Critical Reflection: My Academic Writing

It is coming to the end for my ES1102 journey. Although this module added a lot of workloads in my timetable, it really helps me to improve my English. Initially, i thought this is a typical language learning lesson which is dry and boring. but i was wrong, it is not fun but enjoyable when i really paying attention to it and i learned something at the end.

Ms Anita Toh is very friendly and willing to help us to improve our English. with her help, I learned how to write a proper review comment or an academic essay/report. I also learned grammars, subject-verb agreement, APA referencing and many other more from the lesson. The one of bigger hints for me that help to write an essay is planning. I had suffered a lot of times that stuck in the middle of essay writing because I used to start my essay writing without planning.

English or other modules that require me to write essay or report will be my weakest subject. There are a lot of things that i need to improve like; grammars, vocabulary, spelling, word choices and sentence structure, but i good at generating ideas and  do critical thinking on analyzing things. Tutor feedback and conferencing really helped me a lot because they pointed out my mistakes and i can correct my mistake. My plan for improving my English is to read more books, newspaper and watch some lesson that posted on Youtube. Of cause, i do need more practices on my own to further enhance my English writing.

ES1102 is not fun but an enjoyable module. I would like to thank Ms Anita Toh for teaching us patiently and willing to guide us along throughout the module, I am the person that will feel very happy whenever there is an improve in any field, even the improvement is very small. I do learn a lot from this module, and i hopes that i can improve more in the future.

Problem Solution Essay Final: Globalization and Income Inequality in China

Income inequality has increased rapidly due to the negative impact of globalization, which involved a huge amount of international trade and migration, in which the wage of low-skilled workers is decreasing as over surplus of workers and less demand on their skill. According to a new Oxfam report (2016), the 62 richest people in the world own as much wealth as the poorest half of the world population. And also, the wealth from top 1 percent owns more than the poorer 99 percent in 2015 (Oxfam, 2016). Therefore, the gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider. This essay will first briefly describe the relation between globalization and income inequality in China, examine its impacts, evaluate the current measures for the issue and suggest some methods to improve the current solution.

There are many reasons that increase income disparity in China. “Let some people and some region get rich first” was first introduced by the country’s former leader Deng Xiaoping. This policy has played a huge role that unshackled China’s economic development, and it created super growth and a plenty of tycoons today. However, it has caused the income inequality to increase rapidly in the past three decades. While globalization is promoting China’s economic growth, it also worsened the income inequality. Globalization may not be the main reason which causes income inequality, but it does widen the gap between the rich and the poor in China.

There are three types of income inequality in China are regional inequality, urban-rural inequality, and inter-industrial inequality. Regional inequality is measured by the ratio of worker’s wages at different regions (Li, 2010). For example, according to China statistical yearbook (National Nureau of Statistics of China, 2014), the ratio of income per capita between east and west area had increased to 1.39 in 1999 from 1.26 in 1990. Urban-rural inequality has contributed more than 10 percent of total inequality of China. For instance, according to China statistical yearbook 2014, the average income from urban is more than triple of their rural counterparts in 2013 (National Nureau of Statistics of China, 2014). Inter-industrial inequality is due to the technologies transferring and the capital inflows, the wages of the low-skilled worker does not grow as much as the high-skilled worker.

Income inequality caused several negative impacts which include: social instability and conflicts, the negative effect of economic growth, hampers poverty reduction (Kochhar, Ricka, Suphaphiphat, Tsounta, & Norris, 2015). For example, on 1 March 2014, a group of terrorist attacks a railway station in the Chinese city of Kunming. In this attack, it caused 29 civilians and 4 perpetrators dead, more than 140 others injured. The attacker came from a terrorist group called “East Turkistan”, which active in the junction area between the east side of Turkistan and west side of Xinjiang province in China. The majority members of this group are Muslim Uighur in Xinjiang, and there are a lot of reasons why they wanted to join “East Turkistan”. The two of main reasons are: this group of people has low income and they believe government treated them differently compare to main race Han in China (Smith, 2014).

One current solution to minimize income inequality is a subsistence allowance system named Di Bao. Di Bao is a social welfare program, which mainly focuses on cash subsidy, for the poor local registered permanent residents. The residents are eligible for the program if their family income per capital is lower than the minimum local living standard.  This program had covered about 74.9 million people including 23.1 million in the urban area and 51.8 million in the rural area (Li, 2013). Although Di Bao is a huge program and it covered a large number of people who are still in extreme poverty, this program has insufficient impact on reducing the income gap.

The Di Bao system has some limitations which restrict its effectiveness for helping the poor. Firstly, Di Bao program’s benefits are insufficient. The objective of this program is to fill in the gap between household income and a certain threshold if any household per capita income is under the threshold. Therefore, it increases the household income to the threshold. But this threshold is set at a level far too low, which is 20 percent to 25 percent of the local average income (Li, 2013). The Chinese government should immediately increase the amount of subsistence and then update the threshold to a reasonable level. Secondly, Di Bao program is strictly limit to the local registered permanent residence, poor migrant households are excluded from the local Di Bao program (Li, 2013). For example, when a migrant worker migrates from rural area to urban area, his or her income is generally higher than the average income in the rural area, but may be lower than the average income in the urban area. He or she cannot receive benefits from the either Di Bao program as he or she is not fulfilling the requirements. Therefore, the Di Bao system should be flexible enough for new migrants to join into the local Di Bao system respectively after some number of years, e.g. 5 years. In this situation, after those migrants joined to the local Di Bao system, they will quit the original Di Bao system from the place they came. Hence, there will be no duplicated benefits for the same person.

Since China’s economic reformation and opening up, globalization has worsened income inequality in China. Subsequently, the income inequality caused many problems such as: increases social instability and conflicts, slows down the economic growth, hampers poverty reduction. The current solution Di Bao system does not reduce income inequality efficiently. Hence, the Di Bao system needs to be more flexible and increase its coverage to include all the situations that the poor needs help.

Reader Response Final

Jeff Oon (2014) summarized Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh’s article on wealth disparity in Singapore. According to Oon, Sudhir suggests that Singapore needs to make a risk assessment on wealth inequality today. He states the danger of extreme inequality, for example, it disrupts the citizen’s innate sense of fairness, can lead to several economic inefficiencies or threatens social stability. Sudhir had pointed out that citizens are paying more attention to wealth disparities in recent years. It is important to reduce wealth inequalities if Singapore wants to preserve Singapore’s core tenets of individual responsibility, equality of opportunities and meritocracy. Jeff Oon also stated Sudhir’s ideas to reduce wealth inequality. Base on his idea, the government should come out with a more efficient tax policy which taxes on the rich more, not the incomes of the middle class. And the government also need to build up the bottom end of people with more healthcare and finance support.

Indeed, there is also evidence that shows wealth inequality has grown exponentially in recent year. A global wealth report released by Credit Suisse in October 2013 showed that the richest 1 percent of Singapore population hold more than a quarter of its total wealth. Thus, it is good that Singapore can come out some better policy to reduce wealth inequality.

There are two most obvious parts when we think about reducing wealth inequality, are the poor and the rich. For the bottom end people of the country, healthcare and finance support do really help a lot for this group of people. However, the main point should be finding ways to help them and the middle-class families earn more. Investing in education may be one way to help them. In order to prevent or minimize the inequality across generations, it is very important to maintain education and school quality for every child. Investments in education may not increase family income immediately, instead it may create a new burden for the family. Nevertheless, in the long run, it helps to push up family income and total wealth. Singapore should continue to provide strong support for education and increase the publicity of student subsidies or other forms of education support to those families need more help. In addition, lower down the living cost and increase minimum wages are the two useful methods to boost poor families’ income.

On the other hand, pulling down people from the richest group is another essential way to reduce the wealth inequality. A strong tax policy is one of the most efficient ways to cut off the tops. As what Oon mentions in his summary, there are many reasons why wealthy people choose Singapore for living or doing business. This includes business convenience, social security and stability, good healthcare and education system, technology, travel, transportation and others more. Thus, the rich will not leaving Singapore, perhaps they would like to contribute to the society more by paying a higher tax.   Hence, the government will have more money to benefit society, and all this will going into a healthy loop.

By now, it is clear that more inequality societies tend to have more problems (Porter, 2014). Singapore had done pretty well for equality of opportunities so far. There are many reasons behind the wealth inequality gap. Some of them can be controlled, like governments’ subsidies or tax refund. Some of them cannot be controlled, like globalization and capital owners getting richer by new technology (Thompson, 2013). It is better to have a good solution before the wealth inequality gap gets bigger.

My English Language Learning Journey

My first English lesson was conducted in Sec one in China. At the point of time, my teacher used dialect to teach English.  I felt that English is useless at the moment, because we would not use it in our daily life. So I slept in the English lesson and copied the homework from my friends for submission. However, i regretted my ignorant and action very soon.

It was a huge turning point in my english learning journey when I followed my parents to Singapore.  I had been told to not leave Singapore if i do not complete the national service. Thus, i couldn't go back china to complete my higher secondary school. And i realised that my english was almost equal to zero at the point of time. In order for me to get into local school, i went to the english tuition centre 4 months to learn the basic English. I did bring an electronic dictionary with me all the time for  the first two years since i was in Singapore.

Actually, i didn't like any kinds of languages. I am those kinds of people who like to listen more than speak. It was a big improvement for me from basic "abc" or " hello"until able to communicate with others. I am so glad that to have my secondary school teachers and classmates with me in my learning journey. Without their help, i couldn't improve that much.

About Me

Hi all! i am Guo Shimin. I was born in Fujian province in china. My family and i came to Singapore when i was 16 years old. I thought it is just a short visit, after that i can go back and continue my studies in China. However, i was told to not leave Singapore because i need to serve national services. The reson that i need to serve NS is because i was second generation of singapore permanent resident. Thus, i re-do my secondary education from sec 3 in local school. After  secondary school, i went through ITE, National Service, Poly and finally come to NUS.

I like to go for a slow jog in my free time. And just like others, i like to play computer games too. My favorite food are steamboat or buffet. Although i like to eat vegetables, i still prefer meats or seafood.