=================
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Will the China HSR rail to Laos reach Bangkok soon, and link on to the port on the west coast of Thailand for access into the Indian Ocean and by-passing the Malacca Straits?
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China has two port accesses, one in Pakistan [Gwadar port] and another in Myanmar [Kyaukphyu, on Myanmar’s west coast]. Will China drill tunnels into the mountains to have two more accesses: Iran and Bangladesh?
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China has started building a 140km canal in QuangXi and will complete it in 4.5 years in 2026.
China’s Pinglu Canal project was launched on August 28, 2022, in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region in southern China. Expected to be completed in 54 months, the project is an important part of a new land-sea corridor connecting inland regions in southwestern China with Guangxi’s coast and cities bordering Vietnam.
How to build 30-feet deep canals? Use five super huge tunnel drilling machines to drill through the ground [the five machines side by side and drill five times for the whole length] to build the canal.
No need digging but by using 5 tunnel drilling machines. The project will take at least 10 years to drill with five tunnel boring machines x 5 times to get the width and depth of 30 feet.
============
If 10 machines are used to drill tunnels from both ends, the project will be less than 10 years.
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80 km canal between Mueang Ranong [western Thailand, Indian Ocean] and Amphoe Lang Suan [eastern Thailand, Gulf of Thailand]. Can it be built? How long will it take using 10 super huge tunnel drilling machines? How much will it cost?
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A huge country like China vs a smaller one like USA…. Looks like only way to compete against China by a smaller USA in size and population, and not let China speed further in strength in all areas, is to create proxy wars, and have complete encirclement of China.
The N buttons will bring all to face reality that we live in a very dangerous world, a mad world of mutual annihilation by the super powers with N weapons.
US knows it cannot escape from total destruction too in this age if they cross the red line of no return, and want total destruction of mankind into ashes.
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For that reason, China has openly declared it will never press the N button first.
It makes the Americans know what to do and yet in desperation they might do just the opposite to self destruct with everyone.
Their only hope is for China to self implode and have self destruction from within with no shot fired [like the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the end of the USSR in 1991 without a single shot fired].
Since 1989, NATO with US backing has been having hopes to do the next thing:
enter Russia with NATO military forces without a shot fired like in 1989 and see the end of present day Russia with NATO forces on Russian land including first of course entering Ukraine by NATO forces with no shot fired.
But Russia has tried to stop that and we see today this Ukraine proxy war with no end in sight.
It is US hopes for China to end and collapse into pieces [like the former USSR with no shot fired where the Eastern bloc countries are occupied by NATO forces].
They must be praying day and night that the Chinese people will have a people revolution to topple the CCP and the Beijing government with no shot fired.
==============
We were in Changsha in Sept/Oct 2019 and saw many huge billboards encouraging the local people to travel within China as tourists.
It is to create the ‘economic momentum by multiplying the effects of ‘invisible earnings from local tourism spending across China’.
For that purpose and objective, China has increased their HSR network in the past 10 years to 42,000 km across China. There are plans to increase the network even more in the next 10 years.
It will speed up travels and increase the size of the local tourist industry.
China is a huge country with a population of 1.3 billion. The Govt knows that the generation of the local tourist spending within China itself will be huge, and will help lift the income of those in poverty in poorer areas of China. The information is on the billboards everywhere in China.
America will find it hard to catch up as the multiplier effect of local travels in China will be many times bigger [some bigger by more than four times] than many countries including that of America.
This is one of China’s economic strategies to create enormous wealth generation across China among the 1.3 billion people.
The only way for the West to stop this internal wealth creation by China is for the West to promote proxy wars around the world to disrupt trade, and to encircle China to create military tensions.
In another 10 years or so, once Covid-19 has ended and there is peace and no war conditions and tensions, many countries will face China’s internal economic growth, which will be stronger than ever before.
Will US and the West have other solutions to stop China’s economic growth, or will they create bigger trade and tariff conflicts, and more proxy wars to disrupt, cripple and destroy China’s growth and expansion?
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Will China be in great restraint and patience. Possible?
When will China openly tell the world that China will have utmost restraint and will not reply immediately when war breaks out?
Will China let the opposite side shoot three rounds first at China, three blows, and later on in utmost restraint give a solid reply that is one blow with the force of three powerful destructive force, all in one shot, where there is no need for China to fire back in anger in haste with three separate shots?
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For peace, stability, and happiness for all, it must be based on wealth distribution around the world with compassion and gratitude, and not by military power, hegemony and domination over other nations.
Who can achieve this?
Will it be China or US able to achieve true peace and happiness for all nations without forcing or imposing military dominance and prowess on others?
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Will China modernise, construct and develop [42,000 km of HSR rails, and 76 high-rise buildings of more than 300 meters in height compared with a total of 70 outside China] to self destruct and destroy it all for the sake of an island, Taiwan, or the invasion of a few islands, Japan?
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Only God knows the intentions of human beings.
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How to build 30-feet deep canals? Use five super huge tunnel drilling machines to drill through the ground [the five machines side by side and drill five times for the whole length] to build the canal.
There is no need for hard digging work by human beings when it is possible to use five tunnel drilling machines to do the job. The project will take at least 10 years to drill with five tunnel boring machines x 5 times to get the width and depth of 30 feet.
============
If 10 machines are used to drill tunnels from both ends, the project will take less than 10 years.
=========================
US has the China Task Force Report.
Please google for it.
It is the American strategy to provoke and cause proxy wars far away from their shores to be safe and untouchable, and the ultimate aim is to destroy China.
This is their strategy. It is not for peace. It is for conflict.
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Communism today…… . Russia is no longer ruled and governed by the Russian Communist Party.
What is the issue with Russia, now a non communist country?
There are only five communists countries left in the world.
Four in Asia, and the fifth is Cuba.
There is no communist country left in Europe.
What are they fighting over in Ukraine?
What is the ultimate aim of the US and NATO in this Ukraine proxy war?
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The US’s China Task Force Report does not have strategies to destroy the other four communist countries:
Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and Laos.
The US strategy is to destroy China, and hopefully it will see the end of communist governments in the four countries.
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Vietnam and Laos are member states of Asean.
The eight democratic non-communist countries in Asean are co-existing and living side by side in peace with these two communist nations.
Is this a game of hypocrisy, deception and the two-face strategies in world politics in this dark severe age?
It will be compassion in gratitude plus plus that will enable mankind to brighten up this age of decadence.
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The proxy war…
How should it end and when, and in whose favour?
What is the ultimate aim of the US’s NATO in this proxy war?
====
What are the ultimate aims in the US’s China Task Force Report. It is in google.
Please google for it.
It is not for peace. It is for conflict.
It is to provoke other nations to wage proxy wars.
It will not bring world peace.
It will bring darkness, evilness and unhappiness, not happiness.
Only God knows the intentions of mankind.
==============
China in great restraint and be patient. Possible?
China, when will China openly tell the world that China will have utmost restraint and will not reply immediately when war breaks out?
China will let the opposite side shoot three rounds first at China, three blows, and later on in utmost restraint, China will give a solid reply that is one blow with the force of three powerful destructive force, all in one shot, where there is no need for China to fire back in anger in haste with three separate shots.
========
For peace, stability, and happiness for all, it must be based on wealth distribution around the world with compassion and gratitude, and not by military power hegemony and domination over other nations.
Who can achieve this?
Will it be China or US able to achieve true peace and happiness for all nations without forcing or imposing military dominance and prowess on others?
=======
.
Will China modernise, construct and develop [42,000 km of HSR rails, and 76 high-rise buildings of more than 300 meters in height compared with a total of 70 outside China] self destruct and destroy it all for the sake of an island, Taiwan, or the invasion of a few islands, Japan?
=========
Only God knows the intentions of human beings.
==========
.
How to build 30-feet deep canals? Use five super huge tunnel drilling machines to drill through the ground [the five machines side by side and drill five times for the whole length] to build the canal.
No need digging but by using five tunnel drilling machines. The project will take at least 10 years to drill with five tunnel boring machines x 5 times to get the width and depth of 30 feet.
============
If 10 machines are used to drill tunnels from both ends, the project will be less than 10 years.
=============
.
In Asean…the member countries will not directly interfere with Myanmar’ internal policics for good reason. They will leave them as is as long as they want. Also, they will not interfere with the communist politics of Vietnam and Laos for good reasons. It is to keep the peace among Asean member countries. It is like “living with the devil” than fight with the devils. Peaceful coexistence in Asean the Asean way, Asean’s pragmatism, and so far so good.=
Rule based international competition. Possible? Or, is it talk only and it is more about unfair competition in trade and currency wars to topple other countries?
=====================================
When the West cannot compete and win against China economically, financially [China now with modern cities and infrastructures, 42000 km of HSR, and 76 high-rise buildings of more than 300 meters in height compared with a total of 70 outside China], the only solution for USA is to provoke and cause proxy wars to destroy the PRC. US wants and hopes that the proxy conflicts will be far away from American shores for itself to be safe and sound, untouchable.
Please google for the US’s China Task Force Report. It is not for peace. It is to provoke conflict and destruction by proxy wars far away from US shores. It will not bring happiness or world peace.
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.Peace in the Far East? Impossible? Encirclement of China from the East and South, and when Russia falls under NATO control, to have NATO military forces on the borders of Russia/China to have complete encirclement of China from the North and West.
The only way to stop US on this path of destruction and proxy war is to bring the prospect of war entering the American continent and the destruction of their top 10 cities within minutes.
The US must not be allowed to go on with their belief that their strategy to wage proxy war and remain safe and sound at their own free will is supreme and unbeatable without damage to themselves.
The days of war not affecting America [forget about the 1962 Cuban crisis] must end for it to sink in deep into the strategies of the American leaders and people to wake up to reality. This is a modern world of high tech and mutual destruction by a press of a few buttons.
America cannot remain as is to have the cake and still eat it up.
This modern age is mutual self destruction that the leaders in Washington must not stick their heads in the sand any more to believe that US is far away untouchable.
The days of the 19th and 20th century warfares and gunboat diplomacy, plundering and bullying are over.
Those days were dim and the age of the water element. Now is the fire age, the age of Baptism by Fire, no longer the Baptism by Water.
Time has changed. The 21st century is not the same as the 19th and 20th centuries for the west to conquer, occupy and plunder at free will.
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For a peaceful Asean based on unity, compassion, love and harmony. Possible?
When will China invite all the navies of Asean to have tea together at their military bases in the South China Sea?
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For a peaceful Far East. Possible How?
What will be US’s response 24/7 [forget the 1962 Cuba crisis] when Russia and China send some 50 of their surface and submerged naval vessels to cruise some 300 km off the western, eastern and southern coasts of America? ==============================================
Naval vessels cruising 300 km off shore?
It is like be outside at each others’ main and back doors or garden knowing that it is a deterrence to stop any adventurist from pressing the buttons for mutual and total destruction of the human race.
The pressing of the buttons could see the total destruction of many major cities into ashes within a few minutes.
We are in very severe times, very dangerous when a press of the button by a deranged or mad person could be the a simple press with one forefinger to end it all.
How dangerous we are living on edge if we know what is living dangerously with a finger on the button by a human being, and for all humans entering into an age of armageddon.
We are in a mad world.
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China in great restraint and be patient. Possible? China, when will China openly tell the world that China will have utmost restraint and will not reply immediately when war breaks out. That China will let the opposite side shoot three rounds first at China, three blows, and later on in utmost restraint, China will give a solid reply that is one blow with the force of three powerful destructive force, all in one shot, where there is no need for China to fire back in anger in haste with three separate shots.
=============
What is the ultimate aim of the US’s NATO proxy war in Ukraine?
===============================================
How will the Ukraine proxy war end for it to become the biggest success for the West?
The biggest win for NATO [and the West, of course eventually] and an even bigger success than the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 [no shot fired, and the unity of East and West Germany becomes one Germany today, and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc countries and the former USSR, including Poland, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia – the split into two countries] will be the self-implosion of Russia [where Putin is gone and Russia becomes like Poland] and the might of the NATO military is in Russia without a shot fired.
It will be a repeat of the end of the Cold War and the end of the former USSR where NATO military forces are now stationed along borders close to Russia.
This has created the present tensions, and the proxy-war between Russia and Ukraine where there is no indication how and when this military conflict will end and in whose favour.
The west will pray and hope that the end of this military conflict will bring about a post-proxy-war Ukraine together with the new Russia becoming members of NATO.
This will become the biggest success with no shot fired by NATO having its military forces stationed along the Russian/Chinese borders when the new Russia comes under NATO.
It will be the complete encirclement of China by the West from the north and west of China.
Is that not the US’s ultimate aim and the biggest prize for NATO military forces to stretch out all the way from UK to Russia and looking eye-ball to eye-ball with the Chinese military forces across the Chinese western and northern borders with the new Russia?
What next will be more dreaming of the world of tomorrow by the West, and a world peace under their domination and control.
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Big powers choose convenient principles, small countries pay the price: Shanmugam
A year since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, K. Shanmugam takes a step back to examine the broader picture and historical record on US-Russia competition
K. Shanmugam
A man walks outside a destroyed school after a missile strike in Kramatorsk, Donbass regions, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, on March 6, 2023. PHOTO: AFP
UPDATED 2 HOURS AGO in Straits Times on 11th March 2023.
Singapore has taken a firm and consistent stand that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a clear, gross violation of international law. This was made clear in our support for resolutions at the United Nations condemning the invasion, and the sanctions that we imposed against Russia.
Nine years ago, when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, I was the foreign minister. I stated the same position: It was an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country. Russian troops should not be in Ukraine in breach of international law, and the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine must be respected.
This is clear – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, on any pretext, is inexcusable.
At the same time, one year on, it is useful to take a step back, to look at the broader history – to see what responsibility others, beyond Russia, might have – where the situation is less clear.
The Western view
The dominant view, put out in Western media, is that this war arose largely because of President Vladimir Putin’s imperial ambitions.
In this view, Mr Putin is nostalgic about the USSR. He called the break-up of the USSR in 1991 the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the (20th) century”, and that it was the demise of “historical Russia”. He wants to restore Russia to its former glory, and bring back former Soviet states under Russian authority.
Ukraine, in particular, was an especially painful loss, because Russia and Ukraine share a long and common history.
Although both had evolved into different countries, Mr Putin believes that Ukraine has to be in Russia’s sphere of influence. Just before Russia invaded Ukraine, he said: “Modern Ukraine was entirely created by… Communist Russia”, and that “Ukraine never actually had stable traditions of real statehood”. As such, its separation from Russia was a “historic, strategic mistake”.
In other words, Ukraine’s sovereignty is an artificial construct – so that sovereignty does not have to be respected.
Summarising this view, The New York Times, in an article published on Feb 27, said: Mr Putin is “intent on securing a place in the pantheon of historic, expansionist Russian leaders”, by styling himself as a “modern-day Peter the Great, gathering up lost Russian lands”.
In this view, it is Russia who is the sole, irresponsible, actor. Mr Putin’s own ambitions have led to all this suffering.
Much of this is accurate. But it does not convey the whole picture. It too conveniently absolves the West of any responsibility, for the way the events have unfolded.
Another view
There is another view. Some analysts, like Professor Anatol Lieven, have pointed out that Mr Putin was not always opposed to cooperation with the West.
Russia had once made overtures for cooperation and peaceful co-existence.
For instance, Mr Putin wrote on Feb 27, 2012, that Russia is an “inalienable and organic part of Greater Europe and European civilisation”. He expressed his hope for a “harmonious community of economies from Lisbon to Vladivostok”.
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, with Mr Putin’s approval as prime minister at the time, also tried to propose a European security treaty in 2010. This would have institutionalised consultation between Russia and Western countries on equal terms.
Was Russia just bluffing, when it said it was keen on integrating with Europe and the West?
There are credible scholars who believe that Russia was serious.
However, especially in the 1990s and 2000s, Russia was treated as a “has-been”. It was not seriously consulted on major issues, and it was not treated with a great deal of respect.
The neoconservatives in the United States saw America as the hyperpower, in a unipolar world. As such, Russia’s security concerns do not appear to have been taken seriously.
Russia had repeatedly said that there should be no eastward Nato expansion, as it was a threat to Russia’s security. But Nato expansion happened anyway.
As a result, in this view, Russia felt increasingly encircled.
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Looking at the facts: Nato expansion
In assessing these two views, we have to go back to the facts.
One starting point is to consider whether the West had promised that Nato would not expand, after the Cold War.
In 1990, as the Berlin Wall was falling, the US and USSR discussed how to reunify Germany. One question raised was whether Nato would then expand – primarily, into the territory of East Germany. But, as the Cold War was ending, there were also implications beyond Germany, to the then Warsaw Pact countries in Eastern Europe.
Records show that Western leaders anticipated Soviet opposition to Nato’s expansion.
For example, in a speech on Jan 31, 1990, West Germany’s Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher said that in the process of reunification, “Nato should rule out an expansion of its territory to the east”.
Shortly after, on Feb 9, 1990, US Secretary of State James Baker also told Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that, given the need for assurances to the countries in the Warsaw Pact, there would be “no extension of Nato’s jurisdiction for forces of Nato one inch to the east”.
In separate discussions between Mr Gorbachev and the leaders of (West) Germany and France, similar concerns were acknowledged.
However, notwithstanding these discussions, non-expansion was not mentioned in the 1990 Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany.
Nothing was in writing, but historical records suggest that Russia was given some basis to believe that there would be no eastward expansion of Nato. In his memoirs, Central Intelligence Agency director William Burns, who was then a political officer in the US Embassy in Moscow, said then President Boris Yeltsin and the Russians “assumed, with considerable justification, that Jim Baker’s assurances (of non-expansion) would continue to apply after the break-up of the Soviet Union”.
In other words, even after the Warsaw Pact ended, Russia’s security concerns would continue to be respected – Nato would not expand eastward.
However, Mr Burns said that the Clinton administration saw the applicability of these assurances as “fairly ambiguous”, because they had not been precisely defined or codified.
In 1991, the USSR collapsed.
The year after, in 1992, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary jointly declared their “long-term objective (to attain) full-fledged membership in Nato”.
In 1999, they became Nato members and, in 2004, seven other Eastern European countries followed suit – Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.
Russia protested these expansions. Mr Yeltsin told US President Bill Clinton in 1995 that this would be “a new form of encirclement”, which Russians feared. Russia’s legislature also voiced concern in 2004 that Nato expansion “does not promote the consolidation of stability and security in Europe”.
In February 2008, Mr Burns – by then the US Ambassador in Moscow – wrote to his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He said that Ukraine joining Nato was the “brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin)… (he had) yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in Nato as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests”.
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We do not know how seriously these views were taken. But two months later, at the 2008 Bucharest Summit, Nato welcomed Ukraine’s and Georgia’s aspirations for Nato membership. Nato members declared their agreement that “these countries will become members of Nato”.
Mr Putin responded the next day. He said that the appearance of Nato at Russia’s borders was viewed as a “direct threat to the security” of Russia.
And six years later, on April 17, 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea, Mr Putin said it was a response to “the infrastructure of a military bloc… moving towards (Russia’s) borders”.
One may agree or disagree with whether Nato expansion was indeed a threat, but Russia’s position was clear.
Assessing Russia’s concerns
One might reflect: Could Russian concerns have been better handled?
This is not an argument that Nato should not have expanded. To the Baltic states and countries like Poland, it is entirely understandable that they might want to join Nato. They have a bitter history of invasion and occupation, and Nato membership would provide security against this.
But there was arguably a responsibility to deal with Russia’s security concerns, even as Nato decided on enlargement.
We have seen such security concerns being voiced in different ways elsewhere.
In April 2022, when China signed a security agreement with the Solomon Islands, there was considerable alarm in Australia about a possible Chinese military presence in the Pacific islands.
And 60 years ago, during the Cuban missile crisis, the US ordered a “naval quarantine” around Cuba on Oct 22, 1962, to intercept “all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba”.
America was not keen on Russia’s military on its doorstep. And America and Australia both felt similarly about Chinese military presence in the Pacific Islands.
Likewise, as regards Nato, Russian concerns needed to have been dealt with. Otherwise, it would look like double standards are being applied.
To be clear: nothing justifies the Russian invasion of Ukraine – Nato enlargement, and how Nato enlargement was done, can in no way justify an invasion. The point is only that the picture is more nuanced than some portray it to be.
Looking at the facts, the West were not uninvolved bystanders, who had no role to play in the current situation.
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Lessons: Big powers choose principles to suit their current interests
Entangled in these historical events, are two important principles of international law.
First, indivisible security: One state should not enhance its security at the expense of another’s. One state’s security is inseparably linked to another’s.
Second, self-determination: in this context, the right of a state to choose its own military and political alliances.
We have seen that these two principles can contradict each other. When they do, each power will pick the principle best suited for its interests, in that particular geopolitical context. Let me illustrate.
In today’s conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has referred to the indivisibility of security. He says that Ukraine has an “obligation not to strengthen (its) security (by joining Nato) at the expense of the security of other states” – i.e. Russia.
On the other hand, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has affirmed that the right of Ukraine to choose its own security arrangements and alliances is a “core principle” that the US is “committed to uphold and defend”.
During the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when it was Cuba that was potentially posing a threat to the US, it was the reverse.
Back then, US President John F. Kennedy spoke about halting Cuba’s offensive build-up of weapons in “defence of our own security”, as they were “a threat to world peace”.
In response, Soviet President Nikita Khrushchev dismissed America’s actions as “undisguised interference” in the internal affairs of Cuba.
In a reversal from today, it was America back then who emphasised the principle of indivisible security, while Russia emphasised the principle of sovereignty.
Such dynamics are not new – and they will continue. Great powers will cite the principle that best suits their interest and the position they wish to take, at that particular point in time.
But it is often the small countries who pay a disproportionate price.
Depending on how you look at it, smaller countries can be said to have been either wilfully used as pawns, or just inadvertently caught between the powers, as collateral damage. But – as in this case – looking at the past few decades of conflict and tension between Russia and the West, it is the Ukrainians who are bearing the brunt of the suffering.
One thing about Ukraine is clear, though. Its defence has been nothing short of heroic, against a vastly superior power.
A war that many thought would be over in days, has stretched to more than a year. Ukraine’s sense of national identity, purpose, and independence have now been forged in steel and blood.
Whoever might have queried the artificiality of Ukraine as a state before the war, will have no doubts today that Ukraine’s sense of nationalism and statehood is completely formed. Ukraine’s spirit has become immeasurably stronger, and it is unlikely to be rolled over.
There is a lot to admire about the way Ukraine has defended itself.
For small countries like Singapore, it is in our interest to have regional structures that promote cooperation, rather than rivalry, in our region. We must also work to uphold international law consistently.
But we must also understand that ultimately, we have to have the military means ourselves, and the social resilience, to defend ourselves. And we must continue, as we always have, to act only and always in Singapore’s own interests.
K. Shanmugam is Minister for Home Affairs and Law. This is an abridged version of his closing keynote address at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute Workshop on The Russia-Ukraine War And South-east Asia One Year On: Implications And Outlook on March 8.
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Speaking up for Asean in the battle of narratives.
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In 1983, American writer Isaac Asimov wrote that by 2019, “It is quite likely that society, then, will have entered a phase that may be more or less permanently improved over the situation as it now exists.”
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1984 + 35, and it was 2019, and if we add + 35, what will it be like for mankind on earth in 2054? Or 2059? 100 years from 1959.
In the world of tomorrow, or rather in 2054, will it be possible for mankind to live in harmony in this 21st holy century and for many countries to have divine governments?
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To transform the world in this 21st Century:
It is possible to live as true human should when mankind has abundance supply of cheap, clean and green energy, and potable water where there are no more recurrent costs on users. It should become free for all.
It will be like when we had free water drawn from well, river, brook or stream in ancient times; and free firewoods that we gathered as fuel for cooking. Both firewood and water were free back then.
It is time to bring back those days of the past where both resources, water and energy were free. Let us make it possible by making clean and green energy, and potable water become free [no recurrent costs on users] in this century, the 21st century.
It will transform the way we live, and for humans able to work four days a week, and have three days for leisure. All these are possible when we make fire [energy] and water become free to all users worldwide.
All modern machines use electricity.
When these have been achieved, it will transform the world and tremendous progress will be made in major key areas, namely:
LAND, SEA AND AIR:
Humans must find the solutions to have harmony and peace in all three spheres to have optimum efficiency in the way we live, work and play.
POLLUTION:
Solution against pollution lies in green and clean energy, tapping lightning power, and transmitting electricity from outer space to earth by wireless technology.
TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS:
When the whole world is electrified by green and clean energy, cost of everything will come down not up. Efficiency in land, sea and air transportation [drones, flying cars, etc] will mean new business opportunities and greater expansion in the world’s economy and the rise in GDP in all countries. It will be a bigger worldwide economic pie for all to benefit from.
WATER SUPPLIES:
When the world is electrified by abundance and cheap clean and green energy, lack of potable water will no more be an issue. Concerns of conflicts due to lack of water supplies [0.01% water on earth is potable] will no longer hold true when there is abundance supply of water using green energy processes.
FOOD SUPPLIES:
When the world energy and water supplies are addressed by cheap, clean and green energy, problems due to greater threats of deforestation and desertification will be contained, and there will be conversion more of desert into arable land [and also using thousands of bulldozers to level hills -not mountains – near cities and fill up valleys to create arable land for food and for housing]. Cost of food supplies will come down not go up when food supplies increase.
POPULATION GROWTH:
When energy, water and food supplies are addressed, more resources will be available to address problems of hunger, poverty and refugees around the world. It will create demand for more efficient land, sea and air transportation systems [drones and flying cars, etc] in major cities around the world.
ROBOTS, IT, DIGITAL AGE AND JOBS:
When food, water, energy, and transportation issues are addressed, more people will be able to afford leisure time, and can work four days a week.
Robots and computers will make man’s dream of three days a week of leisure time and relaxation become possible.
Astral Particle Information System.
Solution lies in Astral Particle Information System. We are already using it, and are in it, when we press the button on our computers to send messages into the Unseen on wifi to reach our addressees at 186,000 miles per second [not per minute].
IT experts should research into the unseen using APIS for mankind able to use wifi transmission to make contact with the Astral realm.
It is a matter of time to make this breakthrough.
It is very important for the Unseen realm and the Seen physical world able to communicate on the wifi wavelengths as the world is a world of electronic unseen vibrations, some call it the digital world of positive and negative impulses or electronically generated vibrations.
This century will witness APIS as one of the greatest transformation and advancements for all mankind. APIS will prevent accidents when we can be forewarned of imminent dangers.
The Industrial Revolution of the 18th Century will pale in comparison.
Are human beings ready for the 21st century?
WARS, DESTRUCTION AND DEPRIVATION:
When green energy, water, food, and transportation become no more contentious issues, conflict and wars will fade faster into history. Resources now in use for waging conflicts and wars will be available for funding social programmes and peace efforts, not wars.
When there is less fossil oil dollars, the funding with petrol dollars for terrorism will be curtailed and reduced.
When fossil oil and LNG become less in use [due to clean and clean energy], the greed for wealth from oil and gas will decline, and there will be less hegemonic pursuits by the superpowers in the Middle East and in shallow waters in the search for these two natural resources under the seabed.
ENERGY, FOOD AND WATER WASTAGE:
Wastage will reduce when humans wake up to the importance of having better distribution [using drones and flying cars, etc] and networks to feed a bigger world population, and for mankind able to have three not two days a week for leisure and relaxation.
Wastage of energy, food and water will provide the luxuries for all to live as true humans should. It is for mankind to have gratitude and the positive attitudes in the practices of ‘reduce, reuse, repair, and recycle’ to transform the world into an age [no longer overly driven by materialistic way of life] for mankind to live in peace and harmony like in a modern Garden of Eden, a Utopian existence where there are plenty for all to share and live comfortably and happily.
UN ENVIRONMENT COUNCIL:
Let the politicians continue with their quarrels over climate change, global warming and carbon tax.
The UN must take the lead, act and not talk only but make the above changes for the sake of all mankind the soonest possible, not by 2054 but by 2034. It is possible when the UN’s GA collectively know the importance of setting up a new and powerful UN Environment Council to transform the world for mankind to attain harmony and peace that all have been dreaming and praying for over hundreds of centuries.
No one, no country or organisation alone can take on these gigantic tasks [with politicians quarrelling and disagreeing] to make the major U-turns and positive transformation in this 21st century.
More on what I wrote is at this link: https://tankoktim.wordpress.com/2018/05/04/united-nations-21st-century-and-beyond/
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Play it again, iPod [it is a music player device].
[iPod Touch 7th Gen – the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_Touch_(7th_generation) a mobile device designed and marketed by Apple Inc. with a touchscreen-based user interface.
I must be one of the few people left in the world who regularly listen to an iPod.
My iPod is the 160GB classic model that was released in September 2009, which makes it older than a primary school child. It has an honest-to-goodness click wheel. Unlike its sleeker successor, the iPod touch, it is a brick of a device: Larger than my palm, thicker than most poetry collections.
Its heft led me to dub it the Megalosaurus, after a dinosaur that is briefly mentioned in the opening of Charles Dickens’ novel Bleak House.
Like its namesake, which Dickens imagined incongruously “waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill”, the Megalosaurus is today a dinosaur out of time.
Last month, Apple announced that it would cease production of the iPod touch – the last of an empire of portable MP3 players that, more than two decades ago, revolutionised the consumption of music and paved the way for the now-ubiquitous smartphone.
Last week, I visited the new exhibition in the National Museum of Singapore’s basement, Off/On: Everyday Technology That Changed Our Lives, 1970s-2000s.
The museum has recreated immersive sets from yesteryear – a 1970s office filled with typewriters, a vintage coffee shop, and a hair salon with coin-operated phones.
In a display case sat a Zen Micro, an MP3 player by Creative Technology, the Singapore firm that in the 2000s went toe-to-toe with Apple over the digital music market.
Now this relic of a David-and-Goliath tech battle was behind glass. It was nostalgic – and more than a little unsettling – to see the technology of my childhood collected as artefacts in a museum.
“Oh, Megalosaurus,” I said to my iPod, “we’re really in it now.”
I am fascinated by technological obsolescence and unnerved at the speed at which it occurs – which, during my lifetime, has been at an unprecedented clip.
I was born somewhere between the rise of the compact disc and the fall of the cassette tape.
As a child, I would sneak into my parents’ bedroom in the afternoon while they were at work and choose a single CD to listen to, diligently following the lyrics in the liner notes.
In my teenage years, CDs were a kind of love language. You burned mixes for people you cared about, designed home-made covers and wrote the track listings in ballpoint pen on the back cards of cheap jewel cases.
I would spend hours choosing songs for my friends and agonising over the order of tracks and the transitions between them – something I still do today, even with Spotify. Heaven forbid you press “shuffle” on any of my playlists.
When MP3 players came onto the market, they were a revelation. The first iPods in 2001 boasted the ability to put 1,000 songs in your pocket. This might seem a paltry number next to Spotify’s more than 82 million tracks today, but back then it was mind-blowing.
This ushered in a wild era of ripping CDs and scouring the dark corners of the Internet for tracks you wanted, risking viral apocalypse with every download.
All this went into your MP3 player. Whether you were dancing in your room to Beyonce; crying to Regina Spektor behind the lecture theatre over your crush; or walking alone in a foreign city with only Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row to keep you company in the gathering dark – your MP3 player was there for you.
It may sound like teenage melodrama, but it felt like storing a piece of your heart in a device.
Every generation has its own music box. In the latest season of the 1980s-set Netflix series Stranger Things, a teenager is trapped in a trance by a demon from another dimension, but escapes when her friends blast her favourite song, Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God), on her Sony Walkman cassette player.
That scene struck a chord with me. Of course it would be a song that would lead her out of her hell.
Today, I am an avid user of Spotify. I can find almost any song in the world on it with the tap of a finger.
Yet sometimes I fall back on the Megalosaurus. There are practical reasons for this: New iPhone models no longer have analogue headphone ports, and I refuse to shell out for AirPods or an adapter.
But beyond this, my iPod is a time capsule of my past self. It has not been updated since 2017, when I lost my laptop and with it, a music library I had curated for over a decade, which now exists only in the Megalosaurus.
There are tracks on it that cannot be found on Spotify – for example, 94 songs by Joni Mitchell, the Canadian singer-songwriter who pulled her music from Spotify in January to protest against vaccine misinformation on the platform.
There are rare live cover versions; bootleg recordings; indie tunes the streamer has not deigned to host; an esoteric collection of sound effects with labels like “Shatter (glass, continuous)”, “Scream (multiple)” or “Siren (police)” from my brief and unwieldy stint as a theatre sound technician.
Listening to my iPod on shuffle often throws up long-forgotten songs that once meant the world to me and have since got lost in the vagaries of streaming algorithms. It is a musical walk down memory lane, punctuated by the occasional siren or shattering of glass.
Time moves on, yet nostalgia is always in vogue. I learnt recently from a 19-year-old intern that there is a TikTok subculture called “Y2K”, based on the aesthetics of the late 1990s and early 2000s – flip phones, cargo pants, Britney Spears. I imagine they would go wild for click wheel iPods.
Most Y2K enthusiasts are Generation Z and thus probably too young to actually remember this era, or not even born. I, a millennial, find this trend bewildering. Then again, it must be how boomers feel when they see me flouncing around the National Museum in 1980s vintage, shoulder-padded to glory.
The glamour of Y2K, our intern explained, stems in part from what today’s youngsters perceive as an era of technological optimism: The rosy dawn of the Internet, when social media and streaming had yet to penetrate every aspect of our waking lives.
In the Off/On exhibition, I was able to look even further back: Portable radios and cassette players that reminded me of the one my grandfather used to listen to in the afternoon, humming along with the Shanghai songstresses of yore, the golden tones of Bai Guang or the crystalline pitch of Li Xianglan.
In an oral history section of Off/On, someone called Danial recounts: “We used to wait for our favourite songs and record them. Gone are the times when the only way we could listen to our favourite songs was on the radio.”
In contrast, today we have everything at our fingertips, yet sometimes I feel I no longer know where to start. I love Spotify for its convenience, but I miss, too, the way music could be precious – not an overwhelming bounty thrust into your lap by an algorithm, but something you sought out and saved for yourself, or were gifted out of love.
The other day I was driving my grandfather home from an errand. The Megalosaurus was plugged in on shuffle.
On came a Li Xianglan song from the 1940s, Hen Bu Xiang Feng Wei Jia Shi. I heard as if out of the past those clear high notes with which she sings in Mandarin: “In the winter night comes a breath of spring wind.”
I began to sing along, and so, to my surprise, did my grandfather. We have very little in common across our generation gap, but we do have Li Xianglan, and so we sang together: “Though the warmth of that era has vanished, who can forget a lost dream?”
One day the battery of my iPod will go dead and I will no longer be able to recharge it. All those songs, the soundtrack of years of my life, will be lost to me. The husk of it might sit in some museum, for future generations to gaze upon and guess at how we lived, how we listened, how we loved.
Till then, play it again, Megalosaurus. Play as time goes by.
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Life in 1822, 1922, 2022 and 2122…..
Today..22 Feb 2022. Tuesday. All the 2s. What was life like for our ancestors on 22 Feb 1822 and 22 Feb 1922? Did many of them get to appreciate the sunrise and sunset in joy in 1822 and 1922? Those who did not, why? Those who did, why? And how many appreciated today’s sunrise and sunset – in Feb 2022?
Who will see sunrise and sunset in joy on 22 Feb 2122? And on Tuesday, also a 2. All the twos. Will they ask what was life back on 22 Feb 2022 when their forefathers and foremothers were fighting climate change and the Covid-19 virus, and could only communicate with each other on wifi, Internet, and mobile phones?
Without them in 1822 and 1922, we do not live today in 2022, not alive on earth today. Without us living today in 2022, there will be no life in 2122 for many, 100 years from today. Life is a web of mysteries interlinked and interconnected from one generation to the next.
When future generations in Feb 2122 could communicate with their forefathers and foremothers, who are in the spiritual form and alive in the Astral Realm, by using the Astral Particle Information System [a device with connection between the physical and astral realms], they would laugh at us with disbelief. Why?
We would become so primitive to them as how those in the 1822 and 1922 were to us, and then how primitive we were 100 years in 2022 using the slow and cumbersome Wifi, Internet and the mobile phones. Their devices in 2122 would not be handheld, and could communicate with the Astral World spiritual beings and not be restricted to communication only among human beings living in the physical world.
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35 years ago, Isaac Asimov was asked by the Star to predict the world of 2019. Here is what he wrote
By ISAAC ASIMOV Special to The Star
Thu., Dec. 27, 2018
Originally published Dec. 31, 1983
lf we look into the world as it may be at the end of another generation, let’s say 2019 — that’s 35 years from now, the same number of years since 1949 when George Orwell’s 1984 was first published — three considerations must dominate our thoughts:
In 1983, American writer Isaac Asimov wrote that by 2019, “It is quite likely that society, then, will have entered a phase that may be more or less permanently improved over the situation as it now exists.” (MONDADORI PORTFOLIO)
1. Nuclear war. 2. Computerization. 3. Space utilization.
If the United States and the Soviet Union flail away at each other at any time between now and 2019, there is absolutely no use to discussing what life will be like in that year. Too few of us, or of our children and grand· children, will be alive then for there to be any point in describing the precise condition of global misery at that time.
Let us, therefore, assume there will be no nuclear war — not necessarily a safe assumption — and carry on from there.
Computerization will undoubtedly continue onward inevitably. Computers have already made themselves essential to the governments of the industrial nations, and to world industry: and it is now beginning to make itself comfortable in the home.
Read more: Isaac Asimov, you were no Nostradamus
An essential side product, the mobile computerized object, or robot, is already flooding into industry and will, in the course of the next generation, penetrate the home.
There is bound to be resistance to the march of the computers, but barring a successful Luddite revolution, which does not seem in the cards, the march will continue.
The growing complexity of society will make it impossible to do without them, except by courting chaos; and those parts of the world that fall behind in this respect will suffer so obviously as a result that their ruling bodies will clamour for computerization as they now clamour for weapons.
The immediate effect of intensifying computerization will be, of course, to change utterly our work habits. This has happened before.
Before the Industrial Revolution, the vast majority of humanity was engaged in agriculture and indirectly allied professions. After industrialization, the shift from the farm to the factory was rapid and painful. With computerization the new shift from the factory to something new will be still more rapid and in consequence, still more painful.
It is not that computerization is going to mean fewer jobs as a whole, for technological advance has always, in the past, created more jobs than it has destroyed, and there is no reason to think that won’t be true now, too.
However, the jobs created are not identical with the jobs that have been destroyed, and in similar cases in the past the change has never been so radical.
Destroying our minds
The jobs that will disappear will tend to be just those routine clerical and assembly-line jobs that are simple enough, repetitive enough, and stultifying enough to destroy the finely balanced minds of those human beings unfortunate enough to have been forced to spend years doing them in order to earn a living, and yet complicated enough to rest above the capacity of any machine that is neither a computer nor computerized.
It is these that computers and robots for which they are perfectly designed will take over.
The jobs that will appear will, inevitably, involve the design, the manufacture, the installation, the maintenance and repair of computers and robots, and an understanding of whole new industries that these “intelligent” machines will make possible.
This means that a vast change in the nature of education must take place, and entire populations must be made “computer-literate” and must be taught to deal with a “high-tech” world.
Again, this sort of thing has happened before. An industrialized workforce must, of necessity, be more educated than an agricultural one. Field hands can get along without knowing how to read and write. Factory employees cannot.
Consequently, public education on a mass scale had to be introduced in industrializing nations in the course of the 19th century.
The change, however, is much faster this time and society must work much faster; perhaps faster than they can. It means that the next generation will be one of difficult transition as untrained millions find themselves helpless to do the jobs that most need doing.
By the year 2019, however, we should find that the transition is about over. Those who can be retrained and re-educated will have been: those who can’t be will have been put to work at something useful, or where ruling groups are less wise, will have been supported by some sort of grudging welfare arrangement.
In any case, the generation of the transition will be dying out, and there will be a new generation growing up who will have been educated into the new world. It is quite likely that society, then, will have entered a phase that may be more or less permanently improved over the situation as it now exists for a variety of reasons.
First: Population will be continuing to increase for some years after the present and this will make the pangs of transition even more painful. Governments will be unable to hide from themselves the fact that no problem can possibly be solved as long as those problems continue to be intensified by the addition of greater numbers more rapidly than they can be dealt with.
Efforts to prevent this from happening by encouraging a lower birthrate will become steadily more strenuous and it is to be hoped that by 2019, the world as a whole will be striving toward a population plateau.
Second: The consequences of human irresponsibility in terms of waste and pollution will become more apparent and unbearable with time and again, attempts to deal with this will become more strenuous. It is to be hoped that by 2019, advances in technology will place tools in our hands that will help accelerate the process whereby the deterioration of the environment will be reversed.
Third: The world effort that must be invested in this and in generally easing the pains of the transition may, assuming the presence of a minimum level of sanity among the peoples of the world, again not a safe assumption, weaken in comparison the causes that have fed the time-honoured quarrels between and within nations over petty hatred and suspicions.
In short, there will be increasing co-operation among nations and among groups within nations, not out of any sudden growth of idealism or decency but out of a cold-blooded realization that anything less than that will mean destruction for all.
By 2019, then, it may well be that the nations will be getting along well enough to allow the planet to live under the faint semblance of a world government by co-operation, even though no one may admit its existence.
Aside from these negative advances — the approaching defeat of overpopulation, pollution and militarism — there will be positive advances, too.
Education, which must be revolutionized in the new world, will be revolutionized by the very agency that requires the revolution — the computer.
Schools will undoubtedly still exist, but a good schoolteacher can do no better than to inspire curiosity which an interested student can then satisfy at home at the console of his computer outlet.
There will be an opportunity finally for every youngster, and indeed, every person, to learn what he or she wants to learn. in his or her own time, at his or her own speed, in his or her own way.
Education will become fun because it will bubble up from within and not be forced in from without.
At the dawn of 1984, Isaac Asimov predicted that robots would be common by the year 2019. They are, in many forms, although silicone-covered sex companions may have been one step beyond his imagination.
While computers and robots are doing the scut-work of society so that the world, in 2019, will seem more and more to be “running itself,” more and more human beings will find themselves living a life rich in leisure.
This does not mean leisure to do nothing, but leisure to do something one wants to do; to be free to engage in scientific research. in literature and the arts, to pursue out-of-the-way interests and fascinating hobbies of all kinds.
And if it seems impossibly optimistic to suppose that the world could be changing in this direction in a mere 35 years (only changing, of course. and not necessarily having achieved the change totally), then add the final item to the mix. Add my third phrase: space utilization.
It is not likely that we will abandon space, having come this far. And if militarism fades, we will do more with it than make it another arena for war. Nor will we simply make trips through it.
We will enter space to stay.
With the shuttle rocket as the vehicle, we will build a space station and lay the foundation for making space a permanent home for increasing numbers of human beings.
Mining the Moon
By 2019, we will be back on the moon in force. There will be on it not Americans only, but an international force of some size; and not to collect moon rocks only, but to establish a mining station that will process moon soil and take it to places in space where it can be smelted into metals, ceramics. glass and concrete — construction materials for the large structures that will be put in orbit about the Earth.
Women at a Coming of Age Day ceremony in Yokohama last month. Future historians will be astonished at the big disparity in Covid-19 death rates between leading Western societies and East Asian societies, says the writer. PHOTO: REUTERSImagining Asia in 2050
Lessons from scenario planning suggest we should be bolder in our imagination while taking into account the inherent complexities that arise from the interplay of various factors.
One of the most compelling virtues of the recent 2219: Futures Imagined exhibit at the ArtScience Museum was that it made a radical scenario – Singapore as a high-rise Venice, with canals, hanging gardens and vertical farming – appear entirely plausible. But 2219 could well be 2119, or even sooner.
I have frequently noticed this paradox in scenario-planning exercises. A decade ago, while advising the US National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2030 programme, the team posited a future in which urbanisation, technology and capital accumulation had brought about a landscape in which cities, federal governments, provincial authorities and corporate supply chains compete for influence across various enclaves and legal zones. My response: This is the world of 2013, not 2030.
From remote work to travel bubbles, the pandemic has taught us to speed up our acceptance of the “next normal”. Singapore’s own “30 by 30” plan to generate 30 per cent of its fish and vegetable consumption through local aquaponic farming by 2030 has been brought forward to 2023.
When conjuring up visions for the Asia of 2050, two lessons from countless scenario exercises are essential to bear in mind.
Lessons from scenarios
First, we must be imaginative. History is accelerating. Technologies from artificial intelligence to gene therapy are evolving far more rapidly than we previously thought, and are colliding in novel and unexpected ways.
Second, we must embrace complexity. The chain reactions across economics, geopolitics, climate and demographics make a mockery of linear projections.
Two decades ago, when the United States invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, pundits were quick to declare an eternal extension of American “hyperpower”. Yet here we are, nearly 20 years into the spectacular delegitimation of the Anglo-American system.
Meanwhile, Europe, which even Western analysts dismissed as a geopolitical museum, has embarked on a fiscal compact to match its monetary union, trades more with Asia than it does with the US, and leads the world in climate-resilient investments. Any holistic approach to measuring power and influence does more than look at military assets.
Similarly, in recent years, commentators have been far too quick to project that China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) heralded the inevitable return of the Ming dynasty’s tributary system of hierarchy across Asia. But rather than resurrect a Chinese version of the British East India Company (another common analogy for the BRI), strong backlash has already eroded China’s ability to coerce.
Major powers such as the US, Japan, Australia and Europe have erected significant barriers to Chinese investment while demanding reciprocal market access, formed a “Quad” coalition of navies to maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific region, and are working with weaker states to offer alternative lifelines of credit to dilute China’s “debt trap” diplomacy.
Both cases embody geopolitical complexity: The reaction to one power’s actions proves to be more decisive than that power’s original action. What it took the British nearly 300 years to learn, China is experiencing in the span of three years. China has told us what it wants its place to be in 2049. History will have a different opinion.
Envisioning Asia’s future by way of linear projection is therefore dangerous and so too is using static analogies and antiquated theories. Western history teaches that unipolar orders are more stable, but Asia’s 4,000 years of history have been almost exclusively multipolar, with diverse and dispersed civilisations focusing on commercial ties and cultural exchange rather than conflict.
The most recent power to violate that norm was 20th-century Japan, an experience of which China is well aware. Indeed, with more neighbours than any other country in the world, China is even more deeply enmeshed in the region and knows it cannot win a 14-front war.
Extreme scenarios grab headlines: US Hegemony 2.0, China Takes Over the World, New Cold War, or World War III. Take your pick. But if global history is any guide, we would be better served by drawing on precedents from Asia’s broad past while infusing disruptive elements coming at us from the future.
As the world gravitates more towards regional constructs than frictionless globalisation, the most salient template harkens back to the pre-colonial world, namely the 15th- and 16th-century Afro-Eurasian system that spanned the Indian Ocean.
Today, once again, the Indian Ocean region is the centre of gravity in global trade, linking highly complementary regions from East Africa to Asean in an ever more fluid milieu. This is complemented by the revival of another pre-colonial artefact, the “Silk Roads” spanning from Arabia to the Far East.
The resurrection of this trans-regional connectivity has far more to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago than the rise of China, hence we can expect these Silk Roads to flourish in all directions, irrespective of China’s influence over the Asian system.
Variables for the future
Now let us infuse some unprecedented variables into our construct of the Asian future.
First, demographics. The world is headed not towards rampant overpopulation as many feared two decades ago, but rather a plateau of perhaps no more than nine billion people – followed by a rather precipitous collapse. China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and other Asian nations are ageing rapidly and have fallen below replacement fertility levels. Their need to import foreign manpower is evident in Japan, which is now home to nearly three million foreigners, including legions of young Vietnamese and Indians. The country least known for welcoming outsiders has become an immigrant magnet.
China too has a very cautious approach towards immigrants, yet is also heavily importing South-east Asians to fill its labour shortages. We are witnessing a new era of Asian mass migrations from young to old societies, reinforcing the melting pot nature of the region.
Another driver of this demographic swirl: climate change. The estimated 10 million Indonesians working in Malaysia already represent the region’s largest cross-border community. What will happen as rising sea levels engulf Indonesia’s coastlines, drought scorches its agriculture, and heat effects broil its population?
No place is immune to climate effects, but Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change models are more favourable towards upper peninsular Malaysia, Myanmar, Japan and Mongolia than equatorial latitudes. We should not be surprised to find tens of millions of Bangladeshis in northern Myanmar, and perhaps hundreds of millions of Chinese in Siberia decades from now.
Today’s technological breakthroughs befit a world of people more on the move. We are moving from reliance on heavy and polluting hydrocarbon energy towards more localised renewable and alternative resources such as wind and solar ones. Thousands of satellites circulate in orbit and portable 5G base stations can be erected anywhere. A large share of the workforce
is made up of telecommuters. There may still be tensions across Asia and globally. Armed interventions and land grabs may be the new territorial geopolitics. Access to climate oases may be restricted while others scavenge in a more neo-mediaeval landscape. Bio-therapies and other medical treatments could exacerbate inequality, both economic and genetic.
Singapore in a changing world
Where does all of this leave Singapore? The more unpredictable the future appears, the more individuals seek refuge in islands of stability, well-governed enclaves that offer the virtues of security and connection humans innately desire. Already we have enough housing stock to support a population of seven million or more if we so choose, and demographic transition makes higher immigration an eventual necessity.
At the same time, becoming a leader in sectors ranging from advanced manufacturing to vaccines requires fresh minds and knowledgeable technicians, as well as manpower to export innovations to a global society that constantly craves upgrades.
Singapore’s success to date is owed in no small part to being prepared for a wide range of scenarios, equally paranoid about both threats implied in the proverb “come hell or high water”. The future is almost never either/or; it is far more often both/and. That means it is neither all utopia nor all dystopia, not all hyper-globalisation, nor all hyper-localisation.
Our global system evolves the way humanity does, not through grand design or random accident but by adaptation to changing realities. The faster we react to an accelerating world, the better our chances of shaping the future to our benefit.
Dr Parag Khanna is the founder and managing partner of FutureMap, and author of numerous books including Connectography and The Future Is Asian.
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