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Singapore's presidential hopeful Tharman Shanmugaratnam on China-US ties: Why the long game is vital
Exclusive | US must play ‘long game’ with China, says Singapore’s Tharman Shanmugaratnam, not go for short-term gains, risk worse ties later
- Ahead of Singapore’s presidential election, front runner Tharman Shanmugaratnam sets out how he sees his candidacy in an exclusive interview
- Read on for part one with his thoughts on US ‘economic warfare’, China’s growing capabilities and the experience he would bring to bear if elected
When he announced his presidential bid, he said he hoped to use his international experience at a time when the world was entering a more difficult era of tensions and polarisation.
Singapore set for three-way presidential contest on September 1
“I keep telling my colleagues internationally, never underestimate the complexity of the challenges that China faces,” he said. “They are more complex than those faced by any other major economy. And even with the best of technocratic abilities, it requires a constant balancing.”
Tharman said he was confident that China had the capabilities to get past the period of slowdown but it “may take some time”.
“You have to play a long game,” he said. “China will eventually develop its capabilities. And it will do so on its own as well as through a complex and interdependent global market economy, where there’ll be other players willing to engage with them, including those who are not permanent friends of the US.”
He added that the resulting effect of moving away from China “is a little bit of a mirage”. Chinese exports were being diverted through third countries, “which are now benefiting as new manufacturing centres” before exporting to the US, he said.
“It’s become a more diversified set of supply chains, but China is still there at its core, and rightly so, because it is an extremely competitive global manufacturing and logistics base.”
Tharman said he hoped the US would take a longer view of its relations with China.
“What long-term relationship does one want between these two major powers, China and the US? Is it a relationship of interdependence with certain, very carefully prescribed, constraints on that interdependence? Or is it a relationship of gradually cascading separation, which isn’t going to stop China from rising eventually, but will lead to a much more antagonistic relationship in the long term?”
He also pointed out that neither the US nor China would be able to demand that other countries join their camps for the long term.
“Most of Asia isn’t going to decide that they will walk away from China, trade and investment-wise, most of Asia is not going to make that decision. So that, too, has to be part of the long-term strategic calculation.”
Tharman said he feared that both sides of the Democrat-Republican divide in the US had little domestic incentive to halt, let alone roll back the “escalation of economic warfare” with China.
“So the incentives within democracy, as it’s now evolving in the US, are not conjoined with the longer-term interests of the US very well, nor of global prosperity,” he said.
“It requires a new coalescing of leadership in Congress, besides the administration, to take that long view. It’s not blind faith in free trade and free investment flows. It’s a strategic view as to what’s in the US’ long-term interests, and in the interests of global order, which we all depend on.”
If elected, Tharman said he would draw on his extensive experience and the networks of which he is part, both domestic and international.
“People know me in China, India, in the United States and Europe, and of course, in the region around us,” he said.
“We must always speak with humility, as a small country, but our ability so far to project a Singapore ‘voice of reason’ does not go unnoticed.”
Singapore-China ties based on policy, not ‘skewed view’ of cultural interests
He said Singapore need not be deterred by its small size from speaking up. “We must always be larger than that, larger through persuasion.”
This was not merely about projecting Singapore’s narrow interests, he stressed, but about being a “bridging player in addressing the challenges that we see in the world”.
“My leadership roles in various global fora involve finding ways in which everyone understands the challenges that different parts of the world are going through, particularly in the developing world, and finding a way in which even the major powers know that small countries and mid-sized powers want to play a role in avoiding a fragmentation of the whole system. Those are active roles, which I will continue to play.”
Part 2, tomorrow: Tharman Shanmugaratnam on what kind of president he plans to be