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http://frankcomment.blogspot.com/2009/11/h...prc-talent.html How Singapore appreciates a PRC talent who tried to integrate All the talk about PRC scholars remind me of my classmate in NUS. He was born and bred in China. He had arrived earlier with his parents and attended JC and did well. Unlike the PRC scholars, he spoke decent English and he had no problem mingling with Singaporeans. In fact, he prefers to hangout with us than those fresh from China, even though he is very brilliant and very driven, and that made him more like the PRC scholars than the Singaporean slackers (like me). In fact, he was so brilliant he was the "go to" guy for PRC scholars who needed help with school work. And, even though he is strictly speaking a first generation PR, he served National Service. An exemplary foreign talent, don't you think? A model new citizen? And for all the hard work he put in, what did Singapore offer him? Well, Singapore offered to screw him. Since he was not recruited via "rigorous interviews" held in China, he was not entitled to apply for the PRC scholarship, even though he proved himself worthy by aceing the "A" levels. This is not the case, for example, for ASEAN scholarships. Irregardless of the route you took to enter NUS, as long as you are a non-Singaporean citizen of ASEAN, you can apply for the ASEAN scholarship. And either because his Singapore citizenship did not arrive fast enough, or because some scholarship boards referred him to the PRC scholarships, he did not manage to get any scholarship at all. I had trouble knowing the details because he was always eye-bulging mad when he talked about it. This is the stark reality of Singapore. Be a non-committal tourist like Zhang Yuan Yuan and enjoy the best of both worlds, or embrace Singapore and get screwed, like my friend. He was incredibly bitter about his situation throughout his four years in NUS, and immediately upon graduation, found a great job in US and never returned since. So, what is the lesson learnt here? Don't be stupid and serve NS, since Singapore will not appreciate it? The biggest benefit of the Singapore citizenship, ironically, is that it allows you to find a job and migrate to developed countries easily? Honestly, I cannot help but feel that our whole foreign talent policies are being run by people who are not thinking very far.