World's Brain Factory

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Last Friday, I found out that another Hin Hua mate of mine and his wife, who is also a product of Hin Hua, have joined the Malaysian community in Shanghai. He previously worked for a Japanese company in Singapore and was recently seconded to work in Shanghai. He is currently staying in a RMB15,000-a-month (approximately RM7,350) apartment, so please go figure out how much he is making per month, and how much tax he is paying to the Chinese government per year.

I did a quick audit on my former Hin Hua classmates and realized that almost half of them are not in Malaysia but scattered across the globe. We are not talking about illegal immigrants who are washing plates in Chinese restaurants; we are talking about professionals. To my knowledge, we have a chemist and a computer scientist in the US, a food scientist in Singapore, a dentist in Taiwan, an accountant and an engineer in China, an architect in Australia, a gym instructor in New Zealand etc. Imagine the total amount of tax these professionals contribute to the foreign countries they are currently living in. Besides tax, imagine the contributions these professional could have made to Malaysia's nation building had they chosen not to leave Malaysia. I am sure you get the picture.

And we are just looking at my classmates, what about the students from other classes? Take my siblings for example (who are all 100% products of Hin Hua). My elder brother is an engineer who is helping the city of Los Angeles to come out with ways to prevent flood (while Klang cannot even endure a 30-minute downpour); and my younger sister is a nutritionist who is making the Taiwanese healthier (while some Malaysians still believe that adding some Tongkat Ali powder in teh tarik will help them perform better at night).

China is labeled as the “World's Factory”. You can't really deny that. It is hard not to find anything made in China in our home these days. Keyboards, DVDs, kitchenware etc are manufactured in some parts of China. However, if China is the World's Factory, maybe Malaysia could be labeled as the “World's Brain Factory”. While China manufactures and exports goods for profits, Malaysia manufactures and exports brain free-of-charge.

The next time you drive pass Hin Hua High School or any Chinese independent schools for that matter, please spend a few minutes to toy on these questions: For which country are these schools built and for which country are these students trained?

The saddest part is, though many Chinese school students provide their services in overseas, the governments of the USA, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia etc do not provide a single cent to our Chinese schools. They enjoy the fruits of the Chinese schools without having to pay for it. The Chinese schools are funded by the generous donations from the local Chinese communities. Every year, Hin Hua has to send out lion dance troops and risk the safety of its students to collect money for the school's operations.

However, once a doctor, a dentist, an accountant, or an architect is fully trained using the hard-earned money of the local people, we send them to serve in other countries. In other words, we are using our own money to train professionals for other countries. Are we that stupid? Apparently, we are.

Not long ago, I remember our government was talking about K-Economy. K in this context stands for Knowledge. I am not sure if the government is still serious about this K-Economy. But, how can we have knowledge when we don't even have brains? When we are shipping out tons and tons of brains to other countries F.O.C?

I would like to end this article with an excerpt from Namewee's (who is also a Chinese school's product) infamous Negarakuku:


独中生毕业了要进local大学西北难。
其实这件事情我们更不需要赌懒。
这个其实是政府的一个伟大计划。
他要我们到处跑，出国自己找希望，然后学习东西回来报答国家。
这个计划真的是好到没有话讲。
世界各地都会看到Malaysia的孩子，好像逃难一样，西北爽.