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CHINA’S GLOBAL LEAP
In Singapore, loud echoes of Beijing’s positions generate anxiety
President Xi Jinping wants to build influence among ethnic-Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, raising concerns that the Chinese Communist Party is stoking divided loyalties
Waterloo Street, one of the oldest streets in multiracial Singapore, is host to Chinese temples, food centers and newspaper vendors, alongside a Hindu temple and a synagogue.
By
Shibani Mahtani and
Amrita Chandradas
July 24 at 5:00 p.m.
11
SINGAPORE — As China accelerates efforts to build its global power, President Xi Jinping has laid out an extravagant vision for overseas ethnic-Chinese communities that
he hopes will “give shape to a powerful joint force for advancing the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
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Promoting these communities as a vehicle for China’s geopolitical ambitions has become something of a mantra in Beijing, often wrapped in bland rhetoric like
building a “shared future.” But in seeking to incorporate citizens of other countries into its vision, critics say, Beijing is stoking divided loyalties, and their potentially destabilizing consequences, across Southeast Asia — home to more than 80 percent of the ethnic-Chinese people outside China and Taiwan, researchers say.
Concerns are most pronounced in Singapore, a multiracial city-state with a majority ethnic-Chinese population that is increasingly sympathetic to Beijing. A 2022 survey of 19 countries by the Pew Research Center found that Singapore was
one of only three that saw China and Xi in favorable terms. In June, the Eurasia Group Foundation released a survey conducted in Singapore, South Korea and the Philippines that
found Singapore was the only one that viewed China more favorably than it did the United States. Fewer than half of respondents in Singapore viewed the United States favorably, compared with 56 percent who viewed China favorably.