Singapore sought to play down the impact the seizure of nine of the city-state’s armored troop carriers could have on its relationship with Beijing, even as Chinese media pointed to growing anger over the incident.
The troop carriers were impounded last week as they passed through Hong Kong from Taiwan, sparking a rebuke from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs about Singapore maintaining military ties with Taiwan.
In his first comments on the matter, Singaporean Minister of Foreign Affairs Vivian Balakrishnan was quoted by the Straits Times Web site yesterday as saying it was “not a strategic incident.”
“I wouldn’t overreact to that ... we expect commercial providers of services to strictly comply with the law,” Balakrishnan was quoted as saying. “It will be a footnote on how to do things strictly, carefully and by the law. It’s not a strategic incident.”
Ties between China and Singapore have been strained, particularly over the disputed South China Sea, where Beijing suspects Singapore of siding with the US.
China claims most of the waterway, through which about US$5 trillion in trade passes each year, and has accused Washington of deliberately creating tension by sailing its ships close to Chinese-controlled islands.
On Monday, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it had lodged a protest to Singapore over the vehicles and demanded the city-state abide by Hong Kong’s relevant laws.
Singapore and Taiwan have a longstanding military relationship that began in the 1970s and involves Taiwan being used as grounds for Singaporean infantry training.
Beijing has grudgingly tolerated the agreement since China and Singapore re-established diplomatic relations in the 1990s.
“We all know, and China knows, that we’ve had special arrangements with Taiwan for a long time and what we are doing there is no longer a secret,” Balakrishnan said. “If you are truly close, there will be things you disagree about from time to time. Fortunately or unfortunately for Singapore, we are very transparent, we call a spade a spade. It doesn’t mean we are shifting our position or deliberately trying to poke people in the eye.”
China’s state-run tabloid the Global Times said the vehicles should be “melted down,” in its second swipe at Singapore in two days.
The newspaper criticized Singapore’s “carelessness” with the troop carriers, which it said reflected a failure to take seriously China’s displeasure over its relations with Taiwan.
“Singapore’s image in China is now so rotten that ordinary Chinese people think the best thing to do with the ‘confiscated’ armored vehicles that ‘walked right into our trap’ is to send them to the steel mills to be melted down,” it said.
The editorial, published in the paper’s Chinese-language edition, adopts a similarly strident tone to a Monday commentary in its English edition, accusing Singapore of hypocrisy.
In September, the paper embarked on a war of words with Singaporean Ambassador to China Stanley Loh (羅嘉良) over a report that said Singapore had raised the South China Sea at a summit in Venezuela, which the ambassador denied.
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