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‘Pro-Singapore’ Lawrence Wong and the US-China tightrope he must walk as prime minister
- Singapore’s incoming PM takes the reins against a vastly changed geopolitical backdrop from the one his predecessor Lee Hsien Loong faced
- Heightened US-China tensions have left little diplomatic room for manoeuvre – but experts say Singapore ‘cannot survive without both’
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When Lee Hsien Loong took over as the third prime minister of Singapore in 2004, the United States was mired in a war in Iraq aimed at depriving it of its supposed weapons of mass destruction and ending “Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism”.
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Then-US secretary of state Colin Powell said his country’s relations with China were in the “best state” since former US president Richard Nixon travelled to Beijing for a historic meeting with top Chinese leader Mao Zedong in 1972.
By contrast, Lee’s successor Lawrence Wong – who becomes the city’s state new prime minister on Wednesday – will assume power against the backdrop of a US that has been pivoting to the Asia-Pacific, forging multiple security and defence alliances with Asian nations aimed chiefly at countering Chinese influence and aggression.
Washington now sees China as its primary strategic competitor, with the two nations embroiled in a range of disputes spanning political, economic, technological, ideological, military and security interests.
In such a vastly different geopolitical landscape, Wong’s assertion this month that the republic could be neither pro-China nor pro-America, but “pro-Singapore”, was “certainly easier said than done”, said Dylan Loh, an assistant professor of foreign policy at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. “But there is no other choice.”
While Singapore had moved closer to the US, this had not come at the expense of its ties with China, Loh said. “It was just in 2023 that we upgraded our relations with Beijing.”
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