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Jean Iau

Singapore should seek deeper integration of new Chinese immigrants to guard against any possibility that the demographic may be used as instruments for “China’s interests”, a former diplomat from the city state has warned.
In an essay published in the newly launched (Re)Defining Singapore, Bilahari Kausikan, an ex-permanent secretary at Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, argued that the relationship between the city state and China was unique in light of it being the only country outside Greater China with a majority-Chinese population.
This meant Singapore’s relations with Beijing were not just foreign policy matters but struck “at the heart of Singapore’s domestic politics engaging potentially existential issues”, Kausikan wrote.
“Much as we want ‘friendly’ relations with China, this is a red line that we cannot allow China to cross, even if it causes periodic strains in the relationship,” he said.
“To acquiesce in the subordination of Singapore’s interests to China’s interests for expediency or merely to avoid trouble, risks the imposition, through a gradual process of almost imperceptible steps, of a Chinese identity on multiracial Singapore.”
About three-quarters of Singapore’s resident population is Chinese, followed by Malays at 13.5 per cent, Indians at 9 per cent and other ethnicities making up the remainder.

In a separate email response to This Week in Asia on Monday after the book launch, Kausikan said the projection of Chinese influence through its overseas diaspora was a reality that must be managed, including through legal tools if necessary. He also warned that “sooner or later” Singapore might have to use its Internal Security Act – which allows authorities to detain security threats without trial – against new immigrants.
In 2021, Dickson Yeo, a Singaporean and former PhD candidate at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, was detained by the Internal Security Department for acting as a paid agent of a foreign state, which the department did not name.
Yeo had been deported to Singapore after serving 14 months’ imprisonment in the US for acting under the direction of Chinese intelligence officials to obtain sensitive information from American citizens.
The restriction order against Yeo was allowed to lapse in January this year after the department assessed he no longer posed a threat as a foreign agent.
Kausikan urged for better integration of new Chinese immigrants since most of them were not security threats, but the issue was the difference in cultural reflexes that required Singapore to adopt better socialisation processes.
“The Chinese from China really do not understand multiracial societies. I am not talking about the ultra-rich which are anyway a tiny minority of immigrants. It’s the ordinary Chinese who came here in search of a better life that needs to be better integrated,” he said, noting that the ultra-rich were not committed to Singapore or China as “capital is intrinsically rootless”.
Aside from Kausikan’s, (Re)Defining Singapore features 25 other essays from Singaporeans who have contributed to the city state’s success. They include senior public servants, academics, songwriter Dick Lee, chef Violet Oon, opposition candidate Michael Thng and Olympic champion Joseph Schooling. It was compiled by Bianca Cheo, Fiona Leung and Woon Tai Ho.

During a panel discussion at the launch on Monday at the National Gallery, where President Tharman Shanmugaratnam was the guest of honour, Singapore’s Ambassador-at-Large Chan Heng Chee also addressed Singapore’s relationship with China.
Reiterating former prime minister Lee Hsien Loong’s comments at Chatham House last month, Chan, who contributed an essay on leadership in Singapore, argued that the region did not see China as a security threat.
Chan acknowledged that while Singapore and other Asean members had differences with China, such as on trade imbalances or South China Sea disputes, such issues should not be elevated into a security threat.
“The relationship of the countries in the region with China is larger than the South China Sea, there are far more things at stake,” Chan said.
She argued that the biggest threat to Singapore now was not being able to find an economic model fit for the fast-evolving times.
“We took to globalisation as a fish to water, but globalisation is now changing. Is it deglobalisation? Is it regionalisation? Is it fragmented globalisation; a sort of broader version? Whatever it is, we have to find our way through,” said Chan, who was also Singapore’s ambassador to the United States.
On the domestic front, Mohammed Saleem, co-founder of social enterprise LifeCraft that helps at-risk youth, urged for a more inclusive society that gave ex-offenders a second chance.
In his essay, Saleem recounts his own experience with drug addiction and run-ins with the law as a young man, and says what he needed was a genuine conversation with someone who was interested in finding out what it was that he needed.
“This is what happens when we do not understand that someone is crying out for help; someone is crying out for acceptance, that starts the entire slippery slope,” Saleem told This Week in Asia at Monday’s launch.
He noted that drug addiction did not distinguish between those from the elite and neighbourhood schools.
“What it really means is that there are a lot of youth today who are grappling with an identity crisis, who are grappling with the fact that maybe they are not accepted, and they want to fit in somewhere,” Saleem said.


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Bilahari Kausikan says the projection of Chinese influence through overseas diaspora is a reality that must be managed


Bilahari Kausikan says the projection of Chinese influence through overseas diaspora is a reality that must be managed.


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Lee Hsien Loong

Singapore must not allow China to cross ‘red line’ in domestic interests: ex-diplomat

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Bilahari Kausikan says the projection of Chinese influence through overseas diaspora is a reality that must be managed

Bilahari Kausikan says the projection of Chinese influence through overseas diaspora is a reality that must be managed