Freedom, GEABSOLUTE POWERS CORRUPT ABSOLUTELY, General Election (GE15), Malaysia, Politics, polling Nov 19: Destroy Umno for the betterment of Malaysia, race, religion, Solidality, support Aliran for Justice
If the story of the 2008 Olympics was all about Beijing and its new
modernity, the story of these Olympics is about China's urban-rural
divide and the challenge of transforming some of the poorest and most
remote areas ..
Beijing Winter Olympics is China's success, and also the success of
the whole world. As some foreign media commented, maybe one day, when
the world returns to normal, we will remember the Beijing Winter
Olympics as the starting ...
The Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games (February 4-20, 2022) makes
Beijing the first city to host both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games.
The world’s best athletes will compete for 109 gold medals during the
19-day event with the first medal handed out on February 5.
The Global Times will track the results of the Olympic medal events,
with the medal table updated in real-time. We’ll also highlight which
countries win the most gold, silver and bronze medals.
`
KUALA LUMPUR: The JaminKerja Keluarga Malaysia initiative will support the government’s goal of reducing the unemployment rate by providing 600,000 job opportunities this year, says the Prime Minister. `
Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob said these would be provided via an allocation of RM4.8bil, which is a key thrust under Budget 2022 on job creation. `
“The JaminKerja Keluarga Malaysia initiative is the manifestation of the government’s commitment to providing more employment opportunities and more sustainable economic development to drive the country’s recovery efforts in a structured manner and to contribute towards strengthening the national labour market. `
“Malaysia is on the right track in its economic recovery efforts through the creation of more employment opportunities to fulfil the needs of the labour market,” he said at the launch of the JaminKerja Keluarga Malaysia initiative themed “Keluarga Malaysia, Makmur Sejahtera” and JaminKerja Keluarga Malaysia Career Carnival 2022 at the KL Convention Centre here yesterday.
`
CLICK TO ENLARGECLICK TO ENLARGE
The JaminKerja Keluarga Malaysia (Malaysian Family Job Guarantee) initiative is a collaboration between the Finance Ministry, Economic Implementation and National Strategic Coordination Agency, Human Resources Ministry, Social Security Organisation (Socso) and Human Resource Development Corporation (HRD Corp). `
Also present at the launch were Finance Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz and Human Resources Minister Datuk Seri M. Saravanan. `
The initiative consists of three main programmes, the first of which is the JaminKerja Employment Initiative that will be implemented by Socso with a target of providing about 300,000 job opportunities. `
The second is the Malaysia Short-Term Employment Programme (MySTEP) that will offer 80,000 job opportunities in the public sector, government-linked companies and strategic partners. `
The third is the Upskill Malaysia programme implemented by HRD Corp to provide practical skills training for job seekers to improve their marketability and provide guaranteed job placements. `
About 220,000 trainees will be targeted. `
Ismail Sabri said the JaminKerja Employment Initiative will also focus on efforts to encourage employers to hire especially individuals who were not actively working such as the unemployed, and vulnerable groups consisting of the disabled, former prisoners, the elderly and women who were unemployed for a long time. `
“This is to ensure that no group is left out,” he added. `
Ismail Sabri said once employers are given the incentive to hire, job seekers could use the MyFutureJobs platform to get job matches and fill the vacancies that are offered, adding that incentives will be given to employers who employ locals to fill jobs that used to be filled by foreign workers or expatriates. `
The government, he said, is committed to helping the entrepreneurial community, which hires and creates job opportunities, so that they could continue to grow and rebuild their business through the Semarak Niaga initiative worth RM40bil. `
The Prime Minister added that the Human Resources Ministry, too, has planned 312 open interview programmes and employment carnivals throughout the year. `
“The JaminKerja Keluarga Malaysia Career Carnival is the curtain-raiser for 2022 and is the first to be organised in the country, offering more than 12,000 job opportunities from 50 employers from various industries,” he said. `
To reduce the skills mismatch gap, Ismail Sabri urged the industry to implement better recruitment strategies by taking into account social changes including a more flexible work environment. `
“As the National Employment Council (NEC) chairman, I am confident that the efforts of the NEC in enhancing the momentum of job creation as well as boosting the job market will be able to continue through the JaminKerja Keluarga Malaysia initiative, which in turn will also strengthen the Malaysian Family household income, especially underprivileged groups, and the B40 and M40,” he said.
Growing acceptance: A bank employee counting 100-yuan notes in Nantong, China’s eastern Jiangsu province. Usage of the currency has jumped in the past three months as international funds boosted holdings of Chinese government bonds. — AFP `
BEIJING: The Chinese yuan is making deeper inroads as a currency of choice for global payments, with international transactions climbing to their highest level ever. `
Payments using the currency jumped to a record 3.2% of market share, according to data from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, breaking through its previous high set in 2015 that came on the back of a currency devaluation in a bid to increase exports. `
Usage has jumped in the past three months as international funds boosted holdings of Chinese government bonds, pushing their share to a fresh record, and amid gas producer Gazprom Neft’s decision to accept yuan rather than dollars for fuelling the Russian airplanes at China’s airports. `
The People’s Bank of China governor Yi Gang urged emerging economies to promote the use of local currencies at a Group-of-20 central banks’ gathering Wednesday, echoing a similar call from Indonesia to reduce reliance on the dollar to manage the risk of Federal Reserve’s stimulus withdrawal. `
The yuan will be one of the biggest beneficiaries as “trade between various Asian countries and China grows, and more of it is denominated in yuan,” said Alvin T. Tan, head of Asia FX strategy at Royal Bank of Canada in Hong Kong. `
Yuan’s growing popularity could also provide additional support for assets denominated in the currency, even as China’s yield premium over the United States narrows due to policy divergence between the two nations. She expects the yuan to be assigned a larger share in the International Monetary Fund’s reevaluation of Special Drawing Rights basket in July. `
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership trade deal that deepens China’s regional foreign trade ties will also prompt member nations to raise yuan asset holdings due to further economic integration with China, she wrote in a note Wednesday. `
The currency retained its fourth place in the past two months, compared with being the 35th most-popular medium of exchange for payments in October 2010 when Swift, which handles cross-border payment messages for more than 11,000 financial institutions in 200 countries, started tracking. `
Despite its rise in the rankings and having upped its market share by orders of magnitude over the last 12 years, the yuan is still dwarfed in popularity by its more established peers, notably the US dollar and the euro. `
The dollar kept its top spot in January, a position it’s held since June, even though its market share fell to about 39.9% from 40.5% in December. `
The euro also lost ground but held onto second place, while the British pound and yen rounded out the top five in third and fifth place, respectively. — Bloomberg
Recently there were quite a few videos coming out from an Indian Internet TV channel going by the program name of *"Gravitas"*.
*"Gravitas"*
This channel is similar to the TV channel *NTD ("New Tan Dynasty") TV* and the *Epoch Times* (newspaper) which are both owned and operated by the *Falun Gong Cult* from their HQ in New York and known far right US/Trump supporters and financiers).
Gravitas is always posting right wing anti-Chinese propaganda videos.
*Gravitas* is operated by an Internet TV network called World In One Network... *"WION"*.
It's owned by the *Essel Group* from Mumbai under one Subash Chandra. Sometime last year it got into very serious financial problems and was bailed out in late *November 2019* by the Invesco Group of Atlanta USA which also took a large block of their share. (Prior to this takeover there was almost no anti-chinese rhetoric from them)
The question to ask is "why would a US fund management company mangling more than USD 1 trillion in assets want to bail out a bankrupt "Mumbai" Internet TV company?... and also take a large block of its shares, especially when *it is not their business as fund managers* to do so and go bailing out bankrupt Indian businesses.
Invesco is a very large Fund management group managed by a team of hard core right wingers ... now can you see why this TV channel is putting out such matters.
They continue to call the virus *"Wuhan" virus* and refer this pandemic as a "disease from China", when the name has already been officially known as SARS-CoV-2, and the disease Covid-19.
The only other persons who still insisted on calling it "Wuhan virus" are those right wing liars Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence. The Duckbrained President called it a Chinese virus ... they hated China. Their so called human rights attacks on China, firstly using Tibet and the Dalai Lama, then Xinjiang and the Uighurs, then HK are just a pretext to kicking open the doors for their nonsense to go in. ..... don't trust this bunch of frauds and their propaganda.
I
do share the views expressed. We saw when both stood up for Venezuela,
and possibly Iran. Heavy weight China/ Russia partnership does move the
geopolitical needle and change the balance equation. Never expect war,
but Putin did flex some biceps.
There are many predictions about China's economic collapse. Why isn't that happening?
Take Evergrande!!!!
Why did so many Economists predict that Evergrande collapse would be huge etc etc????
Because they are stupid??? No
Because they are biased??? Maybe…but they are still reputed Academics who wont just tout propaganda
So Why????
BECAUSE THEY LOOK AT EVERYTHING FROM THE US ANGLE (And the European Angle and the Japanese Angle and the Indian Angle) or the US LENS
In the United States - The Shareholder is GOD
So any Collapse of a Company , leads to a blow in the Markets which causes massive massive massive losses and creates all the financial crises since 1929.
In China - The Investor is GOD
China believes that the Speculator is a Gambler. They restrict major funds from investing too much into the Stock market and ensure that the Common Citizens who invest in the stock market know that they can lose their shirt or win a pile of gold.
Instead their Focus is on the Investor - the ones who paid for the Houses, the ones who bought Bonds etc. They are to the Chinese - the backbone of Economics.
IN the United States - Rule of Law is Cumbersome but Absolute
This means - THE LAW Comes First. So whenever any Company Collapses - you have Chapter 11s filed , Protection of the Company Directors and Shareholders , Allowing the Company to file counter suits etc.
This means the Assets of the Company get wound up for an average of 46 months and by this time shares plummet to Zero.
Thus a Companys failure means failure for all its investors.
In China - The Public is Absolute or the Common Man
China puts everything including Freedom or Human Rights above the Common Man.
So in China when a Collapses - the System will first Force a company to pay back its investors.
The Law never interferes
The Company has to pay back its investors by selling Assets, swapping Assets etc.
This means Assets of a Company can be disposed off in weeks rather than months or years.
And thus Investors almost always get between 55% - 100% of what they invested
IN the US - Value is all about Perception
US doesnt like the word ‘Assets’ or ‘Profits’
They like ‘ Potential’ or ‘Expansion’
This means many Companies in US are almost always heavily bloated with very little Real Assets
So in a sense US is mostly like India. They do nothing until a company folds and then its Chapter 11 and in some cases - FBI investigations or SEC investigations
So when a Company crashes - its Perception or Potential crashes and its Value crashes.
In China - Value is all about ASSETS
China doesnt like words like ‘Potential’ or ‘Closing a Deal’ etc.
They like Hard Core Assets - Land, Contracts, Trade Deals, Gold, Jade, Coal , Gas Pipelines are what they love.
So when a Company crashes - It always has Assets to back it up and these Assets manage to salvage a big chunk of Value
So thats what is helping China ignore Evergrande or even a Real Estate Crisis while if this was happening in US or even India - people would be scrambling for cover.
Yet while Economists are good - they simply dont think like a Chinese or know the Chinese System
My Associate Lawyer in Singapore told me how Westerners focussed on Huge Office Space whereas a CHinese office was a small 15X10 enclosure and yet you had 10 times larger deals floating through the same.
Likewise Most Western Personal Debts are based on paperwork etc. Most Chinese Personal Debts are given based on just the mans face and his Chop (Chop is a personalized Stamp like thing with Unique Chinese characters)
So those who make Predictions on China - Just dont understand how China works
Its why Singapore never makes Predictions on China. They simply report the US Predictions and Laugh because They are Chinese too.
Likewise South Korea understands the Chinese Way as does Taiwan and even HK
Thats why South East Asia really didnt care too much about Evergrande. They just reported what the West said but ignored it.
Thats why South East Asia scrambled in Panic when Lehman Brothers folded. They also know how US works and knew how big a crisis it was.
Just change your glasses and wear a Chinese one - and you will see just how different Chinese Business is compared to the Western models
China: Rise of an Asian giant | Insight | Full Episode
China’s space station: From no flush toilets to building its own space station within 40 years.
AS an Egyptian, I have been studying China intensely for the past year — its government, society, history, and transformation. `
I’ve spoken to hundreds of Chinese and China-haters and heard everything they had to say. By now I’ve learned roughly as much about China as anyone can learn without knowing the language or living in the country, and I’ve reached my conclusion. China attracts a lot of haters, know-nothings and armchair experts. `
The truth is that China is the greatest country on the face of the earth. It makes all other countries look insignificant and contemptible. It is the most brilliant, most industrious, most ambitious, most educated, meritocratic and technocratic, most modern, sophisticated, and civilised, and best-governed by far. `
It is the first nonwhite, non-Western country to reach this status since the 1600s. The determination of this country is indescribable. Supernatural. There is no force that can stop it from accomplishing anything it wants to do. `
Forty years ago a flush toilet in China was a luxury. Today it has its own Space Station. This is a tiny example of China’s capabilities. `
It doesn’t matter who we are. Egyptians, Syrians, Pakistanis, Indians, Africans, even Americans. Next to the Chinese, we are pathetic. We can’t do what they do. We would have a mountain, an Everest of changes to make, and we would whine and bicker and fail at every one of them. China’s story since the 1980s has been one of an almost divine metamorphosis.
`
Next to China the entire Western world from Alaska to New Zealand has stagnated. Next to China the entire developing world from Brazil to Madagascar has progressed only at a crawl. `
China is the mother of all gargantuan bullet trains. Every day it manages to create something new and astonishing. And unlike the United States, unlike the British Empire, unlike the French, Dutch, Germans, Spanish, Portuguese or any other Western nation that had its turn at being a superpower in the past four centuries, China doesn’t need to run anybody over or take something from somebody else, to rise majestically. `
China is also standing up to the West all by herself. The West can’t believe their four-hundred-year-old global supremacy is being challenged. They hoped that the more China developed, the more it would submit to their influence, interests, and leadership. That didn’t happen. So now they will do anything possible, short of a nuclear war, to make China end. `
Their goal is to destroy this country. That’s why, although the United States has killed several million people and turned several regions of the earth into hellscapes.
`
China is the worst fear of our planet’s Western masters. They want you to despise and dread a country that’s done nothing to you, that hasn’t invaded anyone, bombed or sanctioned anyone, that hasn’t overthrown any foreign government, or used its military on anything since 1979. `
China is the only major country in the nonwhite developing world, to stand up to the West. To look it in the eye when challenged or threatened. `
The Global South are simply Western puppets who submitted long ago. Even the most powerful ones. Saudi Arabia, Brazil, India. `
The 1500s—1000s BC were Egypt’s time. Antiquity belonged to the Greeks and Romans. The 1700s belonged to France, and the 1800s to Britain. From 1945 to the present, the world has been under American overlordship. And they call it the Pax Americana but there isn’t much Pax in it. `
There’s plenty of Pax if you’re in Europe or Australia. But the Middle East? Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran and Yemen in the past 20 years. Latin America? They’ve destroyed that part of the world beyond any hope of recovery. Africa? It’s only been spared because of disinterest. The US sees Africa as nothing. The whole West does. `
But in the twenty-first century, we are witnessing the rise of China. We are decades away from China becoming the greatest power on earth. This will be China’s time, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Attack China all you want, curse her and monger rumours and hysteria — but the truth is that none of your accusations are backed up by evidence. The Western press is under the thumb of Western governments that want to stay on top of the world for eternity. And the truth is that China is not affected by the noise and maneuvers of her enemies.
`
For her first thirty years, from 1949 to 1979, China was basically blockaded and isolated economically and politically by the West. It didn’t even have a seat in the UN General Assembly. And it was dirt-poor in those days, barely a speck of the global economy, a tiny fraction of Japan’s or Germany’s GDP — not even able to prevent famine. And it still didn’t submit to pressure or take any orders. Why on earth would it do that now? ` China will be the next global power. There’s nothing that can be done about that. The first stage is that its economy only needs to grow at 4.7 percent per year to become the world’s largest by 2035. That means the usual, historical bare-minimum of 6 percent is already overkill. The US can build as many bases as it wants, slap as many sanctions as it wants, recognise whatever bogus genocides it wants. That’s what it’s been doing all along. Has any of it made a difference? China can adapt to any situation. It took China a mere ten years to go from being barred by the US Congress from participating in the “International” Space Station, to building its own Space Station from zero. `
See, the US has an $800-billion war budget, 800 military bases, 13,000 aircraft, 500 warships, 6,000 nukes — but it doesn’t have what China has: invincible national resolve. It takes the US about 5 years to renovate a bridge, and it takes China 43 hours. There’s simply no competing with that. `
China doesn’t need to be a military superpower or empire. That was never part of the plan. US troops, God bless their souls, will continue sitting in their bases, scratching their balls, costing their government $800 billion a year to do nothing. Meanwhile, China will continue to actually develop. `
That’s the part of the equation that America totally missed, because it has barely developed since Reagan’s day. China is a better place to live today than at any time in its previous 5,000 years; Americans saw their highest standard of living in the 1960s and those days will never come back. `
So yes, China will be the next global power, and the Chinese are vastly superior to us in every way. This is a fact that everyone can attack but that nobody can change, like the theory of evolution. `
Look at you silly buggers, talking about China like it’s going to be the next Nazi Germany. Even many Middle Easterners I know fit in this foolish category. Did you notice when the US invaded or overthrew the governments of 20 countries in the past 32 years (my lifetime)? Did you even know? You think just because you’re ready to forget all that because of Beyoncé and Game of Thrones and Snapchat and other US cultural exports, it didn’t happen. `
The US is feeding me terror-bytes about Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, Tiananmen Square, Great Leap Forward! I don’t see any dead bodies, I can’t show you one invasion or one example of Chinese regime change, I can’t even find Hong Kong on a map or tell you one factual detail about Tiananmen Square, but the US State Department and all its media are telling me CHINA BAD! `
Aren’t you at least curious to see what a world with a nonwhite, non-Western leader might look like, after 400 years? Because God knows that leader won’t be us. It won’t be Brazil or Africa, or the Middle East or India or Indonesia or Nigeria or Pakistan. We’re a mess. `
China was a mess too. But we remain a mess many decades after we achieved independence, and the Chinese went their own way, disentangled their mess and created their destiny. We’re not made of what the Chinese are made of. `
I see China as hope. Hope that a colonised, brutalised, primitive and humiliated country, can rise above its past — refuse to be weak any longer — rebuild itself from nothing, with iron resolve, and become too strong to be overrun by the West again! `
Hope that a nonwhite, non-Western country can look deep within itself and find its own solutions to its problems — proving that (foolishly) trusting the West to guide us isn’t necessary! Proof that if we can do what the Chinese did, there will be no limits for us. `
Imagine a world where the US, France, Britain, Australia, are no more important than Uzbekistan or Paraguay. `
A world where the World Court might be headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, the World Bank in New Delhi, the United Nations in Jakarta, the IMF in Cairo. `
A world liberated from the US banking system and the dollar as its reserve currency, so that Washington can no longer tell 200 other countries who they can and can’t trade with. `
A world where an American can be tried for war crimes at the Hague, not just an Iraqi or Liberian or Serb. `
A world where we don’t hear about a non-Western-made vaccine and grunt to ourselves, Oh, it must be poison. A world where we don’t have to immigrate to the same countries that turned ours into hellholes, to work as sales clerks or taxi drivers, or even if we’re brilliantly employed — to drain our brains from our homelands in the best of cases, and use them to reinforce Western riches and supremacy in exchange for a fat paycheck, instead of using them to make our own countries semi-habitable. ` When I hear that China has built its own Space Station, landed a rover on Mars, ended extreme poverty, built the Earth’s biggest city, dam, telescope, 5G network, highway, air purifier, or whatever the heck it is that will come tomorrow — I feel the same pride as if I were Chinese. `
It’s not happening for all of us, but it’s happening for one of us and that’s a start. There’s got to be such a thing as developing-country nationalism — a common nationalism for all the countries that were colonised and plundered, and remain economically and politically captured by their ex-rulers. `
A nationalism for the Global South. We are too divided, too brainwashed, too fooled and weak — most of us still worship the countries that destroyed us, are non-Western on the outside and Western on the inside, are hating and fearing and buying all the lies about the only one of us that’s made it, and are leaving our countries in droves to let them burn while we “make a better life for ourselves” in the West. `
Do you want to live on a Western-dominated Earth for another 400 years? If you do, keep doing what you’re doing. But I don’t! `
You know what’ll happen for all of us if America’s sick wishes come true and its global thuggery does make China collapse? Nothing. Eternal repetition of the status quo. More enslavement, hijacking of our resources and weak corrupt governments, neo-colonialism, invasion, regime change, sanctions, MISERY. `
Haven’t we already seen this? Libya, Cuba, Venezuela, Yugoslavia, Belarus, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, the Soviet Union. Rest in peace. Even FRANCE and JAPAN for God’s sake. What does the United States do when any other country says NO, or simply becomes too powerful, too good at honest competition? `
Japan was a Western-style democracy crawling with US troops, with a US-authored pacifist constitution and almost no military and an extremely pro-US government and populace, and it STILL got crushed when it looked like it would become the #1 economy in the 80s. `
I remember 10–15 years ago when China was still relatively poor and impotent, and Bush and Obama would talk about China as sweetly as swans. Obama happily had dinner with Xi Jinping in late 2015, called China a crucial partner of the United States, and said the US welcomed China’s rise; it was all horseshit. Today Biden, who was there with Obama in late 2015 as Vice-President, angrily rebukes a reporter who merely said that Biden and Xi were old friends. `
America has taken off its mask. `
China made it, it wasn’t supposed to make it, so now it must die. What a difference 5 years can make. China went from “crucial partner” to “number one threat.”
`
We should be helping and supporting China to keep climbing to the top, and giving her some serious solidarity as she withstands the new Cold War of Western imperialism. It’s been a long 400 years. China is the first non-Western country to even come close to reaching a status of ultimate global importance. She is akin to the the first member of an impoverished family to go to university. That is our family of nations. ` And when China gets to the top, believe me, it won’t be a repeat of the French, British, or American Empire. Not a single developing country on earth will be worse-off because of China becoming #1. There will be something good in this for all of us, so let’s wake up. `
- Ismail Bashmori is an Egyptian China watcher
How Generation MZ in S. Korea view jobs and the workplace
The luxe life: Shoppers with tents and portable chairs lining up outside a Chanel store in Seoul in December. With homes beyond the reach of millennials and Gen Z-ers, many are spending their money on luxuries, helping to make South Korea the seventh largest market for luxury brand items globally. — Bloomberg
LATELY, the foreign press has featured some intriguing articles on South Korea’s “Generation MZ,” a term that encompasses millennials and Generation Z, or roughly those born from the 1980s into the 2010s.
For example, Bloomberg reported on young people in South Korea in their 20s and 30s standing in a long line at 5am to buy famous brands at a department store. The New York Times, too, in an article called “The new political cry in South Korea: ‘Out with men haters’”, covers another side of the MZ generation: the rise of anti-feminist sentiment among many Korean young men. `
In the eyes of the foreign press, these behaviours of South Korea’s younger generations must look weird. However, despite some obvious problems, there is a grain of reason in some of their unusual behaviours. Many Korean men born between the early 1980s and early 2000s cannot find a decent job today, and this harsh reality has left them deeply disillusioned and frustrated. They are angry at their society for not providing them with a happy, stable life. `
In that sense, they are the Angry Generation. They are angry because their unemployment status has also forced them to give up vital things in life, such as getting married, having children, owning a home and a myriad of other things. That is why MSN called them “South Korea’s Give-Up Generation”. Korea’s Generation MZ also calls itself the Lost Generation. `
Since they cannot afford a home in their lifetimes due to skyrocketing real estate prices, Generation MZ finds pleasure elsewhere; they buy luxury cars or merchandise from a famous brand instead. It is no wonder, therefore, that they are willing to stand in a long line early in the morning to purchase luxury items or drive a Mercedes or BMW. Ostensibly, their attitude looks like snobbery, and yet deep down, there is sadness and anger in their desperate, extravagant spending of money. `
As for young Korean men’s anti-feminist attitudes, there are reasons behind that, too. They believe that feminism belongs to the older generation, who discriminated against women in a male chauvinist society. Assuming there is no longer real discrimination against women in South Korean society, these young men in their 20s think that it is unfair and absurd to give advantages to young women in the name of feminism. `
Moreover, they are angry because they think women take away all available jobs while men still have to fulfil mandatory military duty for about one-and-a-half years. That is why Korean young men think that it is only fair that Korean women, too, have compulsory military duty, just like men. `
Of course, young Korean women do not agree with them. Women argue that there is still discrimination against women at workplaces in salaries and wages. Besides, if a woman becomes pregnant, she feels the invisible pressure to resign, unless she works at a government institution. `
Korean women are also disappointed in Korean men because they think it is unmanly for them to demand that women serve in the army under the guise of gender equality. `
Yet despite these profound gender differences, both men and women of Generation MZ can agree that their government has failed to provide them with happy, secure lives. `
Young Koreans detest the older politicians’ self-righteousness and the illusion that they represent justice. Young people in Korea are perfectly aware that what the officials call “justice” is arbitrary and thus even dictators can claim that they represent justice, just as Michel Foucault perceived it many years ago. `
Young Koreans also hate the hypocrisy of the older generation that preaches “fairness,” while they themselves are relishing the sweetness of privileges and unfair advantages. `
Korea’s Generation MZ also does not approve of the older generation’s servile attitude towards bully nations. `
Young people in Korea think that Korean politicians should say “No!” to their neighbouring countries when they are overbearing and rude. `
Young Koreans are confident and proud because they live in an advanced, affluent country. `
To a certain extent, Korea’s Generation MZ resembles America’s Soft Generation in the 1960s. `
American parents who had gone through the Great Depression in the 1930s raised their children as sheltered kids who were consequently vulnerable to violence and adversity. `
The parents of South Korea’s Generation MZ, who had gone through the IMF (International Monetary Fund) financial crisis, also raised their children as sheltered kids with over-protection and excessive care. `
South Korea’s Generation MZ may look selfish, but they value individual freedom, fairness and transparency. They detest group-oriented, communal impositions and dogmatic political ideologies. `
Moreover, they are computer- savvy kids who live with social media every day. Recently, a Reuters story contained the headline, “South Korea‘s Gen MZ leads rush into the ‘metaverse’”. `
They are the future of South Korea. In the upcoming presidential election, Generation MZ should choose wisely so they can have a bright future.
– The Korea Herald/Asia News Network
By Kim Seong-kon, a professor emeritus of English at Seoul National University and a visiting scholar at Dartmouth College, the United States.
Bidding farewell to Beijing 2022 with tears, hugs and hope
Japan36918
Italy27817
South Korea2529 
