MP Foo Cexiang proposes Tiong Bahru residents vote on colour scheme after purple flats backlash
Newly elected Tanjong Pagar GRC Member of Parliament Foo Cexiang announced that all Boon Tiong households will be polled after concerns were raised about the use of dark plum hues on Block 9A.
The repainting works, which were part of a broader project involving 14 blocks, were paused after residents criticised the colour and questioned the lack of consultation.
According to Chinese media outlet 8World News, protest signs were seen at Blocks 9A and 9B, with messages calling the colour 'the most saturated and awful purple' and questioning the legitimacy of the decision-making process.
Some residents alleged that no vote had taken place before the works began. Several individuals who contacted the Town Council said they were informed that no voting process had been conducted.
Typically, repainting projects for HDB flats involve residents choosing from a set of proposed colour schemes, with voting overseen by the Town Council or Residents' Network.
The apparent bypassing of this process drew attention online, with netizens discussing both the controversial colour and the lack of public engagement.
In a Facebook post on 10 May, Foo responded to the growing discontent, acknowledging the feedback and promising to investigate the issue.
He confirmed that he had requested repainting works to be paused while the matter was reviewed.
'Several of you have written to me on the painting of your blocks. I am looking into this urgently — to understand the context and also plan the steps ahead, including to engage you,' he wrote.
Poll to Be Held, Options to Be Refined
Foo later met with over 200 residents to address their concerns.
In an update posted on 17 May, he announced that a poll would be conducted to determine the preferred colour scheme, although the exact date has yet to be confirmed.
'My team and I will take a bit of time over the next few days to refine the options. I seek your patience and understanding,' he said.
'We will post notices in your lifts to let you know when voting begins.
We will also have clear communication to all of you ahead of the works, and will do our best to minimise disamenities during the works.'
According to The Straits Times, residents will be able to choose between the current purple concept and an alternative off-white and orange palette.
More options may be added based on additional feedback.
Foo explained that the original purple scheme was inspired by bougainvillaea flowers lining Boon Tiong Road, planted as part of a 2015 community initiative.
The concept was developed in consultation with architects and former MP Indranee Rajah.
While Block 2A has already been painted in lighter lilac tones, Foo clarified that the dark purple seen on Block 9A was merely a mock-up and not part of the final design.
He also acknowledged the absence of a formal process for colour selection in HDB projects and said that after consulting Indranee, he was advised to work closely with both residents and architects to make adjustments if necessary.
Repainting works are expected to resume within a month after residents have cast their votes and a final colour scheme is selected.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Times
3 hours ago
- Business Times
Bessent sees Nvidia, AMD China agreements as a model for others
[WASHINGTON] US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the recent deal to allow Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) to resume lower-end AI chip sales to China, on the condition they give the US government a 15 per cent cut of the related revenue, could serve as a model for others. 'I think we could see it in other industries over time,' Bessent said on Wednesday (Aug 13) in a television interview on Bloomberg Surveillance. 'Right now, this is unique, but now that we have the model and the beta test, why not expand it?' Bessent credited President Donald Trump with the 'very unique solution' of allowing Nvidia to expand in China and become a bellwether for Chinese technology, with the US taxpayer getting 'a share of' the reward. The revenue the Treasury receives from the arrangement will go to pay down debt, he said. 'If we could make a substantial debt' repayment, that would then allow for discussions about a programme of sending money to taxpayers, he also said. Asked about reporting that China is urging its companies to avoid the Nvidia H20 processors now allowed for its market, Bessent said 'sure, we can discuss that' with the Chinese. 'But it also tells me that they are worried about the Nvidia chips becoming the standard in China.' China talks On Tuesday, Bessent said that he'd be meeting again with his Chinese counterparts 'within the next two or three months,' speaking on Fox Business. He dismissed the possibility of China emulating other US trading partners in winning tariff relief in return for boosting investments in the US. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up When asked if China could make pledges worth billions of US dollars like Japan, South Korea and the EU have as part of their trade agreements, Bessent said 'my sense is no because a lot of the buyout or the funds from the buyout are going to go to critical industries that we need to reshore and a lot of those need to be reshored away from China.' Whether the industry was semiconductors, rare-earth magnets, pharmaceuticals or steel, 'my sense is that isn't what will happen,' Bessent said in an interview with Fox Business on Tuesday. Tech and AI have been among the most high profile of areas of competition between the world's two biggest economies. President Donald Trump has extended a pause of higher tariffs on Chinese goods for another 90 days into early November, a move that stabilised trade ties between the world's two largest economies while they try to forge an agreement. Chinese companies in sectors such as electric vehicles have opened factories abroad to access new markets, a move that could also help them skirt US tariffs. He also indicated that Washington wanted to see measures from China over an extended period to stem the flow of chemicals used to make fentanyl before lowering duties Trump put in place over the issue. 'We will need to see months, if not quarters, if not a year, of progress on that before I could imagine those tariffs coming down,' he said. BLOOMBERG
Online Citizen
4 hours ago
- Online Citizen
Yeoh Lam Keong calls VERS approach to HDB lease decay 'too little, too late'
Former GIC chief economist Yeoh Lam Keong has warned that Singapore's reliance on the Voluntary Early Redevelopment Scheme (VERS) to address the ageing of Housing and Development Board (HDB) flats risks leaving many households' retirement savings exposed. In a Facebook post on 11 August 2025, Yeoh described the government's latest reforms under National Development Minister Chee Hong Tat as 'steps in the right direction' but ultimately insufficient. He noted that for the bottom 50% of households, HDB flats constitute 80–90% of their net worth. By the time flats reach the 70-year lease mark and become eligible for VERS, much of their value would already have depreciated. Yeoh cautioned that allowing this erosion of asset value could create a heavier long-term financial burden on the state in the form of increased income support for elderly citizens. He suggested a more comprehensive approach: a guaranteed Selective En bloc Redevelopment Scheme (SERS) for all HDB estates, planned over 90–100 years. This, he argued, could be funded through an annual sinking fund and higher plot ratios for redeveloped mixed-use projects. According to Yeoh, this proposal was detailed in a policy paper co-authored with architect Tay Kheng Soon and property consultant Ku Swee Yong, submitted to the Ministry of National Development (MND) and then-Finance Minister Lawrence Wong in November 2019. The 2019 proposals In their public housing paper, Addressing Singapore's Key Housing Problems: Asset Protection, Affordability and Access, the three experts proposed that HDB owners should be given an affordable, automatic one-time 99-year lease top-up after 50 years. They argued that such a measure would immediately address the depreciation of older flats, while retaining state land ownership through the Singapore Land Authority. Owners affected by redevelopment could be compensated with a flat of equivalent use value and location, mirroring current SERS provisions. The paper suggested a base lease renewal fee of about 3% of the average market value of a resale flat—around S$15,000 for a 4-room flat or S$10,000 for a 3-room unit—payable over 10–15 years at no interest. Lower-income owners could be charged nominal fees as low as 10% of the guideline price. Beyond the lease top-up, the authors proposed state-funded reconstruction of HDB flats every 100 years, citing structural concerns with reinforced concrete over long periods. Under this plan, owners would receive a new, sustainably designed flat with a fresh 99-year lease at no rebuilding cost. The group also called for closer alignment of Build-To-Order and retirement flat prices to construction costs, as well as a sufficient stock of high-quality subsidised rental flats for the bottom 30% of income earners, especially in a volatile gig economy. They argued that Singapore's large fiscal reserves, land ownership and past compulsory acquisitions made such reforms affordable and sustainable. Yeoh warned at the time that failing to act—'do nothing'—would invite a housing crisis in future decades. Current government stance VERS was first announced by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong during his National Day Rally speech in 2018 as a way to allow more HDB households to benefit from redevelopment before their 99-year leases expired. Lease expiry had become a growing concern among homeowners, and then-National Development Minister Lawrence Wong revealed in a 2018 CNA interview that the government had been studying the matter since 2016. However, despite this review period now spanning almost a decade, no detailed framework has been released. The CNA report this week, which ran extensively through Minister Chee Hong Tat's remarks, offered more context than content: timelines were provided, but concrete mechanisms — such as how sites will be chosen, exact compensation formulas, and financial modelling — remain absent. Minister Chee said the framework will be finalised during the current government term, before September 2030, and that public engagement will be used to shape its parameters. In effect, after nearly nine years of discussion, the key features of VERS are still undecided. The only confirmed points are that VERS will be rolled out in selected sites in the first half of the next decade, it will be voluntary rather than compulsory, and it will target flats at about 70 years of age — meaning residents are likely to receive less compensation than under SERS. Chee stressed that redevelopment would be staged over two to three decades to avoid a housing crunch in the 2070s and 2080s, while HIP II would be used to keep 60–70-year-old flats liveable until lease expiry. Yeoh's comments reflect broader public concerns that, despite the long lead time and repeated public references to VERS, the government still appears far from delivering a detailed, actionable policy to address lease decay and safeguard retirement security.
Business Times
6 hours ago
- Business Times
How scared should you be of ‘the China squeeze'?
'CHINA beats you with trade, Russia beats you with war,' mused US President Donald Trump on Aug 11. His reflection came mere hours before he extended a fragile trade truce with China for another 90 days. After months of tit-for-tat tariffs, the Sino-American trade war has settled into uneasy stasis. But China is using the time to hone a sophisticated arsenal of devastating economic weaponry. Even as the sides contemplate a broader deal to stabilise the planet's most important trading relationship – worth US$659 billion (S$843.7 billion) each year – China knows that its power is not in what it buys, but in what it sells. That is a far cry from the last time Chinese President Xi Jinping and Trump went head-to-head on trade in 2019. Xi agreed to buy more American goods in a deal much criticised in China. It fitted a clumsy pattern. Back then, China tended to punish transgressions by cutting access to its consumer market, such as for Australian wine or Lithuanian beef. No longer. Now Xi's economic weaponry squeezes supply chains and the foreign industries which depend on them. Victories piling up Chinese victories have piled up in recent months. First came Xi's masterstroke in April: retaliating against US tariffs by choking off supplies of Chinese-refined rare earth minerals and magnets critical to American industry. Within weeks, the US' US$1.5 trillion carmaking industry, among others, panicked and Trump sought peace. In July, the European Union squealed in the lead-up to an EU-Chinese summit after flows of rare earth minerals and battery technology to Europe slowed without explanation. Speeding them up then became a subject of negotiation. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up It all appears in line with Xi's very careful plan. In 2020, he called for China to create asymmetric dependencies, by ridding its own supply chains of foreign inputs, while seeking to 'tighten international production chains' dependence on China'. At a meeting held in secret in April that year, Xi told a powerful Communist Party body that such dependencies are 'a powerful countermeasure and deterrent capability against foreigners who would artificially cut off supply (to China).' It wants other countries to depend on it without it depending on them. China's use of economic sanctions of all sorts has reached an all-time high in 2025, according to data collected by Viking Bohman of Tufts University and co-authors. Like US export controls on which China's new regime is modelled, Xi's weapons are hard to resist using, even at the risk of blowback. 'Beijing was not surprised to find it has leverage, but it must be used discreetly,' says Xiang Lanxin of the National University of Singapore. So how does China's economic weaponry work? In recent years, Xi's officials have been drawing up a list of goods that China makes and the world needs. After Trump's election last year, China's government steeled itself. It implemented a long-expected export-licensing scheme for more than 700 products, many of which are relied upon by Western armed forces, including advanced manufacturing machines, battery inputs, biotechnology, sensors and critical minerals. The listed items are not limited to inputs for weaponry, however. Many are also critical to industries that officials view as strategic, such as electric vehicles and solar technology. For some of the items, such as minerals and chemical precursors for medicines, Chinese producers hold a near-monopoly over global supply. That is partly a result of market forces concentrating production in China, where it is cheap, scalable and often subsidised, and partly a deliberate strategy to control industrial inputs. Crucially, the rules formalise officials' ability to switch off exports by revoking licences. Chinese producers applying for them must know who is the end user of their goods and report as much. This has allowed China to continue choking supplies of rare earths to specific Western defence firms, even as it has resumed the flow into America as part of the trade truce. A shortage of heat-resistant magnets, for example, is pushing up costs for such things as jet-fighter engines. The legislation also includes so-called long-arm jurisdiction. It gives officials the ability to mandate that goods manufactured in third countries using Chinese-made inputs cannot be sold to specific end users. When China's policymakers consider which industries to target through such rules, they do not appear to focus on what will cause the most pain, but rather on what will be good for their own firms. Export controls follow a pattern of keeping high-value-added supply chains inside China, says Rebecca Arcesati of Merics, a Berlin-based think tank. If officials were to ban exports of finished goods, such as batteries or drones, it could hurt the strength of domestic producers. But by restricting the flow of industrial inputs needed to make those goods, policymakers in fact lower prices on domestic markets, and give their exporters a cost advantage against foreign competition in important sectors. This playbook appears to be in use in India today to prevent it from helping others break free of China's grip. Licences have stopped being approved for advanced manufacturing machines for India, where Apple is creating alternative supply chains. The restricted flow of machine tools and dysprosium, a rare earth element, have apparently slowed production of iPhones and AirPods respectively. And in June, Apple's in-country manufacturer, Foxconn, withdrew more than 300 Chinese engineers from India, suggesting that the recent moves were coordinated. Giving the game away China's use of its economic weapons this year has mainly been defensive – in response to American trade policies. But it all comes at a cost. Foreign officials and firms now fret about being suddenly cut off from Chinese suppliers, say, in a conflict over Taiwan. Chinese policymakers have done themselves 'enormous reputational damage', laments a foreign business leader in Beijing. Officials in Brussels, Tokyo and Washington are spooked and a flurry of deal-making is under way. That means Xi is likely to confront a drawback that America knows well: the more sanctions are used, the less effective they risk becoming. For a chokehold to be effective, a country must have a near-monopoly on supplying a particular good or service, says Matteo Maggiori of Stanford University. 'Sanctioning power is non-linear, which means that the difference between controlling 95 per cent and 85 per cent of a market is the difference between whether the targets of sanctions can find alternative suppliers or not,' says Maggiori. He notes that whereas tariffs cause firms to increase prices, export controls tend to spur them to invest in alternatives. Some Chinese officials quietly understand. Certain senior ones have even indicated to European businesses that urgent cases of rare earth shortages, such as those that would cause a plant to shutter, should be raised with the Ministry of Commerce to find informal work-arounds to keep supplies flowing. Such deft management of the controls by officials may help dull the desire of foreign firms focused on short-term profits to invest in alternatives. Wu Xinbo of the Centre for American Studies at Fudan University told CNN in June that the flow of exports could be dynamically managed. 'If the bilateral relationship is good, then I'll go a bit faster; if not, I'll slow down.' Ultimately, China finds itself in a delicate position. It is simultaneously assuring foreigners that its supply chains are reliable while warning them off seeking alternatives. And its diplomats badger trade partners not to give in to American demands that would isolate China from global trade. 'Attempting to decouple and disrupt supply chains,' Xi told foreign bosses in March, 'will only harm others and not benefit oneself.' Wise advice indeed. ©2025 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved
