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Omitted was the historical fact that Lee Kuan Yew was the only noncommunist leader who in the late 1950s and early 1960s went into a CCP-backed United Front organization and emerged the victor. That drew a red line, which provided the basis on which Lee and his successors developed Singapore’s relations with China. Also ignored was the fact that even though Singapore has no territorial claims on the SCS, that does not mean it has no interest there. And, most crucial of all, although the majority of Singaporeans are ethnic Chinese, Singapore is a multiracial country organized on the basis of meritocracy and it does not view itself as a mono-racial state like China.
Still, many Singaporeans, only cursorily interested in international affairs, did
not realize they were being fed oversimplifications and swallowed them, or played along for other reasons. Businessmen, academics, and others with interests in China were given broad hints that their interests might suffer unless Singapore was more accommodating, and they passed the messages to the Singapore government. The Belt and Road Initiative was dangled as bait and the possibility of being excluded loomed as a threat, even though Singapore, as a highly developed country, did not need BRI infrastructure. Communist Party chairman Xi Jinping himself had asked Singapore to start a BRI-related project in Chongqing. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was pointedly not invited to the BRI Summit held in Beijing in 2017, although Singapore was represented at a lower level. Appeals to ethnic pride were made to yet others.
The operation was effective. The pressures on the government were great. It was difficult to explain the nuances of the SCS issue or Singapore’s relations with China to the general public.
Then Beijing went too far. In November 2016, nine Singapore armored personnel carriers (APCs) en route home from an overseas military exercise were seized by China on the flimsiest of excuses.” Singaporeans immediately understood that this was naked intimidation. Even the leader of the opposition Workers’ Party criticized China in Parliament. Beijing, by then increasingly concerned with the Trump administration, decided to settle. In January 2017, the APCs were released. The influence apparatus gradually stood down and relations returned to normal. Chinese leaders went out of their way to project friendliness. In late 2017, when news of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong being invited to the White House by President Trump became public, the prime minister was hastily invited to come to Beijing first, where he was received by Xi and other senior Chinese leaders.
Academia
Most of the means by which the Chinese narratives were spread in 2016-17 were not illegal. However, in August 2017, Huang Jing, an academic born in China who was
Appendix 2
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