(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.