How tiny Singapore ties China and Taiwan in training for war

HONG KONG – Military rivals China and Taiwan are both seen as benefiting from military training activities conducted with Singapore, which, in turn, also gains from the cooperation.

China’s People’s Liberation Army and Taiwan’s armed forces are getting tips from Singapore’s relatively advanced armed forces but, more so, long-standing political ties with a mutually trusted third country – which is especially critical for Taiwan – experts say.

“Both Taiwan and China work with Singapore because if you want influence, you need to engage,” said Yun Sun, East Asia Program senior associate at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington.

Taiwan has provided Singapore at least three tracts of its much larger territory for training, including exercises, since 1975. The annual Project Starlight exercises bring Taiwan, diplomatically isolated by China, unusually close to an influential Asian country outside consular and trade affairs, to which most of its dealings overseas are limited by Chinese pressure.

Washington-based Asia analyst and author I-wei Jennifer Chang argued in a study for the Global Taiwan Institute in Washington that troops on the self-ruled island have gained from training alongside Singapore’s experienced armed forces.

However, analysts see Taiwan’s biggest gains coming from the elusive international recognition it gets from working closely with a major country in Asia despite growing diplomatic isolation.

Singapore’s founding prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, and his friend Chiang Ching-kuo, Taiwan’s former premier, began the program because Singapore’s armed forces needed the space.

The project’s continuation, though low-key and under pressure before 2020 from China to end it or move it to a Chinese location, strengthens Taiwan’s image, Brian Hioe, nonresident fellow at the Taiwan Research Hub of the University of Nottingham, said by email.

“China, of course, hopes to draw Singapore into its fold, while Singapore is incentivized to maintain training relations with Taiwan – and by extension, the US – so as to avoid geopolitical risk from China,” Hioe said.

If Singapore called off the training, “it would deal a significant blow to Taipei and terminate a historical bond between the two governments,” Chang wrote in her study.

“Singapore has over the decades signaled that it intends to maintain its training program with Taiwan despite compulsion from Beijing,” Chang wrote.

While Beijing normally stews when other countries pursue political or military relations with Taiwan, it now tolerates Singapore’s cooperation with Taiwan because of Singapore’s own close relations with China, said Denny Roy, senior fellow at the East-West Center in Hawaii.

China takes further solace in Singapore’s nod to Beijing’s one-China policy and an “understanding that Singapore needs training space outside of its own territory,” Roy said.

Meanwhile, China and Singapore have also engaged in military cooperation through exercises.

In 2019, their defense ministers updated a military exchange agreement to allow for more frequent high-level defense talks and larger-scale air, sea and land exercises. In December the two sides held Exercise Cooperation 2025.

The seventh in a series of training exercises, it focused this time on urban counterterrorism.

China benefits by improving the ability of “mixed units” to handle rapidly changing situations and integrate crewed and uncrewed units in case of future counterterrorism missions, Beijing’s official Xinhua News Agency said.

China, alongside Singapore, has trained its ground forces and naval units with the sea exercises focused on a “range of low-level naval missions and tasks” including mine countermeasures, Malcom Davis, senior analyst for defense strategy and national security with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said by email.

Analysts see little indication that Singapore, whose Defence Ministry did not answer requests for comment for this report, is giving either China or Taiwan a leg up in any conflict or that it is disclosing sensitive information about one side to the other.

“There is little reason for this to change in the future because the arrangement doesn’t significantly make Taiwan more militarily defensible,” Roy said.

Meanwhile, analysts say Singapore is scoring its own victories from military exposure to China and Taiwan.

Singapore has historically trained in Taiwan because of “concerns about the security risks if it were to train directly in China” but practices with China as well to “manage relations,” Hioe said.

Davis said the cooperation with Taiwan gives Singaporean military units physical space for “complex” training.

“Taiwan also allows greater employment of more complex operations, especially for ground force operations,” he said.

“The complex nature of Taiwan’s terrain is in some respects similar to that of the Malayan peninsula, whilst its urban regions match that of Singapore. So there is value to be gained from joint training.”

Singapore’s war game is also a diplomatic exercise, Sun said.

“Singapore takes pride in its ability to balance different relationships to maximize its own interest,” she said.

“The primary gains from working with both Taiwan and the PLA is an image of Singapore being neutral, independent and free to pursue its own agenda,” she added.