Clement Tan – Page 2 – Educator, Writer, Editor

July 12, 2023August 22, 2023

Thailand’s Parliament is about to pick a new prime minister — and a generation’s hopes are at stake

Clement Tan | July 12, 2023 | CNBC.com

Thailand’s Parliament will vote for a new prime minister on Thursday, and the country’s young and urban are about to find out whether their backing of a progressive opposition party at May’s elections will translate into genuine power.

Not too long ago, they were basking in the euphoria of the party’s stunning victory, priming themselves for democratic change and reform. Two months on, they are instead confronted with the sight of 79-year-old Wan Muhamad Noor Matha — very much considered a member of the old guard — as the “new” speaker of Thailand’s House of Representatives.

The young voters had propelled the Move Forward Party — led by the Harvard-educated, 42-year-old Pita Limjaroenrat — to an unprecedented majority of the seats in Parliament after nine years of military rule, but this was too slim for the party to push forward its own candidates, forcing it into a coalition with seven other parties.

Move Forward had campaigned on an ambitious structural reform agenda targeting the country’s monarchy, monopolies and military. These aims essentially extended the goals of student protests more than two years ago that were triggered by the dissolution of a political party — Move Forward’s predecessor entity — which was highly critical of outgoing Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, the former military general who seized power in a 2014 coup and made changes to the Thai Constitution in 2017.

Its slim majority has made its agenda vulnerable to the machinations of the institutions it is seeking to reform, along with the interlocking patronage networks that remain despite the ouster of several influential business families in this election. The installation of Wan Noor as a compromise candidate after second-placed party Pheu Thai had objected to Move Forward’s choice, was just the beginning.

June 13, 2023October 15, 2023

Is Japan Inc finally serious about corporate governance reform?

By Clement Tan | June 13, 2023 | CNBC.com

For the first time in decades, Japan stocks are back in vogue.

In the last few weeks, the benchmark Nikkei 225 and Topix indexes touched their highest levels in more than 30 years as foreign investors pour into Japanese equities with a consistency rarely seen in at least a decade.

After what turned out to be a false dawn a decade ago, when “Abenomics” first raised hopes of corporate governance reform in Japan, many seem to think better of the latest measures by the Tokyo exchange.

“The recent Tokyo Stock Exchange initiative is a game-changing moment, because it’s going to challenge a lot of companies that are trading on less than one-time price-to-book to improve profitability and support their share price,” said Oliver Lee, a Singapore-based client portfolio manager, at Eastspring Investments.

The Tokyo Exchange Group recently finalized its market restructuring rules. Among the latest measures was one that directed listed companies to “comply or explain” if they are trading below a price-to-book ratio of one — an indication a company may not be using its capital efficiently.

The exchange warned such companies could face the prospect of delisting as soon as 2026.

Part of the optimism in Japanese stocks stems from how specific and tangible the Tokyo exchange’s requirements are this time round. Warren Buffett’s bullish calls on Japanese equities has also helped boost confidence among foreign investors.

There is hope this would press Japanese companies’ notoriously resistant management — which typically view shareholders as enemies — for greater capital efficiency and profitability. It could in turn lead to a domino effect among other Japanese companies once the big players start to make changes.

June 4, 2023October 15, 2023

U.S. and China trade barbs at top security summit as Taiwan Strait tensions simmer

By Clement Tan | June 5, 2023 | CNBC.com

SINGAPORE — A handshake and a ministerial lunch were all that the U.S. defense chief and his Chinese counterpart shared on the sidelines of a regional security summit in Singapore.

Ahead of the annual Shangri-La Dialogue which kicked off Friday, Beijing rejected a U.S. request for a bilateral meeting between its defense minister, Gen. Li Shangfu, and his American counterpart Lloyd Austin.

On Saturday, when Austin took to the stage at the summit where global defense leaders gathered, he called out China for refusing to engage in military dialogue.

“Dialogue is not a reward. It is a necessity. A cordial handshake over dinner is no substitute for substantive engagement,” Austin said in prepared remarks. “The more that we talk, the more we can avoid the misunderstandings and miscalculations that could lead to crisis or conflict.”

China’s Li responded a day later by accusing the U.S. of lacking sincerity and behaving in a manner not befitting of a superpower.

“It is undeniable that a severe conflict or confrontation between China and the U.S. will be an unbearable disaster for the world. China believes that a major country should behave like one,” Li said Sunday in a translation provided by summit organizers. It was his first address to an international audience in his current role as China’s defense chief.

May 30, 2023October 15, 2023

China’s record high youth unemployment is deepening economic scars

By Clement Tan | May 30, 2023 | CNBC.com

As youth unemployment in China rises to a record high, college graduates are caught in a perfect storm — with some forced to take on low-paying jobs or settle for jobs below their skill levels.

Official data shows urban unemployment among the 16- to 24-year-olds in China hit a record 20.4% in April – about four times the broader unemployment rate even as millions more college students are expected to graduate this year.

“This college bubble is finally bursting,” said Yao Lu, a professor of sociology at Columbia University in New York. “The expansion of college education in the late 1990s created this huge influx of college graduates, but there is a misalignment between demand and supply of high skilled workers. The economy hasn’t caught up.”

The scourge of underemployment is another issue that Chinese youths and policymakers have to grapple with.

In a paper Lu co-authored with Xiaogang Li, a professor at Xi’an Jiaotong University, the professors estimated at least another quarter of college graduates in China are underemployed, on top of the rising youth unemployment rate.

June 9, 2017June 12, 2017

Australia’s Tantalizing Lessons on Privatizing Infrastructure

The White House is interested in modeling Australia’s approach to national infrastructure. Here’s how they do it Down Under.

Clement Tan | June 9, 2017 | CityLab

The White House’s “Infrastructure Week” didn’t offer many clues about how the Trump administration might approach its promise to “spend big” on ailing infrastructure in the United States. But when it comes to financing roads, bridges, and other projects through public-private partnerships, we know Trump advisers have one model in mind that Australia figured out nearly 10 years ago.

In July 2008, facing the fact that inadequate infrastructure could limit economic growth, the Australian government decided to do what it had never done before: infrastructure planning on a national level.

That month, the federal government created a statutory body—Infrastructure Australia—that brought together the public and private sectors to devise a long-term strategy and prioritize key projects for funding.

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May 3, 2017July 26, 2017

Nanyang Girls’ Elizabeth-Ann Tan shatters 24-year 100m record

By Clement Tan/Red Sports, with additional reporting by Erwin Wong

National Stadium, Friday, April 28, 2017 — As she stood over the starting block amid the cacophony of screams, Elizabeth-Ann Tan looked straight ahead, arms akimbo, focused on the task at hand. There were the nerves, but she was mostly visualising the century sprint she’s about to run: the start that was always problematic for her, her shoulders, her arm swing, her stride rhythm.

The time Elizabeth had in mind: the 12.44 seconds she ran at a meet in Perth in March. She ran 12.71s in the semi-finals last week to break the electronically timed C Division girls record of 12.74s that Nur Izlyn Bte Zaini set in 2012 while representing Singapore Sports School. To go anywhere near 12.44s would mean bettering the 12.6s hand-timed record set in 1993 by Lim Joo Lee, then of Raffles Girls’ School.

“I was very, very nervous,” said Elizabeth, a Nanyang Girls’ High School secondary two student. “It was a bit more difficult to focus here than at Bishan Stadium because of the bigger crowd and the place, it’s quite scary though the adrenaline also pushed me along.”

She ended up crossing the finish line in the C girls 100m final in 12.41s, run with a slight tailwind of 0.1 metre/second. Teammate Bernice Liew, who finished second in a close 200m final last week, again claimed the silver in a personal best 12.72s. Both girls later combined to win gold for Nanyang Girls’ in the 4 by 100m relay.

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February 14, 2017June 12, 2017

To preserve social harmony, Singapore has racial requirements for its next president

By Clement Tan | Feb. 14, 2017 | Quartz

At a time when right-wing nationalism is seeing a resurgence globally, Singapore’s move to ensure minority representation may seem almost progressive in comparison.

The city-state could soon have its first female Muslim president, after the government rubber-stamped changes last week that would see only the country’s Malay, Muslim minority—making up about 15% of its 3.9 million resident citizens—eligible to stand at September’s election to choose its head of state, a largely ceremonial role.

But since Singapore gained independence from Malaysia in 1965, the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) has in fact relied on a plethora of race-based innovations to maintain racial harmony between its majority Chinese population, and the minority Malay-Muslim and Indian ethnic groups. The latest move to designate that the president must be a Muslim is seen as another one of these measures.

“The government believes they have to engineer multiracialism,” said Eugene Tan, associate professor of law at Singapore Management University. “They regard the election of a minority as head of state as an important testament of Singapore’s nation-building journey. Attaining that end justifies the means.”

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March 31, 2016March 13, 2017

Without Baggage of Legacy, China Budget Airlines Gain on “Big Three”

By Clement Tan

March 31 (Bloomberg) — Cheap fares and no legacy are helping China’s budget airlines beat state-owned carriers in the stock market.

With combined fleets exceeding 1,000 planes, $31 billion in market values, and up to 20 times more workers, state-controlled China Southern Airlines Co., China Eastern Airlines Corp. and Air China Ltd. on average provide just one-third the returns of Spring Airlines Co. and Juneyao Airlines Co., according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Even the Chinese regulator has lauded Spring as a model of efficiency.

Investors have driven up shares of Juneyao fourfold since the stocks listed last year, while Air China, the leader by market value, has fallen 46 percent in the same period. The data also suggest the three carriers need to step up the pace of reforms to better exploit growth in the Chinese air-travel market, poised to become the world’s largest within two decades.

“Spring and Juneyao don’t have the baggage of legacy like the state-owned airlines,” said Cao Xuefeng, an analyst at Huaxi Securities Co. in Chengdu. “They were started as profit-driven businesses and cost-efficiency for them extends to all aspects of their operations, not just their smaller work forces and cheaper tickets.”

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March 1, 2016April 9, 2016

Airbus, Boeing See Politics Make Good Business Sense in China

By Clement Tan

March 1 (Bloomberg) — China’s political leaders identified aerospace as one of 10 key industries in the country’s quest to become an advanced industrialized nation. Ahead of this weekend’s annual legislative session, Western planemakers — their future competitors — are helping them toward that goal.

Airbus Group SE will break ground Wednesday on a finishing center for its wide-body A330 jets in Tianjin, near Beijing, a decade after it opened an assembly plant there for single-aisle planes. Chicago-based Boeing Co. also is seeking a location in China for a plane-completion facility.

Opening plants in China, poised to become the world’s largest aerospace and air-travel market in two decades, is as much a political as an economic decision. One factor is proximity to customers: Chinese airlines order billions of dollars of planes from Airbus and Boeing every year, and doing some assembly locally eases the strain on the planemakers’ existing facilities. Equally important is the goodwill such investments earn.

“It’s absolutely undeniable there’s been a communication of Chinese expectations for companies to build in China, to provide jobs in China, that they will be treated less equitably otherwise,” said Scott Harold, the Washington-based associate director of Rand Corp.’s Center for Asia Pacific Policy. “If you build in China, you’re a ‘friend’ of China.”

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February 18, 2016April 9, 2016

Five Things to Look Out for When You Fly With Air Koryo, the World’s Worst Airline

By Clement Tan and Sam Kim

Feb 18 (Bloomberg) — Change is in the air in North Korea. After years of being ranked by Skytrax as the world’s worst airline, national carrier Air Koryo is undergoing a revolution, according to interviews with passengers and travel agents.

New planes, new in-flight entertainment options, smart new uniforms for the cabin attendants, even business class. It’s all part of supreme leader Kim Jong Un’s effort to boost tourist numbers 20-fold to 2 million by 2020 and supplement the nation’s meager foreign exchange.

Here are five reasons to book your ticket now, before the thrill of flying the world’s only one-star airline vanishes forever. (And as long as you don’t mind helping fund Kim’s nuclear-weapons program.)

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