Singapore's new leader yesterday tried to mend fences with China, saying the city-state would back Beijing if Taipei ``provoked'' armed conflict across the Taiwan Strait.
In a nationally televised address, Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) reaffirmed Singapore's backing for the so-called one-China policy, and stressed the importance that the tiny Southeast Asian country attaches to cordial relations with Asia's emerging giant.
"There is a real risk of miscalculation and mishap" across the Strait, Lee said in the National Day Rally speech, the local equivalent of the U.S. president's state of the union address.
Ties between Singapore and China were severely strained last month after Lee made a ``private and unofficial'' visit to Taiwan.
Beijing reacted with fury to the visit, saying that it violated Singapore's recognition of Beijing as the sole, legitimate Chinese government.
"I will not change our one-China policy. But I had to make the trip to meet the Taiwanese leaders, so I can make the right decision for Singapore in a crisis," Lee said. He added: "If the conflict is provoked by Taiwan, we will not support Taiwan.''
Lee -- elder son of Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀), modern Singapore's founding father -- was sworn in Aug. 12 as Singapore's third prime minister. He replaced Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟).
Earlier this month, Chinese media said that China might delay talks on a free trade deal with Singapore in retaliation for Lee's visiting Taipei.
"His visit has dampened the mood to negotiate the free trade area between the two countries," the China Daily quoted an unidentified commerce ministry official as saying. Economists in Singapore voiced doubts that a delay in talks would damage the wealthy city-state's US$93 billion economy but said it could hurt in more subtle ways, casting a shadow over business deals between the Asian dynamos.
Economists said assessing the impact was difficult until it became clear how much China wanted to punish Singapore for Lee's July 10-12 visit, which the Singapore government has defended as unofficial and within its sovereign right.
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
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