Sit down with George Yeo: On China's ambitions

foreign will become less anxious when it realizes that China is an expansionist I've also mentioned how in the Chinese thinkings that they built walls to protect themselves but on the other hand you know over the years we've seen how China has extended its reach you know to other countries through the Belgian Road initiative and currently there are some of these developing countries which have failed to meet their debt obligations and are in some trouble um and we've also seen China's you know actions in rhetoric on the South China Sea as you've mentioned do you think that you know you we may be a bit too sanguine about China's geostrategic Ambitions in the world no I think we have to take it uh once straight at the time and not put them all together in one basket and then draw an easy conclusion if you're talking about a burden road that I think is winning for everybody because if I do a road from China to you then there can be more trade both sides will benefit so China's building rule is a natural outcome of the growth of this economy and the spillage Beyond China this has always been in all Chinese dynasties it's always been the biggest internal Market in the world and it created huge opportunities for its neighbors so the burden road is a facilitation of that process it provides an opportunity for countries to coordinate their Master planes so that when they build rows and bridges they meet and connect to me it is obviously beneficial to everybody provided the birth and road is not all converging on China and not leading to a network of Transportation communication lines throughout Eurasia which I think it will be so you may be a road from China to Astana but Astana may be Rose to tashcan to Moscow to other places so in the end you have a web and the button wrote should not only serve China and its neighbors to serve these neighbors among themselves in the Japanese and Europeans and Americans want to add to the network that's all to do good so if they feel that China is having an unfair advantage and they want to also do that bit we should welcome it when our student Minister I used to make this comment let China do all the north south links let Japan do the East West links then we have a nice grip and that's the way we should play it and I believe there's a real countries on the burden Road were played that as they account with China growth naturally they want diversification naturally they want Americans the Japanese and others to also be part of it what is uncomfortable is the when the U.S or Europe tell these countries you choose China you choose me and that doesn't make sense for those countries surely they want connections to both so there's one strand of the birth and rule that you raise which I don't think is negative at all in China then you talk about the debt trap that is repeatedly a point raised by Western media that somehow China wants to lose money and therefore the foreclose their loans and commodity assets they want to make money they don't want to lose money and sometimes in enthusiasm they may make wrong choices they may be involved in them quick decisions sometimes corrupt on the side and then they lose money and I believe they regret it they don't want to lose money so this debt threat to me is not very credible they talk about Sri Lanka you know and Chinese have got a 99-year lease and tampon total or something foreign no in any case China's total debt in Sri Lanka's total debt is only 10 percent so most of Sri Lanka's financial problems are not due to China but China gets 90 of the blame and I think it's something that we should remember that it is not in China's interests to to create that threats sometimes it does happen when countries are irresponsible in which case is the people themselves and the leaders who are principally responsible but I think we should remember that for many of these countries the principal creditors are Western countries and Western Banks not China then you raise the other issue of whether China will become expansionless you talk about the nine dash line the subtendency I think here history is important when a western Powers arrived in this part of the world and the French were expanding the the influence up into China in the South China Sea the Qing Dynasty at every step recorder is objection it was weak then I could not do very much about it but it never allowed it to pass without protest so when a kmt took over the they inherited those claims and formalized them I think the 30s and then finally after the one 1947 they actually put out a map showing the 11 Dash lines 11-9 and at that time I don't believe any of the western power subjected you know now the claims of Vietnam Philippines Malaysia Brunei are inherited claims from the coronal powers so it's not as if China made those claims recently these countries I'm referring to the Philippines Malaysia Brunei the base their claims the maritime claims not on territorial ownership but on unclose which is that if you have these territories then these are the claims you are entitled to claims way ahead in the case of Vietnam in 1958 and 1974 from Van dong explicitly said that those Islands belong to China but there was no Vietnam in 75 22 over the South they said they rescinded those statements that they will make under the rest of War now how much this will hold in the court of law I'm not so sure because the rest of war is if you acted under coercion China was an ally not the enemy but anyhow anyone looking at that man will feel that China's nine dashed lines nine-dash line is egregious that it comes almost to the horizon so naturally countries of the Philippines Brunei and Malaysia you see how can that be just because we're not born as independent countries at that time doesn't mean that you have all these rights which you claim to be in the from the past I think in the end Channel we have to negotiate on boundaries and a maritime rise the point I'm making is China's claims are not without legal basis they are not weak and we should not let me dismiss them as an act of Chinese aggression in fact in the Tonkin Gulf between North Vietnam and China I believe in the early 50s the wrapped off two dashes and settle the delineation and the Chinese were generous Ho Chi Minh actually wrote a letter to mausted them to thank him for China's generosity and I hope eventually when they're good relations more dashes can be rubbed out and the boundary delineation properly made in the sea foreign

Channel: The Straits Times

Views: 74,098

Keywords: china, george yeo, singapore, singapore news, foreign minister, geopolitics, politics, belt and road initiative, international relations, foreign relations, united states, usa, europe, japan, africa, debt, economics

Id: m4iV4_3hp0s

Length: 8min 34sec (514 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 01 2022