Faced with the Dragon: Perils and Prospects in Singapore's Ambivalent Relationship with China

Abstract

How Asian countries relate strategically with rising China remains one of the most debated questions in Asian security today. Although the concomitant rise of regional powers (China, Japan, and India) has undoubtedly shaped, and continues to shape, the geopolitical milieu of post-Cold War Asia, it is the perceived emergence of China as an economic and military power that has nonetheless engendered most concern among Asian countries, not least Singapore. Analysts, however, disagree over how Asians perceive and respond to China’s rise. One view, for example, has it that Asian countries have opted to bandwagon with China (as vassal states once did with imperial China);1 another that Asian states on the whole have demonstrated a greater inclination towards balancing China.2 A third view adopts the via media in suggesting that aspects of both bandwagoning and balancing can in fact be discerned in the behaviour of Asian states.3 Smaller and/or weaker Asian countries accordingly ‘hedge’4 against China and other major powers as they manage their respective vulnerabilities and dependencies vis-à-vis those more powerful than they.5