Recently, clips of a speech by Minister for Manpower, Dr Tan See Leng went viral. It went viral because he quoted from a 2004 Cantonese movie called 江湖 (“Blood Brothers” in English) starring HK heavenly kings Andy Lau and Jacky Cheung, in the recent parliamentary Budget debates. It is a movie about the HK underworld triads and both the heavenly kings were cast as triad bosses. The lines from the movie were used to chastise Non-Constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP) Leong Mun Wai from the Progress Singapore Party (PSP) for repeatedly trying to get data that differentiates between citizens who were born in Singapore and citizens and PRs who were born elsewhere.
Whether you agree with the Minister or not, this hobbit must concede that the incident was quite funny. And it was in Cantonese. This hobbit did not think he would live to see the day when Cantonese would be uttered in Parliament ever since Chinese dialects were banned on national TV in 1979. The first HK TV Cantonese serial that was dubbed into Mandarin in Singapore happened in 1979. The serial was the version of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre starring Liza Wang and Adam Cheng (both of them are 78 years’ old now). Yes, this hobbit is that old. I don’t call myself an “old coot” for nothing.
The parliamentary speech segment was so funny that The Straits Times came up with an official English translation the next day. It reads “Even if I’d said it, you wouldn’t listen to it. Even if you’d heard me, you wouldn’t understand. Even if you understood, you wouldn’t do it. Even if you did it, you would do it wrongly. Even if you did wrong, you wouldn’t own up to it. Even if you owned up, you wouldn’t correct yourself. Even if you corrected yourself, you did so begrudgingly. Then what am I supposed to do?”.
This is seminal because for once, parliamentary debate is funny. It hasn’t been so for a long time. Let’s face it, our political leaders just aren’t that funny. And we could all do with more laughs once in a while. Humour is in itself an effective communication tool.
But jokes aside, the important fact that was revealed by the Manpower Minister before he quoted Andy Lau was that 63% of newly created PMET (Professional, Managerial, Executive or Technical) jobs went to local-born citizens.
The PSP NCMPs (Mr Leong and Ms Hazel Poa) then replied over the next two days that there were right to insist on demanding on the breakdown between “old” citizens and PRs (born in Singapore) and “new” citizens and PRs (not born in Singapore) because all the new jobs created could have gone to new citizens and PRs and so there was no benefit to old citizens and PRs. Ms Poa gave a table of figures to illustrate this possibility. This hobbit is told Ms Poa studied Mathematics at Cambridge University and the table is of course 200% correct. (it’s 200% because this hobbit didn’t study Maths in any university).
Mr Leong came up with a Cantonese clip of his own to rebut the Minister. I must say the way he spoke Cantonese was really old school and slick. He reminded me of this famous and handsome actor called Cheung Ying (张瑛) who acted in many classic black and white HK movies from the late forties to the sixties. He died in 1984 and in addition to his acting, he was also known for having had five wives in his lifetime.
But we digress.
This hobbit has no wish to take part in partisan politics because politics is nice to read about but terrible to participate in. Especially the partisan kind. So, this hobbit will not comment on whether 63% is too high or low or whether we should really distinguish between old or new citizens and PRs. But this hobbit readily confesses that all his grandparents weren’t born in Singapore. And he also confesses that he grew up watching movies starring Cheung Ying replayed on TV, in particular on Channels 8 and 10 (The then free-to-air Malaysian channel).
However, demography is something that is taught in medical school (at least when I attended medical school) and this hobbit would like to offer a perspective from a demographic angle.
It is well known that the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of Singapore has fallen to slightly less than 1; 0.97 to be exact. The number of “resident” babies born in 2024 was 30,800 (babies with at least one parent who is a citizen or a PR). The replacement TFR acknowledged worldwide is 2.1, which is when the population replaces itself with no increase or decrease in population size. Let’s round up our latest TFR to 1 and round-down the replacement TFR to 2.
The replacement cohort size for residents would therefore be 30,800 x 2 = ~61,600, give or take a few. Another fact to note is that for the birth cohorts that are now in the workforce, the cohort sizes were bigger, probably ranging from 40,000 (Millennials and early Gen Z) to >60,000 (Gen X and late baby boomers). In recent years, we have maintained or grew Singapore’s resident population size by maintaining the cohort size of about 60,000 or more per birth cohort through immigration – i.e. by converting non-Singapore born PRs to citizens and giving out PRs to foreigners.
Personally speaking, I do not want the resident population to shrink, as we are already seeing the ill-effects of this phenomenon in places such as Japan. And as a selfish old coot, I would like to see more young people working and paying taxes to fund folks like me who are retiring or have retired. I also do not want to increase the resident population too much too quickly, because this in itself may drive inflation higher and create a very crowded living environment.
But if we are to just maintain the resident population (no increase) and with the resident cohort size continuing to shrink in the more recent cohorts to the now all-time low of 30,000 resident births or so, the government of the day will have to top-up the shortfall with more and more “new” citizens and PRs who were not born here. So going forward, the figure of 63% is almost certain to drop further to 60% or even 50%. Since we have a TFR of 1, it is also very likely that the figure of 50% will be reached in the future, provided our number of resident births do NOT decline further. If it drops to 20,000 births a year, and the replacement cohort size remains at ~60,000, then the figure may even hit a shocking 33%. I.e. Singapore-born citizens only take up ~33% of the new PMET jobs created.
It’s simple maths.
This is a mathematical and demographic certainty if we want to maintain (or maybe even grow slightly) the resident population. Barring the most unlikely scenario of our TFR miraculously rebounding back to 2.1, the figure of 63% will only rise (i.e. >65%) if we are happy to see the resident population shrink or if we are happy to attract new citizens and PRs who take on non-PMET jobs or both, assuming that the number of new PMET jobs being created remains the same over time.
All this is beyond the small brain of this hobbit. But from a mathematical and demographic perspective, the figure of 63% will not, in any likelihood, get any higher, so don’t hold your breath for that to happen. It’s got nothing much to do with favouring new citizens and PRs over old ones but more to do with the lack of resident babies to maintain the resident population. It is essentially a demographic problem. The additional underlying considerations could also be about maintaining or growing the absolute size of the economy (i.e. GDP); as well as the relative contribution by residents to our economy vis a vis foreign workers’ contribution (i.e. those holding Employment Passes, S-passes and Work Permits).
But of course, none of this really matters to the man in the street who has lost his job and is looking for another job without success and to the new graduate still jobless six months after graduation. Which is why this hobbit is pretty sure that Andy Lau and Jacky Cheung are having a better time than our Manpower Minister now. Not to mention Cheung Ying, who had five wives.
hobbitsma 