Ref: FMJ/00/10/001.

11 December, 2000.

The Federal Minister for Justice

Federal Ministry of Justice

The Honourable Prof. Dr Herta Däubler-Gmelin

Jerusalemer Straßen 27

10117 Berlin.

Dear Minister,

Seeking Justice on behalf of Foreign Investor

Our company was bought by Gaspower Coenergy Systems (S) Pte Ltd of Singapore from BvS – Bundesanstalt Für vereingungsbedingte Sonderaufgaben Vertragsmanagement formerly known as B/M/G/B in December 1997. To date, around 25,000,000.00 DM have been invested in the company.

The head of IG Metall Mr. Rainer Metke who is also a member of the State Parliament of Sachsen-Anhalt made false accusation of insolvency, fraud and stealing of engine design against my Technical Manager and myself to the Public Prosecutor Madgeburg and in the local press, see Appendix (1). Despite my protest four policemen accompanied by an interpreter, WITHOUT warrant conducted a two-and-half hour search of my home on Sunday night 12 November 2000 from 7.00 to 9.30 p.m., and subsequently sealed my office and seized accounts and business documents. Two days later, the Lower District Court issued confirmation of the searches and seizures, see Appendix (2).

The bad publicity resulted in our creditors demanding payment and the banks froze our accounts. Stadtwerke Halberstadt who were supplying GAS to our Power Plant that provides “electricity” and “heat” to a number of buildings around our factory, threaten to “cut off” GAS supplies on 16.11.00 at 12 noon unless full payment were made. To ensure supplies of heating and electricity we were left with no alternatives but to apply to the Lower Court in Madgeburg on 16.11.00 morning for Temporary Insolvency Administration, see Appendixes (3) & (4).

The press reports and allegations of insolvency, fraud and stealing are totally untrue and without foundation. As at 16.11.2000, we had made a net profit of 1,544,000.00 DM, see Appendix (5). On the advice of our Chief Designer, Mr. Hans Standhardt, we had taken precaution to protect the design of our revolutionary new engines by assigning it to our parent company in Singapore at 10,000,000.00 DM. In order to comply with the conditions of the Research & Development subsidy from the State of Sachen- Anhalt that the design and engines must remain in the State for not less than five years they were licensed back to our company, see Appendixes (6) & (7).

Letter to myself

41-24, Lengkong Satu,

Off Jalan Kembangan,

Singapore 14

27th May 1957

Dear Baey,

When you open this letter, you will be nearly 46 years old, and married for 21 years. If God permits, you will have children of your own, and soon hope to be a grandfather, as your dear wife Daisy, is now pregnant and will be having a baby in the middle of the next month.

The reason for this letter to yourself is that you are almost certain that you will succeed in business, and that the Company, Baey Kim Swee & Co Ltd, will be ever bigger and prosperous, not only in this line, but in all the field of commerce, and that you might be swell-headed (like your father) and put all the glory to yourself, instead of to the other people who helped you to succeed.

Should you succeed, and be much more wealthier than your father, you promised that you will be generous and helpful not only to your relations but to the people, whom you made your money from. You would not make the mistakes your father made, by taking all the credits and blaming the bad and unsuccessful on other people.

By now, some of your children would be in school, and you promised to give them a good education, girl or boy alike, so that they will be able to [fend] for themselves in later years. Although you wish them to follow your footstep in business, you must not force them, if they wish to take up any other type of professions.

You promised not to have second wife, because of your unhappy childhood days due to the two stepmothers, and your own mother being kicked out by your father.

You know that it is impossible to be entirely faithful to Daisy, but you promised to yourself that should you ever feel tempted by woman, you will pay them with money (or other ways) for the enjoyment. But you will never marry a second wife, so that your children will not suffer as you have suffered.

Dear Kong Kong,

How are you? How is the family? i sent you 2 replys but im not sure if you received them. Anyways, i've been reading up and trying to follow up on the whole GE that's going on in Singapore. I was just curious as to what were your thoughts about the whole PAP/SDP thing going on. I don't really know much but to me hasn't the PAP done a good job so far? The SDP seems like they're trying to market themselves as a “people's government” but do you really think they'll be suitable? …

Just thought i'd ask for your opinion plus i also miss you both so sending an email always helps

Lots of love

Zhong Yi

My Dear Grandson,

It is most gratifying to know that you are now able to vote in the forthcoming Singapore's General Election and what pleases me most is the fact that you are sufficiently interested and concerned in writing to me for my thoughts. You are being very wise. Though just only one vote, your vote may make a difference in securing the right political leader to help to chart our country's future.

If you had asked me this question when you were back here, I would have suggested that we meet over lunch or dinner as it would take at least a couple of hours to fully enlighten you on the pertinent facts and events from the time when we were a British Colony, through the three and a half years of Japanese Occupation and its subsequently surrender, leading to nationhood, initially as part of Malaysia and later into an independent sovereign nation under Lee Kuan Yew. Without knowing the past events, one would not be able to appreciate and comprehend the political, social and economic landscape that transformed our country into what it is today.

When the suggestion to write a book on Dr Baey Lian Peck was put to me by ISEAS Director K. Kesavapany in mid-2010, I must confess that I felt very doubtful. I had just put in three years of work on a book on Dr Goh Keng Swee, and was looking forward to getting back to studying Malaysian personalities from the Merdeka years. Not another Singaporean, I thought.

But I had no idea who this Dr Baey was. In fact I had never heard of him, and none of my peers had heard of him. This was not strange, since I began living in Singapore only in 2004. And so, to be fair to the Director, I said I would have to meet the man first before I decided. The head of ISEAS’ Public Affairs Unit, Mr Tan Keng Jin, arranged for the three of us to meet for lunch at the Singapore Cricket Club.

It turned out to be a very entertaining meal. Dr Baey was obviously a charismatic individual. Most significantly for me, he was clearly a very frank and honest person, and he had a lot of stories to tell. I was hooked. I had to find out more about him and his improbable tales.

I now think that it was exactly because I had just finished a book on a Singaporean leader that I felt drawn towards the story of Dr Baey Lian Peck. What is always not sufficiently present when authoring a biographical account of great leaders like Dr Goh are the soft voices and untold tales that lurk in the shadows, without which that main plot would not be plausible. In fact, the main plot is fatally bland unless one assumes the existence of these sub-plots.

And yet, the supporting cast in the big drama of nationhood is seldom studied seriously. This is a failing on the part of historians. These sub-plots are stories in their own right.

In that important sense then, the project I was being offered promised to still a disquiet that had settled upon me following my choice to base my book on Dr Goh largely on his writings. The adjoining and the underlying stories began to seek my attention.

First, I would like to thank you for your presence. This will be the only occasion in which SCORE is holding a dinner on its own. We will be joining the Prisons Department when it holds its future annual dinners.

This evening is perhaps a good time to reflect on what objectives SCORE has set out to achieve, what are expected of the staff and what roles private enterprises can play.

SCORE's objectives, as they have often been stressed, are:

1. (i) To inculcate in inmates exact industrial discipline; and

2. (ii) To provide work to as many inmates as possible.

We have one aim; that is, to lead and rehabilitate those who have gone astray and try [to] turn them into useful citizens again.

The task of rehabilitation falls no less on the Prisons Department than on the staff of SCORE. Staff of SCORE must therefore share this responsibility in an enduring and positive manner. Working in a rehabilitative environment is more than a job. It is a public service. And we will be doing the public a great service if, through our collective efforts, we are able to inculcate in drug takers and prison inmates (particularly the recidivists), the will and determination to reform themselves.

We have done quite well over the last 2 years but there is no cause for [rejoicing] yet. We still have much more to do in the years ahead. It is the duty of the management to ensure that conditions of service for staff are competitive to Government departments and related industries in the private sector. Every officer must, however, demonstrate his or her commitment to the Corporation. In order that management can build up the infrastructure for a conducive working environment, it is important that there must be more feedback from staff on the ground level. The submission of fortnightly reports on workshops’ performance, though a chore, is necessary so that experience from the workshop could be translated into effective policies.

SCORE is grateful to participating companies for their contributions to our work programme. While the viability of any investment is a prime concern of businessmen, companies should not look at their participation in SCORE solely from the business point of view.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong

Prime Minister's Office

Orchard Road

Istana

Singapore 238823

Dear Mr Lee,

May I begin this letter by wishing you and your family a Happy and Successful Lunar New Year.

In the midst of the so-called OPEC war in the mid-seventies when the price of oil escalated and inflation went wild, NTUC Welcome Consumer Co-operative, now known as NTUC FairPrice was set up to combat inflation in our country.

The late Mr Lim Kim San was Chairman Board of Trustees and I was Chairman Board of Directors as well as CEO.

Through a system of cross-subsidy by progressively reducing the prices of about a dozen essential items that had direct bearing on the cost of living of the workers and subsidized by profit margin from the rest of the other items, we were able not only to contain inflation but managed to get it reduced when inflation was rising elsewhere. Gradually, those essential items became loss leaders and because of competition, the other supermarkets and provision shops were compelled to adopt the same strategy. The attached article from the Straits Times of September 11, 1978 showing the inflation rate of Singapore and selected countries would give you an insight into the success of the system.

If you consider the system worth pursuing, I will be delighted to brief you further on the matter.

Yours respectively,

BAEY LIAN PECK

Encl. Straits Times article, 11 September 1978 [see APPENDIX VII]

c.c. Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew.

Productivity — The Key to Singapore's Correctional Rehabilitation

Singapore's approach to both corrections and its drug problems is positive and direct. For that reason its policies are either lauded as sensible or criticised as repressive according to the commentators’ own position on the current drug and correctional controversy. Like most other countries, Singapore is not yet able to show that any one policy rather than another has been conspicuously successful: and even if it did claim success there would doubtless be scope for varying interpretations of this according to the criteria used. If one begins however with the modest assumptions that the people responsible for policy in Singapore are neither unlettered nor uncultured, that they are widely travelled and alive to the developments on corrections and drug problems in other countries of the world — and that they are genuinely concerned about the best interests of their country, then it is possible to identify objectives and tease out the principles for some future evaluation.

There are two arms to Singapore's action to deal with drugs and crime: and the policy is gradually to bring these together in a pincer movement to improve rehabilitation. One arm is the country's drive to develop, socially and economically. There is a keen appreciation of Singapore's need to be competitive in exports and to serve as an international market. With two million people crowded on about 600 square kilometres which offer little except human resources, secondary industry, tourism [and] commerce loom large as means of survival and improvement in the quality of life. Singapore is sensitive to the fact that it must produce and market on competitive terms to earn its foreign currency. It has therefore sought to mobilise the relatively unused human resources in the prisons and in the rehabilitation centres to provide selected competitive exports. The second arm of correctional and drug policy is the personal rehabilitation of the inmates of institutions with a corresponding reduction in the rates of recidivism. The attempt to join these two arms into a total thrust to benefit both the community and the individual is well illustrated by the creation of SCORE — the Singapore Corporation of Rehabilitative Enterprises. This statutory body is chaired by an industrialist, Mr Baey Lian Peck, who is a successful entrepreneur in his own right and who practically gives his services to the government.

Dear Kongkong and ZY [Zhong Yi],

Not sure if you have seen this, but I just watched this short clip that my dad linked me to and felt that it was quite insightful. Thought to share it with everyone.

I share the same sentiments as ZY — hasn't the PAP been doing a decent job all these years? What is all this whining about?

Perhaps a reason why we think in this fashion is because we have been blessed with being “the fortunate lot” in Singapore. And although we probably do have some awareness of the less fortunate, we can never fully empathize with what they have to live with. According to this video, they are apparently quite oppressed. This makes a lot of sense — an economically driven country like ours putting less economically productive people at the bottom of the food chain. Or is that fallacy?

Just some food for thought.

http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/101east/2011/ 05/20115494458152827.html

Love,

Yi Wei

Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 16:20:27 +0800

From: “Dr. Baey Lian Peck”

Subject: Re: Hello from Perth!

Dear Yi Wei,

What the PAP had achieved is water down the drain. Over time, people forget especially those who had not lived through the period of development. Politics like a family is a living thing, it has to change with the times. What is important is that the people who are asking for changes should fully understand the difficulties the country or organizations have gone through and try to put themselves in the same situations.

Take for example NTUC Welcome Consumers Co-operative Supermarkets. Dr Goh Keng Swee mooted the idea of a consumers’ co-operative to combat the seemingly uncontrollable inflation due to [the] decision by OPEC (Organization of Oil Producing Countries) in the middle of nineteen seventies to increase the price of oil from $1.50 to $11.50 per barrel resulting in serious worldwide inflations, particularly in Singapore with no natural resources when prices of essential food shot up over 200% overnight.

I was appointed Justice of the Peace in 1979. I am still a JP. As you may know, a JP is appointed by the Prime Minister's Office through the Ministry of Home Affairs. Now, when I am eighty years old, a lot of my time is used advising young couples and marrying them. I take that job very seriously, as you might expect.

There are two or three tasks a JP has the authority to carry out. Of course, there are some other things you have to do as well, for example, when the registrar of the subordinate court allocates cases for mediation to you. Mediation is held in chamber at the Subordinate Court on Havelock Road. I have been happy with this position because of the connection it allows me to have with common people. My other positions — in SCORE, SANA, the HDB, St John or NTUC FairPrice — have all given me a deep understanding of the problems faced by Singaporeans, which comes in useful in my position as a JP.

For instance, I have sometimes to ask the lawyers in mediation cases that have been allocated to me to leave the chamber. With all due respect to them, lawyers are always in a fighting mode. I prefer having a discussion with only the two parties directly. Their problems can be issues such as someone placing a flower pot at the common corridor. This leads to a neighbour who knows the rules regulating that to call the Town Council to complain. The council responds, and things get personal. Pride is hurt, egos are bruised. So, as JP, I have to talk them to their senses, deflate their egos with practical and economic considerations such as the costs of a civil suit.

Most of these cases involve young people, who seem easily offended nowadays, who know their rights, and who tend to get a bit too cocky too quickly.

Nevertheless, I love mediating. I take my time with them, getting to know the situation, and convincing them about what I think is best. With lawyers around, you cannot convince anybody in a peaceful manner. With them, it is about winning, not about getting along.

I am therefore basically a businessman, and, fortunately, I gained financial success very early in life. So, from thirty-eight years old onwards, a lot of my time went into serving Singapore, and I could do that without ever taking payment for my work for the government.

This was my national service.

I think my commitment to work for the country came when Lee Kuan Yew cried on the air, when Singapore was kicked out of Malaysia in 1965. After the Japanese Occupation, we had all felt that we had to become independent. Either you chose to migrate or you stayed to fight. My old man and I actually discussed that, and we decided to stay.

Lee Kuan Yew took us into the federation in 1963, and at that time, I remember I didn't agree with him. But I soon saw that he was learning, and changing his policies accordingly. After that, I was all for him. I remember Dr Toh Chin Chye asking me to enter politics. He could not guarantee that I would become a Minister, but a position of Minister of State was a foregone conclusion. I said no to him. I saw myself as a businessman. My father taught me things as a businessman, and we had always been doing business. Certain things you may do in business which you cannot do in politics. In business, you make use of the grey areas. One gets involved in what used to be called “yellow culture”, for example. I mean, I was doing business with the Americans in Vietnam. I knew who did what to whom, and when.

Politics is something else altogether. So, I did not want to discredit the party. That was my official excuse to Dr Toh. But in truth, I did not want to. It was as simple as that.

Years later, after my work with NTUC Welcome, Lim Kim San also wanted me to join politics. I turned him down too, and for the same reason. To be sure, I became a cadre for the PAP in 1971. I was on too many important boards to not be one, I suppose. Although I stopped being a cadre later, I remained a member of the PAP. So I knew the top leaders very well.

This chapter examines the history of maritime exchange between the Japanese archipelago and various areas in Asia from the 9th to the first half of the 14th centuries. In contrast to the growth in pre-war research (which, of course, was closely related to Japanese expansion), post-war research after 1945 stagnated for some time. However, from the 1980s in particular, research in this field was gradually revitalized. Notably, scholars have now paid attention not only to the political and diplomatic interactions among states and rulers that were the main topics of traditional research, but have also actively focused on various levels of relationships among such peoples as maritime merchants, seafaring people, and monks. Consequently, a research direction became clear relating to various ways of considering the areas of “state” and “state borders”. Closely related to this point, many studies have been focusing on the Ryukyu Islands, the northern part of Tōhoku and Hokkaidō, areas which had been understood only as “peripheries” or “marginal areas” of “Japan (Yamato)” and had attracted less research interest. New studies have been trying to understand the historical evolution of these areas in their own terms in the context of their connection with a broader world outside the Japanese archipelago (“regional world” and “maritime world” across state borders).

Dividing the Japanese archipelago into three maritime areas, namely the west, the south, and the north, the first section of this chapter surveys the history of interactions between the Japanese archipelago and other Asian regions and the current status of research on this topic. As a concrete example illustrating the maritime linkage between the Japanese archipelago and other regions in Asia, the second section introduces the issue of Japanese sulphur export to China, a trade that has not attracted much attention.

DEVELOPMENTS IN THE WEST, THE SOUTH, AND THE NORTH OF THE JAPANESE ARCHIPELAGO AND THE MARITIME WORLD

The Western Maritime Region

The 9th Century as a Turning Point

In the 9th century, except for missions from Bohai, there was very little interaction between Japan and Asian countries through official state missions. On the other hand, private maritime merchants, described in the sources as “Silla merchants” and “Great Tang merchants”, often sailed to Kyūshū initiating private trade with Japan.

The historical scholarship of the nationalist age in the second half of the 20th century achieved much in understanding the roots of Southeast Asian national cultures and the resilience of each of them in maintaining an autonomous dynamic despite imperial pressures. Among the models energetically rejected by that era were not only European and Japanese imperial ideas of a civilizing mission, but the “Greater India” school celebrating Indian cultural expansion in the first millennium of the Common Era, and Sino-centric notions of a Chinese world order extending its influence into Southeast Asia. The new national historians insisted on disentangling their pasts, as well as their presents, from the stories of others. Busy building new pasts to match and legitimate their new futures, they had neither time nor inclination to explore more regional themes. Comparison and connection within Asia and beyond it has only recently returned to the agenda, not before time in a globalizing world.

In the West there was also much sympathy for decolonizing history and for exploring the roots of the new nationalist and radical forces transforming society. But the single-country focus was modified from the 1970s by an area studies approach to organizing knowledge, dominant in the U.S. and to some extent English-medium scholarship more generally in this period. In the classroom, and increasingly in books that served the classroom, Southeast Asian history was often taught as a whole. To a lesser extent those studying China, Japan and Korea outside that region had to know something about Northeast Asia as a whole. But the more these area-focussed textbooks sought a particular character for Southeast (or Northeast) Asia, however, the more they emphasized its distinctiveness from each of the other conventional regions. The maritime and commercial character of Southeast Asia, open to external influences, was contrasted to the self-sufficient Confucian societies of the Northeast, ideologically inclined to exalt agriculture and scholarship in contrast with commerce. The fluid, plural and kinship-based political systems of the Southeast were contrasted with the relatively bureaucratic, bookish and “earthbound” states of the Confucian tradition.