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In the old days, mainstream editors could be relied upon to block publication of any photos (of small audiences) that would embarrass the PAP, but netizens are only too eager to publish such pictures. The paradigm has shifted.

A smart response, in my view, would be for the PAP to shift the paradigm again: No more rallies. Don’t create opportunities to be embarrassed. Once such a decision is taken, the subsequent question will naturally be: How else to campaign for votes? Clearly the answer will have to lie with new media. Perhaps a blitz of cool videos, catchy phrases that can be spread by mobile media and other tools which even I myself, not being state of the art in many ways, cannot anticipate. If indeed they took such a decision some time back, they would have spent maybe 18 months conceptualising and putting together such a campaign.

Meanwhile the opposition parties have been stuck in their old ways (the Singapore Democratic party excepted) thinking in terms of market walkabouts and rallies in muddy fields, assuming that there will be little liberalisation of media rules.

Export dependency is another correlate with English. Countries that export more are better at English (though it’s not clear which factor causes which).  Malaysia, the best English-performer in Asia, is also the sixth-most export-dependent country in the world.  (Singapore was too small to make the list, or it probably would have ranked similarly.) This is perhaps surprising, given a recent trend towards anti-colonial and anti-Western sentiment in Malaysia’s politics. The study’s authors surmise that English has become seen as a mere tool, divorced in many minds from its associations with Britain and America.

Teaching plays a role, too. Starting young, while it seems a good idea, may not pay off: children between eight and 12 learn foreign languages faster than younger ones, so each class hour on English is better spent on a 10-year-old than on a six-year-old.

Between 1984 and 2000, the study's authors say, the Netherlands and Denmark began English-teaching between 10 and 12, while Spain and Italy began between eight and 11, with considerably worse results. Mr Hult reckons that poor methods, particularly the rote learning he sees in Japan, can be responsible for poor results despite strenuous efforts.

one surprising result is that China and India are next to each other (29th and 30th of 44) in the rankings, despite India’s reputation as more Anglophone. Mr Hult says that the Chinese have made a broad push for English (they're "practically obsessed with it”). But efforts like this take time to marinade through entire economies, and so may have avoided notice by outsiders. India, by contrast, has long had well-known Anglophone elites, but this is a narrow slice of the population in a country considerably poorer and less educated than China. English has helped India out-compete China in services, while China has excelled in manufacturing. But if China keeps up the push for English, the subcontinental neighbour's advantage may not last.

Arguing that governments can pick winners, Professor Chang urges us to reclaim economic planning, not as a token of centrally-planned communism, but rather as the simple reality behind our market economies today:

Capitalist economies are in large part planned. Governments in capitalist economies practice planning too, albeit on a more limited basis than under communist central planning. All of them finance a significant share of investment in R&D and infrastructure. Most of them plan a significant chunk of the economy through the planning of the activities of state-owned enterprises. Many capitalist governments plan the future shape of individual industrial sectors through sectoral industrial policy or even that of the national economy through indicative planning. More importantly, modern capitalist economies are made up of large, hierarchical corporations that plan their activities in great detail, even across national borders. Therefore, the question is not whether you plan or not. It is about planning the right things at the right levels.

Drawing a clear distinction between communist central planning and capitalist 'indicative' planning, Chang notes that the latter: ... involves the government ... setting some broad targets concerning key economic variables (e.g., investments in strategic industries, infrastructure development, exports) and working with, not against, the private sector to achieve them. Unlike under central planning, these targets are not legally binding; hence the adjective 'indicative'. However, the government will do its best to achieve them by mobilizing various carrots (e.g., subsidies, granting of monopoly rights) and sticks (e.g., regulations, influence through state-owned banks) at its disposal.

Chang observes that: France had great success in promoting investment and technological innovation through indicative planning in the 1950s and 60s, thereby overtaking the British economy as Europe's second industrial power. Other European countries, such as Finland, Norway and Austria, also successfully used indicative planning to upgrade their economies between the 1950s and the 1970s. The East Asian miracle economies of Japan, Korea and Taiwan used indicative planning too between the 1950s and 1980s. This is not to say that all indicative planning exercises have been successful; in India, for example, it has not. Nevertheless, the European and East Asian examples show that planning in certain forms is not incompatible with capitalism and may even promote capitalist development very well.

As we have argued before, the current crisis raging through Europe (in large part caused by free-market economics), forces us to reconsider our economic options. More than ever before, now is the time to rehabilitate indicative planning and industrial policy as key levers in our arsenal of policy tools.

While officials probably still can’t stand TOC’s guts, such sites represent the more rational and reasonable end of the ideological spectrum in cyberspace. TOC, together with Alex Au’s Yawning Bread and some other individual blogs, have been noticeably pushing for more credible online journalism within their extremely limited means. Most importantly, they have shown some commitment to accountability. They operate openly rather than behind cloaks of pseudonymity, they are not above correcting factual errors when these are pointed out to them, and they practice either pre- or post-moderation of comments to keep discussions within certain bounds.

Bloggers will have to understand that the huge and complex machinery of government is not going to transform itself overnight. Indeed, a blogger-friendly media engagement policy is probably easier to implement for a small and discrete Presidential Election campaign office than it would be for any government ministry.

On the government’s part, officials need to be clear that the success of the experiment cannot be measured by how quickly bloggers and their readers are led to the “right” answers or to a “consensus”, but by the inclusiveness and civility of the conversation: as long as more and more people are trying to persuade one another – rather than ignoring or shouting down one another – such engagement between government and alternative media would be strengthening Singapore’s governance and civic life.