold a passport for one country, but we've been brought up in one, or many, others.

According to that paragon of information, Wikipedia, a 'third culture kid (TCK/3CK) or trans-culture kid is someone who, as a child, has spent a significant period of time in one or more culture(s) other than his or her own, thus integrating elements of those cultures and their own birth culture, into a third culture'.

It goes on to say that TCKs also tend to have stronger connections with other TCKs, regardless of nationality, than they do with extended family members or friends from their passport country, that they are often multilingual and 'highly accepting of other cultures'.

Take me, for example. I have an Australian passport but find it hard to identify with typically Australian cultural practices; I don't generally get on with other Australians; and I speak about three languages - that's not counting the languages I can swear, order beer or buy cigarettes in.

One of the reasons I moved to Singapore was so I'd never have to do another story on Rugby League, swimming as entertainment or the importance of beer as a national icon. Heresy for all Aussie journos!

Even my family, which looks terribly Australian from the outside - right down to our Caucasian features, Irish ancestry and my father's love of cricket - are in fact rather more Asian than Australian.

No one wears shoes at home, we eat rice at every meal, my mother strongly believes in fengshui, traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture, and we have a lovely shrine to my deceased grandparents in an appropriate place in the living room.

Sure, there are lots of multi-cultural families living in Australia these days - despite the racism of Pauline Hanson and the Cronulla Riots, the population does consist of people from many different cultures - but in our case, there's no genetic reason for us to be the way we are.

Rather, our adoption of Asian attributes has been made through personal choice and a genuine feeling of belonging. We choose to be more Asian than other Australian families because we like and identify with certain cultural practices.

I'm the first to abhor the wholesale adoption of a culture without consideration, like the American students I came across in Beijing who wanted to 'live like the locals' so they could then expound on why the People's Republic of China should become an American democracy.

But if you have a genuine connection to a place, a people and a culture, I don't see why you can't celebrate its strong points and adopt them as your own, integrating them into your own way of living.

This is actually the core trait of the TCK. According to the research of sociologist Ruth Hill Useem, who reportedly coined the phrase, 'TCKs integrate aspects of their birth culture (the first culture) and the new culture (the second culture), creating a unique 'third culture',' which is where the term comes from.

Hmmm ... actually the description of a TCK sounds awfully similar to that of a Singaporean. In fact, modern Singaporean culture could be described as the quintessential Third Culture, the mix of a birth culture with a new culture, creating a third culture.

No wonder I feel so at home here!

The writer, an Australian, is the online editor of herworld.com and SheShops.com and has lived in Singapore for two years.

Indefensible ideas behind homeopathy

Jan 22, 2011
DAEDALUS

By Andy Ho

HOMEOPATHY is integrated into the national health-care systems of France and Britain. The fact that their governments pay for this mode of alternative health care seems to imply it must have been well established beforehand that it works.

However, in October 2009, when queried by the House of Commons, the British Department of Health stated that 'no scientific evidence was examined in drawing up the National Rules Scheme', which is the British licensing regime for homeopathic treatment.

Most of us tend to conflate homeopathy with herbal or 'natural' remedies. If so, you might be quite taken aback by the mystical claims some make on its behalf.

The present system called homeopathy was first founded by a German called Samuel Christian Hahnemann (1755-1843) who ingested some cinchona bark. This had long been identified as a cure for malaria as it contains quinine. When Hahnemann developed an allergic reaction to the bark, it caused symptoms that resembled malaria, such as fever, chills and rigors. Based on this observation - his first and only 'correct' one - he deduced that there were many natural products that induced symptoms resembling those of a given disease.

If so, such substances needed to first be identified by direct experimentation. He thus fed his family and himself various things used as remedies in his day and recorded any symptoms he thought were induced. To this day, his compilation of such symptoms is still used.

Now, if you have certain symptoms in your present illness, the substance that produces the same symptoms could be used as a cure if it were made into a solution. This is because that substance imprints a mirror image - and thus the inverse - of itself on the water used.

As the inverse, the image's effects must be the reverse of those of the offending substance. Hence its curative powers.

But if you took it unattenuated, it would surely only cause symptoms like those you already suffered from. So it should be diluted until it no longer evokes symptoms when ingested. Thus, the dilution process is key; serial dilutions supposedly lead to increased potency.

The preparation is to be diluted tenfold (1:10) or a hundredfold (1:100) at each step, with the steps repeated several times - up to 200 times, say. But at such a rate of dilution, just one molecule of the substance or none of it will remain (according to a law in chemistry involving something called Avogadro's number).

Between each dilution step, the concoction must be vigorously shaken ('succussions') many times to increase its potency. Hahnemann believed that the dilution process - augmented by the succussions - set free some vital force held inside the offending substance. Thus even after there was none of it left in the solution, the freed force remained in it.

Not all homeopaths today would defend these ideas that Hahnemann championed, for they are scientifically indefensible. Instead, homeopaths might simply assert that the mechanisms by which their remedies work are quite unimportant as long as people are cured. But do they really work?

'A systematic review of systematic reviews of homeopathy' published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology in 2002 concluded that 'no condition... responds convincingly better to homeopathic treatment than to placebo...'. This was updated by the same reviewer in a study published in the Medical Journal of Australia last year, which also concluded that 'homeopathic medicines have no effects beyond placebo'.

This should not surprise us since there is no viable mechanism for water to have memories or carry information. No bona fide scientist has proposed a plausible one and none has ever been demonstrated experimentally.

In fact, if water memory did exist, then every soluble substance would have dissolved in the world's total stock of water at some point in history. In such a scenario, any water we drink would have the memories of these substances and thus have an infinite range of effects on us. Under these circumstances, the effect of any homeopathic remedy would be overwhelmed completely by a deluge of water memories.

At any rate, a homeopathically prepared remedy would have whatever active substance it supposedly carries already significantly diluted. If so, the concoction should be mostly water or whatever the inert solvent is. This should ensure that homeopathic remedies are not toxic. That is they are safe even if useless.

In fact, the Homeopathic Reference Manual (Natura-Bio) states: 'In homeopathy, there is no harm in taking the wrong medicine or too much medicine.' That is, homeopathic preparations are basically inert.

But if this were so, whence their capacity to treat specific diseases? This is a logical dilemma. In his book, Homeopathy: How It Really Works (2004), Jay Shelton says that homeopathy does work - because it is simply an elaborate placebo system.

However, it would be erroneous to conclude from this that all homeopathic remedies are inherently safe because they are so highly diluted, containing essentially nothing. Remember that unscrupulous hucksters might spike their homeopathic preparations with prescription painkillers or steroids, say. In such cases, serious toxicity may ensue. This being a possibility, smart consumers should simply get rid of any and all homeopathic remedies which they might have at home.

andyho@sph.com.sg

'S'pore is my concern till the end of my life'

Jan 22, 2011


BY 2009, Lee had stepped down as Prime Minister for almost 20 years. Hence, our interviews would be a golden opportunity for a stock-take on what he thought of the political system and the challenges ahead, or so we believed. We booked two interview dates to discuss 'politics' and sent him a list of questions a week ahead.

At the appointed hour, Lee walked in and whipped out another 'submission'. He read aloud a collective response from his younger Cabinet colleagues to our questions, which he had forwarded to them. The younger ministers found our queries to be 'standard' fare from critics.

Lee dropped another bombshell. He was not interested in talking about politics, he said emphatically, as he tossed our printout of questions back across the table at us. 'I am no longer in charge,' he declared. Pose those queries to the younger ministers, he said with a dismissive wave of the hand. He inhaled deeply and puffed out his cheeks. Lips pursed, silence. He glared at us through narrowed eyes. But there was a flicker of amusement on his face, as if he too realised the irony of the guru, the master strategist, the mentor, muzzling himself from, of all things, talking politics.

We tried to press on. Younger Singaporeans deserved to know what he thought of the current system and the leadership, one of us said. 'No, no, I cannot in any way be condescending on the younger ministers. My job is to support them,' he replied.

So it was that Lee remained reticent on political leadership and liberalisation throughout the two sessions. Even when he did relent, he never strayed from talking about just his own role in the past and what he considered to be Singapore's perennial fundamentals.

Lee then surprised us again, now not only with what he omitted, but also with what he stressed repeatedly. Time and again he returned to this unexpected theme: the inevitability of the PAP some day losing power. This is despite the absence of any apparent cracks in Singapore's dominant-party system. While the PAP has never regained the monopoly of Parliament that it enjoyed until 1981 when J.B. Jeyaretnam won the Anson by-election, the opposition has not gone beyond the record four seats it won in 1991 and today has only two seats. The PAP's share of the valid vote has ranged from a decent 61 per cent to a thumping 75.3 per cent in the five general elections since 1984.

Yet Lee refuses to take the PAP's continued success for granted. He does not care whether the PAP exists in perpetuity, he said. What is important is that Singapore perpetuates itself. He is not interested in seeing the PAP victorious at all costs, he told us. If the party lost the voters' trust and let another more capable group take over, so be it. To Lee, the PAP would sow the seeds of its own destruction if it deterred the best people from rising to the top or failed to deliver what the electorate needed.

Lee also sticks to his government's line that it is not its job to ease Singapore towards a two-party system and ensure a less traumatic handover if that came to pass. After all, his party had clawed its way up from the ranks of a rowdy opposition, succeeding against the colonialists and leftists in its own nest.

Lee believes that the same kind of pitched battle is possible in today's Singapore. Any opposition party can challenge the PAP and knuckleduster its way into power. The worthy will prove themselves in conflict. Contrary to what the critics claim, the opposition's main problem has nothing to do with the state of civil liberties. It is that the PAP has left no stone unturned. Any credible opposition would not be able to come up with a truly alternative platform because if it were made up of smart people who want to do what is best for Singapore, it would arrive at similar conclusions to that of the PAP's, he said. While others may be troubled by whether Singapore is a full-fledged democracy and if people enjoy full civil liberties, Lee is seized by more pragmatic concerns: Are people's lives improving from year to year, election to election? Is Singapore continuing to attract investments and create well-paying jobs for its citizens? Do people have opportunities to make it in life?

The current system of government may evolve, but not towards a Western-style liberal democracy. Of this Lee is adamant: Democracy as practised by the West is not a universal good.

Is there any virtue at all in democracy, then? Only one, he replied: It allows governments to be thrown out without violence.

Over the years, commentators have described how Lee's own personality has left a mark on Singapore politics - hard, combative and unforgiving of the vanquished. He is who he is, he told us. He might have said and done 'some sharp things', but his battles were never about the person but what he stood for, he is certain.

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A TEAM of seven Straits Times journalists interviewed Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew on 16 occasions for his views on Singapore politics, global issues and his family. The interviews are published in a new book, Hard Truths.

Here are Q&A excerpts from the book where Mr Lee takes on questions on democracy, political change, and whether the People's Action Party (PAP) will lose power.

At no point in history do we have so many democratically elected governments around the globe. Doesn't that suggest democracy has its attractions? 

No. The greatest attraction is, you can change governments without violence. In China, the greatest disadvantage was that you can only change governments by rebellion, qi yi. Qi yi means righteous uprising. That means the ruler has lost his mandate and deserves to be overthrown. Here, we can be voted out if we are no longer fit to govern. If we're voted out, the system is still working. It is our duty to ensure that. And the elected president is to add another layer of safeguard to give the country a chance for recovery. 

How so? 

The new government cannot frivolously change the top men with its own sycophants nor spend the country's past reserves without the president's consent. They need to govern within these rules. If they can win a second election with an overwhelming majority of two-thirds, they might change the rules. But I don't think that's easy. And if they are incompetent, they will lose after one term.

 
If we do not envisage losing, we would not have to put these safeguards in place. I envisaged at some point, people will get tired of a stable government and say, let's try the opposition. It's bound to happen some time. I don't know when. I don't think it will happen in the next five, 10 years because you've got a competent government. But supposing in this recession, we had an incompetent government and jobs were massively lost, then you're going to get a rebellion of some sort...

As we're talking about the opposition, may I ask, why are you reluctant to open up the system? You don't see any need for a two-party system? 

You're just reflecting the views of the Western-educated intelligentsia that we need an opposition so it can take over the government. There's no chance of the opposition having enough capable people to take over. It's as simple as that. We can't find enough good people to run the government, we are constantly looking for such candidates. You can see the quality of the people that Low Thia Khiang has found. He's tried very hard. We get the constant critics. I say, 'Come on, form an opposition. Drive round the place. Go down and meet the people and see whether you can win them over.'

I took the draft questions you sent and I sent them to the other ministers for comments because I'm not making the changes now. This is their joint comment:

'SPH (Singapore Press Holdings) have put down the standard issues which critics raise. They do not necessarily believe in all these criticisms but are raising them just to elicit your response. We're not claiming our present position is fixed and must never be changed. It will evolve over time with new generations of leaders and voters. Leaders and voters must work the system in their own way. The test of our election system is not whether there is an independent elections commission, but whether voting is honestly administered and whether it produces governments which enjoy legitimacy and govern the country well.'

...They're thinking of all the possible ways to break down a seemingly impregnable PAP. Open up the press, dissolve the NTUC, don't have the symbiosis. You'll end up dissolving institutions we have created that have made Singapore successful. Anybody who takes over should work those institutions. And I do not see any opposition team emerging in the next election that is capable enough remotely to do the job. I do not see it, neither does the present leadership.

Just in the next election or several more? 

This is the view of the younger ministers: 'In recent GEs (general elections), many seats have been uncontested and the PAP has won an overwhelming majority in Parliament. We should not assume that this is a permanent state of affairs. For a start, the increase in the number of NCMPs (non-constituency MPs) will encourage more opposition candidates to stand, especially in the GRCs (group representation constituencies), and try their luck. If voters elect more opposition MPs, so be it. But we do not believe that helping to build an opposition, to buy insurance in case the PAP fails, will work. Instead, it will lead to more party politicking and distraction from long-term issues.'

That's their position. It's not very far removed from mine but then there's been osmosis all these years. They've been running the system, they have been going down to the ground. They have held the ground. Your questions should be put to them.

The future, I can only determine in my lifetime - and in this case my political lifetime. You may or may not believe me, but I'm no longer the decision-maker. Yes, I have influence. Yes, I make them pause and think again. But they make the decisions because it is they who will have to carry the ground and be responsible for the future. I tell them that I no longer have the same feel.

So, you don't see any opposition being able to offer an alternative? 

Is there an alternative? I don't see it. One way is for the PAP to break up into two parts. Will that help? For one, two elections? Then what? And then the opposition that doesn't get into power will say, I want to come back to the PAP. I don't want to sit out in the opposition benches. Makes no sense, right? We're going to tap the same limited talent pool...

So you believe Singapore cannot have an alternative set of leaders because of a lack of talented people rather than what the PAP has done to fix the system, as it were? 

 Because the talent is not there. In the opposition you ask questions and you vote no and so on, just posturing. What's the alternative? They can come up with an alternative? Rubbish. They know that. Sylvia Lim (non-constituency MP) acknowledges that they're in no position to run the government.

What do you mean when you said earlier that there will come a time when people will tire of the PAP government? 

There will come a time when eventually the public will say, look, let's try the other side, either because the PAP has declined in quality or the opposition has put up a team which is equal to the PAP and they say, let's try the other side. That day will come.

I mean, the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan carried on from the 1950s until now. I think they took over in 1955. (The LDP held power from 1955 to 2009 with an 11-month interruption between 1993 and 1994.) That's four years before we did, but they have come apart partly because they carried on with old ideas.

No system lasts forever, that's for sure. In the next 10 years to 20 years, I don't think it'll happen. Beyond that, I cannot tell. Will we always be able to get the most dedicated and the most capable, with integrity to devote their lives to this? I hope so, but forever, I don't know.

I can see the change in my grandchildren's generation. It's a change in values and attitudes of a different generation who feels that, you know, I'm not going to spend my life in public service like my father or my uncle. I see no reason for that. The place is running, let somebody else do it. Who is that somebody else? Have we got such a plethora of talent, capable, honest, dedicated? We haven't.
So, I can't tell you what it will be in 30 years. It could well be after it's broken up or threatens to break up, the people with a stake in it will either pack up and leave or take over and say, look, let's run this. 

Don't you see it as beneficial to you to create the conditions for a more gradual evolution for the sake of the sustainability and stability of the system going forward? I do not believe for one moment that if we can get a small group of two or three, it will grow, because how are they going to grow? Chiam See Tong found Chee Soon Juan and it collapsed. Jeyaretnam found Francis Seow. Who else? Low Thia Khiang found who? Sylvia Lim.

Some people would say the barriers to contesting elections are so high. All you need is your deposit and a lot of sweat.

If you look at the political system today, are you satisfied with the level of competition that exists now? We'll be quite happy if we get a small group of equal calibre contesting against us. I mean, you look at the NMPs (nominated MPs), they talk more sense than the opposition politicians. Would they fight an election? No. So? They have the brain power, they have the knowledge, but they're not prepared to jump into the rough sea.

Many people say they are intimidated by the PAP. There is the climate of fear, crackdown on dissent and so on. No, no. Are you intimidated?

Since I'm asking you this question, obviously I'm not. But the fear is very real out there, when we interview people, they say it. The perception is fairly pervasive even among the professionals. Why should you, if you believe you're any good? This chap who stood up for gay rights, (former NMP) Siew Kum Hong, is not intimidated. We have no objections if he goes and joins the Workers' Party. He takes us on, we'll take him on. That's part of politics.

How confident are you that the system you have set in place will survive that moment when people say, yes, they've tired of the PAP government? It depends on when it happens and whether it's all of a sudden or it's gradually. If the decline in standards happens gradually, an opposition of quality will be launched. The public can sense it. If it is sudden, well, you're landed with an emergency, and unless a credible team emerges, the country will start to go down the drain.

What's your greatest fear for Singapore? I think a leadership and a people that have forgotten, that have lost their bearings and do not understand the constraints that we face. Small base, highly organised, very competent people, complete international confidence, an ability to engage the big countries. We lose that, we're down. And we can go down very rapidly.

After 57 years in politics, what are the most important lessons that you would distil for an aspiring politician in Singapore? 

You must have convictions. If you don't have convictions, you are going in for personal glory or honour or publicity or popularity, forget it. Do something else. When you want to go in, you take this job on like my original team did: 'This is for life.' We were putting our lives at stake taking on the communists. If you lose, they'll pull our fingernails out and brainwash us and we know that and they make no bones about it. That's number one, you must have the convictions to want to do it, and do it not for glory but because you feel you have to do this.

Were there ever times that you felt that you just had enough, when your convictions were really being tested? 

The more we're being tested, the more I have to be around to make sure we pass the test. No, no, this is a life-long commitment. What are the things important to me in my life? My family and my country. My family, my wife looked after. She brought up the children. I spent some time with them, trying to impart some values. Twice a year to hill stations, when I could go off on leave. I think they've grown up with the right values. But Singapore is an ever-going concern. Singapore is my concern till the end of my life. Why should I not want Singapore to continue to succeed?

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'I see no reason why I should impress people by having a big car or changing my suits every now and again to keep up with the latest styles.'

MM Lee is known in Singapore for his simple, down-to-earth lifestyle. He lives in a house which has not been renovated for decades in Oxley Road, prime real estate in the city area. He wears the same worsted wool suits when travelling on planes to go overseas. He was, in a sense, an ecologically conscious consumer long before such a concept became fashionable. Never in favour of the disposable society, he believes in the value of thrift, not over-consuming resources. The day this interview took place, he was wearing a jacket so old, he confessed that the man who tailored it for him had died. His lifestyle is so spartan, he considers it an extravagance for the Prime Minister to wear a new shirt each year for the National Day Rally.

Do you try to recycle? 

We haven't got the system of different dustbins for different items. Our people have yet to understand and would not be able to do it: Bottles, tins, food go into different chutes and bags. We'll get there sometime.

Another part of being environmentally conscious is not to consume so much, and you're not particularly a great consumer? 

No, I'm not. I eat less, I travel less. I wonder whether I'm right in buying my car. Even if I travelled by the best Mercedes-Benz taxi limousine, it'll cost me less than what my Lexus is costing me every day. Except that I don't know what time I'm going to wake up, and take the one kilometre to office, one kilometre back. My car is five years old and it's only done 20,000km. 

In photographs we can see that your wardrobe, your shirts, seem to have been kept for years, decades. You don't throw away your stuff. 

Why should I throw something away which I'm comfortable with? I'm not interested in impressing anybody.
I had a supervisor who taught me criminal law. He used to be a lecturer but, you know, he became old, so he only did supervisions and he had a fireplace that did not give out any smoke because he was gassed in the First World War, and he had a lung problem. He also had a large family. He had leather patches on his coat elbows, knees of his trousers. One student was bold enough to ask him, 'Sir, are you lacking in clothing?' He took it gracefully. He laughed and said, 'That college porter at the gate has to be dressed well. He wears a top hat, always to look smart. I don't have to dress to impress anybody.'
As I listened to that, I said, 'It's inverted snobbery.' But it makes sense. I see no reason why I should impress people by having a big car or changing my suits every now and again to keep up with the latest styles.
The trouble is my wardrobe is now full up. I've got many new suits that are absolutely in good condition because I seldom wear them. I don't go to office every day wearing a suit, except for formal functions or when I am abroad. They are of finest worsted wool. In fact, the older I get, the less willing I am to spend time putting on a suit and tie. I just have a blouson or a buttoned-up Chinese jacket, and it saves a lot of trouble. I have had them for many years and they are very comfortable.

Isn't it a virtue though? 

No, it is not. You may say it's a virtue, others think, why is this chap that thrifty? Watch other prime ministers. They always have new ties, new shirts and suits to look good on TV.
I mean, you look at our Prime Minister. He wears a new shirt every year for the National Day Rally. Look, I have no reason to want to impress anybody. 

May I ask, how many years have you had your jacket? 

This one? It's a very comfortable jacket. The man who tailored it for me is dead. 

How many years have you had it? 

I can't remember now. Nearly two decades or 15 years. And it's very comfortable.

That applies to your house as well. I mean MM, I haven't been there but people who have been there say you've not done much to renovate and to upgrade it. 

I've told the Cabinet, when I'm dead, demolish it.

Why? 

Because I think, I've seen other houses, Nehru's, Shakespeare's. They become a shambles after a while. People trudge through. Because of my house the neighbouring houses cannot build high. Now demolish my house and change the planning rules, go up, the land value will go up.

But isn't that part of Singapore history? 

No, no, no. You know the cost of preserving it? It's an old house built over a hundred years ago. No foundation. The cost of maintaining it, damp comes up the wall because there's no foundation. So the piling in the neighbourhood has made cracks in my walls. But fortunately the pillars are sound.

By your comment then, you don't place great store on preserving old buildings? It's like the old National Library, no architectural significance but when it was torn down I think a lot of people still bemoan its loss today. 

I don't think my daughter or my wife or I, who lived in it, or my sons who grew up in it will bemoan its loss. They have old photos to remind them of the past.

Lai Teck - the traitor of all traitors

Jan 21, 2011

By Barry Wain
WHEN Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) boss Lai Teck failed to show for a special Central Committee meeting near Kuala Lumpur in early 1947, Chin Peng, a ranking colleague, suspected the worst. He thought Lai Teck had been picked up by the Special Branch.
Chin Peng headed for a house where Lai Teck - married with two children in Singapore - usually stayed with his Chinese mistress when he was in the area. She told him Lai Teck had been and gone.
Now worried that the Special Branch had kept the Central Committee gathering under surveillance, Chin Peng went underground for a week.
By the time he re-established contact with the party, concern had switched from the snooping British colonial police to focus on Lai Teck himself. The man who had served as secretary-general of the CPM for eight years - having been elected to the post at the outbreak of World War II - had disappeared.
Also missing were most of the party's considerable funds, consisting of gold ingots and sheets, 130,000 Straits dollars in cash and a stack of currency notes issued by the Japanese occupation administration during the war.
While the CPM established a three-man panel to investigate the affair, the senior communists recognised immediately the ugly truth:
Lai Teck, who had been re-elected secretary-general only a year earlier, months after the British had re-occupied Singapore and Malaya, was a traitor.
The stories circulating about Lai Teck having collaborated with the Japanese - which he had been summoned to address at the aborted Central Committee meeting - were true.
With no qualms, he had betrayed his comrades in spectacular fashion to the dreaded Kempeitai, the Japanese secret police, condemning dozens, if not hundreds, to certain death and temporarily crippling the clandestine communist movement - in particular its military wing, the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army, or MPAJA.
It was a year before the Central Committee received the panel's report, formally expelled Lai Teck from the party and disseminated the sordid details to party members.
Actually, what the Central Committee did not say, and apparently did not know, was even more damning. Lai Teck had not just collaborated with the Japanese. He was also a British plant who had infiltrated the CPM with the express purpose of destroying it.
He had opened the way for his leadership ambitions by passing on incriminating information to his Special Branch handlers in Singapore. That invariably led to the detention or death of party rivals.
Moreover, unknown to both the Japanese and the CPM, Lai Teck had earlier double-crossed the communist party in his native Vietnam and become an informer for the French colonial authorities there.
Covering his tracks expertly, the French intelligence agency in Indochina had then passed him along to its British counterpart, the Special Branch in Singapore, when he was no longer useful in Vietnam.
The French did such an effective job in spreading the false word that dedicated Vietnamese communists long believed Lai Teck had fled to Thailand to escape 'French repression'.
His exploits are recorded in the latest issue of the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, under the appropriate heading, 'Traitor of all Traitors'.
His tale is told by Dr Leon Comber, a former member of the Malayan Special Branch, who is now attached to Monash University's Monash Asia Institute in Australia. He currently is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.
Dr Comber adds to Lai Teck's profile by including information provided by Chin Peng and a Western academic doing research in Vietnam. But Lai Teck remains elusive. Dr Comber could find no specific Special Branch file on him in the official archives of Britain, Australia, Malaysia or Singapore.
Lai Teck's role in modern South-east Asian history is important, and not just because of the mystique that surrounds him.
It was Lai Teck - under the alias Chang Hong, one of at least 26 he used - who signed an agreement with British officers in 1943 that committed the CPM and the Allies to cooperate with each other to fight the Japanese for the duration of the war. The Allied South-east Asia Command based in Ceylon covertly supplied weapons, training and cash to the MPAJA in occupied Malaya.
It was also Lai Teck who made the first personal contact, in Hong Kong after the war, with the Chinese Communist Party, seeking advice on whether the CPM should resort to armed struggle in Malaya. The Chinese advice evidently was: Form a united front with all anti-colonial forces and strive for self-government by constitutional means.
And it was Lai Teck's disappearance that opened the way for Chin Peng - decorated by the British for his war-time bravery - to become secretary-general of the CPM at the age of 23.
Chin Peng led the Malayan National Liberation Army in an unsuccessful guerilla war against first the British colonial authorities and later the federal Malayan government from 1948 to 1960. He represented the CPM at the failed peace talks in Baling in 1955 with then Malayan Chief Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman and then Singapore Chief Minister David Marshall. Chin Peng finally reached an agreement with the Malaysian and Thai governments in 1989 to formally end hostilities.
The Lai Teck mystery begins with his communist activity and subsequent defection in southern Vietnam, and continues after he left the country with French help.
Some researchers believe he went to Moscow and joined the Third International, the Comintern, which then controlled all communist activities outside the Soviet Union. His trail leads to China, where he is thought to have worked for the Comintern's Far Eastern Bureau.
In his 2003 autobiography, Chin Peng dismisses the Moscow-China connection as conjecture. But he admitted to Dr Comber that Lai Teck was given the nickname Ah Lin, or 'Malaya's Lenin', because of his impressive knowledge of communist theory.
In any event, Lai Teck's claim to Comintern status, which implicitly proclaimed his revolutionary credentials and sophistication, impressed the provincial CPM when he arrived in Singapore in the early 1930s. The party signed him up as a member, even as he was being assigned to a Cantonese-speaking case officer in the Singapore Special Branch.
With secret Special Branch help, this foreigner - son of a Vietnamese father and Chinese mother, who spoke heavily accented Cantonese and Mandarin and whose real name was unknown to anyone in the CPM - rose rapidly to the top of the party. A mole at the heart of party central was a breathtaking coup for British intelligence.
Lai Teck's collaboration with the Kempeitai during the war included the preparation of a CPM organisational chart that enabled the Japanese to systematically target, torture and kill key personnel. By April 1943, he was the only CPM Central Committee member to have survived the Japanese dragnet.
Once, when a captured party member learnt of Lai Teck's perfidy and managed to get word to the CPM, Lai Teck arranged for the man to be released by the Japanese, successfully branded him a traitor and had him buried alive.
Lai Teck did not rat on the British officers working behind the lines with the MPAJA, displaying what one of them preferred to think of as a 'residual loyalty' to the British. But, of course, keeping them onside was merely an insurance policy for Lai Teck, who could see by the trend of events that the Allies were likely to win the war.
Even in the annals of espionage, where monumental feats of daring, danger and deception are common, Lai Teck was exceptional. In British or American terms, write scholars C.C. Chin and Karl Hack, it was as if Prime Minister Winston Churchill or President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had turned out to be spies for Josef Stalin.
It is hard to fathom the philandering Lai Teck's motive. The connecting thread at nearly every stage of his career was disloyalty - but why? What drove him?
We can only guess. All we know is that his triple-faced treachery did not end happily.
Finally confronted by Thai and Chinese communists in Bangkok in 1947, he resisted and was strangled - accidentally, they said. His body was stuffed in a gunny sack and dumped into a klong (canal).
He was 44.
The writer is a writer-in-residence at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
Spies By Ben Jonson
Spies, you are lights in state, but of base stuff,
Who, when you've burnt yourselves down to the snuff,
Stink and are thrown away. End fair enough.

Chess experts use brain differently than amateurs

Jan 21, 2011

WASHINGTON - EXPERTS use different parts of their brains than amateurs, maximising intuition, goal-seeking and pattern-recognition, said a study out on Thursday that examined players of shogi, or Japanese chess.
Researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to compare the brain activity of amateurs and professionals who were presented with various shogi board patterns and were told to think of their next move.
They found that certain regions of expert brains lit up, while the amateurs' did not, said the research led by scientist Xiaohong Wan and published in the journal Science. When they asked players to mull their next move, experts' brains showed more activity in the area associated with visualising images and episodic memory, known as the precuneus area of the parietal lobe.
When pressed to come up quickly with a move, activity surged in another region called the caudate nucleus, where goal-directed behaviour is rooted.
'This activation did not occur in the amateurs or when either group took their time in planning their next move,' said the study. Researchers believe that experts who train for years in shogi are actually perfecting a circuit between the two regions that helps them quickly recognise the state of the game and choose the next step.
'Being 'intuitive' indicates that the idea for a move is generated quickly and automatically without conscious search, and the process is mostly implicit,' said the study. 'This intuitive process occurs routinely in experts, and thus it is different from inspiration, which occurs less frequently and unpredictably.' -- AFP

Lessons for US in Tunisian revolt

Jan 20, 2011

By Mohamad Bazzi

THE Arab world is jubilant over the popular uprising in Tunisia that forced President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to flee last week after 27 years in power.

Everyone is wondering whether the example set by Tunisians will spread to other dictatorships in the Middle East. In recent weeks, small protests have erupted in Algeria, Jordan and Egypt over rising food prices, unemployment and government corruption. But if protests take hold in those countries, the security forces will likely use far more violence to suppress dissent than was used in Tunisia.

It is also unclear what kind of political system will emerge from the revolt in Tunisia. If a military strongman takes control as a 'saviour', or if Mr Ben Ali's cronies manage to hold on to power after the chaos subsides, then the prospect of revolutionary change could become less appealing to other Arabs.

But one thing is clear: People in the Middle East have given up any hope that the United States can be a force for change. As the uprising spread in Tunisia, Washington stayed largely silent until the day Mr Ben Ali fled. That was when President Barack Obama issued a statement condemning the use of violence against peaceful protesters and applauding 'the courage and dignity' of Tunisians. But it was too late: The US-backed dictator was gone, and the Arab world noted another instance where Washington favoured stability over democracy.

The Obama administration inherited a decades-old US policy of supporting autocratic regimes in exchange for political acquiescence. Most governments in the Middle East rely on vast secret police agencies to keep them in power, using the 'war on terror' as a cover to silence any opposition. These regimes put on a veneer of stability for the West, but in reality their political systems are weak, corrupt and calcified.

On Jan 13, a day before Mr Ben Ali's fall, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton lectured a group of Arab leaders assembled in Qatar on the danger of their countries 'sinking into the sand' unless they reform their political systems and economies. 'Those who cling to the status quo may be able to hold back the full impact of their countries' problems for a little while, but not forever,' she said. 'If leaders don't offer a positive vision and give young people meaningful ways to contribute, others will fill the vacuum.'

Mrs Clinton's words appeared prophetic the next day. But she neglected to mention that most of these leaders were US allies who had heard the same rebukes from American officials many times.

In June 2005, then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the world that America would no longer support repressive regimes in the name of political expediency. 'We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people,' she declared.

For a brief period, her message resonated in the Arab world. It was five months after Iraqis showed extraordinary bravery by turning out in droves to vote in the parliamentary elections of January 2005. In Lebanon, a popular revolt had helped dislodge years of Syrian military and political domination. At that moment, the US could have encouraged some genuine change in the region.

But things fell apart when Washington confronted its first test: In late 2005, a small group of Egyptian judges challenged President Hosni Mubarak's authoritarian regime. The US stood by silently while Mr Mubarak crushed public protests.

Washington fears that supporting reform in the region would bring Islamist groups to power. Without any space for popular-based political movements to emerge, Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt have the greatest influence through their social service networks. These well-organised groups would likely win any free balloting, so the autocratic rulers have a convenient bogeyman to avoid elections.

[Perhaps. Perhaps the Islamist bogeyman is a consideration. But going around supporting rebellion or revolution is not diplomatic behaviour, but would be considered an act of war.]

But democracy is not just about voting. It is a slow process of promoting individual rights and building up civil society, an independent judiciary and state institutions. These efforts take time and they make a far less glamorous photo op than a quick election.

Mr Obama himself took up the soaring oratory of democracy promotion in his much-celebrated address to the Muslim world in June 2009. Yet he chose to deliver this message in Egypt, where Mr Mubarak has clung to power since 1981 under emergency laws that allow him to imprison thousands of dissidents without trial, and to stifle peaceful political activity. His regime receives nearly US$1.8 billion (S$2.3 billion) a year in American assistance, making it the second-highest beneficiary of US foreign aid after Israel.

Since that speech, Mr Obama's aides have been reluctant to criticise US allies who fall short of the ideals about which the President had spoken so eloquently. The administration has also blocked threats by members of Congress to link future US assistance to reform or improvements in Egypt's human rights record.

With Tunisia's revolution, Mr Obama missed a chance to show the Arab world that he can live up to his lofty rhetoric. He must seize the next opportunity to portray America as a more sympathetic power - a country that sticks up for the little guy and does not tolerate repression.

The writer is an adjunct senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in the United States.

[The problem is that in world relations, governments deal with the government of the day or risk being seen as interfering with the internal issues of a foreign country. For as long as there is a diplomatic solution, you work with the govt of the day. Even in N. Korea, deals are worked out with the govt in power. It is not for the US to back any political groups in another country. Even if the US-backed party emerges triumphant, its legitimacy would be in doubt. There will be nationalistic feelings, and the there will always be the taint that the new govt is a US puppet, or that the US is exporting imperialism by proxy.

What the US has done is correct. Persuading the govt of the day to be open to democracy, to encourage civil society to grow, to promote political activism. Anything else more than that would be suspect. Expecting more than that is idealistic.]

Making Singaporeans feel this is home in a global city

Jan 18, 2011

By Wong Kan Seng

IN THE past 10 years, we have made great strides towards becoming a global city and society. We have attracted many international players in industries such as pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, alternative energy, aerospace engineering and tourism. We have broadened and deepened the base of our economy. The developments around Marina Bay have created one of the most striking downtown landscapes in the world. Our residential heartlands are also being remade and rejuvenated.

Our voice is heard in international forums and taken seriously only because we are successful. If we are not, no one will pay attention to us. According to a study by Foreign Policy magazine, consulting firm A.T. Kearney and the Chicago Council, Singapore is one of the top 10 global cities in the world in terms of how much influence it has beyond its own borders, and how well it interacts with global markets, culture and innovation.

Yet not all Singaporeans are comfortable with the pace of change and developments. I can understand why, and I empathise with them. Some point out that the pace of life has picked up too fast, and they are experiencing higher levels of stress. Some attribute problems related to congestion and increased prices to the presence of many foreigners, and feel we should admit fewer of them. Others are concerned about potential erosion of our Singaporean identity, as we become more cosmopolitan. In short, some Singaporeans wonder whether a global city can also be an endearing home.

For Singapore, becoming a global city is not merely an aspiration. It is a pre-requisite for our survival. Being open is the only viable option for us if we wish to be self-reliant and continue to prosper. Closing our doors would only turn us into an island of no consequence, unable to provide for our people. We will become irrelevant to the world. Being open allows us to connect and trade with the rest of the world, and to attract the best investments and talents to Singapore. Being open also helps us to overcome our physical constraints and small population.

At the same time, Singapore has to be more than a global city. More than anything else, this is our home, a place where we belong. Other global cities like New York, London, Tokyo and Hong Kong, are connected to wider hinterlands which provide a constant source of skills and labour to sustain their competitiveness. People in these cities can opt to move out of the city to another part of the same country for a more leisurely pace of life, lower costs of living. As a small city state, we are not like New York, London or Tokyo. Our city is our country and our home.

Most global cities have sizeable populations. New York, London, Tokyo and Hong Kong all have populations of between seven and nine million. Many aspiring global cities, like Shanghai, have much more. While population size is not everything, it provides the critical mass to attract investors and grow domestic markets. Singapore, however, is a compact city state, and any growth in population size must be balanced against the need to maintain a liveable environment and a harmonious ambience.

Global cities are also centres of change, open to constant flows of people, capital, technology and ideas. To thrive, global cities remake themselves from time to time. Too much change, however, and we risk losing the essence of home. Home is about familiarity, stability and comfort. We want to retain the vibrancy and dynamism of a city on the move, without eroding the sense of belonging and pride in our shared heritage.

The way forward
RESOLVING these tensions of size and change will be tough, but it is not 'mission impossible'. These are the challenges that will drive and shape the work of the newly inaugurated National Population and Talent Division (NPTD). The NPTD's key function is to formulate, coordinate and review the whole of government policies related to population and talent. It will focus on achieving a sustainable population profile. It is about navigating a path that allows us to grow as a global city, yet remain a distinctive and endearing home. In doing so, the NPTD, with other government departments and agencies, will be guided by three key principles.

The first principle is to retain and preserve what is unique and distinct about Singapore.

To some, what makes Singapore distinct is the presence of family and friends, and the treasured memories of growing up in Singapore. To others, it could be our unique food culture, or our way of life. To Singaporean men, it is the memorable experience of national service which has instilled a deep sense of why we must defend our country.

To me, what is distinctive and unique about Singapore boils down to two aspects. One is our national character, shaped by our forefathers and by our journey in nation-building. Being descendants of immigrants who had to make a living on unfamiliar shores, we value hard work, thrift and honesty. This is the basis of our meritocratic society.

Despite living in a highly urbanised environment, many of us still subscribe to the gotong royong spirit of neighbourliness and mutual assistance. We can be competitive, or kiasu, but we also have a strong tradition of philanthropy, volunteerism and caring for one another. We can see this in the early years when migrants came to settle down in Singapore, where they extended mutual help to one another. We are an orderly, law-abiding people, but not so serious that we cannot poke fun at ourselves, with a humour that is folksy and unpretentious.

But no matter how much better life has become for us, all true-blue Singaporeans will readily sit down at a hawker centre table and heartily enjoy the same hawker food that nourished our forefathers decades ago. Our habits and character as a people reflect the simplicity of our roots.
Second is our multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-lingual society. Our diverse roots and decades of living together helped us to understand the importance of tolerance, harmony and unity which have been painstakingly fostered and nurtured. This is a unique feature of Singapore which we must treasure. Most of us are so used to this that we do not even think of it as unusual. It has become part of our DNA. But to the casual visitors, this is an achievement that they truly marvel and admire.

In managing our population, we will always be guided by the need to preserve a strong citizen core, and to maintain stability in our ethnic mix.

The second principle is to ensure that growth and change is for the benefit of Singaporeans.

One tangible benefit of becoming a global city is our increased links with the rest of the world. As we grow, there will be an increase in job opportunities. The strong economic growth last year corresponded with low unemployment rates. While growth in 2011 is unlikely to be as exceptional as in 2010, there will be many job opportunities available for Singaporeans. There are many measures in place for Singaporeans to upgrade their skills.

With economic growth come more choices and options to enrich our lives. Today, we see services or products that would have been considered 'niche' 20 years ago. As recently as 10 years ago, the Esplanade, a world-class theatre and performance venue, did not exist. Even in essential areas such as education, economic growth has expanded our choices. We have now many pathways beyond O levels. And they can achieve their full potential: If they're good sportsmen, they go to the Sports School. Potential artists go to our Arts School. And they don't have to leave home to pursue these interests today.

The Government has pledged that Singaporeans' interest comes first. We will continue to ensure that any growth and change is to the benefit of Singaporeans.

Ensuring sufficient manpower for economic growth and mitigating the impact of ageing are two other needs that must be managed in achieving a sustainable population profile for Singapore.

The key hurdle to achieving a sustainable population lies in our local fertility rate, which is quite weak. For more than 30 years, we have not been having enough babies to replace ourselves. Preliminary estimates indicate that our resident total fertility rate has fallen to 1.16 in 2010, even lower than the 1.22 recorded in 2009. The going is hard, but we have not given up. We will continue to support couples' decisions to get married and have children, and aim to create a pro-family environment. To be realistic, however, we must accept that boosting fertility will take time. For the foreseeable future, we will need to tap immigration to augment our population, to support economic growth and to mitigate the impact of ageing.

The third principle is to stay nimble and be ready to make adjustments along the way.

We will continue to monitor the impact of our population policies closely and introduce refinements when necessary. We have already tightened the immigration framework to better manage the inflow and quality of new immigrants in the last quarter of 2009. As a result, the number of new permanent residence passes granted has been falling - from 59,460 in 2009, to 29,265 in 2010, and we have observed an improvement in the quality of new permanent residents (PRs). Because we have been able to attract new citizens of good quality, the number of new citizenships granted has remained relatively steady at 19,928 for 2009 and 18,758 for 2010.

We have also drawn sharper distinctions between the benefits Singaporeans, PRs and other foreigners enjoy, in areas such as housing, education and health care. This underlines our principle that Singaporeans will enjoy priority over non-citizens.

Singapore's population story is still evolving. Continual refinements need to be made at appropriate junctures to ensure that Singapore will remain our best home. Like other countries around the world, we must continue to welcome suitably qualified people to work and live in Singapore, and contribute to our society. Whatever we do, we will ensure that Singaporeans will benefit from growth and change. The benefits will be concrete. We will not leave behind those who need more help. The surpluses we have set aside in good times can be tapped to look after the needs of the old and the poor.

This is an edited extract of a speech by the Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for National Security at the Singapore Perspectives 2011 conference yesterday. He is also the Minister in charge of the National Population and Talent Division.