tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-600802170849928872.post4217841796774623923..comments2023-10-29T15:18:25.355+08:00Comments on de minimis: Dalian, the Bangalore of Chinade minimishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06478671079348612565noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-600802170849928872.post-89994919444010970072009-09-17T17:56:17.445+08:002009-09-17T17:56:17.445+08:00Which remains for us to ask ourselves why it has d...Which remains for us to ask ourselves why it has disappeared from the mainstream here that magic phrase used so many times in the past - "masterplan"?<br /><br />What is our industrial or national development masterplan today? Why has that word disappeared? <br /><br />To hazard a wild guess, it has disappeared as folklore because we have strategised ourselves into a hapless and helpless corner. There aren't any more grand ideas we can push in order to excite the people and ignite investment activity because we have literally finished off all our comparative advantages in living memory when we started with a growing economy while others were still fighting their bush-fires. Now our learning and performance curves are declining while theirs are upclimbing. <br /><br />To a large part, our national wealth and economic well-being depend on foreign investments. If they have the cherry pickings of places like Dalian, why should they park themselves here? Some of the old ones have left as too some of our own local companies.<br /><br />If people think that we are a nation of slow learners but quick burners, they cannot be faulted for taking their training manuals elsewhere. <br /><br />In a world where the only KPI is win over lose, winners who fall asleep will quickly become losers. <br /><br />We may try to take some modicum of comfort in our present rankings. But any investor worth his salt will be wise not to depend on rankings alone. He will call for those factors which directly affect his business. One common factor is brain power. Brains mean knowhow. Knowhow means learning. Learning means language. <br /><br />Once investments pick up in knowhow industries, then we will have a knowledge-based service-oiled high-income economy. Which will sprout metropolitan lifestyles on which we can then incubate by cross-pollinating network interfaces the very software and intellectual money-spinning activities that will create the new business models which will succeed in this new century of changing consumer profiles. If you have seen Spielsberg's Minority Report last night, it may come to that - all about computing power and virtuality in daily life.<br /><br />One may however depend on luck for good fortune but to put it mildly there is high likelihood it would be a safer bet to be so extensively good in something that all in the world will come looking for that accumulated expertise. Knowledge, will and skills provide surer tracks to excellence and opportunities. <br /><br />...................................<br /><br />http://is.gd/3nakB<br />http://is.gd/3nao1<br />http://is.gd/3nar8<br />http://is.gd/3nayU<br />http://is.gd/3navSwallahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17580252352785040456noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-600802170849928872.post-78325492024360092082009-09-17T17:54:52.226+08:002009-09-17T17:54:52.226+08:00At one sumptuous vegetarian lunch, the head of one...At one sumptuous vegetarian lunch, the head of one local logistics company took a customer call from overseas and proceeded to speak with offhand ease in japanese. What would have been historically expected to be a negative has been deftly turned into something effervescently positive. Energetic and intelligent, that young lady exuded intelligence in a way which makes one understand why the japanese, master globalists themselves in the last century, were quick to admit admiration for the speed and completeness in which the Chinese entrepreneurs and industrialists have been able to catch up on the global game. Because their worldview has remained intact all along from generation to generation across the centuries. <br /><br />Geography was not a problem because culture was not a question because the politics was pragmatic because the individual spirit was progressive.<br /><br />The city itself is just a short hop by plane from Beijing which is just a short trip by train from Tianjin. The whole area formed by that triangle in this north-eastern region of the country receives much FDI, notably from South Korea and Japan, and increasingly from the americans across the ocean.<br /><br />Also a tourist attraction local and inbound, Dalian is a weekend getaway for many who have made their pile enough to buy the many modern condo's which are a reflection of the country's rapid re-ascension.<br /><br />China has four seasons; the two mild ones provide welcome relief from the heat of the summer and the cold of the winter. Yet its peoples have been seen to work right through all four seasons as though nothing disturbs their desire to progress themselves. You can see the same earnest hard work in the way the indonesians go to work at the break of dawn. Time is seldom wasted. One wonders if China has only one mild season how many percent more would have been her GDP growth rate per annum.<br /><br />.....................wallahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17580252352785040456noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-600802170849928872.post-76976528751366713102009-09-17T17:54:26.258+08:002009-09-17T17:54:26.258+08:00If they had been conversant in english or other tr...If they had been conversant in english or other trading languages, all of our sixty thousand unemployable graduates could have been absorbed into our local outsourcing and call-center industry. <br /><br />The training and exposure they would then be receiving would have stood good stead for them to later venture out on their own with greater confidence anywhere in the world.<br /><br />Since many of these unemployable graduates actually hail from the rural areas whose language difficulty is one of the reasons for the policy reversal, one is therefore left to ask whether clearer heads had prevailed when making the decision which will have far-reaching consequences on national development in all the years to come in our quest to reach developed nation status.<br /><br />The MOE must have made the reversal looking at just the rural problem without asking the questions of what is the current already-minute competitive advantage on hand in the whole country and where are the local sources of knowledge that is needed to compete in the near future.<br /><br />In the former, there are many schools whose students have already invested much effort to learn and use english. In the latter, there is no growing local sources of knowledge for nation-building because we don't do credible or commercialisable research such as found in prolific diversity in the english-speaking world.<br /><br />Putting the two together would have pointed out that a dual (or three) track system would have wiser. In fact the only course of direction to take, evidenced by the success of other economies which have done so with lesser sentimental frippery.<br /><br />Now we have one for all but all will only end up having none from the only relevant frame of reference out there - the world - simply because the output from our reversed system will soon be the input to provide future education, thereby perpetuating our global weakness. <br /><br />Left unattended, a self-inflicted wound will indubitably lead to gangrene, and amputation.<br /><br />If we look back all the past thirty years or more of government policies, there is a strong and probably supportable suspicion about something best left unsaid directly. However it will inescapably bring up memory of an old adage:<br /><br />"You cannot make the weak strong by making the strong weak."<br /><br />To say the least, it is most counter-productive to national progress to let concern for the weakest link in a chain override all other parts. The motor will sputter and the whole vehicle including its weakest links will stall by the roadside as others zoom past while one is still trying to crank up the engine with a spanner of ancient vintage.<br /><br />And that's the real metaphor in 1MalaysiaF1 for you.<br />......................<br /><br />Dalian is a lovely and throbbing sea-fronted international metropolis. It has an interesting history. Being the only locality there on which was fought a war by two foreign powers, remnants of russian and japanese architecture deck some parts of the city. <br /><br />In its suburbs lie those acres after acres of modern and well organized technology and industrial parks which make the most pointed statement about global-level progress repeated in many other places throughout that most populous country. <br /><br />There is a visible shift in focus from heavy industries to the soft brainpower industries of today. The pragmatism and single-minded will persists from government down to industry.wallahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17580252352785040456noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-600802170849928872.post-57641157352761225362009-09-17T09:10:04.032+08:002009-09-17T09:10:04.032+08:00DM,
Long ago when MSC was in the pipeline, I had ...DM,<br /><br />Long ago when MSC was in the pipeline, I had imagine Cyberjaya would be something akin to this outsourcing hub. <br /><br />Wonder what happened to all the fine vision from Tun Dr Mahathir, eh?<br /><br />Yes, I share your exasperation with MY's reversal of the PPSMI whatcammacallit.<br /><br />Others are moving forward, but we are pulling inside our tempurung thinking that whatever we have inside would suffice.<br /><br />Sigh...Raison D'etrehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00502897699976453728noreply@blogger.com