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China’s nationalistic Global Times has led the attack against Singapore fiercely.
On Tuesday its Chinese-language edition published a news story citing a “military expert” who said the designer of the personnel carriers “has little to be proud of. It is merely an assembly of parts from different countries, and its performance is not outstanding compared with similar vehicles.”
The article said “neither China’s People’s Liberation Army nor its defence industry will care about gaining information about it. China’s land *vehicles are much more *advanced than Singapore’s.”
So there.
The publication said “this matter is completely Singapore’s fault”, since such equipment should not have been taken to Taiwan, with which China *opposes any military contacts.
It conceded that “Singapore is good at playing a big country *diplomatically, although it is a small one”.
But this small nation has such a bad image, it said, that Chinese people would prefer the vehicles to be confiscated and melted down in a steel mill.
It added about Stanley Lo, the Singapore ambassador to China — who said on Monday his government would not be cowed by the incident — that “he must have had his head kicked by a donkey”.
There is a history to this *antipathy. Lo became outraged two months ago about Global Times comments on Singapore’s position on the South China Sea; the city-state has been more critical of China than some ASEAN peers.
Global Times editor Hu Xijin had written that at a conference, Singapore echoed the stances of the US and Japan over territorial disputes in the region. Lo *attacked the report as fabricated.
Wang Haibin, a senior consultant at Oak Valley Think Tank in China who is being *widely cited there on this issue, said about Singapore: “Being small and weak are not obstacles to survival, but arrogance is.”
Since the demise of Lee, he said, the country had “rapidly stepped from prosperity to arrogance, and with the European Union and America retreating from globalisation and ideological confrontation, Singapore has stepped up to the frontline to *resist China”.
On Tuesday its Chinese-language edition published a news story citing a “military expert” who said the designer of the personnel carriers “has little to be proud of. It is merely an assembly of parts from different countries, and its performance is not outstanding compared with similar vehicles.”
The article said “neither China’s People’s Liberation Army nor its defence industry will care about gaining information about it. China’s land *vehicles are much more *advanced than Singapore’s.”
So there.
The publication said “this matter is completely Singapore’s fault”, since such equipment should not have been taken to Taiwan, with which China *opposes any military contacts.
It conceded that “Singapore is good at playing a big country *diplomatically, although it is a small one”.
But this small nation has such a bad image, it said, that Chinese people would prefer the vehicles to be confiscated and melted down in a steel mill.
It added about Stanley Lo, the Singapore ambassador to China — who said on Monday his government would not be cowed by the incident — that “he must have had his head kicked by a donkey”.
There is a history to this *antipathy. Lo became outraged two months ago about Global Times comments on Singapore’s position on the South China Sea; the city-state has been more critical of China than some ASEAN peers.
Global Times editor Hu Xijin had written that at a conference, Singapore echoed the stances of the US and Japan over territorial disputes in the region. Lo *attacked the report as fabricated.
Wang Haibin, a senior consultant at Oak Valley Think Tank in China who is being *widely cited there on this issue, said about Singapore: “Being small and weak are not obstacles to survival, but arrogance is.”
Since the demise of Lee, he said, the country had “rapidly stepped from prosperity to arrogance, and with the European Union and America retreating from globalisation and ideological confrontation, Singapore has stepped up to the frontline to *resist China”.
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