Right, bring back English schools would be a smart move for Malaysians

Bring back English schools

It is unhealthy for race relations when the student population in Chinese schools is 99.9% Chinese, Tamil schools is 100% Indian and national schools, dubbed Malay schools, is 80% to 90% Malay.

SERIOUSLY, the government should allow the use of English as a medium of instruction in schools again. If there are Chinese and Tamil primary schools alongside national schools, there is no reason for Malaysians not to have other options.

At present, the other option for better English proficiency is in private schools, which allocate more time for the teaching of English despite following the national school syllabus. However, it is an expensive option that only a few can afford.

Why should the right of Malaysians to study in English-medium schools be enjoyed only by those who can afford to study at international schools?

There are many good reasons for English-medium schools to be reintroduced, chief of which must surely be the language's neutral status whereby no one can claim ownership to it.

Older Malaysians who went to English-medium schools can testify that it was in such an environment that they made many friends of all ethnic backgrounds.

The English schools, as they were popularly referred to, were neutral grounds and were real cultural melting pots.

Friendship cultivated at primary school level among Malaysians of different races and religions would always be strong and deep. Our current primary school system basically does not provide such opportunities for our young ones to mix.

We do get to mix with one another later on in life, but working relationships that are untested or superficial are not true friendships.

Older Malaysians can narrate long stories of how they used to sleep over at their friends' homes, eating with their friends' families and parents of their friends treating them like their own children. These friendships continued even after they went to university, entered working life, and got married.

These are the kinds of friends who would be part of the wedding entourage, either on the side of the bride or bridegroom.

I am now 52 years old. I believe I was among the last batch of Malaysians who had the privilege of being taught in English.

While some may dismiss what I have said as elitist or an attempt to glorify English at the expense of the national language, let me set the record straight. In Form 6, I opted to study Malay Literature and sat for the exam in Upper Six, which was then called Higher School Certificate and is the equivalent of the STPM today. It was also the entrance exam into local universities. I also studied Islamic History.

During my first year at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, I also chose Malay Letters as one of my three majors. At UKM, it is also compulsory to pass the Islamic Civilisation course, which was a basic course on Islam. I have also amassed a huge collection of books on Islam in my private library, and the works of Malay artists like Yusuf Ghani and Ismail Latiff continue to inspire me.

I dare say many of our politicians and leaders of so-called non-governmental organisations, who loudly make statements with racial overtones, do not even have such credentials.

But the point I am making is that more and more Chinese parents are sending their children to Chinese primary schools because they believe the standard of teaching and discipline in these schools is better. For the same reason, the number of Malay students at such schools has also increased.

But most Malay parents send their children to national schools where they form the bulk of the student population. Over the years, the national schools have been seen by many Chinese as becoming more religious in nature.

It's a Catch 22 situation. If the Chinese are shunning national schools, then the students in these schools would be predominantly Malay.

The Federal Constitution guarantees the position of Chinese and Tamil schools. No politician, whether in Barisan Nasional or Pakatan Rakyat, would dare to make any statement against these vernacular schools.

But the reality is that it is unhealthy when the student population in Chinese schools is 99.9% Chinese, Tamil schools is 100% Indian and national schools, dubbed Malay schools, is 80% to 90% Malay!

It is meaningless to talk about 1Malaysia when our children have no friends of other races in their formative years! Many Malaysians in their 30s and 40s now are already in this situation.

Just ask Malaysians at random how many real friends of other races, not colleagues, customers or bosses, they have. Be honest.

Is it any wonder then that the Malays are incredulous when they see Chinese Malaysians who can't speak Bahasa Malaysia well or even refuse to speak Bahasa among themselves?

The Chinese, on the other hand, still wonder why some Malay quarters continue to ask what else the Chinese want when they find that some policies are working against them and make them feel discriminated.

This is happening because race relations have taken a beating. The various races are not talking or trying to understand one another. Each side only sees its own viewpoint without appreciating that in a complex and plural society like ours, no one group can have its way completely.

We have churned out bigots in our schools. It also doesn't help that the various races are only watching channels in their own languages on Astro. The only time they probably watch the same channel is when an English Premier League football match is on.

If we are serious about restoring the standard of English in schools and improving race relations in this country, bring back the English-medium schools. Let Malaysians choose.

On the Beat by WONG CHUN WAI

Yes, bring back English schools

I AGREE with Wong Chun Wai’s views as expressed in his On The Beat column to “Bring back English schools”.

It is timely for our Prime Minister and his new Cabinet to seriously consider bringing back English-medium schools to help foster racial unity among Malaysians.

Racial unity begins in the most formative years of our children, which is the time when they are in primary and secondary schools.

This is the time when they can easily relate to one another as true friends without even thinking of race, religion or social background.

I am 51 years old and a practising Buddhist. I was educated in a mission school, the St Xavier’s Institution in Penang, of which I am very proud of until today.

During our formative years, we had many close friends of all races. We played games together with the Malays and Indians after school, and usually ended up enjoying their families’ home-cooked food and hospitality.

It was during such moments that we not only appreciated the spicy curry dishes, but we also learned about their cultures.

These fond memories and happy moments with classmates like Mohd Farid, Mohd Salmi, Razak, Ismail Manaf, Chandran, Ravi, Richard Clarence and many others are still vivid in my mind.

But my own children, who are now in their teens, are not able to share similar moments.

Another good reason to bring back English-medium schools must surely be to improve our command of the language, both written and oral.

Many of our local university graduates have a very poor command of the language.

As a human resource practitioner for more than 15 years, I have met many of these fresh graduates who cannot speak properly, or even complete a conversation in English during interviews.

They prefer to speak either in Bahasa Malaysia or Mandarin because they did not grow up in an environment where they could use English more frequently.

It appears to me that those who go to government schools are greatly disadvantaged in this respect when compared to their peers who go to private or international schools.

In my time, we have no choice but to speak in English, as that was our common language in school.

Bringing these schools back will also give us a global competitive edge and help the nation in its economic transformation programme.

By MICHAEL HEAH Penang

English-medium schools seen as right move 

 
The Penang Free School is the first English School in Malaysia that was started in 1816 (It's still around!). As the population grows, more schools were built ranging from the Straits Settlement of Penang, Perak, Selangor, Malacca and Singapore. This has benefitted the urban people as they received education from these English schools.

PETALING JAYA: Bringing back English-medium schools as an option would be a smart move, say many groups.

Sarawak Teachers Union president William Ghani Bina said English is a global language.

“If we want our children to be global citizens, there are no two ways about it,” said Bina when commenting on The Star executive director and group chief editor Datuk Seri Wong Chun Wai's On the Beat column on bringing back English-medium schools.

In his column yesterday, Wong said that the Government should allow the use of English as a medium of instruction in schools again.

Wong added that if there are Chinese and Tamil primary schools alongside national schools, there is no reason for Malaysians not to have other options.

At present, he said the other option for better English proficiency is in private schools, which allocate more time for the teaching of English despite following the national school syllabus.

Parent Action Group for Education (PAGE) Malaysia chairman Datin Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim said English is the language of knowledge.

“As our students are not being taught in English, what we see is a loss of opportunity to acquire knowledge,” she said.

Microsoft Malaysia Legal and Corporate Affairs director Jasmine Belum said English is the language of business and technology.

“We want to make sure that Malaysians are proficient so that they are not at a competitive disadvantage,” she added.

Malaysian English Language Teaching Association (Melta) president Dr Ganakumaran Subramaniam agreed, saying that English-medium schools does not mean converting to a non-Malaysian curriculum.

“We also need to remember that if English is the medium only at international schools, then we are polarising our students further.

“There needs to be equal opportunity,” he added.

StarEducate columnist Mallika Vasugi said the neutrality of the English language also acts as a binding agent.
“What we see now in secondary schools is that different races tend to remain separate, based on their language.

“But what we also see is that those who mix around the most are the ones who speak English,” said Mallika who is also an English language teacher.

By LUWITA HANA RANDHAWA educate@thestar.com.my

My home, my school

More and more Malaysian parents are turning towards homeschooling today for various reasons. 

IF you ask Jeremy Lee* how much he likes school, chances are you'll get a rather frank reply.
“I don't like school. I get very restless, and then the teacher will make me stand in the corner and pull my ears,” he says.

Until three years ago, Jeremy, 11, was in a public school. And he had trouble fitting in.

“We put him in a public school for Year One and Two. From the start, it was clear he had difficulty adapting. We kept getting complaints from teachers that he could not concentrate, he couldn't stay in his seat long, he asked too many questions and was too opinionated.

“Soon, he was labelled as a difficult student and constantly punished,” his mother Sharon Lee*, 38, explains.

Jeremy adds that he had very few friends in school. “If you want to be friends with the good students, you have to be very, very good yourself. The other students are bullies. You have to pay them RM20 to be their friend,” he says.

Sharon says Jeremy had always been a bubbly and active child, but his personality began to change and his grades suffered. “He was so depressed and miserable, it was frightening. Going to school was like torture for him. He had tonnes of homework, but it was clear he wasn't learning anything. It was merely a process of doing lots of homework, and sitting for test after test.”

Jeremy's father Simon Lee* adds: “Initially, we thought maybe it's because we had been too easy on him, and so if we pushed him a little more, he would be able to do better. So we pushed him and we caned him ... but nothing worked.

“One day in the middle of all the caning, he just cried back You can cane me until I die, I still won't learn this!' That was when we knew it just wasn't working.”

Simon and Sharon began to explore other options, including homeschooling

“We read up, attended workshops ... we even visited families who practised homeschooling. After about a year of researching and weighing this option, we decided to give it a try,” Sharon says.

Dr Chiam: ‘Parents need to make sure that the (homeschooled) child is exposed to other environments.’

 They took Jeremy out of the school system when he was nine, and Sharon started teaching him at home. Today, Jeremy has been homeschooled for three years, and has his nine-year-old brother Matthew* for a classmate.

“I think homeschooling has helped him a lot. He likes to find things out on his own, rather than being force-fed information. He wasn't getting that opportunity in school. Back then, the system was forcing him with information, and expecting him to regurgitate it. He couldn't learn that way.

“Now he explores and learns at his own pace, and he's definitely doing much better. In fact, he's giving me so much more than what the programme books are covering. He reads up extra material on topics he's interested in and really enjoys it,” she explains.

Sharon applies a mix-and-match syllabus and keeps academic lessons to a maximum of three hours per day. The rest of the time, her children learn through activities or pleasure reading.

“I'm using a little bit of the AOP (Alpha Omega Publications a Christian-based syllabus from the United States) and Singapore mathematics. That's one advantage of homeschooling, I can pick and choose what curriculum I want to use.”

The Lees decided to homeschool Matthew for a very different reason.

“Matthew would have fitted perfectly into the public school system. He's intelligent and very obedient ... the perfect law-abiding citizen. If the teacher says No drinking water in class,' he won't drink water the whole day. If the teacher says No going to the toilet,' he will actually hold his bladder the whole time he's in school,” Simon says.

“We believe he would have been an above-average student in a public school, but we didn't want him to be a fearful child who didn't know how to express himself. So after a year in public school, we decided to take him out too.”

The Lees are not alone in homeschooling their children. They say many other families are also turning to homeschooling as an alternative education system.

There are essentially three variations of homeschooling:

> parents tutoring their children at home (like the Lees);

> a few families banding to teach their children together in a casual setting;

> centres which apply homeschooling methods and syllabus.

Over the last four months, Jamie Ong*, 45, has been sending her daughter Jolyn Ong*, 12, to a homeschooling centre near their home. Jolyn had spent the last five years in a public school.

“My husband and I want our children to experience the public school system, where they get to make friends from the different layers of society. We want them to experience that first,” she says.

“Our plan is for them to go to a regular school for five years, but we pull them out in Year Six. We don't really see the need for them to sit for the UPSR, where they're just drilled for the exam the whole year.”

Jolyn has two younger siblings in public schools. Jamie plans to take them out, too, after Year 5.
Why homeschooling?

“We want our children to have a better quality education. We've seen the public school syllabus and we're not comfortable with it. The education blueprint ... on paper it looks wonderful, but the reality is a different story altogether,” Jamie says.

“We also considered private schools, but the fees are too expensive. Schools we inquired at were charging around RM10,000 a year, or more. Currently, we're paying RM450 a month for Jolyn's school fees. It's a lot more affordable.”

Indeed, quality and cost seem to be two major factors why homeschooling centres are mushrooming nationwide.

Emily Wong*, a principal at one such centre in the Klang Valley, says there are over 60 students in her centre (between the ages of seven and 18), and she knows of at least 80 other similar centres in Malaysia.

“Students can come in at any time of the year; there is no intake period. They are given an entrance-assessment to see what grade they should start at, and then they learn at their own pace,” she says.

“Many people think homeschooling centres are only for children with problems, but it's not true. We have very bright students, and we have slow students too they can learn at their own pace.”

The centre applies the Cambridge IGCSE (International General Certificate of Secondary Education) curriculum, where students sit for the O-Levels when they are ready. This allows them to later pursue the A-Levels, if they choose to do so.

Junior students at the centre learn the basic subjects of English, Mathematics, Bahasa Malaysia, Social Studies (basic introduction to history and geography), and Science.

In Year Six, the sciences are split into Biology, Chemistry and Physics, and in Year Nine, students have the option of taking up additional subjects such as Business Studies, Accounts and Additional Mathematics. Classes are from 8.30am to 1.45pm, Monday to Friday.

Students have optional additional activities such as Mandarin classes, and the Emerging Leaders programme. They can also take up sports, such as badminton and basketball.

“The students learn through modules books and online. If they have problems understanding their lessons, we have supervisors who will assist them,” Wong says.

“Senior students even have live-conference classes. They can interact with the teacher and ask questions. These teachers are experienced ... some are even lecturers in the subjects they are teaching.”

She adds that students are required to set out daily goals what they set out to do for the day. When class ends, they recap to see if they've achieved those goals.

“When a student has completed a module, he sits for a test to see if he has really understood what he has learned. We hold very high standards for our students. Our passing mark is 80,” she says.

While homeschooling seems to have gained popularity in Malaysia in the last 10 to 20 years, it is not a new concept, says Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Council president Datuk Dr Chiam Heng Keng.

“If you go back to history, you will see that homeschooling has been long practised, where affluent families hired governesses to tutor their children at home. That is homeschooling. Later on, it was more popular for the rich to send their children to private boarding schools, so even Prince Charles (Prince of Wales) went to school.

“In the 1970s, homeschooling regained popularity, particularly in the United States, which is why many homeschooling syllabuses come from the US,” says Dr Chiam, formerly a Professor of Social Psychology at Universiti Malaya, and an authority in child development and early childhood education.

According to the US National Center for Education Statistics, there were about 1.5 million homeschoolers in 2007. Today, the US National Home Education Research Institute estimates that there are about two million homeschoolers in the country.

Across the Atlantic, the Home Education UK website (www.home-education.org.uk) estimates that “there are around 60,000 (approximately 0.6%) UK children of compulsory educational age who are currently being home-educated”.

In Malaysia, data is harder to come by, but industry insiders estimate that there are 3,000 to 5,000 Malaysian homeschoolers, the majority of whom keep a low profile as a primary school enrolment is compulsory by law in the country.

Under Section 29A of the Education Act 1996, parents who fail to enrol their children in school can be fined up to RM5,000, jailed up to six months, or both.

However, parents such as Simon believe that they are not breaking the law.

“I believe that this law was enacted to prevent child labour, to make sure children get an education. I may not be sending my children to school, but I'm giving them quality education,” he says.

Homeschooling, however, is not totally free from criticism. A main concern is whether homeschooled children have adequate social interaction with their peers.

“Socially, they may be impacted, but parents can make up for it by ensuring the children have opportunities to interact with other children their age (for example, through sports activities). Parents need to expose their children to other environments,” Dr Chiam says.

The Lees have done just that Jeremy and Matthew have competitive swimming lessons three times a week.

“They have friends from their swimming classes, and they are also very active in church. Jeremy and Matthew both play the drums for the children's service. Jeremy plays the guitar too,” Sharon says.

“We also belong to a support group of homeschooling families, and the children get to play with the other homeschoolers.”

Is homeschooling for everyone?

“It's a very personal decision, and there are many factors to consider. For Jeremy, school couldn't bring out the best in him, so we turned to homeschooling.

“People often ask us What's the end goal?', but we don't have fixed answers. We're just trying to do the best by our children. What we have in mind is for them to find out what they really enjoy doing. When they enjoy what they do, we believe they will excel,” Simon concludes.

*Names have been changed to respect the privacy of the individuals.

By LISA GOH lisagoh@thestar.com.my

Online banking Trojans going after your money!

Online banking users in Malaysia need to be wary of sophisticated Trojans. 

IMAGINE a burglar hiding in your house and slowly cleaning out your valuables, bit by bit, without you even realising it.

According to security firm Symantec, that is the common modus operandi of banking Trojans today, which have grown so sophisticated that they are almost impossible to detect and very difficult to get rid of.

As its latest white paper the World of Financial Trojans reveals recently, malware (short for malicious software) attacked over 600 financial institutions worldwide last year.

With this growth, bank hold-ups or ATM robberies, the bank heist of choice in Malaysia these days will soon be a thing of the past.

The phenomenon is no doubt partly due to the growing trend of online banking. As banks move online to make their transactions fast, easy and convenient for customers, cyber criminals are also finding the digital route the faster, easier and more convenient mode for looting.

A big threat, the report highlights, is the rate at which banking Trojans are now developed: with state-of-the-art mechanisms to circumvent the more complex security systems and exploit their weaknesses.

“Trojans have indeed evolved and the attackers have become more specialised and sophisticated,” Symantec Corporation (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd director (systems engineering) Nigel Tan concurs.

Most worrying, is that while the United States and Japan remain top of their target list, the banking Trojans are increasingly targeting emerging economies with high Gross Domestic Products (GDP) in Asia and the Middle East like Malaysia.

Tan notes, “Malaysia is on the radar of these cyber criminals and our financial institutions experienced attacks out of the 600 reported globally last year. We are not in the top 10 of countries attacked but the threat for Malaysia is no less dangerous.”

Internet banking has grown steadily in Malaysia since it was first launched in June 2000, and is now offered by 29 banks in Malaysia. As of September last year, there were 12.8 million registered users, rising from 3.2 million in 2006 and eight million in 2009.

Predictably, cyber crimes in Malaysia have also increased, with some RM2.75bil losses recorded over five years, from 2005 to 2010, especially in the financial sector.

The fact that cyber criminals are starting to eye Malaysian banks means we need to be more vigilant and tighten up our cyber security, says Tan.

End-users need to keep abreast with what security measures there are. - Nigel Tan

“They need to look at the malware threats they are risked to and look for measures to mitigate them because any organisation will face these threats.”

However, one problem is that many of these institutions cannot keep up with the constantly evolving sophisticated attacks. Another is the gap in the ability of certain organisations to detect threats on customers systems, according to the report.

Tan concedes that the security of our financial institutions can be improved.

Another challenge is that the Trojans are beginning to work out which banks have less security, and going after them, he warns.

“There is a difference in quality between the different banks in terms of how much of the protection and fraud detection methods they put in place.

“And if you are a robber trying to decide between two houses one big house with full security or one smaller house with minimal security; it is secured with only a padlock and chain which one will you target?” Tan quizzes.

As the report sums it, banking Trojans now “enter through the backdoor, strike with clinical precision, and have evolved to a degree of sophistication that allows attackers to conduct high-value transactions while evading traditional fraud-detection measures.”

It is not that banks have been unaware of this growing threat. Since online banking was first introduced in 1994, cyber criminals have looked for various ways to attack them. By 2003, around 20 distinct banking Trojans have existed including simple keylogging Trojans and phishing, said the report.

In response, the banks bolstered their security and fraud detection capabilities.

The problem is, the cyber criminals started adapting, until most security systems and measures were neutralised.

Tan calls these cyber criminals a specialised hacking community that is no longer searching for notoriety and fame, but is in it for the money.

“Hackers now are less noisy than five years ago, but just because there is less noise right now, it does not mean that they are not there. Trojans now stay in your computer as quiet and as long as possible to steal as much money as possible,” Tan cautions.

As mentioned, an attack technique increasingly used is called “man-in-the-browser” which basically involves an application hooking into the browser and manipulating data before it is displayed.

Sophisticated thievery

The report explains, the users will not be able to detect any malicious activity but the Trojan will intercept their transactions and inject a form in the browser requesting sensitive information. Once the user submits the requested personal information, it steals the data for future thievery.

The more sophisticated Trojans can automatically execute transactions in the background, the report highlighted.

What makes it difficult to notice with the naked eye, says Tan, is that “the domain is legitimate and the security page is accurate. It is your computer that is affected, so it can steal your personal data or attack your bank.”

One thing that makes it difficult to clamp down on the attackers behind these Trojans is that it is not easy to pin the crime on them.

“Just writing malware is not an offence. It is hard to pin it as a crime, as long as the writer does not go out and sell it,” Tan points out.

It also does not help that they are reportedly organised underground groups who are not only experts at scripting and automating attacks, but are also knowledgeable about the sophisticated global financial industry and supported by a service industry of widely available malware.

It is akin to organised crime, he opines.

As the report puts it, “The financial fraud marketplace is also increasingly organised. It is a service industry where a wide variety of financial Trojans, webinjects, and distribution channels are bought and sold. Services being offered are dedicated to each aspect of a financial fraud campaign. These offerings will improve effectiveness of established techniques.”

The Top Three of the “Most Wanted” malware list in 2012 were the Zeus Trojan, also known as Zbot (+ Gameover), having compromised more than 400,000 computers worldwide; followed by Cridex at more than 250,000 computers compromised and Spyeye at more than 50,000.

Symantec also points to third-party remote webinjects which can circumvent security countermeasures, targeting a large number of financial companies “concurrently and intelligently” as posing a threat to financial companies.

According to the report, it is not only the main financial organisations like commercial banks that are high on the list of targets, but also organisations that perform online financial transactions such as automated clearing house payments systems and payroll systems.

It is thus crucial for the “good guys” to be alert all the time. They can't slip up and must put in place adequate security mechanisms and take strong measures to deter attackers from targeting these institutions, Tan urges.

Ultimately, users cannot leave the responsibility for security solely to the institutions, he warns.

“End-users need to raise their awareness of the threats out there as at the end of the day, the criminal will go through the end-user to attack the financial institutions.”

The best measure, he stresses, is not to get infected in the first place, so installing a good anti-malware programme on your personal devices is crucial.

As he puts it, anti-malware solutions can stop the malware, even if you were already infected, shares Tan.

“The scanning will pick it up and delete it off your system.”

Tan also emphasises ongoing education in security, as the threats are constantly evolving.

“There will not be a point where you can say this is it. This is what everyone should do. End-users need to keep abreast with what security measures there are.”

Good practice needs to be adopted such as reading the message box or running an anti-virus before downloading anything from a website.

“Most of the time when people get a pop-up to say that you have a malware, they just cancel it or click it close, or when it says your computer is infected, they just ignore it.”

Significantly, Tan says this is not a call to say that Internet banking is bad.

“Quite the contrary. Internet banking has a lot of benefits.

“But as we embrace any new technology or media, we just have to be aware of what the threats are on the Internet. As long as we take adequate protection, we will be safe.”

By HARIATI AZIZAN sunday@thestar.com.my

The China dream

Tan Sri Lin See-Yan analyses the China Dream' and that President Xi Jinping needs to assure middle-class Chinese that the nation can remain rich and strong.
 
PRESIDENT Xi Jinping, general-secretary of the ruling Communist Party as well as chairman of the Military Commission, talked of the “China dream” to unite an increasingly diverse nation of 1.35 billion people. What's Xi's vision which incidentally sounds somewhat like the American dream?; even evokes Martin Luther King's “I have a dream,” reflecting some US-style aspiration.

Since the revolution, China's goals have centred on unity, strength and wealth. Mao Zedong tried to attain them through Marxism and failed: the cultural revolution ended with his death in 1976. Deng Xiaoping's catchphrase was more practical: “reform and opening-up.” Then, Jiang Zemin pushed the more arcane “Three represents” to embody the changed society, including allowing private businessmen to join the party. Lately, Hu Jintao championed the “scientific-development” outlook which was about being greener and dealt with disharmony created by the divisive wealth gap. His Prime Minister Wen Jiabao dwelt repeatedly with the need to rid the economy of the 4-UNs unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and ultimately unsustainable growth.

Now, Xi talks of his dream of “the great revival of the Chinese nation,” of a “strong army dream,” and of our mission “to meet the people's desire for a happy life.” He also alludes to ordinary citizens wanting “to own a home, send a child to university and just have fun.” The Chinese dream, he said “is an ideal. Communists should have a higher ideal, and that is Communism.” Frankly, even though short on detail, Xi's dream is different from his two predecessors' stodgy ideologies. I see practical politics at work here. With growth slowing, Xi's new vision appears to emphasise nationalism going beyond middle-class material comfort. Of course, there is the usual tough talk on the rule of law and on corruption (“fighting tigers and flies at the same time”); also on meeting the public's wish for “better education and more stable jobs.” His dream seems designed to inspire rather than inform. In the end, “The China dream is the people's dream,” so he says.

Promises and pledges

China's US$8.3 trillion economy went through its worst slowdown in 13 years in 2012 when weak exports and increases in interest rates dragged annual growth to 7.8%, the grimmest since 1999. The economy faces more headwinds as it struggles with surplus production capacity and underlying risks in the financial system. So it's not surprising the new administration has called for sweeping reforms and lessening state control. Areas requiring pressing change include freeing interest rates, promoting private investment, encouraging consumption and “greener” growth, and enforcing the rule of law. It has even declared “fair competition is our common goal,” vowing to end subsidising SOEs (state owned enterprises) and levelling the playing field for private enterprise.

The new leadership has since pledged to slash bureaucracy, commit to market-oriented reforms, boost social spending and services, and fight pollution. China is expected to rely on migration to the cities to boost domestic consumption and re-make the economy to be less dependent on massive outlays on fixed investment at home and exports abroad. Such “rebalancing” needs to give markets room to operate competitively. In finance, market forces will be given freer play in setting interest and exchange rates, to ensure savers get a better deal, and businesses have ready access to funding through more effective capital markets.

The Xi administration now puts China's fast growing consumer class at centre stage. Perhaps, the most far reaching change thus far is the urbanisation policy being pursued. This involves reforming the rigid urban hukou household registration system by giving residency permits to some 220 million migrants to the cities, and allowing farmers to sell land at market prices to protect their land rights and boost incomes. Empowering a whole new class of consumers underpins the national drive to reorganise the entire economy from government to banks to SOEs. Such radical overhaul is needed to seriously expand domestic demand. China's plan includes adding 9 million new jobs in urban areas to keep unemployment at or below 4.6% to ensure that real per capita income for both urban and rural residents continue to increase. Its inflation target this year remains at 3.5%, lower than 4% last year. China's actual inflation last year came-in well below that at 2.6%. But these achievements came at the cost of widening inequality and environmental degradation. China's Gini coefficient a measure of income differences was 0.474 last year, higher than the 0.4 level which signals a potential for social unrest.

Transformation

China's GDP (gross domestic product) rose 7.7% in the first quarter this year (down from 7.9% in the fourth quarter 2012), slower than the median analysts' forecast of 8%. Given continuing weak US conditions and a eurozone locked in recession, disappointing Chinese data cast a long shadow over the global outlook. Frankly, I am not as worried provided it reflects the transformation that's said to be already in train. Elements of this reform include shift from investment-export led growth to a new structure providing widespread support for domestic private consumption. This rebalancing will involve new initiatives emanating from services-led consumption, which in turn relies on more labour-intensive services. These require 35% more jobs per unit of GDP compared with manufacturing and construction (thus ensuring rising employment and poverty reduction), with a much smaller resource and carbon footprint.

Xi’s dream is different from his two predecessors.

As I understand it, this services-led pro-consumption reform remains a core initiative in the current 12th 5-year Plan. The agenda needs complementary support from implementing an enlarged and better designed social safety net; reform of SOEs; and ending financial depression of households by raising the artificially low interest rates on saving. But there are strong headwinds coming from several directions: deteriorating credit quality affecting the integrity of bank balance sheets; weakening export competitiveness reflecting continuing rising wages; pollution, corruption and inequality; and political economy missteps, including escalating disputes with Japan and others. China has come through two major crises in the past four years. Its economy remains robust and resilient but it still needs to modernise. Make no mistake, the risks are real. Only purposeful transformation can provide China with the needed strength and resolve to pull through future crises. Reality check: as the economy matures, its pace of growth will surely slacken.

Urbanisation

Urbanisation (movement of rural population into cities and towns) has become a focus of China's reform plans. Its urban population reached 690 million in 2011, against 170 million in 1978. The percentage of urban population rose to more than 51% in 2011 (17.9% in 1978) and will touch 60% by 2020. Consequently, rural population fell from 82.1% in 1978 to 48.7% in 2011. This movement highlights the strategy to rebalance the economy:

● It drives market demand; per capita consumption ratio of urban residents to rural is about 3.3:1;

● Pushes investment in infrastructure and social housing which in turn creates employment and new incomes, which further raises consumption. A 1-1.5 percentage point rise in urbanisation adds 15-20 million people to the city;

● Promotes industrial restructuring and upgrading thereby raising the quality and productivity of employment;

● Increases jobs in the service industry. According to the World Bank, emigrants send home US$45bil a year, with some sending as much as 80% of their income to support their families. This leads to rising rural spending on better homes, education, consumer durables and higher grade groceries. Contrary to common belief, migrants actually maintain their rural shopper habits as they work and sleep in urban environments. The entire process will help to restructure the economy. It is projected that 400 million people will become urban dwellers over the next decade. Under the 12th 5-year plan (ending 2015), 36 million social housing units will have to be built in addition to the 7.2 million units built in 2012. To meet the growing demand for urban jobs, China created 10.24 million new jobs in the first nine months of 2012 (exceeding the 9 million target set for the entire year).

But urbanisation comes at a cost. It is accompanied by chronic environmental degradation and worsening pollution, posing a serious threat to human health and social stability. Urban migration is drastically changing patterns of consumption and behaviour city residents use three times more electricity than rural dwellers; consume 10 times as much sugar, and require vastly more infrastructure and utilities to service their daily lives. Despite efforts to make cities greener, progress is slow because local officials are rewarded for high investment and fast growth, rather than for sustainability. Hence, repeated calls for urbanisation to be “balanced with ecological security.” Additionally, there is fear that the surge of migration would turn cities into Latin-American style slums. But urban reformers are pushing for “bigger-is-better” the idea that cities gain by having people more tightly packed forcing greater use of public transportation (hence, raising its effectiveness), forcing old-line high polluting industries to relocate (thus raising productivity and freeing valuable social space), forcing new energies into a city thus, helping to create new businesses and investment.

Surprisingly, many of China's biggest cities are much less densely populated than Singapore, Seoul, Manhattan and downtown Tokyo, all of which have made strong, successful transitions to the consumer-led service-industry model China wants. Beijing (20 million) has a density of less than 5,000 per sq km and Shanghai (18 million), less than 6,000 against 11,000 in Singapore, 18,500 in New York and 10,400 in Seoul. Rightly so, the Chinese leadership is worried about building super-size urban centres because they create slums, worsen pollution or spur pockets of political dissent.

What then, are we to do?

National unity requires China to be one big bed. But its people can, and do have different dreams indeed, as many as 1.35 billion. The challenge is to get them all to dream the same dream. Xi hopes this would be his “China dream.” China's rise in national strength is well known. It's already the world's second largest economy and the world's largest exporter. Over the past decade, the economy rose 9.3% on the average, raising per capital income to over US$6,000 by 2012. Historians remind us that in 1820, China's GDP was one-third of the world. Then humiliation of the century brought it down to a low so that by the 1960s China's share fell to just 4%. Now, it has recovered to about one-sixth in purchasing-power parity terms. Xi's dream needs to reassure the new middle-class that China can remain “rich and strong” in the hope of reigniting “the great revival of the Chinese nation.”

From the “people first” approach to the “Scientific Outlook” on development, and then to campaigning for a “harmonious society” and “inclusive growth”, the Hu-Wen administration shifted the single-minded pursuit of GDP growth towards more emphasis on balance, reorienting its strategies towards a stronger focus on social security (by 2012, 480 million were on pension and 1.3 billion covered by medical insurance); education (reforms at decentralisation and addressing the need for innovation and entrepreneurship); urban-rural divide (reform of subsidies and taxes, and free and compulsory education in rural areas); and social housing (leading to massive building). Despite much progress, these areas remain of deep enough concern to require bold and innovative action by China's new fifth generation leadership. As I see it, gradualism (instead of cold turkey) is still the tone of future reforms. I see this manifested by the new emphasis on introducing pilot programmes first to test their workability on the ground when carrying out major reforms.

As part of reform, it does appear now there won't be any large-scale stimulus to boost growth as the government pares the state's role and rely more on workings of the market mechanism and the initiative of private enterprise. Many analysts have since begun to lower China's 2013 growth to 7.6% for the year as a whole, as the road ahead gets bumpy. It's unlikely to grow at 8.2% in 2014 (International Monetary Fund forecast). For the Xi administration, speed isn't everything. Better balance holds the key to unlocking China's dream.

WHAT ARE WE TO DO
By TAN SRI LIN SEE-YAN

● Former banker, Dr Lin is a Harvard educated economist and a British Chartered Scientist who speaks, writes and consults on economic and financial issues. Feedback is most welcome; email: starbiz@thestar.com.my.

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Taiwan stages military drill as Philippines killing Chinese fishermen

Standard Type II missiles (front) are ready to launch and 5-inch canon (back) is ready to fire during a joint military drill on a Kidd-class destroyer outside a navy base in Kaohsiung port, southern Taiwan, on Thursday. Photo: Reuters

Taiwan on Thursday staged a military exercise in waters near the northern Philippines in response to the killing of a Taiwanese fisherman, after rejecting repeated apologies for the death.

Philippine coastguards shot dead the 65-year-old last week after they said his vessel illegally sailed into Philippine waters. Outrage in Taiwan at the incident has grown amid a perceived lack of remorse in Manila.



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A flotilla of one destroyer, two frigates and four coastguard ships sailed to the waters near Batan island to press Taiwan’s territorial claims in the area, defence authorities said.

Taiwan’s Foreign Minister David Lin and the fisherman’s family refused to meet a personal representative sent by President Benigno Aquino in a bid to contain the diplomatic fallout. He was due to return to Manila later on Thursday.
“I came to convey the president’s and the Filipino people’s deep regret and apology over the unfortunate and unintended loss of life,” Amadeo R Perez told reporters at the airport.

Philippine special envoy Amadeo Perez (centre) and Philippine envoy in Taipei Antonio Basilio (right) meet the media during a visit to Taiwan's Foreign Affairs Ministry in Taipei on Wednesday. Photo: AFP 
Perez is chairman of the Manila Economic and Cultural Office which handles relations with Taiwan in the absence of diplomatic ties. The Philippines, like most countries, formally recognises China over Taiwan.

Taiwan has deemed it “unacceptable” that the death has been described as unintended by the Philippines.

Tensions mounted after Taiwan on Wednesday slapped sanctions on the Philippines, including a ban on the hiring of new workers, a “red” travel alert urging Taiwanese not to visit the Philippines and the suspension of exchanges between high-level officials, trade and academic affairs.

Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou reiterated on Thursday that the Philippines should take the responsibility over the fisherman’s death.

“I do hope they (the Philippines) will understand they have to be responsible in the international community. Shooting unarmed and innocent people in the open seas is not an act tolerated by civilised nations,” Ma said.

Taipei has repeatedly pressed Manila to issue a formal apology by its government, to compensate the fisherman’s family and to apprehend the killer.

It also rejected an initial apology on Wednesday by the Philippines’ de-facto ambassador.

Maritime tensions are already high over rival claims in the South China Sea, adjacent to where last Thursday’s shooting took place.

China, the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei all have competing claims to parts of the strategic and resource-rich maritime region.

“This (exercise) highlights Taiwan’s navigation and fishing rights,” said Vice Admiral Hsu Pei-shan, the Navy Chief of Staff, Central News Agency reported.

- Agence France-Presse in Taipei

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