Singapore’s George Yeo on Southeast Asia’s Chinese diaspora, regional anti-Chinese sentiment, and Lee Kuan Yew’s US-China calculations

The ex-foreign minister believes the relationship between China and Singapore’s Chinese diaspora will strengthen as Beijing’s influence in global politics and economics grows

Singapore’s ‘Chinese-ness’ can be appealing to diaspora communities, but city state is conscious that Asean neighbours could view it as ‘an agent of China’, he adds

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George Yeo, former foreign minister of Singapore. Photo: SCMP

Published: 10:30am, 31 Aug 2022Updated: 10:55am, 31 Aug 2022

For half a year, Singapore’s former foreign minister George Yeo met and mused over a wide range of topics with writer Woon Tai Ho and research assistant Keith Yap, in weekly interview sessions which lasted two to three hours each time. The result of the interviews is a series of three books. In the first book, George Yeo: Musings, the 67-year-old offers his views on India, China, Asean, Europe, the United States and other parts of the world, and how Singapore’s history and destiny are connected to all of them. In this excerpt, Yeo addresses Singapore’s strong diasporic links with China, its relationship with the mainland and regional suspicions about these ties.

How will Singapore’s connection with China affect its ties with other countries?

As China moves to centre stage in global politics and economics, the relationship between China and the Chinese diaspora will naturally grow stronger. Chinese communities which lost their connection to China (like the Peranakans of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore) are finding renewed interest in Chinese heritage and language. For generations, the Peranakans of Singapore and Malaya developed their own subculture.

They were self-consciously Chinese but looked down on new Chinese migrants, whom they called the sinkeh (新客). Peranakan food is a favourite cuisine among Singaporeans and Malaysians. The fastidiousness of their womenfolk is expressed not only in their food and dressing but also, and especially, in their jewellery.

When in mourning, the women wear only silver jewellery as gold is reserved for celebrations. In 1993, Edmond Chin put together a delightful exhibition called “Gilding the Phoenix” at the old Tao Nan School, which became a part of the Asian Civilisations Museum.

Many of Singapore’s first generation of leaders including Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Keng Swee and Lim Kim San were Peranakans. With the rise of China, Peranakans are reconnecting to their mother culture. This creates new tensions.

In the US today, American-Chinese working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) have suddenly found themselves under surveillance or suspicion by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) because of worsening relations between the US and China.

In 2018, the director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, said the US was concerned with “the China threat as not just a whole-of-government threat, but a whole-of-society threat on their end”, which required “a whole-of-society response by us”.

In a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in January 2022, Wray stressed again, “I want to focus on it here tonight because it’s reached a new level – more brazen, more damaging, than ever before, and it’s vital, vital that all of us focus on that threat together”.

In Southeast Asia, ethnic Chinese have gone through difficult periods in the past. After South Vietnam fell to the North in 1975, the first waves of boatpeople were mostly Chinese.