By U AC
Myanmar has seen its best days in the past. Educated elderly people reminisced about how people across the region came over to study at the famous Yangon university (now world ranking at 6,500+), at a time when people respected Myanmar and UN Secretary-General U Thant, and the fact that people from China admired those emigrants, who escaped the poverty there to successfully come over to live in the golden land of Myanmar.
These days are long gone. Decades of mismanagement and a lack of world-class educational infrastructure have stripped the country of the ability to compete in the regional and international arenas. As Senior General Min Aung Hlaing said at the government term extension meeting, all the 7.3 per cent admirable growth rates achieved during President Thein Sein’s administration are all but wiped out by the well below regional average growth of a miserable 3.4 per cent during corrupt Su Kyi administration.
The international community welcomed change in Myanmar with open arms. And did we NOT use that to our advantage during Su Kyi’s administration? Ask any businessmen or working professionals, and 98 per cent of them would willingly vouch that the best of the times, economically at least, were during the 2013-2015 period. The international community welcomed Su Kyi with an even bigger arm.
Hailed globally as an icon for democracy, they, especially the western world, have a vested interest to make their prodigy a success. Yet ostensible governance skills and international experience were up to no match against the previous administration, made up of ex-military top brass, reportedly lacking in management skills and worldly experiences. Now that there is indisputable evidence of her hand in voters’ fraud as well as rampant corruption per excellence across the whole of her cabinet, the Western countries find it totally obnoxious to accept the fact that their erstwhile puppet would go down the history as the most corrupt and incompetent leader in Myanmar’s history. Even King Thi Baw (the last king of Burma) would be laughing at his death bed, to finally have someone who would take his place.
Her NLD keyboard worriers kept on disparaging any ex-military leaders as big-time thieves, yet the most kleptocratic leader of all is no one but Su Kyi. Yet, being corrupt is not enough for her. How would people know of her omnipotent skills unless she leaves her legacy by transforming Myanmar into a dystopia? And the end is not there yet.
The end result of letting her govern actually brought the country down the path of the intractable morass. The only benefit would have been for the general public to realise what a mistake it had been. The superwoman who came down from heaven to save not just Myanmar, but the world, turned out to be at best, very well below average, after all. Lee Kuan Yew is right again!
Myanmar has become the poorest in ASEAN under her watch, in 2017. Our educational institutions have gone backwards. Worst of all, she has torn down the sense of loyalty that any decent human being should display. Her election slogan of ‘Take everything from USDP, then vote for NLD’, has bred a generation of youngsters and workers, who thought that it is right not to be loyal to your employer - you can take everything from your employer and whatever he graciously provides you, yet it is ok to bad-mouth him, betray him, swear and cursed at him and slander him on Facebook. There need not exist any sense of gratitude!
Another slogan of her ‘Do not look at the person, just vote for the party’ discouraged handwork and individual excellence implicitly. You do not really have to be good or excel at what you do, you just need to follow her and say yes, all the time.
The end result has been bringing the country down the path of demise, together with her own. Not wanting to accept that their backer was a fraud, the western world refused to entertain, let alone believe in the factual evidence put forward to the world at large by the current State Administration Council.
Now Myanmar is poorer than ever because of her. And Myanmar is now totally impotent to even take on a once-in-a-millennium opportunity offered by companies shipped out of China.
Exodus from China
International companies across China are relocating to the regional countries, as China’s labour costs are no longer competitive enough, especially for labour-intensive operations. From 2013 to 2022, manufacturing wages in China doubled to $8.27 per hour. In contrast, such wages in India, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Viet Nam are still below $3, approximately a third of China. Obviously, the decision to relocate the production base cannot be based on costs alone. At least in the high-tech manufacturing industry, the continuing high-tech war between US and China is also forcing manufacturers to reconsider their reliance on China.
Between 2020 and 2022, Japanese companies operating in China fell from 13,600 to 12,700. Sony itself is moving its camera production from China to Thailand. Samsung of Korea has slashed more than two-thirds of its workforce since 2013. Dell Computers aims to stop using Chinese chips by 2024. The immediate beneficiaries of this exodus are the countries of RECP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) plus India and Bangladesh.
Taiwan’s Foxconn, Pegatron and Wintron, which assemble gadgets for Apple among others, are investing heavily in Indian factories. The share of iPhones made in India is expected to rise from 1 in 20 last year to 1 in 4 by 2025. Two Taiwan universities have teamed up with India’s Tata, to offer courses in electronics to Indian workers. Google is shifting outsourced production of Pixel smartphones from China to Viet Nam. Malaysia is already exporting around 10 per cent of the world’s chips, in terms of value. Qualcomm, the US chip design maker, opened its first research and development centre in Viet Nam in 2020. The country itself is now even courting a $3.3 billion investment from Intel to open a chip manufacturing plant. Thamlev, US electric bike startup, moved production from China to Malaysia in 2022, to avoid a 25 per cent US tariff. Glico, a Japanese food processing MNC, opened its largest-ever factory in Indonesia for ‘pocky’ chocolate snacks to supply SEA and US, in 2023.
Where is Myanmar in this?
Myanmar is nowhere to be seen among the beneficiaries. Countries and MNCs are shunning Myanmar as they did Russia.
Most of those who are interested in coming to Myanmar are also not interested in promoting the Myanmar brand either. They would buy raw materials or raw produce from Myanmar, repackaged them in their own countries, under their own brands and resell them internationally. Do we ever wonder, why we have never seen any rice bags with Myanmar brands in foreign supermarkets when the country itself is within the top 10 rice producers in the world?
The answer lies in our own resilience, hard work and perseverance. The Vietnamese had it worse during the Viet Nam war. Yet, the country is even now about to produce electric vehicles. Attacking each other, infighting among us and destroying local companies have hurt Myanmar. The faces of all our neighbours will be lit up with impish glee, as they observe us bring down each other on social media and destroy our top brand name companies, through social punishment and cyber harassment.
This has got to stop! Perpetrators must be punished hard enough that there would be no repeat of such acts henceforth.
The food for youth!
Before you consider becoming a keyboard worrier or worse, a terrorist, please consider what youth in our neighbouring countries would be doing…
- While you are being lazy taking a nap or sleeping an extra hour or talking nonsense at the tea shop, factory workers in China are working seven days a week, every day non-stop for twelve hours.
- While you are not reading, children in Singapore as young as ten, are studying using google, and YouTube to understand their works and subjects better and making presentations in front of the classes.
- While you cannot even produce a proper business report, Malaysian workers are making microchips to export to the whole world.
- While you do not even know how to polish your own car properly, Vietnamese are making solar vehicles now.
- While you cannot even install a telegram programme on your phone, Indian workers are making iPhones now.
- While you are resting on your laurels, the average GDP per capita of Bangladesh is improving year after year and is about to exceed twice of our own country.
- While you are studying the past of Myanmar kings conquering Thailand, some Thais are abusing and discriminating against Myanmar workers in Thailand.
- While you do not even know how to use google, let alone ChatGPT, Beijing alone has more than 1,000 top-class AI firms now.
Now that’s real food for thought! Go figure.
