Chapter 1: Looking Back and Forward at 50 Years of China-Singapore Ties
Chapter 1 is by John Wong and Lye Liang Fook, and it tries to do something ambitious: cover the entire arc of Singapore-China relations in one chapter. Centuries of trade, Cold War politics, panda diplomacy, military exercises, and a whole web of institutional frameworks. The through-line is clear: pragmatism made this relationship work, and institutions are what will keep it going.
Trade Before There Was a Country
Here’s the thing most people don’t realize. Singapore and China were doing business long before either country looked anything like it does today.
Trade between China and the Malay lands goes back to the Tang Dynasty (618-907). A Chinese trader named Wang Dayuan wrote about Temasek (old Singapore) in 1349. Admiral Zheng He showed up in Malacca in 1409. But the real flow picked up in the 1800s when Chinese immigrants from Fujian and Guangdong came to work in British Malaya. By 1860, ethnic Chinese made up 60% of Singapore’s population.
After Hong Kong became a British colony in 1842, Singapore linked up with it as an entrepot center for China-Southeast Asia trade. The immigrants who came as contract laborers eventually became traders and craftsmen, dominating the economic life of the Straits Settlements.
So when people talk about Singapore-China relations “starting” with diplomatic ties in 1990, they’re missing centuries of context.
Surviving the Cold War on Pragmatism
After the People’s Republic of China was formed in 1949, things got complicated. Indonesia broke off ties with China. The Philippines and Thailand suspended trade. Most of Southeast Asia went into deep freeze.
But here’s what happened with Singapore: trade kept going. Even during the Korean War, when a UN embargo shut down rubber exports to China in 1951-1952, Singapore still imported Chinese goods. For four decades, from 1950 to 1990, trade happened without any formal diplomatic framework.
The authors use the word “pragmatism” a lot in this chapter, and it fits. Both sides kept the economic relationship alive by separating trade from politics.
In the 1950s, China was running product exhibitions at the Bank of China’s Singapore branch on Battery Road. Over a thousand items on display: bicycles, sewing machines, textiles, porcelain, tea. Commercial diplomacy in action, right in the middle of Cold War tensions.
The Road to Formal Ties
The 1970s brought a thaw. Individual ASEAN countries started normalizing relations with China. Singapore improved ties too, but with a deliberate twist: it would be the last ASEAN member to establish formal diplomatic relations.
Why? Because Singapore has a majority Chinese population, and it did not want its neighbors thinking it was acting on China’s behalf. By waiting until Indonesia (August 1990) formalized ties first, Singapore sent a clear message: we’re an independent country making our own decisions.
The diplomatic milestones came step by step. Foreign Minister Rajaratnam visited China in 1975 and met Premier Zhou Enlai. Lee Kuan Yew followed in 1976 and met Chairman Mao, though Mao was too ill for a real conversation. Lee took it as a signal that China considered Singapore important enough.
Then came the formal agreements. A trade agreement in December 1979. Commercial representative offices in 1980. Trade offices in Beijing and Singapore in 1981. And finally, full diplomatic relations on October 3, 1990. The authors argue this patience actually laid a better foundation for everything that followed.
Deng Xiaoping’s Singapore Moment
Deng Xiaoping visited Singapore in November 1978 and was impressed by what a small post-colonial country had accomplished. After the visit, China’s People’s Daily stopped calling Singapore “running dogs of the American imperialists” and started describing it as a garden city and a model for housing.
Then in early 1992, during his famous Southern Tour, Deng specifically mentioned Singapore as a reference for China’s reforms. Over 400 Chinese delegations visited Singapore that year to study how the place worked. That one remark led directly to the Suzhou Industrial Park project in 1994 and set the tone for decades of cooperation.
By 2014, Singapore was China’s top foreign investor (US$5.8 billion), China was Singapore’s largest trading partner (S$121.5 billion in bilateral trade), and over 6,000 Chinese companies were operating in Singapore.
Cultural Exchanges: Chingay, River Hongbao, and Huayi
The relationship isn’t just about money. Cultural exchanges have been a steady part of the story.
The Chingay Parade, Singapore’s big Lunar New Year street event, has featured Chinese dance troupes since at least 1994. By 2015, China sent contingents from Gansu, Suzhou, Tianjin, and Xinjiang. Suzhou and Tianjin even had their own floats, a nod to the two flagship bilateral projects in those cities.
Then there’s the River Hongbao festival, started in 1987 along the Singapore River. Each year the organizers partner with a different Chinese province to showcase local culture and performances. In 2010, Chengdu artisans spent a month building 88 giant lanterns from ceramic utensils and sugar syrup. In 2015, Xinjiang acrobats did tightrope walks 20 meters off the ground.
Fun fact from the book: Peng Liyuan, wife of current Chinese President Xi Jinping, performed at the River Hongbao in 1990 when Xi was still a mid-ranked official in Fujian province.
The Huayi Chinese Festival of Arts at the Esplanade, launched in 2003, has also been a regular showcase for Chinese artists, featuring everything from classic Kun opera to pianist Li Yundi.
The authors make an interesting point: back in the 1950s-1970s, Singapore was nervous about the cultural dimension of its Chinese majority and how that might make neighbors suspicious. That anxiety is basically gone now.
Pandas as Diplomacy
Singapore got its first taste of panda diplomacy in 1990 when two male pandas, An An and Xin Xing, arrived for a 100-day exhibition celebrating the new diplomatic ties.
The bigger deal came in 2009 when President Hu Jintao announced China would loan Singapore a pair of pandas for 10 years. Singapore was only the seventh country to receive them.
Singapore went all in. They planted bamboo near the zoo, built an S$8.5 million climate-controlled enclosure, trained a dedicated vet team, and ran a public naming contest. The pandas, named Kai Kai and Jia Jia, arrived in September 2012 on a chartered Singapore Airlines flight with a VIP welcome. The book even mentions that by 2014, the zoo was doing “squat training” with Kai Kai to strengthen his hind legs for mating. I’m not making that up.
Military Cooperation
This is the area most people probably don’t know about. Singapore and China signed a defence agreement in January 2008, their first one ever, covering exchanges, courses, seminars, port calls, and humanitarian relief cooperation.
Things moved fast. In 2009, the Singapore Armed Forces and the PLA ran their first joint counter-terrorism exercise in Guilin with about 60 troops each. By 2014, they’d graduated to conventional military training with live firing in Nanjing. They also worked together in multilateral settings: anti-piracy operations off the Gulf of Aden in 2011, and a massive 18-nation disaster relief exercise in Brunei in 2013 with 3,200 personnel and seven ships.
A Defence Policy Dialogue was set up in 2008 for regular strategic discussions. The authors note that Singapore’s growing military relationship with China doesn’t prevent it from having similar ties with other countries. It’s not exclusive. That’s part of the pragmatism.
Building the Institutional Framework
Here’s where it gets interesting for anyone who cares about how international relationships actually work.
The big structure is the Joint Council for Bilateral Cooperation (JCBC), launched in 2003 as the highest-level governmental body between the two countries. Co-chaired at the deputy prime minister and vice premier level. By the time of writing, 11 meetings had covered everything from double taxation to banking cooperation, free trade, and currency trading between the yuan and Singapore dollar.
Under the JCBC sit Joint Steering Councils for the Suzhou Industrial Park and the Tianjin Eco-city, each with working committees.
But it goes deeper. Singapore has separate cooperation mechanisms with seven Chinese provinces: Shandong, Sichuan, Liaoning, Zhejiang, Tianjin, Jiangsu, and Guangdong. Each co-chaired at the ministerial level. This gives Singapore direct working relationships with sub-national Chinese leaders, which is pretty unusual for a small country.
On top of that, there’s an Investment Promotion Committee (since 2007), a Forum on Leadership (since 2009), and a Social Management Forum (since 2012). A lot of institutional machinery for two countries that didn’t even have formal diplomatic ties until 1990.
The Big Takeaway
The authors’ main argument is straightforward. In the early days, strong personalities drove the relationship. Deng Xiaoping and Lee Kuan Yew had genuine respect for each other. But you can’t build a lasting relationship between countries on personalities alone. People retire. They pass away.
What Singapore and China have done is build institutions that create regular reasons for officials to meet, review cooperation, and explore new areas. The JCBC, the provincial councils, the forums, the defence dialogue: all of these provide structure that survives leadership changes.
It’s remarkably unique, the authors note, for a small country like Singapore to have this many high-level platforms with China. That speaks to how seriously both sides take the relationship.
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