realpolitikasia

Thursday, July 2, 2020

Francis Light statue today, Henry Burney's Siam-Great Britain Treaty next?

by Ganesh Sahathevan

Black Lives Matter seems to have come to Penang,Malaysia where the statue of its British founder Francis Light, has been vandalised with that trademark red paint. Coincidentally Associate Professors Mohd Hazmi Mohd Rusli and Fareed Mohd Hassan, senior lecturers at the Faculty of Shariah and Law, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia have called for the treaty between Francis Light and the then Sultan Of Kedah ceding control of Penang to the British be declared invalid.

While at it, why not review the Burney Treaty?

From Wikipedia, but do look at the references:

The treaty between Kingdom of Siam and Great Britain commonly known as the Burney Treaty was signed at Bangkok on 20 June 1826 by Henry Burney, an agent of British East India Company, for Britain, and King Rama III for Siam. It followed an earlier treaty of 24 February 1826, in which Siam became an ally of Britain against the Kingdom of Ava (Burma), with which Britain was at war. A Siamese army was raised and equipped, but took no serious part in the war due to ill-feeling and suspicion arising from the Siamese invasion of Kedah in 1821.

In 1822, John Crawfurd undertook a mission to the court of King Rama II to determine Siam's position on the Malay states.[1] The treaty acknowledged Siamese claims over the five northern Malay states of Kedah, Kelantan, Perlis, Terengganu—the future Unfederated Malay States—and Patani. The treaty further guaranteed British possession of Penang and their rights to trade in Kelantan and Terengganu without Siamese interference. The five Malay states were not represented in the treaty negotiation. In 1909 the parties of the agreement signed a new treaty that superseded that of 1826 and transferred four of the five Malay states from Siamese to British control, Patani remaining under Siamese rule.[1][2]

As the Burney Treaty did not adequately address commerce, it was a subject of the Bowring Treaty, signed by King Mongkut (Rama IV) on 18 April 1855, that liberalized trade rules and regulations.

By Clumsily - Own work, Public Domain

Interesting times ahead, for Singapore as well.

END

Land and money will find its owner: Malaysian Chinese attitudes to wealth explained by SHL Consolidated's Yap Teoing Choon, in contrast with Lim Guan Eng's "skin colour does not guarantee that you are rich or poor"

by Ganesh Sahathevan

SHL Bhd's Yap Teoing Choon is a good example of how Malaysian Chinese see themselves

Former Malaysian Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng, in response to a comment from former Malaysian PM Mahathir about Malaysian Chinese and wealth, said:

Malaysia is not colour-coded......skin colour does not guarantee that you are rich or poor. This is wrong. The Chinese community is upset at this simplistic labelling as being rich when there are many Chinese who are not. There are also many non-Chinese who are rich. The colour of your skin is not the final determinant of your wealth.”

Lim is clearly wrong on the first point for Malaysia is colour-coded,it says so on every Malaysian citizens birth certificate and national identity card.

On the second point, Lim has been been careful to not say what many Malaysian Chinese believe; that the returns from capital are a virtual birthright.

This attitude is best explained by SHL Consolidated Bhd's Yap Teoing Choon,who once told The Star, en-route SHL's IPO in 1995 that land and money will find its owner. These words were then and remain provocative in a country where an affirmative action policy in favour of the majority Malays has been enforced since the race riots of May 13 1969, caused in part by Chinese control of the economy.

In that interview Yap went on to explain that in his experience (which by then was not inconsiderable) there are many in life who regardless of their effort, never find wealth .while others seem to find it without too much trouble.

SHL (which stands for Sin Heap Lee) is a property developer and there is no doubt that the company has strong and proud Chinese roots.

It is doubtful that Yap meant his words to exclude his fellow Chinese.

TO BE READ WITH

Why has Sin Heap Lee expedited the ‘death’ of Malayan Thung Pau, which will make its last appearance tomorrow instead of on next Monday on August 8?

By Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-general and MP for Tanjong, Lim Kit Siang, in Petaling Jaya on Tuesday, 2nd August 1994:

Why has Sin Heap Lee expedited the ‘death’ of Malayan Thung Pau, which will make its last appearance tomorrow instead of on next Monday on August 8?

Malayan Thung Pau will make its last appearance tomorrow.

Sin Heap Lee, the Thung Pau proprietor, should explain why it has expedited the ‘death’ of Malayan Thung Pau, as it had announced that Malayn Thung Pau would be published until next Monday on August 8?

Sin Heap Lee also owes the Chinese Community a responsibility to explain why it is closing down Malayan Thung Pau, as when it bought over Thung pau from MCA, it had assumed a trust to the Chinese community to make a success of the Chinese newspaper.

Did Sin Heap Lee decide right from the beginning to operate Malayan Thung Pau for only two years and then to close it down, and if so, was the MCA aware of this when it sold Malayan Thung Pau to Sin Heap Lee?

What were the full terms and conditions of the sale of Malayan Thung Pau by MCA, through MCA Investment Company, Huaren Holding, to Sin Heap Lee that make it impossible for the new proprietor to make a success of Malayan Thung Pau?

MCA leaders have claimed that MCA lost RM30 million in the 11 years from 1981 to 1992 when it bought over and operated Malayan Thung Pau. I understand that Sin Heap Lee had told Malayan Thung Pau staff that it had lost RM20 million in the two years since it bought over Malayan Thung Pau from MCA.

Can Sin Heap Lee publicly confirm its claim that it had lost RM20 million in two years when the MCA only lost RM30 million in 11 years?

Does this figure of RM20 million include the price paid by Sin Heap Lee to MCA for the purchase of Malayan Thung Pau, and if so, what was the amount that Sin Heap Lee paid to MCA for taking over Malayan Thung Pau.

Questions were raised when Sin Heap Lee bought over Malayan Thung Pau from MCA in 1992 as it had no Chinese newspaper background or record. Did Sin Heap Lee buy over Malayan Thung Pau with a mission to make a contribution to Chinese Culture in Malaysia by promoting Chinese journalism? Was it prepared to bear financial losses in the first few years of its ownership to make Malayan Thung Pau a viable, dynamic and successful Chinese daily in the country?

Or were there other reasons, conditions or incentives that led Sin Heap Lee to buy over Malayan Thung Pau from MCA in 1992?

And is Sin Heap Lee’s decision to close down Malayan Thung Pau because these reasons, conditions or incentives that led it to buy the newspaper have not been fulfilled?

Mr. Lim Kit Siang released this statement on August 2, 1994 and is filed under Accountability, MCA, Media.

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Australia will spend $250 Billion to deter China, but will not stop IFlytek-Huawei from infiltrating government departments; akin to buying China made Long March rockets to defend Australia

by Ganesh Sahathevan

Zhu Minshen is responsible for
providing iFlytek access into

the Australian university system

Al-Jazzera and others have reported:

Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced plans to boost defence spending by 40 percent over the next 10 years, including investing in long-range missiles as part of an effort to "deter or respond to aggression" in the Indo-Pacific region.

In a major policy speech on Wednesday, Morrison said Australia will spend 270 billion Australian dollars ($186.5bn) over the next 10 years to acquire longer-range strike capabilities across air, sea and land.

Meanwhile,China's iFlytek continues to make inroads into Australian government agencies. Morrison might as well buy Chinese Long March rockets to meet his requirement for long range anti-ship missiles.

TO BE READ WITH

Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Many Australian government agencies have now adopted iFLYTEK products: iFLYTEK blacklisted by the US Govt for persecution of Uyghurs

by Ganesh Sahathevan

China’s AI champion iFlyTek brushes off US entity list inclusion with bullish profit forecast

In the words of iFLYTEK, in a press release dated 20 January 2020:

Many Australian government agencies have now adopted iFLYTEK products.

This is intriguing, given that iFlytek was blacklisted by the US Government in October 2019 for its part in supplying AI that was used in the persecution of Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

The decision is astonishing given iFlytek's partnership with Huawei.

TO BE READ WITH

Friday, April 17, 2020

iFlytek & Huawei formed a strategic partnership in 2018, collaborated since 2010: NSW LPAB , Law Council Australia still silent about their approval of Zhu Minshen's Law School & his business with iFlytek given the Uyghur persecution

by Ganesh Sahathevan

Zhu Minshen and his Top Education Group Ltd's business with iFlytek is still of no concern to the NSW Legal Profession Admission Board, TEQSA and the Law Council Australia, despite iFlytek being sanctioned in the United States. The US banned iFlytek for its part in the Chinese Government's persecution of Xinjiang's Uyghurs.

The fact that iFlytek has actively collaborated with Huwaei since 2010 is also it seems of no concern to the NSW LPAB which is chaired by the Chief Justice of NSW, Tom Bathurst.

Bathurst, the Law Council Of Australia and the Attorney General of NSW Mark Speakman are primarily responsible for granting Zhu and his law school entry into the NSW and Australian legal establishment, despite his links to the Communist Party of China,and his undermining of the authority of the Australian Federal Police.

TO BE READ WITH

iFlytek: The voice of AI

2018.09.19 By Xu Shenglan, Xue Hua

AI is on a clear upward trajectory and is reshaping all aspects of life. According to Hu Yu, Executive President and Consumer BG President of iFlytek, AI is starting to approach human intelligence. Serving hundreds of millions of users with its world-leading technologies, iFlytek started off as a pioneer in China’s voice recognition industry and has now evolved into a global leader in AI. But it all started with a little twist of fate.

From intelligent voice to Super Brain

Founded in 1999, iFlytek’s primary goal was to make machines talk, something that even today is reflected in the company’s mission: “We want the world to hear our voice.” And that’s starting to happen – the company is now at the forefront of the AI phenomenon.

Hu smiles as he recalls, “We had no idea at the time that we were working on AI. At least we weren’t sure what AI really was. We also weren’t aware that 1999 was a bad year for AI, as the second wave of AI innovation had just peaked.” Slightly tongue-in-cheek, he says, “If we’d known that AI was going to be such a tough business, we might never have started the company. I guess it was just fate.”

Around 2004, AI wasn’t the hot tech it is today, says Hu, but his team had come to realize that they were holding a key piece of AI. “The biggest difference between human intelligence and animal or machine intelligence is cognitive intelligence. It comes from our mastery of language and how we express knowledge, which allows us to do logical reasoning and complex decision-making,” he says. The cognitive revolution around voice and language, Hu believes, is the peak of human intelligence and the biggest challenge for AI today.

Hu is the leader of the iFlytek Super Brain Project, which was launched in 2014, “It’s much more than just a fancy name. We announced our definition of AI as computational intelligence.” He asserts that machines were much more powerful than humans since the day they were invented, citing AIs that play the board game Go as an example of computational intelligence. “Humanoid machines possess both perceptual intelligence and motion intelligence. That means they can see, hear, and feel the surrounding world. Today there are some impressive humanoid and animal-like machines,” he says. “However, the reason we’re at the top of the planet’s food chain is language, or ‘cognitive intelligence’.” According to Hu, one of the goals of the Super Brain Project is to evolve machines from the level of perceptual intelligence, where they can hear, talk, see, and recognize, to the level of cognitive intelligence, where they can understand and think.

Currently, Super Brain is using big data to train and optimize its algorithms. They’re not trained by simply cramming all kinds of data into the system; instead, the system actively processes data from interactions in real-world scenarios, and uses that data to update itself. Hu believes this style of self-enhancement is like the ripple effect, where the volume of data grows exponentially as the product reaches more people, enabling his team to more rapidly iterate and optimize the product experience.

No shortage of awards

iFlytek boasts leading tech in areas like speech synthesis, voice recognition, voice assessment, and translation. From 2005 to now, the company has racked up 13 consecutive wins at the Blizzard Challenge, the world’s leading speech synthesis contest. It’s also won various machine translation championships, including the IWSLT 2014 and NIST 2015. Over the past six years, iFlytek’s voice recognition accuracy has improved from 60.2 percent to over 98 percent. The company’s strengths in voice tech became a natural bridge into the world of AI and its industrial application.

iFlytek is also researching the dynamic of AI and neurology. Through computing based on the human brain, iFlytek is trying to unlock the mystery of our intelligence. If they succeed, it may pave the way towards Artificial General Intelligence, meaning human levels of intelligence, one of AI’s holy grails.

Translation on the fly

iFlytek started applying AI to the real world in the shape of natural language processing (NLP) back in 2010, when it developed China’s first voice input product and the second of its kind in the world, after Google. iFlytek’s system has an accuracy of more than 98 percent and supports 22 different Chinese dialects.

In 2016, iFlytek released its first smart device, the iFlytek Translator, which it followed up in April 2018 with the 2.0 incarnation. Offering real-time interpretation between Mandarin and 33 other languages and Chinese dialects, it also translates text in photographs and can be used on 4G or Wi-Fi networks or offline. Most of its users – 86 percent – use it on vacation. Translator 2.0 has also mastered the accents of four major dialects in China’s complex and voluminous linguistic web: Cantonese, Sichuanese, Northeastern Mandarin, and Henan dialect, with support for more expected in the future. In an advance for NLP, the product can recognize different situations and adapt to its users’ language tics.

“There are some who say that there’s no need to build a translator device because the translation function can be integrated into a smartphone. But we made a deliberate decision to sell our translator as a hardware device,” says Hu. First, he explains, we tend to hold our phones close to our faces, which might not always be possible depending on the scenario. Second, phones are affected by ambient noise. Third, Hu believes that intelligent hardware must be easy to use. The best experience is something that works with a single click, but using an app on a smartphone isn’t always easy or intuitive. Fourth, the translation process should allow for natural and intuitive interaction, and sticking your smartphone in someone’s face isn’t always socially acceptable.

In 2012, iFlytek launched its voice cloud platform as part of its efforts to build an ecosystem for the AI industry. Since then, more than 860,000 developers have worked on the platform, which connects 1.9 billion devices and provides nearly 4.6 billion interactive services each day.

In 2015, iFlytek launched the human-machine interaction interface AIUI, hitting a milestone in the AI industry. AIUI redefined the standards for human-machine interaction in the connected era. Hu adds, “In 2017, iFlytek was announced as one of China’s first open innovation platforms for next-generation AI and our platform will focus on intelligent voice technology. The government clearly recognizes the importance of the ecosystem built on our company’s AI.”

AI: An industry enabler

iFlytek is also applying intelligent voice and AI technology to different sectors, including the judiciary and education.

In the justice system, iFlytek is working with China’s Supreme People’s Court and Supreme People’s Procuratorate (public prosecutors). In 2016, a test in Anhui Province showed that an AI system could identify phone scams with a very high level of accuracy. Moreover, a pilot study found that trials were 30 percent shorter when intelligent voice recognition was used instead of a human reporter.

In education, AI has outperformed all expectations in scoring test papers. In a test in Jiangsu Province, two different AIs scored a series of college entrance test papers. For Chinese essay questions, the two AIs differed by an average of less than seven points per paper. They were 92.82 percent consistent – more than 5 percent higher than the average consistency of two human teachers. A trial in Hunan showed similar scores.

iFlytek is currently working with China’s National Education Examinations Authority to build an AI lab to jointly develop more advanced technologies for education.

A partnership covering multiple markets

iFlytek and Huawei have formed a strategic partnership to develop practical applications for voice and AI technology in the areas of telecoms and smart devices, building on nearly a decade of collaboration. In 2010, the two companies deployed the world’s first open cloud platform for Chinese voice recognition.

In May 2018, Huawei and iFlytek signed a strategic agreement covering four areas: public cloud services, ICT infrastructure, smart devices, and office IT systems. Huawei also integrated iFlytek’s AI technology into its smartphones to gain an edge over its competitors. Huawei and iFlytek are working on smart devices and device cloud services based on iFlytek’s voice AI technologies and capabilities, including voice recognition, speech synthesis, iFlyrec, and iFlytek translation.

In the enterprise space, Huawei uses iFlytek’s technology and products in its infrastructure and its own office applications. The iFlytek speech engine will form a key component of Huawei’s Enterprise Intelligence cloud platform. Hu believes that in the intelligence era, all AI applications will run on the cloud. As cloud computing consumes a lot of resources, device computing and edge computing will better support AI.

Each with its own strengths and ecosystems, we’re certain that Huawei and iFlytek will help build a strong AI ecosystem and make AI a valuable asset to life, business, and society.

Saturday, June 27, 2020

China sending MMA fighters to the LAC reminiscent of The Dowager Empress despatching her martial arts experts against the filthy foreigners

by Ganesh Sahathevan

China sending MMA fighters to the LAC reminiscent of The Dowager Empress despatching her martial arts experts against the filthy foreigners.

WATCH WITH THE FOLLOWING REPORT FROM THE SCMP, QUOTING CCTV

A squad of MMA fighters will help train border troops in hand-to-hand combat, according to state media. Photo: Weibo

A squad of MMA fighters will help train border troops in hand-to-hand combat, according to state media. Photo: Weibo

China has enlisted a squad of mixed martial arts fighters into its border militia ranks, according to state media.

The 20 MMA fighters were from the Enbo Fight Club in Sichuan province in the country’s southwest and would form the Plateau Resistance Tibetan Mastiffs to be based in Lhasa, the capital of t

he Tibet autonomous region

, state broadcaster CCTV reported on June 20.

The club is known for producing fighters who go on to compete in international tournaments such as the Ultimate Fighting Championship in the United States.

The announcement came after the deadliest clashes in decades between Chinese and Indian troops along

the two countries’ contested Himalayan border

Soldiers from both countries reportedly

engaged in hours of hand-to-hand combat

, with at least 20 Indian soldiers killed. China has not released the number of casualties on its side.

A squad of MMA fighters will help train border troops in hand-to-hand combat, according to state media. Photo: Weibo

China has enlisted a squad of mixed martial arts fighters into its border militia ranks, according to state media.

The 20 MMA fighters were from the Enbo Fight Club in Sichuan province in the country’s southwest and would form the Plateau Resistance Tibetan Mastiffs to be based in Lhasa, the capital of t

he Tibet autonomous region

, state broadcaster CCTV reported on June 20.

The club is known for producing fighters who go on to compete in international tournaments such as the Ultimate Fighting Championship in the United States.

The announcement came after the deadliest clashes in decades between Chinese and Indian troops along

the two countries’ contested Himalayan border

Soldiers from both countries reportedly

engaged in hours of hand-to-hand combat

, with at least 20 Indian soldiers killed. China has not released the number of casualties on its side.

It was not clear if the Tibetan Mastiffs would be deployed to the border with India but their main mission would be to help border patrol troops and special forces in hand-to-hand combat training, according to a Tencent News report.

“If the country needs us, the Enbo Fight Club will wholeheartedly complete more challenging tasks. As for whether [our fighters] took part in the conflict a few days ago, don’t ask me, I didn’t ask,” club owner En Bo was quoted as saying.

There has been much debate in China over the virtues of the hybrid fighting style of mixed martial arts and the traditional Chinese kung fu approach to combat.

Xu Xiaodong, a prominent MMA fighter,

has been at the centre of the debate, gaining attention for beating a tai chi master in 20 seconds in 2017. Xu claimed he was “China’s number one in cracking down on fakes”, referring to people who exaggerated the qualities of traditional Chinese kung fu for commercial gain.

But Xu has since disappeared from the Chinese internet, censored for his controversial antics and his initial favourable view of anti-government protests in Hong Kong last year.