Singapore spy case: can Beijing leverage overseas Chinese in struggle with US?

The case of Singaporean spy Dickson Yeo is causing Southeast Asian countries to ponder the extent of China’s influence with its diaspora

But even as fractious US-China ties send Beijing on a soft power push, many see pride in one’s roots and ethnic identity as separate matters

Reading Time:10 minutes

Published: 9:00am, 1 Aug 2020Updated: 9:00am, 1 Aug 2020

Soon after Singaporean Dickson Yeo pleaded guilty in a US court on July 24 to providing information to Chinese intelligence and recruiting others to do the same, social media was abuzz with people sharing their recollections of him.

Yeo, 39, also known as Yeo Jun Wei, was a PhD candidate at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

One post was by his former schoolmate American citizen Will Nguyen, who made international headlines when he was deported from Vietnam in 2018 after taking part in a protest against investments from China.

“Not only was [Yeo] responsible for countless pro-Chinese hot takes in [university] Facebook groups, but he also tried to contact me for whatever reason, multiple times after I got out of prison,” recalled Nguyen.

Another acquaintance, who contacted This Week in Asia, said Yeo had mentioned having a job writing reports for a consultancy in China. He said Yeo had a keen interest in US-China relations, with an inclination towards Beijing.

At the same time as discussing Yeo’s case, many users were sharing a thread on Reddit’s Singapore community page, in which a user named “Poppraline”, who described herself as a Singaporean, asked for advice on her father’s “self-radicalisation”. Poppraline said her father had a strong interest in pro-China content, such as videos depicting China as a sleeping lion and saying the disputed islands in the South China Sea belonged to the emerging Asian superpower.

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