Biden’s ‘weak’ leadership will trigger US-China conflict, Singapore ex-minister George Yeo says

Name: Another US delegation meets Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, soon after Pelosi visit
Uploaded: 2022-08-27T03:00:24.000Z
Duration: 2 min 54 s
Description: Another US delegation meets Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, soon after Pelosi visit

By constantly ‘poking the panda’ over Taiwan, the US will cause a conflict ‘which will explode in our faces’, the former foreign minister says

But while deteriorating US-China ties are leaving Singapore ‘caught between a rock and a hard place’, Yeo says it is not the city state’s place to help counter Beijing

Reading Time:3 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

99+

George Yeo, former Singapore foreign minister. Photo: Handout

Maria Siow

Published: 11:00am, 27 Aug 2022Updated: 1:23pm, 30 Aug 2022

While a confrontation between China and the United States over Taiwan appears inevitable, both are said to be arranging a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in November, according to Singapore’s former foreign minister George Yeo.

Describing the Taiwan situation as “dangerous” and “troubling”, Yeo said Washington was “poking the panda” over an issue “so sensitive, it’d react neuralgically”.

Constant provocation by the US will lead to “a bomb which will explode in our faces”, said Yeo, who is now a visiting scholar at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

A video screenshot shows a missile launched by Chinese military targeting designated maritime areas to the east of the Taiwan island on August 4, 2022. Photo: Xinhua

US-China tensions have risen significantly since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan earlier this month, prompting the Chinese military to conduct its largest military drills near the island. The situation heated up when another US congressional delegation travelled to Taipei less than two weeks later, while a US lawmaker on the Senate Commerce and Armed Services committees arrived in Taiwan on Thursday, defying pressure from Beijing to halt the trips.

To prevent the relationship from deteriorating further, the White House has emphasised that the US Congress is an independent branch of government and that there is no change to Washington’s one-China policy.

Yeo said the US-China meeting at the G20 summit in Indonesia would force Washington to coordinate the policy positions of different government departments. But he noted: “China wants to lower the temperature, while the key concern of the US is the midterm elections.”

02:54

Another US delegation meets Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, soon after Pelosi visit

Speaking in a wide-ranging interview ahead of the launch of the first of his three-part book series, Musings, which is based on interviews with media veteran Woon Tai Ho, the former official added that the US decision-making process looked fractured due to Biden’s “weak” presidency.