“This report reminds me of the black operations that Mr S Rajaratnam (late Singapore foreign minister) warned about. It is clearly funded by intelligence agencies and it is not an objective or impartial report.” – Kishore Mahbubani
The China Index 2021
In a recent report by the Taipei-based research group Doublethink Lab, Singapore was ranked second in countries that are most influenced by China. The first and third were Cambodia and Thailand respectively, followed by Kyrgyzstan, the Philippines and Tajikistan.
Of the total 36 countries included in this study, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia and Paraguay were ranked as those least influenced by China.
The researchers have billed this study as “the first cross-regional project to measure and visualize China’s expanding influence by presenting comparable data collected from different countries and territories.” They also said:
This is the 1st edition of the China Index, which ranks 36 independent states and territories according to their level of China’s influence in nine domains: media, foreign policy, academia, domestic politics, economy, technology, society, military, and law enforcement. Each of these domains contains 11 key indicators for measurement which are categorized into three different layers (exposure, pressure and effect) according to their nature.
Singapore’s Results
In the realm of technology, Singapore was ranked as the most vulnerable country followed by Indonesia. Widespread use of Chinese platforms like WeChat (which is obliged to share data with the Chinese state) was cited as commonly used among older Singaporeans, while platforms like TikTok are heavily used among younger Singaporeans. The technology section of the report also assessed “the activity and financial leverage of PRC companies, use of PRC hardware, and bilateral research partnerships.”
Singapore is less vulnerable when it comes to domestic politics (ranked 24) and foreign policy (ranked 13). Domestic politics “evaluates PRC efforts to influence the political landscape” as well as “the footprint of PRC security companies.” Foreign Policy on the other hand “gauges PRC efforts to achieve key actors in the surveyed country.”
The city-state has long been a close partner of the United States with regard to foreign policy. Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, for instance, is of the opinion that the Americans are “benevolent hegemonists” who may occasionally “twist your arm” but by and large provide you with the space you need to determine your destiny.
Chong Ja Ian, an Associate Professor of political science at the National University of Singapore, said in an interview with Mothership that the “report provides a starting point for areas to examine. They present some areas of exposure, but cannot tell readers about where, how, or how much PRC influence affected policies, legislation, or their implementation or not.”
US’ influence on Singapore
Perhaps one of the downfalls of this survey is that it does not set out to take into consideration the influence of other major powers, especially the United States, and how much that differs from the influence of China. This is particularly important as this survey comes out amidst growing tensions between the US and China. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has often stressed that Singapore does not want to pick a side between the US and China. He has also said,
I do not think this is a dilemma only for Singapore. It is a problem for many countries, which is why we are all hoping and encouraging the two large powers to think very carefully before deciding that the other one is an adversary which has to be kept down, if not put down.
Linda Lim, Professor Emerita of Corporate Strategy and International Business at the University of Michigan, has defined Singapore’s economic model as one that is “very western-oriented” and said that,
A lot of Singapore’s success to date has come from being part of this liberal international order that’s western dominated, playing by its rules and interacting economically with the west.
However, Linda Lim has also said that these dynamics are complicated by some groups, like
Chinese-educated who do not speak English well-enough, certainly for the civil-service, for western multinationals and things like that, so there are groups that might be marginalised.
But there are also groups who have a vested interest in making Singapore more sinicised, or more Chinese focused, moving away from its current western orientation.
One group is a very large number of Chinese new immigrants in Singapore — about half a million in a population of five and half million. … In this particular case, I think that the new Chinese immigrants in Singapore haven’t had to cut ties with their own country. Because it’s there, they have many close business relationships, business advantages, and there is so many of them in Singapore that they don’t really need to integrate into the rest of society. They have their own associations, they have even social media platforms that basically are allied with if not funded by the Chinese state and exist to spread things of interest to Chinese emigre population, which includes Chinese State views.
One study that provides a limited assessment of the different perceptions of China compared with the US was released by the Pew Research Centre in June 2021. The report found that among the 17 countries studied, Singapore was the only country that had a more favourable view of the China than the US:
Really interesting results in Pew survey of attitudes to China and US in 17 developed economies, showing Singapore is only nation that has more favourable view of China than US. What's going on here Singaporeans and Singapore watchers? 1/3 https://t.co/1W7ABZN38w pic.twitter.com/sMdNrGDk3Z
— Ben Bland (@benjaminbland) July 1, 2021
Kishore Mahbubani and George Yeo
On the media front of the Doublethink Lab report, Singapore is ranked eighth. The report cites Kishore Mahbubani, a former diplomat and dean of LKYSPP, and George Yeo, Singapore’s former Minister for Foreign Affairs who was voted out in GE2011, as part of “an increasing number of prominent individuals” who were advancing China’s official line on current affairs.
For several decades now, Kishore Mahbubani has been writing books lauding the rise of China and the decline of the west. On sensitive issues like Xinjiang, he has not completely followed the Chinese line, saying that he’s “sure some innocent Muslims have been killed.” He has, however, qualified these remarks by saying:
But that process of deradicalization that they’re going through, the reeducation camps, is a different method [from US methods]. So, my answer to you is let’s wait 10 years and see the results of what China is trying to do in terms of its deradicalization program. Because there was a problem. There was a radicalization.
When asked by Mothership to give a comment on the report, Mahbubani said:
This report reminds me of the black operations that Mr S Rajaratnam (late Singapore foreign minister) warned about. It is clearly funded by intelligence agencies and it is not an objective or impartial report.
Among the “increasing number” of individuals cited in the report as furthering China’s official line, George Yeo was said to be the “most prominent of these” individuals. In 2019, George Yeo argued at an Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) forum that “it is not in China’s nature to be a missionary or colonising power.” Similarly in 2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that:
The genetic makeup of The China Race contains no taint related to invasion or global hegemonic impulses. The Chinese people resolutely reject any suggestion that ‘When a Country Becomes Mighty it Will Invariably Act Like a Hegemon’.
At the IPS forum in which George Yeo made those remarks, Ambassador-at-Large at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Tommy Koh pressed back against Yeo’s statements, saying that they were “not consistent with the facts.” He said that over the course of its history, China had invaded “Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Champa and even invaded Borobudur in Java.”
George Yeo responded by saying that China is by and large a Han nation and has its own customs to deal with internal disagreements and squabbles which are bound to happen from time to time in any country. Ultimately, he said, “the Chinese find it inconvenient to incorporate non-Han” people. They have different customs, traditions and ways of life, which is why you do not see China ruling over places like Japan, Korea, or Vietnam today.
Tommy Koh interjected:
I would challenge your statement. The Tibetans are not Han. The Uyghurs are not Han. And China have incorporated these territories into their sovereign territory. So you can’t say that China doesn’t invade and incorporate non-Han people into their nation. Tibet and Xinjiang are two shining examples of the opposite.”
After a short stutter, George Yeo said “I’m not here to defend the Chinese position.”
Two years after that encounter with Tommy Koh, George Yeo gave an interview with ThinkChina, an e-magazine powered by the Singapore Press Holdings’ Chinese daily Lianhe Zaobao, in which he said:
China has been unified for over 2,000 years. And the Chinese people are the most homogenous people by far in the whole world.
In an interview with the Global Time, a tabloid controlled by the Chinese communist party, George Yeo defined China as a democracy because it is ultimately a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
https://twitter.com/kixes/status/1405405214539087872?s=20&t=S_TenEFwzX8Jw6lQbfPdgg
In the coming years, as China becomes more powerful, we are likely to see more reports on its influence in Southeast Asia and other regions. The west, be it western media or western governments, will likely cite these studies as examples of China’s pernicious intentions in sovereign territories, all the while ignoring their own dominant role in the region. China and the “prominent individuals” that echo their line, will likely say that such reports are biased and possibly designed by western intelligence agencies. There is some merit in both cases. It may be worth quoting Singapore’s first Foreign Minister S. Rajaratnam who said in 1976:
our capacity to resist big power pressure would be greater if there were a multiplicity of powers present in the region. Where there is a multiplicity of suns, the gravitational pulls of each is not only weakened but also by a judicious use of the pulls and counter-pulls of gravitational forces, the minor planets have greater freedom of navigation.
As we transition into a multi-polar world, where the United States is no longer the sole power in the region, perhaps small states like Singapore will discover that they can navigate with more freedom than they have had in recent memory.
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