teaching at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy

177 teaching at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP), was expelled from Singapore and permanently banned from the country. The Ministry of Home Affairs (responsible for internal security and counterespionage) said in a statement announcing the expulsion that Huang had been “identified as an agent of influence of a foreign country” who had “knowingly interacted with intelligence organizations and agents of the foreign country and cooperated with them to influence the Singapore Government’s foreign policy and public opinion in Singapore. To this end, he engaged prominent and influential Singaporeans and gave them what he claimed was ‘privileged information’ about the foreign country so as to influence their opinions in favor of that country. Huang also recruited others in aid of his operations.”* The statement went on to say that Huang gave supposedly “privileged information” to a senior member of the school of public policy in order that it be conveyed to the Singapore government. The information was duly conveyed to very senior public officials who were in a position to direct Singapore’s foreign policy. The intention, the statement said, was to use the information to cause the Singapore government to change its foreign policy. The statement concluded that Huang Jing’s collaboration with foreign intelligence agents was “subversion and foreign interference in Singapore’s domestic politics.” The Singapore government has not named the foreign country. In 1988, Singapore had expelled an American diplomat for interference in domestic politics. But it is generally accepted that Singapore’s moves in Huang Jing’s case were directed at China. Implications for ASEAN There has been no systematic study of Chinese influence operations in ASEAN member states. AS a major economy contiguous to Southeast Asia, China will always naturally enjoy significant influence even in the absence of such operations. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that Singapore’s experience is generally consistent across the region. The differences stem mainly from lax governance standards in other ASEAN member states and their lower level of development. Economic inducements and the greater dependence of these countries on Chinese investment, under the general rubric of the Belt and Road Initiative, seem to play a more prominent role. A common factor is the focus on overseas Chinese communities. Such operations are leading China into sensitive territory in Southeast Asia, where the overseas Chinese are not always welcome minorities. China’s navigation of these complexities has in many cases been clumsy. Malaysia provides a particularly egregious example that betrays a form of cultural and political autism. During the 2018 Malaysian general elections, the Chinese ambassador to Malaysia openly campaigned for the president of the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) in his constituency. This was a blatant violation of the Appendix 2 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020636