TR EMERITUS

The government of South Africa has asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to consider whether Israel’s plan to extend military operations in Rafah “requires that the court uses its power to prevent further imminent breach of the rights of Palestinians in Gaza”. It said in a statement that “the Court may at any time decide to examine proprio motu whether the circumstances of the case require the indication of provisional measures which ought to be taken or complied with by any or all of the parties”. The South African government added it was gravely concerned that the unprecedented military offensive against Rafah has already led to and will result in further large scale killing, harm and destruction, the statement said. “This would be in serious and irreparable breach both of the Genocide Convention and of the Court’s Order of 26 January 2024. South Africa trusts this matter will receive the necessary urgency in light of the daily death toll in Gaza”, it added. Al Jazeera’s Fahmida Miller has the latest from Johannesburg.    Read More →

Don’t Play God. It Always Ends Badly! I remember my late Father admonishing me in the early 80s for not keeping up with my Mandarin. I remember him telling me that one day China would be a very powerful country and that she was destined to play this role because she had the largest population in the World. My Father’s words were “Ren si jing”, literally translating to man is gold. Both my parents were Nantah graduates and they were filled with pride when Nixon made his historic opening to China in 1972. When my Father first brought me to China in 1985 when I had just finished NS and was only 20, I saw a backward country where there were no doors in public toilets, where the streets in Xian were pitch dark at night with no street lamps, where there were hardly any cars in Tiananmen Square but thousands of bicycles, and where young Chinese female University students were fawning over their African male counterparts (foreign students) in the lobby of the Beijing Hotel.The African students were greatly admired in those days because they were more affluent. Fast forward nearly 40 years and China has become the 2nd most powerful economy and is challenging American supremacy in many parts of the world. Foreign companies were tripping over themselves to invest in China to benefit from its incomparable population size.When I watch CCTV, there seems to be an African leader beating a path to Beijing every week to pay tribute to Xi Jingping. It is Africa’s turn to fawn over China because of the vast sums of money China is pouring into the African continent. My late Father’s words seem to have come true. But at the very moment when China ought to be celebrating her entrance on the stage as a world power, she is struck by a disability which threatens to forestall her progress and may even lead to her inevitable decline. Her population is shrinking and aging at an alarming pace. The decline in population is due primarily to short-sighted and misguided policies in the 70s and 80s which first restricted couples to having no more than 2 children and then subsequently one. Couples who breached these regulations were severely punished and there were even forced abortions. China’s population started to decline in 2022. The UN has projected that China’s population will decline from its peak of 1.426 billion in 2022 to about 774 million by the end of this century. This is a staggering decline of almost half. In a recent update, a research team from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences has predicted that China’s population will shrink to only 525 million by 2100. China with a population of 1.426 billion is a completely different proposition from a China with 774 million or 525 million. First, it will not have the global heft it now enjoys. Second, if you see GDP as a function of the number of people working and productivity, you are likely to conclude that China will not be the economic power she is today with a greatly reduced population. In Singapore, we face an even more daunting prospect because our TFR is one of the lowest in the world at 1.04. China’s TFR as of 2022 was 1.48. It takes a TFR of 2.1 to even just replace ourselves. A society which is unable to replace itself in the long run will not survive. That is why it is imperative for any new non-PAP government to overhaul our entire social structure so that couples can afford to have children.We must change our way of thinking. We must bring our insane cost of living down! We must bring our insane cost of public housing down! We must give free education including University, child care and pre-school to lessen significantly the cost pressures on parents so that they will want to have children. We must give priority to Singaporeans for good-paying jobs so that our workers are not living in anxiety as to whether they will lose their jobs. In short, it is time to treat every new born Singaporean as a National Asset and to redirect our resources to developing Singaporean talent and not harp on ”Foreign” talent. In times of war and crisis, it is foolhardy to believe the “foreign” talent will defend our land and families. It is equally foolhardy to think that the indigenous Singaporean is going to defend and die for his naturalised brother who was exempt from serving NS once he was 30 and above. You really have to be wet behind your ears to think the indigenous Singaporean will. And we are now entering a decade or two where wars and conflicts will pose an ever increasing danger to our safety and survival as a Nation. In the forthcoming budget, you will not see Lawrence Wong enact any meaningful change to reverse our dismal TFR. As in the usual PAP style, he will pay lip service to the importance of increasing the birth rate but he will be throwing crumbs to Singaporean parents. They will holler at him in derision and calculate that whatever additional baby bonus he may throw them will be destroyed by the rampant inflation in a very short time due to the inflationary policies introduced by him and the PAP such as the 9% GST hike. Our TFR will see a continuous slide in the coming years ( maybe there will be a slight baby bump this year because it is the year of the Dragon ). There will never be any significant improvement in our TFR under the PAP.   Lim Tean    Read More →

Is it possible to reverse our Total Fertility Rates (TFR) to at least the replacement level of 2.1? Our current TFR is at a very pathetic 1.04 per women of child bearing age. The very sorry TFR state is not an overnight phenomenal but rather crystal clear evidence that despite knowing how to pay themselves the world's highest political salary, the pap government has been sleeping on our plunging TRF issues and challenges over several decades. I repeat. The pap government has been sleeping on our plunging TRF issues for over 40 years! Everything in life is easier when you are rich and wealthy and Singapore is without doubt, a very, very, very wealthy country. The Stop at Two policy was a correct policy at the time when it was implemented. Many families then were poor and could ill-afford to feed more mouths but still, people continued to reproduce. Looking back over 4 decades, the pap government had at their finger tips all our national birth and death numbers but instead of working hard to reverse our falling and falling TFR, they opted for the easy and lazy quick fixes, ie, to pluck the low hanging fruits through immigration in order to make up for our population shortfall. Today, our country and her citizens are paying very heavy prices for their follies and those past ministers including current ones who were and are in charge were either dead, retired and/or enjoying their millions. What is needed to reverse the continuous fall is nothing short of a miraculous undertaking but I believe that it is still salvageable to some extend. We will need strong and serious political will across several terms of government, funds, resources, an all out and sustainable government propaganda blasting (in the past we called it campaign) which the pap government is very good at, religious elders chipping in efforts, changing of young people's mindset and managing expectations etc. In short, a whole of nation effort of over 5 or maybe even 10 years. It is no good to comfort ourselves that western countries, China, Japan and South Korea etc are not doing any better for the simple reason that politicians in those countries are not paid what lhl and his ministers are paying themselves. It is also fruitless to be doing more of the same things and hoping for different results. I can very easily go on... Think.   Simon Lim      Read More →