The ethnic Chinese factor in economic growth

Two weeks ago, I was invited by a group of young Filipino-Chinese business hot shots to speak before their group. They gave me the freedom to speak on any subject and I thought I would share with them something I picked up in a recent conference I attended. The speech is too long for this column but I have received requests to share its message with a wider audience. Here is a shorter version.

The other month, I was in a conference where I heard the eminent Washington SyCip make a very interesting observation. Mr. SyCip said that compared to other countries in the region, the percentage of overseas Chinese who settled in the Philippines is markedly smaller. He then proceeded to the conclusion that this is perhaps one reason why our country has trailed the others.

Mr. SyCip also observed that unlike our regional neighbors, the Chinoys have assimilated into the native culture very well – in other words, Chinoys are more Pinoys than Chinese. Mr. SyCip suggested that this is not such a good thing because Chinoys no longer have the best traits of Confucian China and have adopted the worse traits of Confused Pinoys – who know not if they are still in a Spanish convent or America’s Hollywood.

One wonders how different our country would have been if the Spaniards never came. We might have become as Muslim as Indonesia. Probably a country called the Philippines wouldn’t exist at all. Or the Chinese influence would have been more pronounced in our culture as in Thailand. Given our geographic location and natural resources, we could have been an economic powerhouse.

As it happened, thanks to three centuries of Spanish colonization, our attitudes and culture bore more similarities with Spanish Latin America and the economic penalties that go with it. Exasperated by our poor showing in the midst of healthy economic growth by our neighbors, one economist commented that the Philippines is the only Latin American country in Asia.

It certainly didn’t help that the small Chinese community here assimilated too well, taking on the deleterious aspects of colonial native culture. And like the native Pinoys, the Chinoys didn’t develop a strong sense of nationhood – not in terms of a Filipino nation, anyway. In fact, up until recent generations, Chinoys more than subliminally considered China the motherland.

Based on what we have seen among our neighbors, a strong sense of nationhood is vital to economic growth. I cannot forget a very dramatic television footage on CNN of Thais offering their gold and other jewelry to the Thai Central Bank to help the country weather the 1997 economic crisis. Such selfless sacrifice can only be possible because the Thais possessed not only a sense of nation but of the common good.

In contrast, what do we do here when all hell breaks loose in the economy and the exchange rate tumbles? We aggravate the problem by exhausting every legal loophole and banking industry connection to convert our pesos to dollars – even going to the black market, also known as the Binondo Central Bank, to dump our pesos for foreign exchange to be smuggled out of the country. Government authorities always found it necessary to read us the riot act to stop the speculators from sinking our peso in the currency market.

Young Chinoys have become too Pinoy for our own good. Chinese newspapers are dying because Chinoys no longer read or speak the language as well, if at all. Young Chinoys, like many educated upper class Pinoys who have lost hope in this country also dream of settling down in America, Canada or Australia. In other words, Chinoys have lost more than the facility to speak the tongue of a billion human beings. Chinoys have lost the important social attributes that have spelled the difference between development and poverty among the nations in our region over the last 50 years.

Mr. SyCip lamented that the young Chinoys are no longer as hungry as their forebears and therefore, no longer as ready to suspend present gratification for future rewards – an attitude necessary for economic growth. Instead, today’s Chinoys, like Pinoys of their social class, are engaged in a dog-eat-dog race to the top at all cost, a race that has little regard to social good, just personal gain. Young Chinoys have assimilated too well the ways of upper crust Pinoys and I guess in this context, that’s not something really good for them and for the country they now call home.

If it is the Chinese in Thailand, the Chinese in Malaysia, the Chinese in Singapore and Indonesia who were responsible for catapulting their adopted countries into tiger economy status, would it be right to blame the Chinoys for the failure of the Philippines to keep up with its neighbors?

I think that would be too harsh a conclusion to make but that’s a thought. Besides, Chinoys were subjected to discrimination and abuse since the Spanish era until recent times. But that didn’t stop the best of them from making good, creating economic value for the country.

In a sense, we need more Henry Sys, more Lucio Tans, more John Gokongweis to lead this country’s economic growth. Small as the Chinoy community might be compared to the Chinese ethnic communities in countries around us, the Chinoys still, by and large, power the country’s economic engine.

Chinoy entrepreneurs are needed to create jobs, as much jobs as our army of unemployed can fill. This is why your new generation of taipans should be as hungry and as adept in creating economic value as your parents and grandparents. The young Generations shouldn’t act like spoiled brats typical of the cono crowd or the illustrados or nouveau riche among the native Pinoys.

Indeed, the Chinoys are in the best position to link our economy with the fast moving tigers in the region. In an era where regional markets are important, these connections through family ties are a definite plus. It should be used by all good Chinoys to promote the economy of our country.

Then of course, we all know that the age of China as a world superpower is now upon us. Once again, Chinoys are in the best position to get the Philippines connected. For all the bravado we now hear from America, its days as the sole superpower are numbered. China, with its massive market of over a billion people, four times as large as America’s, is destined to be a major influence, not just in our region but in the world.

Just think about it. Once the buying power of the Chinese masses is unleashed, China can thrive on the sheer magnitude of its domestic market. Think of the economies of scale it would have. Export would only be the icing in its economic cake. China can give America a dose of its current policy of subsidizing exports. China will be an economic power to behold.

Let me end with a joke sent by a reader.

A husband and wife are getting ready for bed. The wife is standing in front of a full length mirror taking a hard look at herself. "You know love," she says, "I look in the mirror and I see an old woman. My face is all wrinkled, my boobs are barely above my waist, my butt is hanging out a mile. I’ve got fat legs and my arms are all flabby." She turns to her husband and says, "Tell me something positive to make me feel better about myself."

He thinks about it for a bit and then says, "Well... there’s nothing wrong with your eyesight."

I told that group of young Chinoy taipans that there is nothing wrong with our eyesight either. We are not having a nightmare. That ugly situation we see day in and day out is the reality – the depth to which our country has sunk. Let us go out there and give our motherland what she needs – the economic equivalent of liposuction, tummy tuck or a boob job. It does her no good to just tell her what she already knows only too well.

Chinoys. Pinoys. It makes no difference now. We are all one and share the same destiny – the same future.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]