Singapore's legion of foreign talent: GOOD? BAD?

In 2010, Singapore's female Table Tennis team had just upped its achievement, and beat mighty China at their own game of table tennis, otherwise known as Ping Pong. A proud moment trumpeted by the PAP government as a triumph of its policies with regards to the sporting world of Singapore. However, this ‘pride’ of Singapore is mostly misguided; at best a result of mass media propaganda, and at worst a slow degradation of Singapore’s fabric of society, as ‘foreign talents’ flood in to don Singapore’s colours, and locals slowly come to desire instant success in all endeavours simply by throwing money at the problem.

The criticism of the team is mostly directed at the fact that the players are made up of Chinese nationalities turned naturalised Singaporeans, and that China in fact did win the championship, in a way. Of course the other side of the coin argues that these players are bred Singaporeans, and that they deserve all the support they can get from their adopted countrymen as they fight for Singapore’s glory on the world stages. Which side is correct though? We take a look at the facts.

Other than the original table tennis foreign talent, Mdm Jing Jun Hong, who married a Singaporean, which one of these talents has actually stayed in Singapore long-term? Looking at other sports, we have the soccer players Mirko Grabovac and Egmar Goncalves, who after pledging to bring Singapore soccer to a higher level, rescinded their Singaporean citizenship and returned to their home countries, after presumably getting lots of money from the Singapore Sports Council’s foreign talent scheme. We then place the spotlight on Lee Jia Wei, who was the flag bearer for Singapore in the 2006 Beijing Olympics. Despite pledging her love for Singapore and other stuff, and a flitting romance with Indonesian born shuttler Ronald Susilo, she married a Chinese tycoon about a decade older than she is, after a whirlwind romance and a suspected shotgun marriage. Given the Chinese adage ‘嫁雞隨雞， 嫁狗隨狗’, which literally means "marry chicken follow chicken, marry dog, follow dog", is it not foreseeable that Lee will eventually return to China, since her husband is not a naturalised Singaporean and will unlikely be, given the wealth and businesses he owns in China.

Also, how true can the ‘bred’ Singaporean tag be when these players have only been here for a few years and sport distinctively different ways of life and even language, through which their accents are as obvious as any mainland Chinese we can find on the streets? While many may point to Singaporeans as unaccepting of these players, that we should treat them as our own instead of as foreigners, it seems that we are not the only ones scrutinising their nationalities. This is a quote from a Chinese newspaper, which states that the Singaporean players are ‘wolves that have bitten the hands of the wolf breeders’. Turns out, even China thinks that our players belong to them! And who can deny them that, when the entire team, from the coaches to the players were all ‘imported’ from China. Frankly, it’d have been easier to swallow if the coaching staff were Singaporean, instructing these players in the Singaporean way of playing and honing their talents. Alas! With a mainland Chinese as the coach, the style of playing is still the Chinese style, which brings home the uncomfortable truth that the only thing Singaporean about the team is the money that has been pumped in. From the newspapers, we also realise that these talents did not come willingly. It appears that the ‘elite’ players that we have imported came over not due to a desire to play for Singapore, but because they were not able to make the mark in China, and were faced with the difficult choice of either disappearing into the darkness of obscurity and poverty in their native country, or fame and riches in Singapore. We once again question the ‘love’ these players supposedly have for our island nation, the tag of ‘Singaporeans’ that they wear, and perhaps even more importantly, do they even know the history, the significance of this country? Do they sing the national anthem with pride, or just stand silent as it is blasted out over them, stumped by the foreign language used in the song?

Of course, the problem is not only within the players themselves, but something intrinsically wrong with the policies of the government. Given Singapore’s small size, there is a limit on the talent pool here, which results in the lack of sporting achievement on the world stage, especially for team sports such as soccer and basketball. However, we must not forget that true blue Singaporeans have had their days in the spotlight of world sports, such as Mr Tan Howe Liang, our first Olympic medallist, and Mr Ang Peng Siong, once the world’s fastest swimmer over 50 metres. This raises a few questions. Since local athletes can compete with the rest of the world, why are we still getting these foreign talents to don our colours, and paying them exorbitant amounts of money to do so? While I do agree that having foreign players can and do up our standards to a certain extent, as a small nation which has defied the odds of survival to become one of the more respected and well to do country in the world, does sporting excellence really matter much to us Singaporeans? We are obviously incapable of fighting against the big nations such as China, the USA, and Russia, where large amounts of people and money ensure trophies, so why do we even try? Isn’t it much better to spend all these money on developing local sports, education and others? To even try is the same as smashing your head against a rock. Frankly, it would be much better to let Singaporeans represent their countries, trying their best, and encouraging them even if they fail. Supporters of the policies will no doubt point their fingers at various other countries in an effort to raise the ‘if you can do it, we can too!’ argument. I agree that the import of foreign talents have been used to raise a country’s chances of success at sports, such as France’s Zinedine Zidane and Patrick Viera of soccer fame, who were born in Algeria and Senegal respectively. What these people miss though, is that these imports were brought in to augment and lend a lift to the existing national team, which was already of high quality and not to replace the entire squad, which therein lays the difference between them and us. In our table tennis squad, there is no Singaporean, coaching staff included. There is definitely no way of seeing the team other than the Chinese ‘B’ squad, which perhaps ironically do describe at least two of the players, Wang Yuegu and Feng Tianwei, who as mentioned above, came to Singapore after being unsuccessful in their bid to represent China.

Some have argued that although Singapore is small, that does not mean that we should not enjoy success in sports. These people point to Denmark, a small European country with almost the same population as Singapore, yet has won the second highest prize in world soccer, the European Championships in 1992. That is however, not an accurate comparison once we look at the starting line up that Denmark had for the finals. From the goalkeeper to the striker, we see that all of them are Danish. Not a foreign talent in sight. They did not buy success, but instead had sent the best team the country had, had them try their best, and were rewarded with the championship. Why can’t, or rather why won’t, Singapore do the same? Moreover, with regards to Denmark, they are Europeans, which comes with all that it signifies. Taller, bigger and definitely stronger, they are able to compete on a level playing field at least in the physical sense, with the other countries. Singapore, with its largely Asian population, does not have that, and will always lose out against bigger opponents such as the Europeans. This means that our bid is already doomed from the start. To realise this, one simply has to look at the statistics. How many physical, non-niche sports have been dominated by Asians? Pitifully little to none is the answer. There is no chance of success in these sports and it would be a waste of money, time and resources to even try. I can only wish that the government realises this and stop the diarrhea of money to these foreign talents and concentrate on what they do best, the governance of the country and the assured continual well being of its citizens.