Singapore and the US... a vantage-point view.

I'm back in the Little Red Dot! And I have been catching up on the newspapers. But I now find it tiring to read the text, given the clouding in my eye. Expect to find more typo errors cropping up in my blog too.

I want to highlight extracts from US correspondent Tracy Quek's article on Singaoore's outgoing ambasador to the US, Professor Chan Heng Chee (Sunday Times, 1 July, "When US noticed the 'little country that could' ", page 40).

Prof Chan, now 70, was among the teaching staff who inspired me when I was a student of political science at the then University of Singapore in the 1970s. Her views below (extracted) -- distilled from her 16 years in DC as our envoy -- on the American image of Singapore, on the state of Singapore-US relations, and on the evolving dynamics of the Singapore polity are worth serious consideration...

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[When Prof Chan first took up her US posting in 1996, it was] against the backdrop of tense Singapore-US ties following the caning of American teenager Michael Fay in 1994 for vandalism.

In an hour-long exclusive interview with The Sunday Times, Prof Chan recalled that the Singapore-US relationship was “not in a good spot” when she arrived...

The first task she set herself was to change the American media’s “hostile” perception of Singapore, she said, noting that “everybody was writing of Singapore as this authoritarian state and (putting) us in the same sentence as Iraq, China and Myanmar”.

The turning point was the 1997 Asian financial crisis. “That was when Singapore started being regarded in a different way, not associated with Michael Fay, but as the country and economy that seemed to stand above the rest, because our currency did not swoon, we had good corporate governance,” she recounted.

After the financial crisis, Singapore’s achievements in maths and science were evident, and the Republic was also developing technopreneurship and biotechnology. All these made people [in the US] sit up and say “what is this little country that is doing all these avant garde things that bring you into the modern economy”, she recalled.

Today, Americans tell her that Singapore is the “little country that could”. They also see Singapore as a country that gets things right and as a nation that comes up with the right solutions, she said.

“I know in Singapore, we have social media and people have become more critical, and that is our evolution. But we forget that so many other countries have things so much worse and wrong,” she said, adding that “as you are trying to right things, you can make some mistakes, and to me that is better than to not do anything”...

Asked how she sees Singapore-US ties evolving, Prof Chan said the aim of Singapore’s diplomacy was to make sure the Republic “remains relevant in the world... to our partners, and in the region”. Singapore can do that by “being what we are, by speaking frankly, objectively, honestly, and by thinking through strategic issues”.

In the Asia-Pacific region where “we have rising powers... and transitions”, Singapore’s views and advice that are aimed at creating stabilising situations have led her to believe that “more than ever, we have a job to do”.