Southeast Asian countries should not be judged harshly on their shifting positions amid the heightened US-China rivalry, Singapore’s top diplomat has said, while emphasising unique “vulnerabilities and opportunities” across the region.
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Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan told the FutureChina Global Forum on Friday to avoid binary thinking, stressing that the city state was open for business to all, with China as its biggest trading partner and the United States its largest foreign investor.
Balakrishnan called Singapore a “technocratic and technophilic system” pursuing the latest technology regardless of source. “We will do business honestly, and we will not play games, and we will live up to our word,” he said at the event organised by the Singapore non-profit Business China.
On whether other Asean countries followed the same belief system, Balakrishnan said: “Everyone, in their own way, is trying to remain open and to have a more balanced set of relationships, but each country will make a slightly different adjustment to their foreign policy.”
He added: “Don’t judge other countries too quickly. Everyone has their own vulnerabilities, their own threat assessment, their own opportunities, and they are making those necessary adjustments. They cannot behave like us, and we should not expect them to behave like us.”
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Balakrishnan pointed out that after being used as an area for proxy wars 60 years ago, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations focused on economic integration and development, putting aside the vast diversity within the bloc in terms of political systems, languages and religions.