A Misplaced Disciplinarian

Having been brought up in a Confucian background, I had always been ridiculously hard on my son. He was an obedient boy and a good student. But my expectations were outrageous. I wanted him to always be top in class. When I left for work, I expected him to be at the front door to see me off, and when I returned from work, I also wanted him to be there to receive me. I also expected him to be thoughtful in every Confucian way. If he failed to satisfy me in any of these matters, I would give him hell. On the other hand, I was partial to my daughter. But even then, she must have been pretty unhappy with my  shouts and screams. My wife tried to moderate me, but when I was angry, she knew it was better for her to leave me alone. But deep inside her, she knew I loved my children deeply.

After their graduation, I became totally non-interventionist. But damage had already been done. My son must have resented me greatly. He got married and had three children. He brought them up his way. We were not particularly close, nonetheless, we cared for each other and he would oblige me always. I guess it was my wife who was instrumental in maintaining the bond.

Relationship with our daughter was smoother. She has an exceptionally good husband who is also a great son-in-law. We spent a great deal of time with her young family.

Relationship with my son took a turn when he had a marital crisis. He then knew our love for him was without boundary. 

Reflecting over the whole matter, I have come to realise that there were missing pieces in my family “development” effort.

My parents had to let their oldest child, who was my eldest brother, live with my grandmother – one of those old-fashioned expectations then. They sent him to an English school. And after finishing his school, he left for Singapore and settled down there. He was a very caring brother. I love to visit and stay with him during school holidays. All my older siblings and I were sent to Chinese schools. However, when it became apparent that prospects for Chinese school leavers were not bright, my family decided to switch me to an English school after I completed my Primary Six. I hated the school I was sent to. Even though we had spent only six years in Chinese school, our thinking and values were very much the Confucian type, especially when many of my teachers were very dedicated to Confucian morals. That had probably sealed my concepts of Rights and Wrongs.

My wife was from a Penang Peranakan background. The language they spoke at home was English. Except for the usual cultural celebrations, they hardly knew anything about China, especially its philosophical sages and history.

When it was time to send my children to school, we naturally opted for the national schools. These are basically Malay-medium schools. However, because of the environment, the lingua franca was English. Both my children excelled in school. I arranged for a lady to give them Chinese lessons once a week. But because she was not really trained in teaching, her effectiveness was so-so. And because there was no opportunity for them to use the language, the effort did not bear any fruit.

Devoid of a basic command in the Chinese language and our failure to provide any guidance or compass in Chinese philosophical thinking, they could only grope in the dark when it came to satisfying my cultural expectations of them. That was the GAP, and my frequent outbursts and their subsequent resentment!

But it also boiled down to my impatience!

Had I behaved like a more thoughtful father, outcomes would have been quite different. My wife has a nephew whose son is was slightly autistic. He is so patient with him. His patience put me to shame!

My son survived the ordeal of having an intolerant father when he was young. No amount of love I now shower on him can erase that wound I have inflicted on him. But I take consolation in the fact that he is so ready to forgive!

Shooting oneself in the foot!

American superiority – economically, scientifically, and thus militarily – was founded largely on its open-arm welcome of usually well-educated and highly productive immigrants and students from all over the world – initially Europe and later East, South and West Asia.  I am afraid this competitive advantage is being hastily thrown away, started by Donald Trump, and now pace accelerated under Joe Biden.

When my nephew was offered a place to do his Engineering in the US in the 1990s, I advised him, “Sam, America is a great place to live. Try to get your green card after you graduate.” What a bad advice from me!

Sam and his wife did get their green card. They have two children now. He works in a senior capacity for a substantial fertilizer company. But he is now seriously considering his employer’s offer to relocate to either Singapore or China. He does not feel safe in America!

I now see video clips of vulnerable Asians of being physically assaulted – for no apparent reasons – by strangers on streets and in public transports. The perpetrators are invariably Blacks. (Somehow the Blacks always want to vent their underclass anger on Asians!) I do not know if most Americans of Chinese descent are feeling that way now. But I am fairly sure most Chinese parents in East Asia are now quite hesitant to send their children for education in America. Chinese students usually go there to pursue STEM courses. Devoid of their enrolment, how competitive American universities will remain, especially they now must compete with some of the most “afraid-to-lose” institutions of higher learning in China?

The West loves to characterize Chinese as copy-cats. Few have bothered to read the history of China and know the prolific nature of that civilization in inventions and innovations. Indeed, China lost its bearings during the later part of the Manchu rule, when it was totally blind to the superiority of western gunboats and their global dominance designs. But China is simply a giant that was forced into temporary submission.

Mao Tze-tung made Chinese stood up. But the backwardness of China after his takeover was too immense for his Great Leap Forward clarion call. Fortunately, Deng was rehabilitated, but devoid of modern infrastructure in toolmaking, it simply could not advance much in the engineering and technology front, hence the need to copy and innovate. But the giant had indeed been awakened.

Within two decades, it became the “factory” of the world. No country could challenge its formidable supply chain infrastructure once this critical mass was reached. But the progress over the last five years or so even more mind-boggling; there is no need for me to repeat what it has achieved.

Much of this collective human capital, hitherto much of it would have gone to and stayed in America, is now locked in China. This, in my opinion, is marking the beginning of the decline of American hegemony in this world.

Joe Biden can say, we still have our traditional intellectual constituents – the Caucasians, and the Jews, and the influx of the Latinos, South and other Asians, etc – to count on. I am not sure about the strength of that argument. The racial divide has not improved much since Martin Luther King, Jr’s march on Washington in 1963. Few Blacks think hard about their future. The Caucasians and the Jews are cruising on a plateau; few need to go beyond their traditional turfs. And coming to South Asians, particularly Indians, you see many Fortune 500 companies and great universities are headed by them. They also have a fair share of Nobel prizes. Many are world-class managers and scientists, but few are entrepreneurs or product/service disruptors in their own right. And millions of economic refugees are trying to enter America. It will take at least a generation or two before these immigrants can really contribute to the brain capital of America.

Chinese have yet to leave great footprints on fundamental research. But once they get to know the ABC in a certain field, they will collectively push all frontiers not only to extend their prowess all the way to XYZ linearly, but also to stretch the alphabets along the way concentrically in three dimensions like an expanded balloon. Yes, just like the western world, China also has many high-tech billionaires, but unlike the West, they would be reined in if their actions were deemed compatible to the greater good policies seen in the Chinese society.

Instead of working with China to benefit the world, it seeks to contain China by demonizing it. The US can scream until its lung collapses about  the Uighurs and forced labour in cotton fields in Xinjiang, the security laws in Hong Kong, and laboratory leak in Wuhan, and sooner, the plight of Tibetans. But are they the real champions? Anyone who is capable of distilling information will conclude it is all hypocrisy. This bad-mouthing strategy simply is no longer workable in this cyber world, when information and knowledge are all available with just a couple of clicks.

Indeed, Trump has let out the Genie, and Biden is making it to roam wild. Who is the loser at the end of the day?

Someone recently forwarded me a video about how America had created a formidable foe in Vladimir Putin. Isn’t this a worse nightmare?