US billionaire Jim Rogers surprised by S’poreans’ poor command of English & Chinese when he moved here
He was half kidding.
Matthias Ang |
September 18, 2018 @ 06:26 pm
You might have heard of the Rogers family.
They are an extremely rich American expat family living in Singapore.
Jim Rogers is a prominent billionaire investor who started Quantum Fund — a well-known hedge fund — together with George Soros, another well-known investor.
The Rogers family have made headlines with the insistence on the young ones learning Chinese.
So much so that one of Rogers’ daughters is able to speak better Mandarin than most Chinese Singaporeans.
The Rogers family have been living in Singapore since 2007.
Why did they move to Singapore?
According to a Aug. 27
talk Rogers gave in San Francisco titled, “Where Are The Opportunities Today?”, he said his main reason for moving to Singapore was to give his children the chance to learn Mandarin:
It would not be a stretch to see that part of this move stems from Rogers’ view that the global economy’s future will be driven by Asia.
Notably, he has even called the 21st century the “
century of China“.
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Finding out the reality of standards
However, much to the amusement of his audience, Rogers said he found the reality in Singapore to be something else:
He proceeded to qualify his statement with some tongue-in-cheek observation.
“Now there are some people who speak good English and some people who speak good Mandarin,” he said.
And then he joked: “I’m sure I’m going to be arrested as soon as I get back to Singapore.”