China, the ‘elephant in the room’ of SG’s cyberespionage fears?

Singapore — The hotly debated foreign interference law last week left many speculating as to just where exactly fears of cyberespionage are coming from.

Shortly before midnight last Monday (Oct 4), the Foreign Interference Countermeasures Act (FICA) passed, with a “yes” vote from 75 Members of Parliament. 

However, 11 MPs from the Workers’ Party and Progress Singapore Party objected to the passing of the bill, and two Nominated MPs abstained from the vote.

Critics have been concerned over the scope of power given the Ministry of Home Affairs under FICA, as well as the haste with which the vote passed, and the lack of public consultation on the matter.

A few days before the bill was passed, the Workers’ Party said  “While The Workers’ Party believes in the legitimate need to counter malign acts of foreign interference, we disagree with the current form of the Bill in achieving the said objective.”

However, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) said in an Oct 9 article that both the WP MPs and the “powerful” Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam “avoided direct mention of the elephant in the room: that China was a major player in regional cyberespionage.”

SCMP further pointed out that the MHA has refrained from mentioning exactly which countries had been waging foreign influence moves, all the while emphasising the importance of passing the law.

Mentioning Beijing directly, despite the widespread perception of it having factored in FICA coming about, “reflected an understanding that the island nation stood to gain little from confronting the Asian superpower,” it added.

“For smaller countries like Singapore ‘naming and shaming’ would almost be tantamount to the ‘nuclear option’ and we do not have to rely on this practice to get the message across,” SCMP quoted Nanyang Technological University’s Assistant Professor Dylan Loh as saying.

Mr Shanmugam underlined in Parliament the implications of naming states directly involved in foreign interference, saying, “The foreign policy and national security implications are too serious. The US can name any country it wishes. But we are a price-taker in this business of international relations.”

He also said that there are “no angels in this game.”

“But anyone sensible will know that the US, UK, Western countries, have similar or perhaps, in the case of the US, even superior capabilities.”

In the meantime, Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan characterised Singapore’s relations with China as “excellent.”

In an interview aired on Oct 10 (Sunday) on skynews.com, 

Dr Balakrishnan said that Singapore’s “attitude to China has been to demonstrate relevance”.

“So, for instance, we’ve got three government to government projects. It’s been about relevance, being about being useful but not being made use of. This is a delicate balance which all of us need to find, and we’ve been able to find that. I would say right now, if you were to ask me, I would have to say our relations are excellent.” /TISG

Read also: Pritam Singh calls it ‘wholly incongruous’ that there was no public feedback on FICA

Pritam Singh calls it ‘wholly incongruous’ that there was no public feedback on FICA