https://www.scmp.com/rss/325840/feed en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com ON CHINA’S CULTURAL STRENGTH At a very young age, perhaps four or five years old, I was becoming conscious of mother’s stories, and her frequent exhortations to me and my brothers. Father, his associates, and even the Chinese labourers working in the shop also had wisdom. I learned from them and from their behaviour that I belonged to a people with a very rich culture. As I grew older, through the 1930s and 1940s, I began to realise that what the Chinese lacked most of all was discipline and... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2121117/dengs-despair-rebirth-under-xi-and-how-i-felt-about-buying-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2121117/dengs-despair-rebirth-under-xi-and-how-i-felt-about-buying-and?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 28 Nov 2017 01:00:15 +0000 CUT THE APRON STRINGS AND CAST OFF In 1967, word reached my ears that the Blue Funnel Group was coming to set up the national shipping line of Malaysia. Blue Funnel was probably the largest shipping conglomerate in Britain at that time. It owned Blue Funnel, Glen Line, Straits Steamship Co in Singapore, and many other lines. The Executive Chairman, a man whom I recall walked with a bad limp, was making frequent lobbying trips from London to Kuala Lumpur. I was interested in applying for the... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2121108/how-i-launched-malaysias-national-shipping-line-and-what-genghis?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2121108/how-i-launched-malaysias-national-shipping-line-and-what-genghis?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 27 Nov 2017 01:00:15 +0000 UNSUNG HEROES The overseas Chinese made enormous contributions to Southeast Asia. They are the unsung heroes of the region: the poor men and women who migrated and blazed trails into the jungle, accessing the timber wealth; Chinese workers who planted and tapped rubber, who opened up the tin mines, who ran the small retail shops. It was the Chinese immigrants who tackled these Herculean tasks, and created a new economy around them. The British were good administrators. Many of them in private... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2121085/chinese-most-amazing-economic-ants-earth-robert-kuok-memoirs?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2121085/chinese-most-amazing-economic-ants-earth-robert-kuok-memoirs?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 26 Nov 2017 01:02:14 +0000 FROM SEA TO AIR It was likely that some people in the government thought that it was shameful for Chinese Malaysians to run the national shipping line. When I sensed that this was their attitude, it was time for me to call it a day. Kuok Brothers eventually sold all their MISC shares and pulled out of the national shipping company completely. In the early 1970s, the Kuok Group started its own shipping company, Pacific Carriers, in Singapore. By then I was a semiexpert on shipping. Any business... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2121067/malaysia-singapore-airlines-siamese-twins-set-separation-robert?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2121067/malaysia-singapore-airlines-siamese-twins-set-separation-robert?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 25 Nov 2017 06:00:30 +0000 COMMUNIST DEVILS? PLEASE, PRIME MINISTER Malaysia has had six Prime Ministers since independence. I have known all six. The first, Tunku Abdul Rahman, had tremendous rhythm. He was a well-educated man, having graduated with a law degree from Cambridge. If you talk of brains, Tunku was brilliant, and very shrewd. His mother was Thai, and he had that touch of Thai shrewdness, an ability to smell and spot whether a man was to be trusted or not. Tunku was less mindful about administrative affairs.... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2121058/devils-friends-how-chinas-communists-won-over-malaysian-pm-tunku?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2121058/devils-friends-how-chinas-communists-won-over-malaysian-pm-tunku?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 25 Nov 2017 01:01:56 +0000 Malaysian-born billionaire Robert Kuok has just published his memoirs – due out at bookshops this weekend – but they are by no means a tell-all. For starters he reveals few clues on the decades-old question of who will succeed him at the helm of the corporate empire he built from scratch in the post-war years. Still, the 376 pages offer a rare glimpse into the private life of a magnate, 94, who despite once owning the South China Morning Post is well known for having avoided the media limelight... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2121123/my-mother-and-mao-singapore-taxes-and-rise-hong-kong-property?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2121123/my-mother-and-mao-singapore-taxes-and-rise-hong-kong-property?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 24 Nov 2017 06:00:15 +0000