The Straits Times Blogs - Chua Chin Hon

Faces of uncertainty

2009-06-05T22:00:00Z

Chua Chin Hon goes in search of faces that capture the US' era of uncertainty.

In DETROIT (Michigan)

AMONG the many iconic images that helped define the Great Depression in the 1930s, the best remembered is arguably the photograph of a weary-looking mother with her two children burying their faces in her shoulder.

The photograph taken by Dorothea Lange in 1936 "stands apart from all but a few others in telling the human story of a profound time in American history", according to the Library of Congress.

With the United States back in the grips of another historic economic downturn, what are the images that would similarly tell the story of this new era of uncertainty?

For six days in May, my colleague Bhagya and I travelled through several Michigan cities in the American Midwest in search of faces and stories that might shed light on this question.

We found no easy answers.

Is the face of the Great Recession, as some call the current slump, that of Mr Rollain Green, 23? The plight of laid-off auto-workers like him has come to symbolise the squeeze on the American middle class, and the decline of a once iconic industry in the US.

Or are the foreclosed homes on the gritty streets of Detroit a more fitting portrait of the recession? Reckless lending and borrowing in the US housing market precipitated a meltdown that rippled through the country’s economy and beyond.

Elsewhere, pictures of the homeless and the urban poor point to socio-economic problems made worse by the fresh bout of economic hardship.

But these photographs of a down-and-out America don’t quite tell the full story. Amid the gloom, we found hopeful signs of optimism and determination as well.

Some American workers, like Mr Jeff Mitchell, 44, are already in the midst of retraining themselves for the much talked about "green economy" – industries focused on renewable energy and environmental technology.

Others like Mr Tim Colonnese, 49, are hoping to blaze a new trail as "green entrepreneurs" who would lead this nascent industry that promises to deliver the new jobs that the country needs.

At the end of the trip, however, the biggest question on my mind wasn't about how these disparate facets add up. Instead, the one question that repeatedly popped into my head was how a country with such wealth and resources could have gotten into an economic mess this deep in the first place.

In Detroit, for instance, the images that left the deepest impression on me were not the obvious signs of urban decay, but rather, the unmistakable reminders of the city’s tremendous wealth in the past. You can tell simply from the architecture and design of the beautiful churches and skyscrapers, even though most of them now look worse for wear.

The nearby city of Highland Park is not your typical slum or ghetto either. It was where famed American industrialist Henry Ford built the world’s first auto-assembly line, a breakthrough that ushered in the age of mass market automobiles and reshaped 20th century life in America.

As a first-time visitor, I was astounded by how cities with such proud and rich legacies could deteriorate this way in just a matter of decades. Who allowed this to happen? Where did the entrepreneurial drive that built this city go?

More importantly, who would come to their rescue? The answers, unfortunately, appear to lie beyond the edge of any photograph.

View exclusive photographs from the writer's trek through the United States here & read the full Saturday Special Report in today's edition of The Straits Times.

Who will lead the fight?

2009-03-03T06:16:00Z

Chua Chin Hon wonders who will take on Obama for the Republicans.

IN WASHINGTON

NOW that US President Barack Obama has laid out his ambitious agenda with a US$787 billion economic stimulus package and a US$3.6 trillion budget, all eyes are on how the opposition Republicans would fight back.

Who will lead them in the political battles ahead? The past weekend threw up some interesting possibilities.

On the cover of the New York Times magazine on Sunday was former House speaker Newt Gingrich with a provocative headline: "The Anti-Obama?"

Credited for leading the "Republican Revolution" in the mid 1990s that ended four decades of Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, Mr Gingrich is looked upon once again by many in the opposition party as a leadership figure who can rally the troops against the popular Mr Obama and his fellow Democrats.

The cover story described the resurgent Mr Gingrich as being at the "zenith of influence in conservative Washington". He is also a "total idea factory", someone who would send suggestions on politics, policy, and strategy at the rate of about 10 an hour.

And ideas are exactly what the Republicans need right now, the magazine suggested, adding: "Gingrich thinks about ideas strategically, as a way of countering his opponents or wooing new constituencies, and this is something Republicans have failed to do almost from the day he left Capitol Hill."

But will ideas return the Republicans to power?

Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, another stalwart of the conservative movement in the US, does not think so.

Attracting just as much media attention over the weekend as the keynote speaker for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington DC, Mr Limbaugh told a 8,000-strong crowd that what the party needed to do was to return to its conservative roots of small government and fiscal discipline, not dream up policy alternatives.

"Everyone asks me 'what can we do', 'how can we overcome this'," said Mr Limbaugh. "Well, the one thing we can all do is stop assuming that the way to beat them is with better policy ideas right now. It's philosophy folks."

This yin-yang, mind-versus-heart contrast in approaches championed by Mr Gingrich and Mr Limbaugh are fitting examples of the turmoil in the Republicans party as it searches not just for a way to beat the Democrats, but also for answers to fractious internal debates.

Can there be a middle way?

Perhaps the third likely leadership figure in the Republicans party – former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney – might provide an answer.

A straw poll of 1,757 people who attended CPAC identified Mr Romney as the person they would most likely vote for as the Republican nominee for the Presidential race in 2012. He ran for last year's presidential campaign, but dropped out of the race eventually to endorse Senator John McCain’s bid instead.

But Mr Romney has not been in the media limelight as prominently as Mr Gingrich or Mr Limbaugh, and said recently that it was unlikely that he would run for President in 2012.

So who will rally the Republicans in the months and years ahead? For now, the search goes on.

No return after the Olympics

2008-11-26T11:21:00Z

Chua Chin Hon looks at how China cabbies are affected by the economic crisis.

In Beijing

IT IS said that a butterfly flapping its wings in Beijing can sometimes cause a tornado in Florida, at least according to scientists who study the seemingly unpredictable behaviour of natural systems, such as the weather.

The financial hurricane blowing across the United States seems to be reversing the direction of this theory, popularly known as the Butterfly Effect.

Ordinary workers and consumers worldwide, who hitherto thought Wall Street's meltdown had nothing to do with them, are now waking up to the unpleasant realisation that a major financial storm brewing tens of thousands of miles away can suddenly clip their wings, so to speak.

At least one Beijing "butterfly" – actually my regular driver in the Chinese capital – feels this way.

The driver, let's call him Chen, has been running an unlicensed taxi service for years. Though Beijing has been trying to clamp down on such services in recent years, he has stayed out of trouble by working only with regulars and tourists.

The latter group has been his cash cow. According to Chen, he practically earns his entire annual income during the peak tourist season in Beijing – between August and October.

Tourists usually make a beeline for attractions like the Great Wall during these months, when the sweltering summer gives way to Beijing's gorgeous autumn skies. In previous years, Chen would get at least two to three bookings every week during this period.

Depending on how far they travelled, these tourists paid between 800 yuan to 1,200 yuan per trip.

This year, however, Chen said he did not get one single booking from foreign tourists, be they American, European or Russian ones. Initially, he thought the tourists stayed away to avoid the Olympic crush in August.

But the Beijing Olympics has come and gone, and the tourists are not returning.

"Not a single soul," he told me during a recent drive to the airport. "It's never been like this before."

Chen, whose moment of epiphany came one afternoon in October while reading a newspaper article on the US financial crisis and how it was hurting the real economy, added: "In September, I thought to myself 'I have no investments, so this has nothing to do with me'.

"Now I know just how much this financial crisis will affect me. Who's going to come see the Great Wall if they can't even be sure about keeping their house?"

Even his regulars – businessmen, journalists, and the occasional Russian trader – are using his services less these days. Businesses are talking about cost cutting, while the usually gung-ho Russians have put their trade on ice. All this, no thanks to the rocky global currency markets, which might turn entire shipments of goods from profit-making one moment to a disastrous financial lost the next.

Further, a growing number of foreign journalists, meanwhile, have been filtering out of the Chinese capital since the buzz from the Olympics dissipated.

"It's mind-boggling when I think about how all these things add up and affect my business in the end," said an uncharacteristically downbeat Chen.

He is hopeful though that the economic recovery would spread just as fast as the current spell of misery. For now, however, Chen said he is just going to hunker down for a potentially long winter.

Why China may not save the world

2008-10-28T11:49:00Z

Chua Chin Hon looks at the obsession with China as the world's White Knight.

In Beijing

WHAT do the North Korean nuclear crisis, the genocide in Sudan, last year's political unrest in Myanmar, and the current financial turmoil have in common?

Not much on first sight. But if you are Chinese President Hu Jintao, you would see a somewhat worrying trend in the international media's reports on these issues.

It would begin quietly and subtlely. But soon enough, the emphasis and the headlines would shift in a big way towards China's role in these issues, and what more it can or should do.

In more extreme instances, such as during the protracted North Korean nuclear crisis, China was almost portrayed as the only party that could resolve the impasse and save the day, a "white knight" so to speak.

With much of the financial world going down in flames, it's no surprise that media attention has once again turned to China, given that it has the world's largest foreign reserves of about US$2 trillion (S$3 trillion).

Arabic-language news network Al Jazeera headlined one of its stories on last week's Asia-Europe Meeting (Asem) in Beijing as "China urged to save world economy". Some regional leaders appeared to have bought this argument as well, according to sources with knowledge of last week's closed-door Asem meeting.

With an eye to China's considerable reserves, one leader even suggested that every country should cough up 10 per cent of its reserves in order to form a "global rescue fund" – a proposal that must have appalled Beijing.

This current obsession with China as the financial world's "white knight", as with its previous incarnation during the North Korea nuclear crisis, conveniently ignores the limits of Chinese power and its own domestic problems.

China's own financial system is a shaky one, meaning the authorities are more concerned with preventing the global stocks meltdown from wrecking havoc domestically rather than rescuing the world.

Another fire Beijing has to fight in its own backyard is the slowdown in the country's massive exports sector, a major source of employment.

For sure, China must play a major role in any global solution to the current economic crisis. But clearly it cannot single-handedly resolve the crisis as it has many problems at home to look after.

Or as President Hu politely told his counterparts from Asia and Europe last week, China will play a responsible role, but it can help the situation best by keeping its own house in order.

In an unusually blunt commentary, the official Xinhua news agency said observers should not "hope for too much" from China in this financial crisis, adding: "Is China able to rescue the world, as some Western media ventured to ponder?"

"The bold proposition more mirrored desperation for hope and support in a sweeping crisis than true faith in China's strength to lead the world out of crisis."

"Not every egg in the basket is rotten"

2008-09-29T10:50:00Z

Chua Chin Hon on the government's attempts to restore public trust.

In Beijing

WITH consumer confidence in Chinese diary products at an unprecedented low, senior leaders and officials here have been going all out to reassure the public that not every egg in the basket is rotten.

On Sunday, China's health minister Chen Zhu and newly-appointed quality control chief Wang Yong visited supermarkets and dairy factories in Beijing as part of a growing confidence building campaign.

Mr Chen was shown on state television interacting with shoppers at a supermarket, inspecting the shelves of diary products, and even drinking a glass of milk from Yili, one of the most popular brand in China, at least before the tainted milk scandal.

Likewise, Mr Wang was shown eating some yogurt when he visited an Yili-owned factory in Beijing.

It's hard to say if anyone's genuinely convinced, but the episode would at least point to the Chinese government having internalised some of the lessons from the Sars crisis, in this case, the need to swiftly restore public trust after a spectacular collapse.

Mr Chen was quoted saying by the official Xinhua news agency: "The best way to restore public trust in diary products is to produce quality and safe products, as well as increase supervision and corporate responsibility."

The affable health minister is only half right. Consumers will not be fully convinced until they have been told why the tainted milk scandal was covered up for so many months, and how such cover-ups can be prevented in future.

There are at least two ways to guard against such cover-ups: one, by giving consumers a reliable channel to report problems, and two, by giving the media the freedom to report these misdeeds.

But rights activists here suggest that the Chinese government has instead tightened its control over the media in recent weeks a bid to prevent public anger from boiling over.

This might work in the authorities favour in the short-run, but as last year's food scares and the latest tainted milk scandal show, such a move will only ensure that the problem returns to haunt them yet again.

The milk of human kindness

2008-09-24T08:17:00Z

Chua Chin Hon on the importance of the human touch in China's current crisis.

In Beijing

THREE days after being thrust onto the hottest seat in the country, China's new quality control chief Wang Yong finally broke his silence today.

Well, sort of.

Mr Wang gave a speech at the headquarters of General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (GAQSIQ) on Monday after taking over from Mr Li Changjiang, who "resigned" in the face of the growing tainted milk powder scandal.

But strangely enough, the speech was not released for days and was posted on the administration's website only this morning.

This is a pity as many parents here were anxious to know what the new quality control chief would do about the melamine problem. What's doubly unfortunate is that Mr Wang's speech was full of the usual official-ese about "firmly upholding the central's decision", and "being mindful of the overall situation".

No one expects Mr Wang, a little-known 53-year-old bureaucrat with no experience in this field, to make grand promises or detailed policy changes right away, of course.

But with consumer confidence on the decline and public anger on the rise, Mr Wang should have at least done some straight talking, or acknowledged the anxieties and anguish of the parents whose children were sickened.

This job has largely fallen to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who over the weekend visited supermarkets and ordinary families in Beijing to offer assurances and words of encouragement. He also condemned the errant dairy companies in plain speak, calling them mei liangxin, or unconscionable.

At times of crisis, the importance of a human touch cannot be underestimated, and as the lead agency in the safety issue, GAQSIQ should perhaps take the cue from Mr Wen.

An Olympic aftermath

2008-08-24T07:10:00Z

Chua Chin Hon asks if China's old habits will return once the Olympic flame is snuffed.

In Beijing

TONIGHT, Beijing will undoubtedly bring the curtains down on the 2008 Olympics with another spectacular show of mass display and fireworks. It will not top the stunning opening ceremony of course, but it is not expected to either.

The closing ceremony will instead be lighter in mood, allowing Beijing to let its hair down after 17-days of intense competition and global scrutiny.

But in many ways, the ceremony will mark the beginning of the real Olympics test for Beijing. The Chinese capital spent the last seven
years getting ready for the Games, building fancy new stadiums, cleaning up the air, improving public manners, and trying to live up to its pledge of greater media freedom.

But can Beijing stay the course? Or will the old problems and bad habits come roaring back once the Olympic flame has been extinguished?

No one's quite ready to take a bet on this at the moment. For one, some of the measures taken by Beijing to ensure success and clear
skies at the Games are simply unsustainable.

The government, for instance, grounded more than half of the city's cars, and ordered large swathes of factories on its outskirts and
neighbouring provinces to close in order to reduce pollution. Some fear air pollution will come back with a vengeance once these
factories are allowed to resume operation, for surely they will crank up production to make up for lost time.

Likewise, there are serious concerns that Beijing will roll back the relaxation of the rules on the foreign media and return to a more hardline way of dealing with journalists.

There's been widespread praise about the "new China" that was on display in the last 17 days. Let's hope the shine doesn't fade too soon.

(No) service with a smile

2008-08-11T12:41:00Z

Chua Chin Hon gets lost while in an official Olympics media bus.

In Beijing

Getting help. ST Photo: Lee W.Y.

THERE are nearly 100,000 of them, all kitted out in cheery blue-and-white uniforms and ever-ready smiles.

Whether you are in town as a tourist or a journalist, you won't have missed this army of volunteers that the Chinese host has assembled for the Beijing Olympics.

Mainly students, this group of volunteers take on a whole range of duties ranging from the essential – translation and crowd control – to the seemingly bizarre – greeting journalists at the door when they enter the main press centre.

Casual conversations with them suggest that they work for nothing, and put up with the long hours and terrible food solely due to a desire to serve their country during the Olympics.

Their enthusiasm and spirit are certainly admirable, and would probably lay to rest worries about the country's "one-child" generation turning out to be a selfish, uncaring lot.

But in a massively complex operation like an Olympics, enthusiasm and a ready smile do not make up for their woefully inadequate training – something which is increasingly frustrating the press corps.

In the past week, I've lost track of the number of times when I approached these volunteers for basic information – where is the media entrance to this stadium? – and got in response what is arguably the most uttered phrase in the Beijing Games: "I don't know."

After being directed to wrong entrances, bounced around from counter-to-counter, this "I-don't-know" mania reached silly new heights on Sunday when the media bus that was supposed to ferry the reporting team to Peking University Gymnasium got lost!

This bus journey from the press centre was supposed to take about 20 minutes. But on Sunday afternoon, the bus driver, a temporary replacement for another chap who was caught in a traffic chap, began going in a strange detour around the main Olympics venue instead of heading to the gymnasium.

The volunteer on board the bus, a hapless teenage girl in glasses, looked traumatized as angry journalists demanded to know where they were going and how this could happen. The teenager, clearly not knowing the way to Peking University, could only assure that the driver was trying his best to find his way there.

The eventual journey took 50 minutes, more than twice the time taken.

A friend remarked that this is a classic example of the inefficiencies that China needs to overcome in its economy and elsewhere.

So here's a memo to the London organizers of the 2012 Olympics: A modest team of well-trained volunteers will beat an army of clueless undergraduates anytime.

Attack on China's psyche

2008-08-04T12:46:00Z

Chua Chin Hon wonders if there'll be VIP cancellations at the Olympics.

In Beijing

KASHGAR, China's western-most city, is over 4,000km, or a six-hour flight, away from Beijing.

But the huge distances involved would not have softened any of the psychological blow that came from today's audacious terror attack there, just four days before the Olympics opening ceremony.

The heavy death toll and the modus operandi of the attackers were all the more shocking given that a heavy security blanket had been thrown around Beijing and restive provinces such as Xinjiang, where Kashgar is located.

According to the official Xinhua news agency, two suspects rammed a dump truck into a team of policemen who were out for their Monday morning jog. The attackers then hurled explosives and used knives to hack at some of the policemen after their truck veered off the road and crashed into an electricity pole.

The attack killed at least 16 policemen and injured another 16, making it one of the most deadly in recent years. The two attackers were subsequently arrested in a raid, though they were not immediately identified by state media reports.

Chinese officials routinely cite separatist groups, such as the "East Turkistan Islamic Movement" in Xinjiang, as the top security threat for the Beijing Olympics.

The attack in Kashgar, which appears to have been planned with cold precision for months, then raises many uncomfortable questions about the intelligence gathering capabilities of the Chinese security forces, as well as their ability to preempt other attacks elsewhere.

With over 80 top foreign leaders and a legion of global business elites flying into town on Friday for the Olympics opening ceremony, these questions can't come at a worse time for China.

The biggest question, however, is whether any major world leader will be prompted to cancel his or her trip to the Olympics as a result of today's attack.

Big chill at Summer Games

2008-07-31T11:27:00Z

Chua Chin Hon on what's causing a chill in Beijing.

In Beijing

Not likely, the journalists suggested as they kept up a barrage of questions about whether there is a cover-up, whether the environmental measures have been ineffective, and whether more cars will be forced off the roads.

A new "battle" shaped up today over the issue of Internet access. At a press conference, foreign journalists took Chinese officials to task over the blocking of several websites critical of China.

These blocked sites include those for Amnesty International, the Falungong sect, and the Tibetan government-in-exile.

Blocking these sites, the journalists insisted, reneged on Beijing's promise of full and unrestricted online access during "Games time", which began on Sunday when the Olympics Village opened.

Faced with these questions, Mr Sun Weide, a spokesman for the Games' organisers, soon ran out of ways to paraphrase his stock response that reporters would be given "sufficient and convenient access".

Unconvinced, reporters pressed him further and wanted to know what he considered "sufficient" access, and why the websites of organisations not outlawed by the Chinese government were being blocked.

Mr Sun managed to keep his cool, but was understably not too thrilled by the grilling. Where he couldn't use his stock answer, the spokesman would ignore the questions asked altogether.

If the terse exchange at today's press conference is any indication, the upcoming Summer Games is going to be a frosty affair between Chinese officials and foreign journalists covering the event.

Anyone up for the luge?