I am not saying that our young people do not work hard – many work very hard. Neither am I saying that we do not have any poor families for whom every dollar counts – we have some. But on the whole our people have inherited success, and are striving to improve on what their parents have already achieved. Whereas young Chinese, Indians and Vietnamese have themselves experienced hardship and deprivation, and feel a powerful urge to get ahead, to lift themselves and their families out of poverty. The intensities of the two drives are not quite the same. It is not anybody’s fault – it is just the result of growing up in different circumstances.

I think that consciously or subconsciously, you know your own strengths and weaknesses. You have high hopes for the future because you know what you can do and what opportunities Singapore offers. You also worry that the future may not turn out as rosy as you hope, because the competition is so strong, and so many things may go wrong. But on balance, I am reassured that young Singaporeans are well-prepared, competitive, and confident.

Hopes

To prepare for this talk, I met some of your classmates, to find out what was on their minds and yours. Let me tackle some of things that we talked about, starting with hopes.

Your immediate preoccupation is to get good jobs after graduation. Every graduate thinks about this, but perhaps your batch more than others, because the past few years have been so difficult. We have seen the Asian Crisis, the bursting of the dotcom bubble, September 11 and SARS. Unemployment has been up, and jobs have been harder to find. But since late last year the economy has been picking up. Already for last year’s graduates, the job situation was improving. Nearly 4 in 5 (79% for NUS and 76% for NTU) of them found jobs within three months of their final exams, at an average monthly salary of $2,200. So things are not so bad. If you want to work and are not choosy, finding a job after graduation should not be a big problem.

But your first job is only the start of a long journey. You must expect to change jobs several times before you retire. Some people spend their whole career doing one short contract after another. So you have to be ready to keep on learning new skills throughout your lives. Of course, the economy has to keep on creating jobs for our people. This is what economic restructuring and upgrading is about. As old activities move to other countries, old jobs will be phased out. We cannot stop this. Instead we must attract new activities to create new jobs and more than replace the old ones lost.

EDB has been quite successful at bringing in new investments. In manufacturing, we are no longer assembling PCs or TVs, but we are doing high-value added activities such as research, design, precision engineering, and manufacturing of high-end components. The new projects will need researchers, designers and engineers. These are jobs which our engineering graduates can fill.

Many of the new jobs will be in the services sector. The healthcare, education and tourism industries are all growing, and will need more manpower and talent. The financial industry is expanding rapidly, especially private banking and wealth management. As Asian economies take off, more and more of their people are getting wealthy. Singapore is a good place for them to park and manage their money. Many commerce and accounting graduates will find jobs in banks and fund management firms.

In creative services, advertising is doing well. It is a popular choice for graduates from the School of Communication and Information. Our advertising companies have produced some very creative and successful ads. So the next time you see a sleek and trendy advertisement, there is a good chance that it was dreamt up and produced in Singapore. What looks like a stylish Mediterranean beach resort, may actually be the East Coast Park, and when you see the deep jungles of Africa, maybe that is the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve!

So as our economy restructures, it will create many challenging and rewarding jobs. But I hope that not all of you will want to be employees all your life. I was very cheered when one of your classmates told me that he wanted to start a business after he graduated. I encourage more of you to do the same. Too few Singaporeans dream of being entrepreneurs, of building something new, and going for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. In contrast, many Americans aspire to start their own businesses, and a good number actually do so.

Entrepreneurship is not just for a select few. Anyone with a good idea and the drive to see it through has a chance of success. They need not be big, high-tech ideas. Many enterprising businessmen have succeeded with simple ideas. One is Mr Don Lim, who started the Don Pie Club, selling chicken pies. (His story was recently in Streats.) He started out working in a confectionery. Later, he became a chef in the cafeteria of an MNC. But four years ago, at age 45, he started his own eatery. He needed financing. To convince the finance company to lend him money, he baked the loan officer a chicken pie. It must have been a good pie, because he got a $30,000 loan, which got him started. Now, he sells 4,500 chicken pies per month at two outlets, and is planning on a third outlet.

Don Lim is not a graduate – he took a course in the ITE in metalwork. Many of our most successful entrepreneurs are non-graduates like him. Sim Wong Hoo, Tommy Goh and Ron Sim all came from humble backgrounds, but made it through their enterprising spirit and business acumen. Some people claim that a university education actually makes you less suited to become an entrepreneur. I hope you will prove them wrong.

Some NTU graduates have set up businesses. Last year, three of them – Mr Vincent Lee Kah Mun, Dr Saw Lin Kiat and Mr Ho Kok Hiang – set up a company called Inflexion Pte Ltd. The start-up provides medical diagnostic solutions, to detect early common Asian diseases. Their most recent product is a device to detect nose cancer. The three young entrepreneurs credit much their success to the education and contacts provided by NTU.  

For something less high-tech, The New Paper recently reported that a 23-year old NTU undergraduate, Miss Michelle Tan, who became an undertaker. She helps families make funeral arrangements according to their requests and budgets, which can range from $4,000 for a simple funeral to $10,000 for an elaborate Taoist funeral. It is an unusual path to take, but as Miss Tan said in the interview "People die everyday and somebody has to help the family…"

I wish all our young entrepreneurs success.

A job is not just a way to support ourselves, but should also be a source of satisfaction and fulfilment. Whether you are an engineer designing a new gadget, an entrepreneur growing a new business, or an SIA girl serving passengers with style, work should be something challenging and worthwhile, if not every day, at least on the whole. But I am sure that beyond job satisfaction, many of you will want to pursue other passions in life. I strongly encourage you to do this, whether your interest is social service, sports, or the arts.

A few months ago I attended a function at a community club. I noticed the stage backdrop had been most professionally done. It turned out that a grassroots leader had designed and painted it. He was a self-taught artist, and did this for many functions in that constituency. I chatted with him. I thought he looked familiar. It turned out that by day he worked as a security guard at MAS, (which is where I had met him), but evenings and weekends he spent pursuing this hobby!

Some of you may know Miss Jeanette Wang. She is a third-year undergraduate at the School of Communication and Information. She participates in triathlons – swimming, cycling and running. These are tough races – the men’s race is called the Iron Man competition. In between triathlons, Jeanette passes her examinations, and also participates in vertical marathons. Last year, she won the woman’s category in the Stamford Vertical Marathon. The prize was a trip to New York. There, she ran up the Empire State Building, and won the race again for her age group. I wish Jeanette all the best in running up the ladder of success in life.

We must define success in many different ways. As a society, we should accommodate many different paths, and recognise and celebrate achievement in many fields. If you have a passion, be brave, seize the moment and pursue it.

Pursuing careers and personal passions are not the only things that matter in life either. Love, marriage and starting a family are important life goals too. Singaporeans want a good balance between work, pursuing their passions and family life.

We have been discussing the problem of too few babies recently. The encouraging thing is that most young people want to get married, and most married couples want to have children. The trouble is that not all who want to get married actually do so, and couples who want children end up having fewer children than they would really like. So we now have a serious problem. Individually, many Singaporeans are not fulfilling one of their life goals. And nationally, our long term future is in jeopardy because we are producing too few babies.

This is a very difficult problem to solve. It involves many interconnected issues, including intensely personal decisions by people to marry and to have children. All the developed countries except the US face the same problem of falling birthrates. Singapore has had this problem for two decades. It has worsened over time, despite many measures to promote procreation, including the Baby Bonus.

I hesitated to raise such a delicate subject tonight, but I think that I have to discuss it with you. You are the age group just entering the years of forming families and bearing children. If I cannot even talk about this with you, then we have no hope of ever solving the problem. By talking about it, we can desensitise the issue, understand it better, and make progress tackling it.

Furthermore, we must recognise that this problem is more serious for better-educated Singaporeans, and especially graduates. Graduates marry later than non-graduates, both men and women. More graduate women remain single than non-graduate women. And graduate women who marry produce fewer children on average than non-graduate women. Many couples say they cannot afford to have more children, yet ironically the ones who are financially most well off are also the ones with the fewest children.

So at the risk of my sounding like your parents or grandparents, let’s discuss this seriously.

The problem does not come about because people are being self-centred or irresponsible. People are behaving extremely sensibly and rationally, from their own points of view. But the difficulty is that when we add together all these individually sensible decisions, the collective outcome is a serious problem for the whole society. To solve this societal problem, we have to zoom in to the individual, to understand the reasons why people are not getting married, not having children or having too few children. Then we can gradually shift social attitudes towards child bearing, and also tackle the practical issues – for example make work arrangements more conducive to family life, and lessen the financial burden of bringing up a child. Then over time we can get people to change their minds and have more babies.

I have no magic solution to produce tonight. We have a Working Committee on Population studying all the things we might do, to come up with a practical plan. But tonight I would just like to mention one aspect: matchmaking. In the old days, parents left nothing to chance. They would work hard to find a suitable match for their son or daughter. Often they would seek the help of professional matchmakers. (And once you married, they would nag you until you had a child.) Today this is still how it is done in India. The Indian Sunday newspapers carry thousands of matrimonial ads. Let me read you one:

"Affluent Mumbai-based South Indian Brahmin family, invites suitable alliance for their only son – 28/5’8", fair, good looking, MBA/MSC. Just returned from UK after completing MSC. Boy is well placed in one of the largest retail groups in India. Father – CEO of a well known media company. Girl should be tall, slim, good looking, qualified from a high status background. Caste no bar."

In fact, young, well-educated professional Indians regard matrimonial ads in the same way as job ads. They will short-list what they want from the ads, go for an interview, and see if their application is successful. Some outsource the whole process to professional match-makers. It does not mean the entire affair is objective-driven and devoid of romance. Nowadays few Indian couples get married without first meeting one another. The ads facilitate a meeting between two people who might be suited for each other. They will date many more times before they tie the knot. The ads reflect their basic attitude towards marriage: that it is a desirable goal in life that should lead to happiness, a serious decision to be carefully taken, and something which there is no reason to feel coy about.

But in Singapore we have gone the Western way. Young people find their own partners to marry, but by leaving things to chance many remain single. Singaporeans probably will not want to go back to the old arrangements, but perhaps some discreet tactful assistance will be helpful – such as from the SDU. I know not all students welcome the attention of the SDU; some even refer to SDU as "Single, Desperate and Ugly". But I assure you that if you try out any of their activities, you will find many people who are "Sexy, Desirable and Unique".

The SDU not only provides meaningful and good service, but its charges are very reasonable. In fact, NTU and NUS students can get complimentary memberships. The response is quite encouraging, as nearly all (95%) the students take it up, and about a quarter (23%) participate in SDU activities. Only a small minority opt out, I hope because they are already dating.

But if you prefer private matchmaking agencies, there are several to choose from. There is D’Match, set up by two former SDU counsellors, and Ice-breakers. There are also many online dating services, such as Hotspots.com, and singaporecupid.com. This is one industry where the Government feels that the more players we have, the better. Maybe we should even consider granting dating service providers some tax incentives!

Fears

While young Singaporeans have high hopes, they also worry about the future. Up to a point, this is not a bad thing, for we must not underestimate the formidable challenges ahead. If we cruise on expecting a smooth ride, at the first bumpy stretch we may be knocked off balance. But neither should we be cowed by our fears. If we stay resolute in times of difficulties, work smart and keep our spirits high, we will prevail.

The first major fear is whether Singapore can compete against new economies like China and India. They are large countries, with more resources, lots of talent, and lower costs. They are developing their economies, and doing things which up to now we have been doing. They are making up for lost time, and catching up quickly with other countries. Will they steal our rice bowl?

If economic competition between countries were like a football match, where every goal the other team scores is a goal against us, we would have a tough time. If it were a sumo wrestling contest, we would be in even bigger trouble. But economic competition is a game in which countries both compete and cooperate. When one country prospers, it does not impoverish its neighbours. Instead it creates new opportunities for its neighbours to trade, to invest, to benefit from its prosperity. So if we are smart, we will find ways to benefit from the rise of China and India.

How should we do this? We should not compete head-on in the businesses in which China and India have a natural advantage. Instead we must develop our strengths in areas where we have the advantage, and complement what they do. This is how the international division of labour works.

For example, China is very strong in making computers, monitors, mice, and TV sets, because of its low wage costs. Singapore no longer makes these products. But we are supplying factories in China with high value components, such as computer chips and high-end disk drives, which go into the computers and monitors. So the net result is not a loss of business to China, but new business for Singapore that grows as China grows.

In services, India is attracting outsourcing activities. Companies in developed countries are moving to India call centres, back office operations, even reading of X-ray films and filling of tax forms, to take advantage of English-speaking graduates there. Some Singaporeans worry that we will lose jobs to India. But in reality the flow is both ways. While some activities will shift from Singapore to India, other activities will come here from other countries. Indian companies themselves are setting up operations here, including top IT companies such as Satyam and Infosys. They are expanding their business overseas, and finding Singapore a good base for their activities in our region.

We should also not ignore the opportunities offered by the growing Chinese and Indian markets. We can offer them quality services in tourism, healthcare, education, financial services. Our entrepreneurs are venturing into China and India, doing all sorts of business – running taxi companies, selling frozen spring rolls, investing in factories, developing properties. Many are doing well. I am therefore confident that Singaporeans will survive and excel notwithstanding the competition.

One of the key ways for us to become more competitive is to attract talent from around the world, to work and live in Singapore. But this sets off another worry among our people: whether with all the foreign talent around us, we ourselves will continue to have a place in Singapore.

The answer is of course yes. Singaporeans are the Government’s priority and obligation. Citizens are the core of our society, the people with the strongest stakes here, the ones we depend on to stand up for the country at all times, and to defend it in a crisis. They elected the Government, and the Government’s first duty is to serve them.

The question is how best to protect the interest of citizens – by keeping out foreigners, or by welcoming in talent? It is easy to keep out foreigners, to make them feel unwelcome. But can we become a vibrant, cosmopolitan city that way? New York is exciting because it attracts people from all over the US, and indeed all over the world. You will find in New York people of many races and cultures, with a tremendous diversity of ideas and talents.

London is the same. The City of London is one of the greatest financial centres in the world. If you take the Tube home from the City of London in the evenings, on some lines you will often not meet anyone who is speaking English on the train. And when you do meet someone speaking English, there is a good chance that he is the station master.

Shanghai is the same too. Shanghai already gathers the brightest and most enterprising people from the whole Yangzi delta. Now the city is consciously attracting more talent from other countries to live and work there. Shanghai runs a contest to choose ten outstanding young people each year, and this year they are opening it to foreigners. If even Shanghai is doing this, how can Singapore afford not to do the same?

I know that more foreign talent means more competition for Singaporeans. In NUS and NTU, the top prizes often go to foreign students. But suppose we did not have them here. Then of course Singaporeans will win the top prizes at NUS and NTU, but will we win the top prizes in the real world? Has the competition really disappeared, or has the talent just gone to another country, where they will compete more strongly against us? If we do not top up our own talent with people from abroad, will MNCs still come here, to recruit from a smaller talent pool? Or will we become a backwater, just one of many cities in Asia?

Of course, while we work hard to attract foreign talent, we must also develop our own people to the utmost. We must invest in our young, and give you every opportunity to learn and to grow. Whether your abilities let you make it to the ITE, polytechnic or university, we will enable you to do so, regardless of whether you are rich or poor. And this is indeed what we have been doing.

We must never make the non-citizens living and working here feel unwelcome. We must help them integrate into our society, and get used to life here. For the foreign students, they should not treat schoolwork as their only priority. It is just as important to learn about the country, make friends with the locals and establish a network of contacts when you are studying overseas. These can be more useful than your excellent academic results when you start work.

We must also make sure to treat citizens more favourably than non-citizens. The more we rely on immigration to top up our talent pool, the more we must get this right. This is one of the issues which the Working Committee on Population is studying.

One heavy responsibility that male citizens bear is National Service (NS). I know many male Singaporeans feel that NS puts them at a disadvantage vis-à-vis their female colleagues and non citizens. But we have no choice. NS is absolutely essential to our security. Without NS there would be no SAF, no dynamic economy, and no Singapore.

Most people who have done NS agree that it has toughened them up and strengthened their characters. But nevertheless NS involves many sacrifices both for the NSmen and their families. We recognise these sacrifices in many ways – through the tax relief for NSmen and their wives and parents; by giving NSmen a little more when we distribute New Singapore Shares or Economic Restructuring Shares, and through SAFRA. The civil service gives salary increments for time spent during NS. These are symbolic gestures, but important ones to make NSmen feel valued and fairly treated.

The third worry that some young people have is whether Singapore is too small. Will it offer enough opportunities for our people? Will it offer the quality of life that a bigger country can? Can we produce world-class winners?

We are indeed a little red dot, but do not underestimate our potential. Being small has many limitations, but significant advantages too. Our people live in a smaller and closer community, and so are more cohesive and united. We see the outside world from the same point of view, and more clearly than a bigger country. We are more flexible and nimble, and can adapt to changing conditions faster. These are vital survival traits.

Being small need not mean limited opportunities. We may only be 4 million people, but we are linked up with the fast growing region. Over 5,000 MNCs are here, many of them regional headquarters, supervising operations all over Asia. Our own companies are active in the region too.

Because we have plugged ourselves into this international grid, Singaporeans can tap opportunities all over the region, and our economy is producing opportunities out of proportion to our size. We are creating new businesses and challenging jobs faster than we are producing people able to fill them. Whether it is running a bank, an airline, a telecoms company, the SAF, or a ministry, the jobs may carry the same titles as they did 10 or 20 years ago, but they have become much more complex and demanding, and require a different quality of people to fill them. So if you have talent and ambition, there are many goals to aim for.

Being small does not mean we cannot achieve big things. It is the quality of the people, their drive and imagination, which counts. Finland has a population of just over 5 million, slightly more than Singapore. But it created Nokia, the largest seller of mobile phones in the world. Similarly, Switzerland has Nestle as well as the Swiss banks. And New Zealand produced The Lord of The Rings.

Singapore too has produced winners. SIA, PSA, Changi Airport, Jurong Island, and Creative Technology are all global winners created in Singapore by Singaporeans. They may not sound as glamorous as Nokia or The Lord of The Rings, but they are significant achievements. We need to keep these winners at the top, and come up with more world beaters. That is your job.

Conclusion - Dreams

Our achievements are only limited by our dreams. Recently, I met Mr Isao Uchida, the President and CEO of Yokogawa Electric Corporation. Yokogawa manufactures industrial equipment, and just celebrated its 30^th Anniversary of operations in Singapore. Mr Uchida told me that back in 1973, when he was a young executive, he was tasked to study how Yokogawa could internationalise its operations. He came to Singapore. The EDB officers showed him the plans, pointed to a piece of barren land along the East Coast on a map, and told him that that was where he could put his plant. Mr Uchida said he did not really listen to the presentation, but he decided to invest in Singapore, because he saw "fire in the EDB officers’ eyes". Today, the Singapore plant is one of Yokogawa’s key operation centres, and is still expanding.

I talked about how your hopes for getting good jobs, pursuing your passions and leading happy family lives can be achieved in Singapore. But beyond these practical pursuits, we must all have dreams. Just like the EDB officers, if we chase our dreams hard enough and have "fire in our eyes", we can make dreams become reality.

The greatest thing we as a people ever dreamt of and achieved is Singapore itself. It is our country, our homeland and a place we can call our own. It is the dream of the first generation of Singaporeans that has become reality. Against all odds, they transformed a newly independent island state into a prosperous Asian city.

The second generation dreamt of a world-class Singapore. They built on the foundation which they inherited, and today we are a vibrant economy and a business hub, with people enjoying a first world standard of living.

As the third generation of Singapore step out of school and into society, what do you dream to accomplish? How bold is your dream? How hard will you work towards it?

If you are totally focussed on your studies or other pre-occupations, then perhaps you are sleeping, but not dreaming. It is time for you to wake up and dream. The course in life that you are about to enrol in has no syllabus, examinations or grades. You make your own syllabus and assess yourself along the way. You may learn your grades only in old age, or maybe after you your children will find out how well you have done.

Singapore is a land of opportunities, where you can realise many hopes and dreams. I urge you to keep a special place in your plans and your hearts for Singapore. Do not be satisfied just to inherit and enjoy what your parents have built. Change it, improve it, and build on it. Make it something better, something your parents never imagined, something special and unique, reflecting the human spirit that will overcome all obstacles. Keep on pursuing excellence, keep on aiming high, and keep on improving life for yourself and all of us.