Sun, Oct 08, 2023 page3

• Singapore can join ‘commonwealth’ first: ex-AIT head

  YOU GO FIRST: A ‘Chinese commonwealth’ might be more suitable for Singapore, a ‘partly free’ country, former American Institute in Taiwan director William Stanton said

  • By Jonathan Chin / Staff writer, with CNA
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  Singapore should pursue joining a Chinese commonwealth before urging Taiwan to do so, former American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) director William Stanton wrote on Thursday in a rebuttal to a former Singaporean foreign minister’s comments at a forum last month.

  Former Singaporean minister for foreign affairs George Yeo (楊榮文) on Sept. 11 told the Asia-Pacific Forward Forum in Taipei that a “Chinese commonwealth” can serve as a political framework to bring Taiwan and China to the negotiating table.

  Taiwan and China’s divide is found “at the political level, not cultural or civilizational,” he was quoted as saying, adding that the former should elaborate its “one China” interpretation to allow loose forms of union with Beijing.

  

  Former American Institute in Taiwan director William Stanton is pictured in an undated photograph.

  Photo: Taipei Times file

  “How long it will take for the Chinese commonwealth to evolve into ‘one China,’ and what the nature of that one China will be, no one can foresee today. By then, it is entirely possible that there will neither be a PRC [People’s Republic of China] nor an ROC [Republic of China] but, just simply, China,” he was quoted as saying.

  Stanton wrote an op-ed for the online English-language Taiwan News titled, “A Chinese Commonwealth: A proposal Singapore itself should best pursue.”

  “Yeo should [know] how well Singapore would fit into a ‘Chinese commonwealth’ before presuming to recommend that Taiwan, a country he clearly neither understands nor appreciates, do so,” Stanton said.

  “Singapore is a far better fit for his dream of a ‘Chinese commonwealth,’” he said. “Singapore should lead the way. But I doubt it will get far.”

  Yeo failed to understand the “rigidity and timelines” of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) ambitions or take notice of Hong Kong’s “glaringly obvious tragic fate” after being subsumed under Beijing’s “one country, two systems” scheme, he said.

  Most Taiwanese have little cultural affinity for China’s culture and even less for its political system dominated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Stanton said.

  “Some 75 percent of Singaporeans are ethnically Chinese, and there is no evidence at all that they — much less Yeo himself — are yearning to be citizens of China,” he said. “Nonetheless, the sincerity and conviction behind any proposal for a ‘Chinese commonwealth’ can be put to the test, and if so, it should best be tested first in Singapore.”

  Singapore, like Taiwan, has never been a part of China or ruled by the CCP while its “bite-sized territory,” like Hong Kong, is more amendable to being “easily digested by the PRC,” Stanton said.

  This means “Singapore is a far better candidate than Taiwan for membership in a Chinese commonwealth,” he said.

  Considered a true democracy and a leading model of freedom in Asia, Taiwan would face difficulties integrating into a sphere dominated by unfree Beijing, but Singapore, ranked only as a “partly free” country in Freedom House listings, might adapt more easily, he said.
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