SG-F-12: US-China Rivalry and Singapore's Positioning (2017-2026)

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Document Code: SG-F-12 Full Title: US-China Rivalry and Singapore's Positioning: The Structural Challenge for a Small State (2017-2026) Coverage Period: 2017-2026 Document Level: Level 1 — Anchor Document Status: [COMPLETE] Primary Sources Consulted:

1. Lee Hsien Loong, "The Endangered Asian Century" (Foreign Affairs, June 2020)
2. Lee Hsien Loong, keynote address, IISS Shangri-La Dialogue, 31 May 2019
3. Lee Hsien Loong, keynote address, IISS Shangri-La Dialogue, 2 June 2017
4. Bilahari Kausikan, Singapore Is Not An Island: Views on Singapore Foreign Policy (Singapore: Straits Times Press, 2017)
5. Bilahari Kausikan, various public lectures and op-eds on US-China rivalry, 2018-2025
6. Vivian Balakrishnan, parliamentary statements and press conferences on foreign policy, 2017-2026
7. Lawrence Wong, speeches and press conferences as Prime Minister, 2024-2026
8. S. Jayakumar, Diplomacy: A Singapore Experience (Singapore: Straits Times Press, 2011)
9. Singapore Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), various sessions 2017-2026
10. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Singapore, official statements and press releases, various years
11. Ministry of Trade and Industry, Singapore, bilateral trade data and economic survey reports, various years
12. Singapore Department of Statistics, trade and investment data, various years
13. International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), Shangri-La Dialogue proceedings, 2017-2025

Cross-References:

• SG-F-01: The Foundations of Singapore's Foreign Policy: Principles and Practice (1965-2026)
• SG-F-02: Singapore and the United States: Strategic Partnership (1965-2026)
• SG-F-03: Singapore and China: From Coolness to Partnership to Managed Tension (1965-2026)
• SG-F-07: ASEAN: Singapore's Regional Architecture (1967-2026)
• SG-F-10: Tommy Koh and UNCLOS
• SG-B-04: Lee Hsien Loong Era
• SG-B-09: Lawrence Wong Transition
• SG-H-PM-03: Lee Hsien Loong
• SG-H-PM-04: Lawrence Wong
• SG-D-17: Technology and Smart Nation
• SG-O-03: Geopolitical Mega Trends — Singapore in a World on Fire
• SG-F-13: Middle Power Diplomacy — Forum of Small States and Multilateralism
• SG-F-15: Bilahari Kausikan — The Geopolitical Voice
• SG-F-19: The Russia-Ukraine War — Singapore's Sanctions Decision
• SG-F-23: The Terrex Affair — Singapore-China Relations Under Strain
• SG-F-27: Singapore and the Iran-Israel-US War — Hormuz Crisis and Governance Response (2025–2026) — case study of the same hedging logic under acute crisis

Version Date: 2026-03-08

Related Documents:

• SG-O-03 | Geopolitical Mega Trends — Singapore in a World on Fire
• SG-F-19 | The Russia-Ukraine War — Singapore's Sanctions Decision
• SG-F-24 | The Trump-Kim Summit at Sentosa
• SG-F-13 | Middle Power Diplomacy — Forum of Small States and Multilateralism
• SG-F-15 | Bilahari Kausikan — The Geopolitical Voice
• SG-F-27 | Singapore and the Iran-Israel-US War — Hormuz Crisis and Governance Response (2025–2026) — Singapore again refuses exclusive alignment between Washington and Tehran/Beijing

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Section 1: Key Takeaways

• The intensification of US-China strategic rivalry from approximately 2017 onward has constituted the most consequential structural shift in Singapore's external environment since the end of the Cold War. For a city-state whose prosperity depends on openness, whose security depends on great-power equilibrium, and whose foreign policy depends on not being forced into exclusive alignments, the rivalry threatens the foundational assumptions of Singapore's national strategy.

• Singapore's consistent position — articulated by Lee Hsien Loong, Vivian Balakrishnan, Lawrence Wong, and Bilahari Kausikan across countless speeches, interviews, and diplomatic exchanges — is that it does not want to and will not choose sides. This is not diplomatic evasion but a statement of strategic logic: Singapore's interests are best served by a regional order in which both the United States and China are engaged, both are constrained by rules and norms, and smaller states retain the autonomy to work with each on different issues.

• The "choose sides" pressure is real and comes from both directions. Washington has pressed Southeast Asian states to limit engagement with Chinese technology companies, to align on Taiwan contingencies, and to frame regional security in terms that implicitly target China. Beijing has used economic leverage, diplomatic signalling, and influence operations to discourage alignment with the United States and to punish states that take positions contrary to Chinese interests, as Singapore experienced during the 2016-2017 diplomatic cooling over the South China Sea arbitration ruling and the Terrex incident.

• Singapore's hedging strategy rests on a dual structure: deep security ties with the United States (Changi Naval Base, F-35 purchases, SAF training in America, intelligence sharing, the Strategic Framework Agreement) coexisting with deep economic integration with China (largest trading partner since 2013, government-to-government projects, upgraded Free Trade Agreement, growing investment flows). Neither relationship is dispensable; both carry risks of entrapment.

• Lee Hsien Loong's keynote address at the Shangri-La Dialogue in May 2019 was the single most significant public articulation of Singapore's position on the rivalry. He warned that the world was at a "turning point" and that the US-China relationship would "define the international order for decades to come." He urged both powers to find a modus vivendi and warned that forcing countries to choose would "bifurcate the world" and impoverish all parties.

• The Terrex incident (November 2016 - January 2017), in which nine SAF armoured vehicles were seized by Hong Kong customs during transit from Taiwan, was the most dramatic manifestation of Chinese pressure on Singapore during this period. It demonstrated Beijing's willingness to use indirect coercion — through ostensibly routine enforcement actions — to signal displeasure with Singapore's strategic positioning and its adherence to international law on the South China Sea.

• The technology competition between the US and China — over semiconductors, 5G networks, artificial intelligence, and data governance — has created a new dimension of "choosing sides" pressure that is particularly acute for Singapore as a technology hub and aspiring Smart Nation. Singapore has navigated this by maintaining technology relationships with both sides while building domestic capabilities and diversifying supply chains.

• ASEAN centrality — the principle that the regional association should remain the primary platform for multilateral engagement in Southeast Asia — is Singapore's preferred structural answer to the rivalry. By channelling great-power engagement through ASEAN-centred institutions (the East Asia Summit, the ASEAN Regional Forum, ASEAN+3), Singapore seeks to prevent the emergence of competing blocs that would force binary alignment.

• AUKUS, the trilateral security partnership announced in September 2021 between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, raised concerns in Southeast Asia about bloc formation, nuclear proliferation norms, and the erosion of ASEAN centrality. Singapore's response was measured: it did not oppose AUKUS but called for transparency, adherence to non-proliferation commitments, and respect for ASEAN's role in regional architecture.

• Bilahari Kausikan has been the most intellectually formidable Singaporean voice on the structural dynamics of the rivalry, arguing that small states must maintain "clarity of mind" about the nature of the competition, resist the psychological pressures exerted by both powers, and accept that managing the rivalry — not resolving it — is the realistic objective for a generation.

• The transition from Lee Hsien Loong to Lawrence Wong as Prime Minister in May 2024 occurred in the midst of the rivalry's most intense phase. Wong has signalled continuity in Singapore's positioning while facing new challenges: the return of Donald Trump to the US presidency in January 2025, escalating technology restrictions, Taiwan Strait tensions, and a global trading system under unprecedented strain. The Trump 2.0 presidency has fundamentally changed the trade landscape: the "Liberation Day" tariffs of 2 April 2025 imposed a baseline 10 per cent "reciprocal tariff" on Singapore's US-bound exports — despite Singapore running a trade deficit with the United States — and global tariffs were subsequently raised to 15 per cent, climbing Singapore's effective tariff rate by 1.1 percentage points. PM Wong's ministerial statement described the situation as "more arbitrary, protectionist, and dangerous," declaring that the era of rules-based globalisation and free trade is over. A USTR Section 301 investigation initiated in March 2026, targeting Singapore alongside Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, and others, has added further pressure. The tariff regime forces a fundamental reassessment of how Singapore balances its strategic partnerships with both Washington and Beijing.

• Singapore's economic model — built on openness, connectivity, and the free flow of goods, capital, talent, and information — is structurally vulnerable to a world that bifurcates into competing blocs. The rivalry therefore threatens not merely Singapore's diplomatic positioning but the economic foundations of the nation-state itself.

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Section 2: The Record in Brief

The period from 2017 to 2026 has been, for Singapore's foreign policy establishment, a period of sustained and intensifying strategic stress. The US-China rivalry — variously described as strategic competition, a new Cold War, or a contest for hegemony — has placed Singapore in a position that its leaders have spent sixty years trying to avoid: the position of a small state caught between two great powers that increasingly demand alignment.

The stress did not arrive suddenly. The tectonic plates had been shifting since at least the 2008 global financial crisis, which dented American confidence and emboldened Chinese strategists who saw the Western economic model as discredited. China's assertiveness in the South China Sea — the island-building campaign that began in earnest in 2013-2014, the rejection of the 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling, and the militarisation of artificial features — signalled that Beijing was prepared to challenge the rules-based order on which Singapore's security depends. The Obama administration's "pivot to Asia" (later rebranded as the "rebalance") acknowledged the shift but produced more rhetoric than structural change.

The Trump presidency, beginning in January 2017, marked a qualitative escalation. Trump's imposition of tariffs on Chinese goods — beginning with steel and aluminium in early 2018 and expanding to hundreds of billions of dollars of trade by mid-2019 — launched a trade war that disrupted global supply chains and forced countries throughout Asia to recalculate their economic strategies. For Singapore, which depends on the smooth functioning of global trade, the trade war was economically damaging and strategically alarming. It signalled that the United States — the architect and guarantor of the post-1945 liberal economic order — was prepared to weaponise trade for strategic purposes, undermining the very system that had enabled Singapore's prosperity.

Simultaneously, China's behaviour toward Singapore hardened. The 2016-2017 period saw the Terrex seizure, Singapore's reported exclusion from Belt and Road Initiative events, pointed criticism in Chinese state media, and the Huang Jing influence operation case. The message was unmistakable: China expected Singapore to moderate its positions on the South China Sea, to distance itself from the United States on sensitive issues, and to acknowledge China's primacy in the region. Singapore refused, but the experience demonstrated the costs of principled positioning for a small state.

Lee Hsien Loong responded with a diplomatic strategy of dual engagement and public candour. He visited both Washington and Beijing repeatedly, maintained personal relationships with the leaderships of both powers, and articulated Singapore's position in high-profile international forums — most notably at the Shangri-La Dialogue in 2017 and 2019 and in a landmark essay in Foreign Affairs in 2020. His core message was consistent: the US-China relationship need not be zero-sum; the region does not want to choose; and both powers would be better served by a competitive coexistence that respects the autonomy of smaller states.

The Biden administration (2021-2025) brought a change in tone but not in structural dynamics. Biden's approach was more multilateral than Trump's — the emphasis on alliances, the "Indo-Pacific Strategy," the Quad (US-Japan-Australia-India), AUKUS, and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) — but the underlying strategic competition with China continued to intensify. Technology restrictions tightened, with the US imposing increasingly sweeping controls on semiconductor exports to China. The Taiwan Strait crisis of August 2022, triggered by Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan and followed by massive Chinese military exercises, brought the spectre of great-power conflict closer to Southeast Asia than at any point since the end of the Cold War.

Singapore navigated this period by deepening ties with both powers simultaneously. The F-35B purchase decision (2020), the renewal of the Strategic Framework Agreement with the US (2019), and continued expansion of bilateral military exercises signalled the enduring importance of the American security relationship. The upgrading of the China-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (2018), the expansion of the Chongqing Connectivity Initiative, Lawrence Wong's early visit to Beijing after becoming Prime Minister, and the continued growth of bilateral trade and investment signalled that the economic relationship with China remained central.

The return of Donald Trump to the presidency in January 2025 has introduced new uncertainties. Trump's second-term trade policies — including the prospect of sweeping tariffs on Chinese goods and on goods from countries deemed insufficiently aligned with American interests — have created fresh challenges for Singapore's open economic model. The question of whether Singapore can sustain its dual-engagement strategy in an environment of accelerating decoupling is the defining foreign policy question of the mid-2020s.

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Section 3: Timeline of Key Events

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Section 4: Background and Context

The Structural Predicament

Singapore's predicament in the US-China rivalry is structural, not contingent. It cannot be resolved by clever diplomacy, by a change of leadership in Washington or Beijing, or by the passage of time. The predicament arises from three immutable facts about Singapore: it is small, it is open, and it is located at the crossroads of the two great powers' strategic interests.

Smallness means that Singapore cannot shape the rivalry — it can only navigate it. Unlike India or Japan, which possess the scale to be independent poles in a multipolar system, Singapore must operate within a strategic environment that others define. Its leverage comes not from power but from utility: its port, its financial centre, its legal system, its location at the Strait of Malacca, and its reputation as a trusted interlocutor that maintains relationships with all parties. This utility is real, but it is contingent on the persistence of a rules-based international order in which small states have rights that great powers respect.

Openness means that Singapore is structurally vulnerable to any fragmentation of the global economy. Singapore's total trade in goods and services exceeds 300 per cent of GDP — among the highest ratios in the world. Its port handles roughly one-fifth of global container transhipment. Its financial sector intermediates capital flows across the Asia-Pacific. Its semiconductor industry — which includes fabrication, design, and advanced packaging — is embedded in supply chains that span the United States, China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. Any bifurcation of the global economy into competing blocs would force Singapore to choose which bloc's supply chains, standards, and financial systems to operate within — precisely the choice its leaders are determined to avoid.

Location means that Singapore sits at the physical intersection of US and Chinese strategic interests. The South China Sea, through which a substantial proportion of global trade passes, is the contested maritime space where Chinese territorial assertions collide with American insistence on freedom of navigation. The Strait of Malacca is the chokepoint through which China's energy imports and export trade flow. Singapore's Changi Naval Base is the only facility in Southeast Asia capable of berthing American aircraft carriers. The US Navy's rotational deployments, the Littoral Combat Ship presence, and the logistics coordination that operates from Singapore are integral to the American military posture in the Indo-Pacific. For China, Singapore's geographic position means that any US military action in the South China Sea or the Taiwan Strait would likely involve assets that had transited, refuelled, or been maintained in Singapore.

The Historical Antecedent: Cold War Non-Alignment

Singapore's response to the US-China rivalry draws on a strategy refined over six decades: maintaining productive relationships with all major powers while allying formally with none. During the Cold War, Singapore was non-aligned in form but pro-Western in orientation — it joined the Non-Aligned Movement but maintained security ties with the West, purchased Western military equipment, and structured its economy around Western investment and markets. This positioning gave Singapore diplomatic flexibility without sacrificing strategic substance.

The crucial difference between the Cold War and the current rivalry is economic interdependence. During the Cold War, the Western and Soviet blocs operated largely separate economic systems — trade between them was minimal, and Singapore could orient itself toward the Western economy without sacrificing significant commercial opportunities. The US-China rivalry, by contrast, involves two powers that are economically intertwined at every level: trade, investment, technology, supply chains, financial flows, and human talent. Singapore's economy is deeply embedded in both systems. The trade war's disruption of established supply chains, the semiconductor export controls, and the restrictions on Chinese technology companies all create situations where economic engagement with one power potentially conflicts with the preferences of the other.

Lee Kuan Yew anticipated this challenge, though he did not live to see its full development. In One Man's View of the World (2013), he wrote that the US and China would be "the two most important players" in the twenty-first century, that competition between them was inevitable, but that "outright conflict" was unlikely because of mutual economic dependence. He argued that smaller states should maintain relationships with both powers, avoid being drawn into their disputes, and focus on making themselves useful to both. This prescription — essentially the strategy Singapore has followed — assumed, however, that the great powers would themselves prefer managed competition to confrontation. The events since 2017 have tested that assumption severely.

The "Choosing Sides" Pressure: What It Means in Practice

The phrase "choosing sides" has become the leitmotif of Singapore's foreign policy discourse, but its meaning deserves unpacking. Singapore is not being asked — by either the US or China — to sign a formal alliance, break diplomatic relations with the other power, or deploy military forces against either. The pressure is more subtle and operates across multiple domains.

From the United States, the pressure takes the form of technology restrictions (which implicitly require countries to exclude Chinese suppliers), expectations of diplomatic alignment on Taiwan and human rights issues, frameworks like the Quad and AUKUS that create informal security architectures with implicit anti-China orientations, and economic initiatives like the IPEF that are designed to provide alternatives to Chinese-centred supply chains. When Singapore purchases F-35s, hosts US naval rotations, and shares intelligence with American agencies, it is making choices that align it with the American strategic posture — even as it insists these are sovereign decisions made in Singapore's own interest.

From China, the pressure operates through economic leverage (the implicit threat of commercial consequences for political positions Beijing dislikes), diplomatic signalling (exclusion from events, delayed responses to diplomatic communications, pointed state media commentary), influence operations targeting ethnic Chinese communities and policy elites, and the expectation that a Chinese-majority state should show greater "understanding" of Chinese interests. The Terrex seizure, the 2016-2017 diplomatic cooling, and the recurring Chinese irritation with Singapore's South China Sea position all illustrate how this pressure manifests.

Singapore's response has been to insist that the binary framing is itself the problem — that the choice between the US and China is a false choice, and that the region's interests are best served by an inclusive architecture in which both powers participate. This is principled and logical, but it is also an increasingly difficult position to sustain as the rivalry deepens and the space for non-alignment narrows.

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Section 5: The Primary Record

5.1 The Terrex Incident and the 2016-2017 Diplomatic Cooling

The seizure of nine SAF Terrex Infantry Carrier Vehicles by Hong Kong customs on 23 November 2016 was the opening act of the most difficult period in Singapore-China relations since the normalisation of diplomatic ties in 1990. The vehicles were being transported on a commercial vessel from Taiwan — where the SAF conducts military training under long-standing arrangements known as Exercise Starlight — back to Singapore via a route that transited Hong Kong.

The ostensible reason for the seizure was a requirement for proper documentation for the transit of military equipment through Hong Kong. But the timing made the real message unmistakable. The seizure came four months after the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled against China's South China Sea claims on 12 July 2016 — a ruling that Singapore had publicly supported as binding under UNCLOS. It also came during a period when Singapore had been ASEAN's most vocal advocate for the principle that international law applies to maritime disputes, a position that Beijing regarded as unhelpfully supportive of the Philippines and, by extension, of the US strategic position in the region.

The incident placed three sensitive issues at the intersection of the bilateral relationship: Singapore's military training in Taiwan (which China tolerated but resented), Singapore's adherence to international law on the South China Sea (which China regarded as meddling by a non-claimant state), and Singapore's deep security relationship with the United States (which China viewed with increasing suspicion as the rivalry intensified).

Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen confirmed the facts publicly and called for the vehicles' return. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs engaged through diplomatic channels. Chinese state media, meanwhile, ran commentary suggesting that Singapore needed to rethink its strategic choices. The Global Times ran editorials questioning Singapore's continued military engagement with Taiwan and suggesting that small countries should be more careful about antagonising large ones.

The vehicles were returned on 30 January 2017, after approximately two months. No formal explanation was given for either the seizure or the return. The diplomatic cooling, however, extended beyond the Terrex affair. Singapore was reportedly excluded from invitations to certain Belt and Road Initiative events. Chinese officials were less forthcoming in bilateral exchanges. The warmth that had characterised the relationship in previous years was palpably absent.

The recovery began in the second half of 2017. Lee Hsien Loong visited Beijing in September 2017, where he met President Xi Jinping and expressed Singapore's support for the Belt and Road Initiative. The visit effectively reset the bilateral relationship, though the underlying tensions over the South China Sea, Taiwan, and Singapore's US ties remained unresolved. The experience left a lasting mark on Singapore's foreign policy establishment: it demonstrated that China was prepared to use significant indirect pressure to punish positions it disliked, and that the costs of principled positioning for a small state were real and immediate.

5.2 The Trade War and Its Impact on Singapore

The US-China trade war, which escalated through 2018 and 2019, was economically damaging and strategically alarming for Singapore. As a trade-dependent economy at the nexus of Asian supply chains, Singapore was exposed to disruption from multiple directions.

The direct economic impact was measurable. Singapore's non-oil domestic exports to China and the United States both fluctuated as tariffs reshaped trade flows. More significantly, the trade war created uncertainty that depressed business investment and disrupted the supply chains on which Singapore's manufacturing sector — particularly electronics and semiconductors — depended. Singapore's GDP growth slowed to 0.7 per cent in 2019, the weakest since the global financial crisis, driven in part by the trade war's chilling effect on regional commerce.

The strategic implications were more consequential than the economic ones. The trade war signalled that the United States — the power that had built and sustained the multilateral trading system through the GATT and the WTO — was prepared to bypass that system for strategic purposes. For Singapore, which had predicated its entire economic model on the assumption that global trade would be governed by rules rather than power, this was deeply unsettling. If the world's largest economy could unilaterally impose tariffs on its largest trading partner, then the rules-based order was far more fragile than Singapore's leaders had assumed.

Singapore's response was three-pronged. First, it diversified: trade agreements with the European Union (the EU-Singapore Free Trade Agreement, which entered into force in November 2019), the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP, signed in November 2020) reduced dependence on any single bilateral relationship. Second, it adapted: Singapore positioned itself as a beneficiary of supply chain reconfiguration, attracting companies seeking to shift manufacturing out of China — a phenomenon sometimes called "China plus one" — while also deepening its role as a gateway for Chinese companies accessing Southeast Asian markets. Third, it advocated: Singapore's leaders used every international platform to argue for the preservation and strengthening of the multilateral trading system, even as its most powerful members were undermining it.

5.3 Lee Hsien Loong's Shangri-La Dialogue Speeches

Lee Hsien Loong's keynote addresses at the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue in 2017 and 2019 were the most significant public articulations of Singapore's position on the US-China rivalry. The Shangri-La Dialogue — held annually in Singapore since 2002 — is the premier security forum in the Asia-Pacific, attended by defence ministers, military chiefs, and strategic thinkers from across the region and beyond. A keynote by Singapore's prime minister at this forum carries weight disproportionate to the country's size.

In his 2017 keynote, Lee addressed the uncertainties created by the Trump administration's approach to Asia. He emphasised the importance of continued US engagement in the region, called on China to act as a responsible stakeholder in the international system, and urged both powers to avoid a confrontation that would force smaller states to choose sides. He argued that ASEAN centrality — the principle that the regional association should remain the primary platform for multilateral engagement — was more important than ever as a framework for managing great-power competition.

The 2019 keynote was more urgent and more specific. Lee described the US-China relationship as being at a "turning point" and warned that a "clash between the two" would make the world "a poorer, meaner, and more dangerous place." He laid out the case for accommodation rather than confrontation:

He argued that the US needed to accept that China's rise could not be reversed and that attempts to contain it would fail — China was too large, too integrated into the global economy, and too determined to resume what it regarded as its rightful place among the great powers. He argued that China needed to accept that its rise was generating legitimate anxieties among its neighbours and that assertiveness, coercion, and the rejection of international law would provoke the very coalitions Beijing sought to prevent.

For Southeast Asian countries, Lee warned, the worst outcome would be a world divided into rival blocs — a "bifurcation" that would require every country to choose which system to belong to. Such a bifurcation would be catastrophic for countries like Singapore that were deeply integrated with both powers. Lee called for an inclusive regional architecture — essentially, the preservation and strengthening of ASEAN-centred institutions — that gave both the US and China a stake in regional stability.

The speech was widely reported and debated. It was praised by many Southeast Asian commentators as a clear-eyed articulation of the region's concerns. It was received more coolly in Washington, where some commentators interpreted it as excessively accommodating of China, and in Beijing, where others regarded it as insufficiently sensitive to China's legitimate interests. For Singapore, the divided reception confirmed that the space for a genuinely non-aligned position was narrowing.

5.4 The "Endangered Asian Century" Essay

In June 2020, Lee Hsien Loong published a major essay in Foreign Affairs titled "The Endangered Asian Century." The essay was his most comprehensive written statement on the US-China rivalry and its implications for the region. Its publication in America's most influential foreign policy journal was itself a strategic choice — Lee was addressing an American audience and making the case for why US-China accommodation served American interests.

Lee's argument was that the twenty-first century could be an "Asian Century" of unprecedented prosperity and development, but only if the US-China relationship was managed cooperatively rather than confrontationally. He argued that the economic achievements of the previous decades — the lifting of hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, the construction of modern infrastructure across the region, the rise of a middle class with global connectivity — depended on the continuation of an open, rules-based international order. That order was now threatened by the rivalry.

Lee rejected both the "Thucydides Trap" framing (that war between a rising and a ruling power is inevitable) and the assumption that China's rise required American decline. He argued that both powers could thrive simultaneously if they found ways to compete without confrontation and to cooperate on shared challenges such as climate change, pandemics, and nuclear proliferation.

The essay's most politically significant passage addressed the position of smaller states: "Asian countries do not want to be forced to choose between the two. We want to cultivate good relations with both the US and China." This sentence encapsulated Singapore's position — and the position that Lee had been advocating in private and public for years. It was also a plea: Lee was asking the great powers to preserve the strategic space that countries like Singapore needed to survive.

5.5 The Technology Competition

The technology dimension of the US-China rivalry has been particularly challenging for Singapore. As an aspiring "Smart Nation" that has positioned itself as a global technology hub — in fintech, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data analytics, and semiconductor manufacturing — Singapore is deeply embedded in technology supply chains and ecosystems that span both great powers.

The US decision to add Huawei to the Entity List in May 2019, effectively barring American companies from selling technology to the Chinese telecommunications giant, forced a reckoning across Asia. Singapore did not adopt a blanket ban on Huawei equipment in its telecommunications networks — unlike the US, Australia, and the UK, which excluded Huawei from 5G infrastructure. Singapore's major telecommunications operators made their own procurement decisions, with some incorporating Huawei equipment while others chose European or South Korean alternatives. The government's position was that Singapore would make technology decisions based on technical assessments and national security considerations, not on the preferences of any external power.

The semiconductor export controls that the US imposed on China — first in October 2022 and expanded in subsequent rounds — were more consequential. Singapore is a significant node in the global semiconductor supply chain. Companies such as GlobalFoundries, Micron, and numerous semiconductor equipment firms operate major facilities in Singapore. The export controls required companies operating in Singapore to comply with US restrictions on the sale of advanced chips and chipmaking equipment to China, creating compliance challenges and raising questions about whether Singapore-based operations would be caught up in escalating restrictions.

Singapore responded by positioning itself as a neutral ground for semiconductor investment from both sides. It continued to welcome Chinese technology companies seeking to establish operations outside China — a trend that accelerated after the US export controls — while also deepening its semiconductor partnership with the United States. The aim was to remain a technology hub that could work with both ecosystems, even as those ecosystems diverged. Whether this dual positioning can be sustained as technology restrictions tighten remains an open question.

5.6 AUKUS and Southeast Asian Anxieties

The announcement of AUKUS on 15 September 2021 — a trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, centring on the provision of nuclear-powered submarines to Australia — sent tremors through Southeast Asia. For Singapore, the announcement raised several concerns.

First, AUKUS represented the emergence of a new security architecture outside the ASEAN-centred framework. Singapore had invested decades in building ASEAN centrality as the organising principle of regional security diplomacy. AUKUS — exclusive, military-focused, and implicitly directed at China — challenged that centrality by creating a parallel structure that excluded Southeast Asian states.

Second, the nuclear-powered submarine component raised non-proliferation concerns. Southeast Asia is governed by the Treaty of Bangkok (the Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone Treaty, signed in 1995), which commits ASEAN members to keeping the region free of nuclear weapons. While nuclear-powered submarines are not nuclear weapons, the transfer of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium for submarine reactors blurred lines that Singapore and other ASEAN members were uncomfortable blurring.

Third, AUKUS risked accelerating the very bloc formation that Singapore sought to prevent. If Australia — a key ASEAN dialogue partner — was aligning itself more explicitly with the US in a military partnership aimed at China, the pressure on other regional states to declare their alignment would increase.

Singapore's response, articulated by Vivian Balakrishnan and Lee Hsien Loong, was characteristically measured. Singapore did not oppose AUKUS — it recognised that sovereign states had the right to enter security arrangements of their choosing. But it emphasised three points: that AUKUS must be transparent about its intentions, that it must comply with non-proliferation commitments, and that it should complement rather than supplant the ASEAN-centred regional architecture. This position avoided antagonising either the AUKUS partners (all of whom Singapore had strong relationships with) or China (which vehemently opposed AUKUS), while placing Singapore's concerns on the record.

5.7 The Taiwan Strait Crisis of 2022

The visit of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan on 2-3 August 2022 triggered the most serious cross-strait crisis in decades. China responded with unprecedented military exercises around Taiwan, including the firing of ballistic missiles over the island and the deployment of naval and air forces in the Taiwan Strait and surrounding waters. For several days, the possibility of military escalation — however remote — was real.

Singapore's response was carefully calibrated. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement calling on all parties to exercise restraint and to avoid actions that could escalate tensions. Singapore reiterated its adherence to the "One China" policy and its opposition to unilateral changes to the status quo across the Taiwan Strait. Notably, Singapore did not single out either the US (for Pelosi's visit) or China (for its military response) for criticism — it addressed its call for restraint to "all parties."

This even-handedness was deliberate and reflected Singapore's structural position. Singapore's military training arrangements with Taiwan (Exercise Starlight) and its significant economic ties with the island meant that any military conflict in the Taiwan Strait would directly affect Singapore. At the same time, Singapore's security relationship with the United States and its economic integration with China meant that it could not afford to be seen as supporting either side in a confrontation.

The crisis underscored a reality that Singapore's leaders had long acknowledged but that the public had perhaps not fully internalised: a conflict over Taiwan would be the single most dangerous scenario for Singapore, because it would be the one most likely to force the binary choice that Singapore's entire foreign policy was designed to avoid.

5.8 Singapore as US-China Intermediary

Throughout the period, Singapore quietly maintained its role as a venue and intermediary for US-China engagement. This role drew on a tradition established decades earlier — the Xi-Ma meeting of 2015 (the first meeting between leaders of the PRC and ROC since 1949, held in Singapore) and the Trump-Kim summit of 2018 had both demonstrated Singapore's unique positioning as a trusted neutral ground.

The intermediary role was less visible but no less important at the working level. Singapore's diplomats, academics, and business leaders maintained channels of communication to counterparts on both sides, facilitating dialogue when official channels were strained. The Shangri-La Dialogue itself served as an annual opportunity for US and Chinese defence officials to meet — formally and informally — on Singapore soil. Track 1.5 and Track 2 dialogues hosted by Singapore-based institutions provided additional venues for exchange.

Singapore's utility as an intermediary depended on its credibility with both sides, which in turn depended on its refusal to align exclusively with either. This created a structural incentive for Singapore to maintain its non-aligned posture — alignment with one side would destroy the intermediary function that gave Singapore outsized diplomatic value. In this sense, the "choosing sides" question was not merely a matter of principle but of strategic self-interest: Singapore's refusal to choose was itself a source of power.

5.9 The Biden Era and the Indo-Pacific Framework

The Biden administration (2021-2025) brought a change in style but continuity in substance. Biden's team emphasised alliances, multilateral coordination, and values-based diplomacy — a contrast with Trump's transactional approach. But the underlying strategic competition with China continued to intensify, and in some areas — notably technology controls and the framing of democracy versus autocracy — Biden went further than Trump.

Vice President Kamala Harris's visit to Singapore in August 2021 was the most significant Biden-era bilateral engagement. Harris used Singapore as a platform to reaffirm US commitment to Southeast Asia, announce new initiatives on supply chain resilience and cybersecurity, and — implicitly — to push back against Chinese assertiveness. Singapore welcomed the visit and the signal of engagement but, as always, was careful to frame the relationship in terms of shared interests rather than shared adversaries.

The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), launched by Biden in May 2022, was designed to provide an economic complement to the US security presence in the region — addressing the long-standing criticism that the US offered Southeast Asia security but not market access. Singapore joined IPEF but harboured reservations: the framework did not include the market access provisions (tariff reductions, trade liberalisation) that Southeast Asian economies most valued, and its emphasis on supply chain resilience and "friend-shoring" implicitly involved reconfiguring economic relationships away from China. Singapore participated but continued to pursue deeper economic integration with China in parallel — the quintessential hedging strategy.

5.10 Trump's Return and New Uncertainties (2025-2026)

Donald Trump's election to a second presidential term in November 2024 and his inauguration in January 2025 introduced fresh uncertainties into Singapore's strategic calculus. Trump's second-term agenda included sweeping tariff proposals — including a baseline tariff on all imports and substantially higher tariffs on Chinese goods — that threatened the multilateral trading system more directly than his first-term trade war.

For Singapore, the concerns were multiple. First, broad-based tariffs could disrupt global trade flows and depress demand for Singapore's exports and transhipment services. Second, tariffs on goods from countries that traded extensively with China could catch Singapore in the crossfire, given that a significant proportion of Singapore's re-exports involved Chinese goods. Third, the Trump administration's transactional approach to alliances — demanding tangible returns for security commitments — raised questions about the future terms of the US military presence in Singapore.

Lawrence Wong, who had become Prime Minister in May 2024, faced the challenge of navigating Trump's return while maintaining the dual-engagement strategy he had inherited from Lee Hsien Loong. Wong's early signals emphasised continuity: the security relationship with the United States remained foundational, the economic relationship with China remained central, and Singapore would continue to resist pressure to choose. But the environment in which these principles had to be applied was becoming progressively more constrained.

The most consequential development came on 2 April 2025 — dubbed "Liberation Day" by the Trump administration — when the United States imposed sweeping "reciprocal tariffs" on trading partners worldwide. Singapore received a baseline 10 per cent tariff on US-bound exports, despite the fact that Singapore ran a trade deficit with the United States, undermining the stated rationale of reciprocity. Global tariffs were subsequently raised to 15 per cent, and Singapore's effective tariff rate climbed by 1.1 percentage points. For a trade-dependent economy where total trade exceeds 300 per cent of GDP, even marginal tariff increases carry outsized consequences.

PM Wong's ministerial statement on the US tariffs was the most significant Singaporean government response to American trade policy since the first Trump-era trade war. Wong described the global trade environment as "more arbitrary, protectionist, and dangerous" than at any point in the post-war era and stated bluntly that the era of rules-based globalisation and free trade — the order upon which Singapore had built its economic model — was over. The statement represented a rhetorical departure from the more diplomatic formulations of the Lee Hsien Loong years: where Lee had urged accommodation and called for both powers to find a modus vivendi, Wong's language acknowledged that the structural assumptions underpinning Singapore's prosperity had shifted in ways that required new responses, not merely reaffirmations of existing principles.

The Shangri-La Dialogue in 2025 further illustrated the changed dynamics. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth addressed the forum, but his presence generated anxiety among regional allies rather than reassurance. The Trump administration's simultaneous imposition of tariffs on allies and demands for increased defence spending created a dissonance that Southeast Asian states found difficult to reconcile: the United States was asking for deeper strategic alignment while imposing economic penalties that undermined the material basis of those partnerships. For Singapore, which hosts US naval rotations and has committed to the F-35B purchase, the question of what the United States expected in return — and what costs it was prepared to impose on partners that did not meet those expectations — became more urgent.

In March 2026, the Office of the United States Trade Representative initiated a Section 301 investigation involving Singapore alongside Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, and several other trading partners. While the investigation's scope and ultimate outcome remained uncertain at the time of writing, its initiation signalled that the tariff regime was not a one-off shock but the beginning of a sustained reassessment of US trade relationships — one in which Singapore's long-standing status as a trusted, rules-compliant trading partner offered diminished protection.

Singapore's response to the tariff shock extended beyond diplomacy to structural economic adaptation. The Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone (JS-SEZ), signed in January 2025 with S$5.5 billion in committed investment and the Rail Transit System (RTS) Link targeted for completion by December 2026, represented one dimension of a regional diversification strategy designed to reduce Singapore's vulnerability to trade disruption by deepening economic integration with its immediate hinterland. Singapore's economy grew 4.8 per cent in 2025, but PM Wong cautioned that sustaining such growth would be progressively harder given the global uncertainty generated by the tariff regime, technology decoupling, and the broader erosion of the multilateral trading system.

The tariff developments of 2025-2026 have sharpened Singapore's strategic dilemma. The US tariffs do not distinguish between strategic partners and adversaries — they apply to Singapore and China alike, collapsing the distinction between ally and competitor that Singapore's hedging strategy depends upon. If the United States treats its security partners no differently from its economic rivals in trade policy, the strategic logic of maintaining deep security ties with Washington while maintaining deep economic ties with Beijing becomes harder to sustain — not because Singapore's preferences have changed, but because the framework within which those preferences operated has eroded.

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Section 6: Key Figures

Lee Hsien Loong (b. 1952): Prime Minister 2004-2024. The central figure in Singapore's navigation of the US-China rivalry during its most intense phase. His Shangri-La Dialogue speeches (2017, 2019) and Foreign Affairs essay (2020) were the definitive articulations of Singapore's position. His personal relationships with leaders on both sides — Xi Jinping, Obama, Trump, Biden — gave Singapore access and influence. His management of the 2016-2017 crisis with China, the trade war, the Taiwan Strait tensions, and the AUKUS announcement demonstrated strategic discipline and diplomatic patience.

Lawrence Wong (b. 1972): Prime Minister from May 2024. Inherited the US-China challenge as the defining foreign policy issue of his premiership. Early visits to both Beijing and Washington signalled continuity. Faces the additional challenge of Trump's second term and the prospect of accelerating economic fragmentation.

Vivian Balakrishnan (b. 1961): Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2015. Bore the operational burden of managing Singapore's positioning throughout the period. Navigated the Terrex aftermath, facilitated the Trump-Kim summit, articulated Singapore's position on AUKUS, and managed the diplomatic response to the Taiwan Strait crisis. His medical training lent a diagnostic precision to his public commentary on the rivalry — he frequently described the US-China relationship as a condition to be managed rather than a problem to be solved.

Bilahari Kausikan (b. 1954): Ambassador-at-Large. The most intellectually rigorous and publicly outspoken Singaporean voice on the rivalry's structural dynamics. His writings and lectures — collected in Singapore Is Not An Island (2017) and in numerous subsequent essays — provided the analytical framework through which Singapore's policy community understood Chinese influence operations, the psychology of great-power pressure, and the limits of small-state agency. His willingness to name uncomfortable truths — particularly about China's influence tactics — gave him a public prominence unusual for a Singapore diplomat and occasionally drew Beijing's ire.

Ng Eng Hen (b. 1958): Minister for Defence from 2011 to 2024. Managed the defence relationship with both the US and China throughout the period. Oversaw the F-35B purchase decision, the expansion of bilateral military exercises with the US, and the signing of the 2019 Defence Cooperation Agreement with China. His challenge was to maintain and deepen the US defence partnership without framing it as anti-China — a balance that required constant diplomatic calibration.

Tommy Koh (b. 1937): Ambassador-at-Large and veteran diplomat. Continued to contribute to Singapore's foreign policy discourse through public lectures, op-eds, and advisory roles. His association with UNCLOS gave particular authority to his articulation of Singapore's position on the South China Sea — that international law must apply to maritime disputes regardless of the preferences of claimant states.

Chan Heng Chee (b. 1942): Ambassador-at-Large and former Ambassador to the United States (1996-2012). Continued to contribute to Singapore's understanding of American politics and the US-Singapore relationship through advisory and academic roles. Her deep knowledge of Washington's political dynamics was particularly valuable during the Trump presidencies, which confounded many conventional diplomatic assumptions.

Kishore Mahbubani (b. 1948): Former Permanent Secretary at MFA and Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. Became a prominent public intellectual arguing that the West needed to accommodate China's rise and that the liberal international order required reform to reflect non-Western perspectives. His books — including Has China Won? (2020) — generated significant debate and placed him in tension with the more cautious positions of the Singapore government. His commentary illustrated the range of views within Singapore's foreign policy community, even if his more accommodating stance toward China was not fully shared by the government.

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Section 7: Stories and Anecdotes

"We don't want to choose — and you shouldn't make us." At the 2019 Shangri-La Dialogue, Lee Hsien Loong delivered his keynote to an audience that included senior US and Chinese defence officials. The speech had been carefully drafted and reviewed across Singapore's foreign policy establishment. When Lee warned that "countries in the region want the freedom to be friends with both sides," applause broke out from the Southeast Asian delegations. The moment captured the region's collective anxiety — and its collective relief that someone with Lee's standing had articulated what smaller states felt but were often reluctant to say publicly.

The Terrex vehicles on the dock. The image of nine Terrex Infantry Carrier Vehicles sitting in a Hong Kong port, covered in tarps, became one of the most symbolically charged images in Singapore's recent diplomatic history. For Singaporeans, it was a visceral reminder of vulnerability — that a great power could seize their military equipment with impunity and hold it for weeks without explanation. For diplomats, the incident was instructive in a different way: China had sent its message without creating a formal diplomatic crisis, without breaking any law (Hong Kong customs regulations did require documentation), and without doing anything that required an apology or retraction. It was coercion in the key of plausible deniability — and Singapore's leaders understood the technique exactly.

The Trump-Kim summit bill. When Singapore agreed to host the Trump-Kim summit in June 2018, the government understood it would bear the costs. The final bill — estimated at around S$20 million — covered security for the Capella Hotel venue on Sentosa, the Shangri-La Hotel where Trump stayed, the St. Regis Hotel where Kim stayed, motorcade routes, airspace management, and the diplomatic staff deployed to manage logistics. When asked about the cost, Vivian Balakrishnan responded that it was "a small price to pay for peace." The summit produced no lasting denuclearisation agreement, but for Singapore the strategic return was the confirmation of its role as the world's most trusted venue for sensitive diplomacy — a role that no amount of money could buy.

Bilahari's "useful idiot" warning. In a public lecture that circulated widely in Singapore's policy community, Bilahari Kausikan argued that every country had people who functioned as "useful idiots" for foreign powers — individuals who advanced a foreign power's agenda while believing they were acting independently. He warned that Singapore's ethnic Chinese majority made it particularly susceptible to Chinese influence operations that exploited cultural affinity, business relationships, and the natural human desire to be on good terms with a powerful neighbour. The lecture was uncomfortable for many in Singapore's business and academic communities who had extensive China ties. Kausikan's point was not that all engagement with China was suspect but that engagement without awareness of influence dynamics was naive. The Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act of 2021 was, in part, the legislative embodiment of his warning.

The semiconductor dinner party. In a telling anecdote that circulated among Singapore's economic policy makers, a senior official described Singapore's position in the semiconductor supply chain as being "at a dinner party where two of the guests have decided they hate each other, and you're the one sitting between them." The official noted that Singapore hosted major operations from both American and Chinese semiconductor companies, that restricting either would damage Singapore's value proposition as a neutral hub, and that the only viable strategy was to keep serving dinner and hope the guests did not start throwing plates. The metaphor, while humorous, captured the genuine precariousness of Singapore's position in the technology competition.

Lawrence Wong's first foreign calls. When Lawrence Wong took office as Prime Minister on 15 May 2024, his early foreign engagements were watched closely for signals about his strategic orientation. He visited China within weeks, meeting Xi Jinping and Li Qiang, and reaffirming the bilateral relationship. He subsequently engaged with the US at multiple levels. The sequencing and tone of these early interactions signalled what the foreign policy establishment wanted it to signal: continuity, balance, and the refusal to prioritise one relationship over the other. Wong later stated that Singapore's foreign policy was "not on autopilot" but that its principles were "well-established" — a formulation that acknowledged the need for active management while reassuring observers that the strategic logic had not changed.

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Section 8: Arguments and Rhetoric

The "We Don't Want to Choose" Doctrine

The most frequently invoked formulation in Singapore's foreign policy discourse is the refusal to choose between the US and China. Lee Hsien Loong stated this with particular clarity at the Shangri-La Dialogue in 2019: "Singapore is a close friend and security partner of the US, and we are also a close friend and important economic partner of China. We do not want to be forced to choose between the two."

This position rests on several arguments. First, the strategic argument: Singapore's security is best served by a balance of power in which both the US and China are present in the region, because the dominance of either would reduce Singapore's autonomy. Second, the economic argument: Singapore's economy is integrated with both the American and Chinese economic systems, and severing ties with either would be catastrophic. Third, the normative argument: forcing small states to choose is itself a violation of the principles of sovereign equality and non-interference that should govern international relations.

Critics from both sides have challenged this position. American commentators have argued that in a military confrontation — over Taiwan, for example — Singapore would have to choose, and that its refusal to prepare for that contingency amounts to strategic free-riding. Chinese commentators have argued that a country that hosts US military rotations, purchases F-35s, and shares intelligence with the CIA is already aligned with the US, and that the "not choosing" rhetoric is simply a way of having the benefits of American protection while avoiding the costs of Chinese displeasure.

Singapore's response, articulated most explicitly by Bilahari Kausikan, is that the binary framing is itself a form of great-power pressure — that by insisting countries must choose, the great powers are already exercising the kind of coercion that the rules-based order is supposed to prevent.

The Structural Vulnerability Argument

A distinct but related argument, advanced primarily by Singapore's economic policy makers and by Lee Hsien Loong in his Foreign Affairs essay, concerns the structural vulnerability of small, open economies to great-power fragmentation. The argument is that Singapore's economic model — built on the free flow of goods, capital, technology, and talent across borders — is only viable in a world of open markets and rules-based trade. A world that bifurcates into competing economic blocs would force Singapore to choose a bloc, and either choice would mean sacrificing access to a significant share of the global economy.

This argument has been reinforced by economic data. China became Singapore's largest trading partner in 2013 and has remained so since. Bilateral trade in goods exceeded S$160 billion annually by the mid-2020s. But the United States and the European Union remain critical markets, and American and European companies remain among the largest investors in Singapore. The semiconductor industry illustrates the dilemma most vividly: Singapore hosts fabrication and packaging operations from American, European, and Chinese companies, all embedded in global supply chains that cross the US-China divide.

ASEAN Centrality as Strategic Defence

Singapore's most consistent institutional answer to the US-China rivalry has been the principle of ASEAN centrality — the idea that ASEAN-centred institutions should remain the primary framework for multilateral engagement in the Indo-Pacific. This principle serves Singapore's interests in several ways: it embeds Singapore in a regional grouping that gives it greater diplomatic weight than it would have alone; it provides a framework for engaging with both great powers simultaneously; and it resists the emergence of competing architectures (the Quad, AUKUS, the Belt and Road Initiative) that could marginalise ASEAN and force its members into rival camps.

The ASEAN centrality argument has come under strain, however. ASEAN's inability to produce a unified position on the South China Sea, its failure to enforce the Five-Point Consensus on Myanmar, and the perception that the organisation is too slow and too consensus-bound to address urgent security challenges have all undermined its credibility. Critics — including some within Singapore's own foreign policy community — have questioned whether ASEAN centrality is a viable strategy or merely a rhetorical device for avoiding hard choices.

Singapore's response has been to acknowledge ASEAN's limitations while arguing that the alternatives are worse. A region without ASEAN, Lee Hsien Loong argued, would be a region in which great powers dealt with smaller states bilaterally — a format that would maximise the leverage of the powerful and minimise the agency of the weak.

Bilahari Kausikan's Framework: Clarity of Mind

Bilahari Kausikan has developed what amounts to the most sophisticated analytical framework among Singapore's policy intellectuals for understanding the US-China rivalry from a small-state perspective. His core arguments include:

First, that the rivalry is structural and will persist for decades — it is not a phase that will pass but a defining feature of the international order that Singapore must learn to live with.

Second, that both powers seek to shape Singapore's choices through a combination of incentives and pressures, and that the first step in preserving autonomy is recognising this fact clearly — what Kausikan calls "clarity of mind."

Third, that Chinese influence operations are qualitatively different from American ones because they exploit ethnic and cultural ties in ways that can blur the line between legitimate engagement and manipulation.

Fourth, that Singapore must resist the temptation to believe it can manage the rivalry through cleverness alone — that there will be costs to non-alignment, and Singapore must be prepared to pay them.

Fifth, that the ultimate safeguard for a small state is internal cohesion — that Singapore's ability to resist external pressure depends on the strength of its domestic institutions, the unity of its population, and the credibility of its leadership.

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Section 9: The Contested Record

Is "Not Choosing" Really Possible?

The most fundamental point of contention is whether Singapore's "not choosing" position is sustainable. Several lines of critique have emerged:

The realist critique holds that in a genuine great-power confrontation — a conflict over Taiwan, a military incident in the South China Sea — Singapore would have to choose, because the geographic and logistical realities of Changi Naval Base, American military rotations, and intelligence sharing mean that Singapore is already functionally aligned with the United States. The "not choosing" rhetoric, in this view, is a peacetime luxury that would collapse under wartime pressure.

The Chinese critique argues that Singapore's position is not genuinely neutral but structurally pro-American: the F-35 purchases, the hosting of US naval assets, the intelligence relationship, and the Strategic Framework Agreement all constitute alignment with the US, regardless of Singapore's rhetoric. From this perspective, "not choosing" is simply choosing the US while maintaining plausible deniability.

The American critique, expressed occasionally by Washington commentators and officials, argues that Singapore's hedging strategy amounts to free-riding — benefiting from the US security umbrella while avoiding the costs and commitments of genuine partnership. This critique intensified during the Trump era, when the transactional approach to alliances made the gap between Singapore's security reliance on the US and its trade reliance on China more politically visible.

The internal critique, advanced quietly within Singapore's own policy community, questions whether the government's public messaging — which emphasises balance and equidistance — accurately reflects the underlying strategic reality. Some argue that Singapore is, in practice, much closer to the US than its rhetoric suggests, and that the pretence of equidistance creates a credibility problem with both powers.

Singapore's leaders have not fully resolved these critiques. Their response is essentially that the question of wartime alignment is hypothetical and that Singapore's diplomatic energy should be directed at preventing the confrontation that would force the choice rather than at preparing for it.

The Economic Hedging Debate

A related debate concerns the sustainability of economic hedging — maintaining deep economic ties with both the US and China simultaneously. As technology restrictions tighten, as supply chains reconfigure along geopolitical lines, and as both powers increasingly demand that economic partners align with their regulatory and technology standards, the space for dual integration may narrow.

Some Singapore economists and business leaders argue that the government underestimates the difficulty of sustaining a dual-integration strategy and that Singapore should be more proactive about preparing for a world in which some degree of economic bifurcation is inevitable. Others — including most government officials — argue that the premature assumption of bifurcation would be self-fulfilling and that Singapore's best strategy is to resist fragmentation for as long as possible while building resilience for the scenarios in which it occurs.

The Kishore Mahbubani Debate

Kishore Mahbubani, the former Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and one of Singapore's most prominent public intellectuals, has advanced arguments on the US-China rivalry that have placed him in tension with the government's position. Mahbubani has argued that the West — and the United States in particular — has failed to recognise the legitimacy of China's rise and that continued attempts to maintain Western primacy are both futile and dangerous. His book Has China Won? (2020) was widely read but also widely criticised for what some regarded as excessive sympathy for Beijing's perspective.

Within Singapore, Mahbubani's views have generated vigorous debate. His critics — including Bilahari Kausikan, in publicly sharp exchanges — argue that his analysis underestimates the coercive dimension of Chinese power and that his prescription for Western accommodation risks encouraging Chinese assertiveness. The debate between Kausikan and Mahbubani — conducted in lectures, op-eds, and social media — has been the most prominent public intellectual exchange on foreign policy in Singapore's recent history, and it illustrates the genuine diversity of views within the policy community, even if the government's own position hews closer to Kausikan's caution than to Mahbubani's accommodation.

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Section 10: Outcomes and Evidence

Economic Indicators

The economic data through the mid-2020s tell a story of successful hedging — so far. China has remained Singapore's largest trading partner, with bilateral goods trade exceeding S$160 billion annually. The United States has remained the largest or second-largest source of foreign direct investment, with cumulative FDI stock exceeding US$300 billion. The European Union has grown in importance as a trade and investment partner, consistent with Singapore's diversification strategy. ASEAN trade has also grown, reflecting Singapore's deepening regional integration.

GDP growth has been volatile — disrupted by the trade war (2019), the pandemic (2020), the post-pandemic recovery (2021-2022), and the uncertainties of accelerating decoupling (2023-2026) — but Singapore's economy has demonstrated resilience. The financial sector has benefited from capital flows seeking a neutral hub, and Singapore has attracted significant investment from companies seeking to reduce concentration risk in China.

Security Posture

Singapore's defence relationships with both the US and China have expanded in parallel. The F-35B acquisition is progressing. US naval rotations through Changi continue. Bilateral military exercises with the US have expanded in scope and complexity. Simultaneously, the 2019 Defence Cooperation Agreement with China has provided a framework for military-to-military engagement, including port calls, personnel exchanges, and modest joint exercises.

The SAF's training arrangements in the US — at facilities in Arizona, Idaho, Louisiana, and elsewhere — remain the largest overseas training programme for Singapore's military, reflecting the depth of the defence relationship. Training arrangements in Taiwan (Exercise Starlight) have continued, though with greater discretion following the Terrex incident.

Diplomatic Positioning

Singapore's diplomatic positioning has been broadly successful in maintaining relationships with both powers. Lee Hsien Loong was received warmly in both Washington and Beijing during his final years as Prime Minister. Lawrence Wong's early visits to both capitals were positively received. Singapore's standing in international forums — the Shangri-La Dialogue, ASEAN, the United Nations — remains strong.

The Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act of 2021 represents the legislative dimension of Singapore's response to influence operations — a recognition that maintaining sovereignty in the age of great-power competition requires not only diplomatic skill but also domestic legal frameworks to protect against manipulation.

Regional Dynamics

Singapore's advocacy for ASEAN centrality has achieved mixed results. The ASEAN-centred institutional architecture remains intact, and the East Asia Summit continues to provide a multilateral framework for US-China-ASEAN engagement. However, the emergence of the Quad, AUKUS, and various bilateral "minilateral" arrangements has created competing architectures that dilute ASEAN's centrality in practice even as it is rhetorically affirmed.

The RCEP agreement (signed 2020, entered into force 2022) — which includes both China and ASEAN members but not the US — and the CPTPP (which includes Singapore and several ASEAN members but neither the US nor China as of 2026) illustrate the fragmentation of the regional economic architecture. Singapore's membership in both reflects its hedging strategy but also underscores the challenge of maintaining coherence in an increasingly complex institutional landscape.

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Section 11: Archive Gaps and Research Questions

1. Internal decision-making during the Terrex crisis. The deliberations within Singapore's cabinet and foreign policy establishment during the November 2016 - January 2017 period have not been publicly documented. The question of what options were considered, what diplomatic channels were activated, and what concessions (if any) were offered in exchange for the vehicles' return remains opaque.

2. Intelligence sharing with the United States. The scope and nature of Singapore's intelligence relationship with the US — widely understood to be extensive but never publicly detailed — is a significant gap. Understanding how intelligence cooperation shapes Singapore's strategic assessments of China would provide important context for its policy positions.

3. The Huawei decision-making process. Singapore's telecommunications operators' decisions regarding Huawei equipment in 5G networks were officially described as commercial and technical matters. The extent to which the government influenced or directed these decisions, and the nature of any discussions with Washington or Beijing, has not been publicly documented.

4. Chinese influence operations in Singapore. Beyond the Huang Jing case and the passage of FICA, the full scope of Chinese influence operations targeting Singapore — through united front work, media cultivation, academic engagement, and business relationships — has not been comprehensively documented. Bilahari Kausikan has alluded to the problem repeatedly, but systematic analysis remains limited in the public domain.

5. Singapore's private diplomacy between the US and China. Singapore's role as an intermediary and back channel between Washington and Beijing has been referenced but not documented. The specific occasions on which Singapore facilitated communication, conveyed messages, or offered mediation between the two powers remain in the realm of diplomatic confidentiality.

6. Economic contingency planning. The extent to which Singapore's government has developed contingency plans for severe US-China decoupling scenarios — including the possibility of being forced to choose which economic system to align with — has not been publicly disclosed. Given Singapore's institutional thoroughness, such planning almost certainly exists, but its content is unknown.

7. Military contingency planning for Taiwan scenarios. Singapore's military planning for contingencies involving a Taiwan conflict — which would directly affect freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and potentially require decisions about US military access to Changi — is, appropriately, classified. But the absence of public discussion about these scenarios leaves a gap in understanding how Singapore would respond to the crisis most likely to force the choice it seeks to avoid.

8. Internal debates on strategic orientation. The diversity of views within Singapore's foreign policy community — from Kausikan's caution to Mahbubani's accommodation — suggests that internal debates on strategic orientation are vigorous. The record of these debates within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defence, and the Prime Minister's Office has not been made public.

9. ASEAN internal dynamics. Singapore's interactions with ASEAN partners on the US-China rivalry — including efforts to coordinate positions, manage disagreements, and prevent ASEAN fragmentation — have been documented only in official communiques that obscure more than they reveal.

10. The semiconductor supply chain vulnerability. Detailed analysis of Singapore's exposure to semiconductor supply chain disruptions — including which specific companies and products are most vulnerable to US export controls or Chinese retaliation — has not been published in accessible form.

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Section 12: Spiral Index

Connected Documents — Direct

Connected Documents — Thematic

Research Pathways

• How does FICA compare with similar legislation in other small states? The Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act of 2021 was Singapore's legislative response to influence operations. Comparative analysis with Australia's Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme and similar legislation in other democracies would illuminate whether Singapore's approach is distinctive or part of a broader trend.
• What is the actual economic cost of hedging? Singapore's dual-engagement strategy has opportunity costs — compliance burdens, foregone efficiencies, the need to maintain redundant supply chain relationships. Quantifying these costs would provide a more rigorous basis for evaluating the strategy's sustainability.
• How do Singaporeans understand the rivalry? Public opinion data on Singaporean attitudes toward the US and China, and toward the "choosing sides" question, would illuminate the domestic political constraints on foreign policy.
• What lessons does the Cold War non-alignment experience offer? A systematic comparison between Singapore's Cold War positioning and its current US-China strategy would identify both continuities and differences that illuminate the structural challenge.
• How do other Southeast Asian states compare? Singapore's positioning is one of several Southeast Asian strategies for managing the rivalry. Comparative analysis with Vietnam (which has its own complex relationship with both powers), Indonesia (which emphasises "free and active" foreign policy), and the Philippines (which has oscillated between alignment and hedging) would provide regional context.

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Document compiled for the Singapore Governance Knowledge Corpus. This document synthesises publicly available sources including government statements, speeches, parliamentary records, diplomatic memoirs, academic analyses, and media reporting. Classified materials, internal government deliberations, and intelligence assessments are not included. The analysis reflects conditions as understood through early 2026.

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Sources and References

1. Lee Hsien Loong, "The Endangered Asian Century," Foreign Affairs (July/August 2020). The most comprehensive public articulation of Singapore's perspective on the US-China rivalry by a serving Prime Minister, arguing that Asia's prosperity depends on avoiding a bifurcation into rival blocs.

2. Lee Hsien Loong, Keynote Address at the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue (31 May 2019). Lee's landmark speech warning that Southeast Asian countries do not wish to choose sides and calling on both powers to accommodate each other's interests.

3. Bilahari Kausikan, Singapore Is Not an Island: Views on Singapore Foreign Policy (Singapore: Straits Times Press, 2017). Collected writings by the former Permanent Secretary of MFA, offering the most sustained public articulation of Singapore's strategic caution toward China's rise.

4. Bilahari Kausikan, "Dealing with an Ambiguous World" (various lectures and essays, 2015–2024). Kausikan's ongoing commentary on Singapore's foreign policy challenges, including sharp critiques of both Chinese assertiveness and Western naivety.

5. Kishore Mahbubani, Has China Won? The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy (New York: PublicAffairs, 2020). The most prominent Singaporean argument for Western accommodation of China's rise, generating significant domestic and international debate.

6. Kishore Mahbubani, The Asian 21st Century (Singapore: Springer, 2022). Further elaboration of the thesis that the era of Western dominance is ending and that Asia — including China — deserves a greater role in global governance.

7. Parliamentary Debates, Singapore, on the Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act (FICA) (October 2021). Hansard records of the parliamentary debate on FICA, including ministerial statements on the threat of foreign influence operations in the context of great-power competition.

8. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Singapore, "Singapore's Foreign Policy: Key Principles and Priorities" (various MFA press statements and ministerial speeches, 2018–2026). Official articulations of Singapore's positioning on the US-China rivalry, including statements on ASEAN centrality, rules-based order, and non-alignment.

9. IISS Shangri-La Dialogue Speeches (annual, 2002–2025). Keynote addresses and ministerial speeches at Singapore's premier defence diplomacy forum, including addresses by US Secretaries of Defense, Chinese defence officials, and ASEAN ministers that collectively document the evolving great-power discourse.

10. Singapore Ministry of Defence, Strategic Framework Agreement with the United States (2005, updated 2015, 2019). The bilateral defence framework that structures Singapore's security relationship with the US, including provisions for military rotations, access arrangements, and technology cooperation.

11. Singapore–China Defence Cooperation Agreement (2019). The bilateral agreement providing a framework for military-to-military engagement with China, representing Singapore's effort to balance its security relationships.

12. Lee Kuan Yew, One Man's View of the World (Singapore: Straits Times Press, 2013). Lee's final major publication, containing his assessments of China's trajectory, American staying power in Asia, and Singapore's strategic choices.

13. Ang Cheng Guan, Singapore, ASEAN and the Cambodian Conflict, 1978–1991 (Singapore: NUS Press, 2013). Provides historical precedent for Singapore's approach to great-power competition in Southeast Asia during the Cold War.

14. Chong Ja Ian, "Small State Soft Power Strategies: Virtual Enlargement in the Cases of the Vatican City State and Singapore," Cambridge Review of International Affairs (2010). Academic analysis of Singapore's diplomatic strategies as a small state navigating great-power dynamics.

15. Goh, Evelyn, "Meeting the China Challenge: The U.S. in Southeast Asian Regional Security Strategies," Policy Studies, No. 16 (East-West Center, 2005). Framework for understanding Southeast Asian hedging strategies in response to China's rise, applicable to Singapore's approach.

16. Kuik Cheng-Chwee, "The Essence of Hedging: Malaysia and Singapore's Response to a Rising China," Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol. 30, No. 2 (2008). Comparative academic analysis of hedging strategies by the two states most directly affected by the FPDA legacy and US-China competition.

17. Parliamentary Debates, Singapore, on Foreign Policy and US-China Relations (various years, 2018–2026). Hansard records of parliamentary questions and ministerial statements on Singapore's positioning amid the US-China rivalry, including debates on trade diversification, technology policy, and diplomatic strategy.