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Wearing rimless glasses and squinting his eyes when he laughs, 51-year-old Lawrence Wong took over from Lee Hsien Loong, who had been in power for 20 years, on the evening of May 15 and was sworn in as Singapore's fourth prime minister.
"Nerd, guitarist and dog lover" is Wong's profile on social media. He was born in an ordinary family in Singapore in 1972, studied in the school where his mother taught as a child, did not receive an elite education, and went to the United States with a government scholarship with his academic performance, writing the story of a grassroots teenager with no prominent family background, all the way to the position of prime minister.
That evening, Lawrence Wong took the oath of office on the grass in front of the main building of Singapore's presidential palace, and after a brief opening in English, he delivered his inaugural speech in Malay, Chinese and English. A total of 900 guests witnessed the official succession of Singapore's fourth-generation leadership group (4G).
Like his predecessors, Lawrence Wong's ancestral home is China.
Lawrence Wong's father was born in Hainan and later moved from Malaysia to Singapore. Lawrence Wong was born in 1972 in an HDB flat (government-built public housing) in Marine Parade, on the east coast of Singapore. On his 8th birthday, his father gave him a guitar, and he fell in love with rock and roll uncontrollably.
Academically, his parents are not "chicken babies", Huang Xuncai is very "Buddhist", so he wants to study happily with all his friends in a school close to home. Later, he went to the United States to study economics, and also went to the hometown of his favorite musician, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to study economics.
When he was a student, he rode his bicycle around the school, busked with his classmates, performed for about two hours at a time, and the best "business" earned $50. After graduating from the University of Michigan with a master's degree in economics, he returned to Singapore and joined the Ministry of Trade and Industry as an economist in 1997 and began his career as a civil servant.
After that, he was transferred to the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Health, where he assisted Lee Hsien Loong, then Minister of Finance, in preparing the budget. From 2005 to 2008, he was Lee Hsien Loong's principal private secretary. At the age of 37, he took the helm of the Energy Market Authority, becoming the youngest director-general civil servant at that time.
In 2011, Lawrence Wong was elected as a member of the West Coast GRC and officially entered politics. He has held senior positions in at least 8 government departments and has accumulated diverse and rich experience.
In 2020, Lawrence Wong, then the second finance minister, was appointed as the chairman of Singapore's joint anti-epidemic department, and he tearfully said in his speech: "Words are not enough to express our gratitude to so many Singaporeans for fighting the virus with all their might". The media called him "a man who will shed tears for Singapore, a man who can be trusted".
But Lawrence Wong "never thought he would become prime minister." In April 2021, Heng Swee Keat announced his withdrawal on the grounds of health and age. The following year, Lee Hsien Loong announced "without warning" that he had officially elected Lawrence Wong as the fourth-generation team leader.
Singaporeans soon discovered that the interests and hobbies of "dark horse" Lawrence Wong were similar to their own. He has a golden hound named "Summer" and often posts photos and videos of interactions with his pets. American singer Taylor Swift came to Singapore to sing, Huang Xuncai released himself playing the guitar to play her song "Love Story", he sang the Hokkien song "I Ask the Sky", the classic Chinese song "The Moon Represents My Heart", broke the circle on the short video platform, and was called "grassroots elite" by Singaporeans.
Some netizens commented: A peaceful handover is a kind of political maturity. Some netizens said that an English-speaking Chinese country is in transition. Some netizens expressed the hope that Huang Xuncai would have a good relationship with China.
What kind of path will a child who grew up in an ordinary family, from a top student to the prime minister, now stand at the starting point of the "post-Lee Hsien Loong era"? Wait for the answer.
Comprehensive CCTV News, Singapore Lianhe Zaobao Official WeChat, Global People, The Paper, China News Weekly, etc
May 15, Changde, Hunan. Zhou Yiwei, a 14-year-old teenager, has been helping his mother clean the streets on weekends and during winter and summer vacations for more than a year. Netizen: A good boy of filial piety, the future can be expected!
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Source: @重庆广电第1眼
Recently, Dongguan, Guangdong. The man was fishing when he encountered a bulging eye fish, and the eyeball bulged out of the socket and hemorrhage, and the man said that the fish was suspected of having an eye infection.
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Source: @四川观察
Netizens played the hand shadow dance, full of rhythm, as if every finger was magical!
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Source: @快看
Huang Xuncai quotes
1. Never bet on China being weakened because China's economy is huge, has a lot of advantages in different areas such as advanced manufacturing, green economy, and has such a huge market.
2. I would say that I would not underestimate the natural nature and vitality of the Chinese, they are very alert, they are determined to pursue a better life for themselves, and should never underestimate the great motivation and energy of the Chinese.
3. As a small country, we cannot escape the powerful tide ... We have to adapt to the new reality.
4. It can be said that we (Singapore's economy) are like canaries in a mine, and when the external environment is not good, we will feel it most directly.
5. If "de-risking" is overdone in the face of geopolitical tensions, the global economy will eventually become more fragmented and decoupled.
6. In the past, we could speak of a "Swiss standard of living" in general terms, but today it is quite difficult to find such a single standard. In this new phase, we are entering a whole new field that no one has set foot in, and we have to figure out the way forward.
7. We have always seen ourselves as weak, and we will always be an incredible nation that can only be created through the collective will of our people. My task is to keep this miracle going as long as possible.
8. I have faith not only in the government, but also in Singaporeans. As we enter this new stage of development, it is ultimately up to us to decide how to move forward.