So the wait for an olympic medal is over at long last. Li Jiawei, Wang Yuegu and Feng Tianwei have done what no others have done for the past 48 years, that is win an olympic medal for Singapore. The foreign talent scheme has apparently succeeded in its aim.
Ah yes, the same old foreign talent scheme. A controversial topic that will rear its ugly head even in our finest sporting moment. Maybe we should first look at the background of this scheme for a moment before deciding on anything.
It was in the 1990s and early 2000s that various local sports organizations, such as table tennis, badminton and athletics started to recruit young players from China. Singapore sports and government officials would go to China and speak with potential young candidates. Do you want to play for Singapore? We have such and such benefits, so on and so forth.
As a young athlete wanting to make your mark but unsure of your future in China, would you take up the offer? Sure you would. But would you have known much about Singapore as a country? Unlikely. Nevertheless, they came over, trained hard, and tried their best to adapt to our society and way of living.
Some of this worked fantastically well. Li Jiawei, Jing Junhong, and now Feng Tianwei and Wang Yuegu have become superstars in their own right, flying our flag high. But equally so there have been others who have not worked out, like the shot putters from athletics. Dong Enxin, Zhang Guirong and Luan Wei etc have not have the best of times. Some have even returned to China.
When our players do well, such as now, winning a silver in Beijing, they are seen as heroes or heroines. They are now 100% Singaporean, and many are lining up to blast those critics of the foreign talent scheme by saying "why can't we accept them as our own".
But do we really? Because when they fail to perform, as sportsmen sometimes do, many of these same people will hope over to the other side of the fence and say "these guys are a waste of our taxpayers money and should never have been brought over."
Ahha, so as long as they are winning for us, they are true blue Singaporeans. What if they are not? We conveniently forget that they have made a commitment to our country, and we see them as outcasts yet again.
Commonwealth and SEA games gold medallist Zhang Xueling recently made the decision to return to China with her husband. Imagine that. Such a decorated athlete for Singapore but she somehow still felt that this was not her home. And rightly so, living in Singapore is not easy. The high costs of living, having your sons serving in the army, and even her career was not guaranteed to be smooth sailing given that STTA had continued to recruit new talent like Wang and Feng despite her good performances. And the poor soul, she could have been happily married with kids still if she had been convinced to make Singapore her home.
Our government is constantly telling us to develop the Singapore spirit. Be stayers, not quitters, they say. yet they specialise in getting others to quit their own country to join us. There is no denying the merit in the Foreign Talent Scheme, but you have to wonder what will happen at the next games. Wang and Li may have retired, so what do we do? Hire more talent like Feng once again?
Li, Wang and Feng have fought for Singapore. They are more true blue Singaporeans than many of our own fans, who only want to support those who are winning. The mark of a true citizen is to stay loyal even when things are not going well, and not simply jumping on the bandwagon when things are. Are you supporting them now only cause they are winning, or do you believe that this scheme is making them into true Singaporeans? Does our government even put in place the measures for these people to indoctrinate themselves into local life especially when their playing days are over? Or are we simply like Arsenal football club?
What does it mean to be a Singaporean athlete? Our government and sports council needs to know it for themselves, if not, how are we going to show what it means to the new players we bring in?
Depends on how strict you want to cut your definition...
Singaporean players but trained by FT coach... still isn't truly considered local skill is it not?
If we want to take local talent to it's logical conclusion, it ought to be a Singaporean talent, trained by truly Singaporean coaches in a truly Singaporean school. This Singaporean talent must also not have spent any significant amount of time overseas that would have contributed to his or her development because that would mean other countries had a hand in developing our talent. This then is truly, 100 percent, organic Singaporean talent, the purest example of the sort.
Last I heard, these kind of people are rather hard to come by.
A bit of an extreme example, but it would be good to examine our own worldviews for logicial consistency once in a while.
when it comes with FT in sports.. i always abide by this analogy..
Would you rather have your own mother giving birth to your younger brother or having a surrogate doing the birth?
younger brother = sporting success
same sperm different people = same training methods but different nationality
Ultimately, you will still have your younger brother albeit by different people and yeah, surrogate mothers are given money for doing the job...
Yeah, but then it isn't truly "natural" is it? And isn't that kind of reasoning the same kind they use to justify simply buying talent? And that is as long as the results are there who cares what is the means?
Simply here the difference is that our definition of things is just one step stricter that's all. While our government is simply happy to get the medal via a person wearing the flag, we are simply happy to get it by what we ourselves consider (though somewhat arbitary standards) truly "local", and that is a person we truly feels who reflects "us". However on introspect we are equally careless about how this "local" aquires the right to claim a truly LOCAL achievement.
That is, we don't care how we win the medal, as long as it is done by a local. It does not matter if he has spent most of his life overseas and more or less learn the trade by a foreign culture, or that all the things he knew and learned to win were taught by a methods form another country. In a sense while we simply bought talents before, we are still in principle doing pretty much the same thing, except that we've put in the local into the equation to justify what is by all standards, a pretty non-local thing.
Indeed this would mean that our medals if won by foreign taught talents... are actually not truly locally grown talents to begin with.
Additionally does this mean that Singapore is unable to give natural birth to sporting talents and have to hire serrogates to do the job? What we have done here is simply shifted the blame one step higher. Now we claim that there are local talents, but apparenlty no local coaches?
Should we not follow our truly Singaporean reasoning to it's end to make sure it's consistent with itself?
Does this not at the end of the day, still mean that we are using the skills and abilities of others but simply getting to the results by standing on the shoulders of others at the end of the day? Isn't this akin to having your younger brother brought up by a maid and not having true, maternal care?
Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to be argumentative, but the question is this... how far are we willing to go to call our talents truly "Singaporean"? How strict are we going to get and where will we draw the line?
There's the ideal situation, and then there's the practical and realistic situation.
As I've written in different threads, Singapore is unlikely to produce and home grown Olympian medalists in the near future. It's not the culture here is focus on sports for years on end.
Also, there is not a single country in the world which has champions in every sporting field.
Not one.
So they all poach and import when necassary. Not just the athletes, but coaches too.
The "problem" here is that the sportspeople in question are from China.
It's pretty common knowledge that many Singaporeans are biased against the Chinese.
And it's ironic too.
You import them to help raise the bar for Singapore, and yet you abuse them.
If they win, then well,...they're not real Singaporeans, just rejects from China.
If they don't win, then well,...they're not real Singaporeans, just rejects from China.
You cant have it both ways my racist friends.
You either stay talentless and remain Olympic losers.
Or you close your mouth and stop being mean to those who have given year of their lives to play in your country's name.
Originally posted by OneWithTheForce:There's the ideal situation, and then there's the practical and realistic situation.
As I've written in different threads, Singapore is unlikely to produce and home grown Olympian medalists in the near future. It's not the culture here is focus on sports for years on end.
Also, there is not a single country in the world which has champions in every sporting field.
Not one.
So they all poach and import when necassary. Not just the athletes, but coaches too.
The "problem" here is that the sportspeople in question are from China.
It's pretty common knowledge that many Singaporeans are biased against the Chinese.
And it's ironic too.
You import them to help raise the bar for Singapore, and yet you abuse them.
If they win, then well,...they're not real Singaporeans, just rejects from China.
If they don't win, then well,...they're not real Singaporeans, just rejects from China.
You cant have it both ways my racist friends.
You either stay talentless and remain Olympic losers.
Or you close your mouth and stop being mean to those who have given year of their lives to play in your country's name.
so have to agree with you!
don't you think that most parents are holding their children back?
they seems as if like they are doing the right things but they never discover the child's potential in sports. you can definitely say im one of those whose parents only care about the child's studies instead of sports.
in order for a child to excel in sports, don't you think parents ought to discover their child's potential at an early age and sent them to singapore sports school though it sucks =x
parents let their child's talents go to waste in some stupid studies when the child can study up till pri 6 and it's ok for the child to stop schooling and enter singapore sports school for training.
singapore now is undergoing a big change and teenagers who have the potential are now totally focusing on studies instead of sports when they can just take part and who knows, they might be representing singapore in the future
I support Bryan Tay
The concept about what makes a Singaporean is definitely important. While the various points listed by you guys are valid, and so are many others out there, again I would like to ask the question of whether we support them only cos they are winning for us.
The government brings in foreign talent in many areas and not just sports. How many times have we complained about foreign workers intruding in on our job market, and foreign students coming in to provide unwanted competition in our schools? We see these people as outsiders, as intruders do we not? And yet, as long as one of them brings an Olympic medal for us, we are quite happy to suddenly embrace them as Singaporeans. Sounds right?
Its definitely difficult to define who is eligible to represent Singapore. Do we go by the amount of time they spend here? Or do they own a HDB flat? Or do they speak Singlish even? Its impossible to say. But we shouldn't exploit this and cheapen our Singapore citizenship.
Just a parting shot. Who do you feel is more Singaporean? Tao Li or Feng Tianwei? I dunno about you, but I was actually more excited about Tao Li entering the swimming final than our table tennis team winning the silver.