Booming Chinese economy pulled ideologically hostile Singapore into bandwagoning alignment

Evidence

Until the late 1970s relations between staunchly anticommunist Singapore and the People’s Republic were frosty, and Lee Kuan Yew and other Singaporean leaders were contemptuous of Chinese backwardness. As Chinese economic development took off in the 1980s, however, Singapore began to reorient itself toward the mainland in classic bandwagoning fashion. By 1992 Singapore had invested $1.9 billion in China, and the following year plans were announced to build an industrial township, “Singapore II,” outside Shanghai, that would involve billions of dollars of investment. Lee became an enthusiastic booster of China’s economic prospects and an admirer of its power. “China,” he said in 1993, “is where the action is.” Singaporean foreign investment which had been heavily concentrated in Malaysia and Indonesia shifted to China. Half of the overseas projects helped by the Singaporean government in 1993 were in China. On his first visit to Beijing in the 1970s, Lee Kuan Yew reportedly insisted on speaking to Chinese leaders in English rather than Mandarin. It is unlikely he did that two decades later. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 471

Categorization

• SHARE: The detail of Lee Kuan Yew insisting on English rather than Mandarin in the 1970s, then flipping to embrace China, is a neat anecdote for anyone interested in Southeast Asian realpolitik or Lee himself.