Attempts by the Chinese media to instruct Singapore on how it should have behaved at the recent Non-Aligned Movement summit at Venezuela are not the first by various Chinese governments to influence and shape the opinions and actions of Chinese Singaporeans.

Both the Communist Party of China (CCP), which has ruled China since 1949, and the Nationalist Government before that, looked to Chinese communities in Singapore and South-east Asia for support, and actively worked to garner their assistance for China. For both the Nationalist Government and the CCP, the Chinese communities in Singapore and elsewhere were huaqiao, or “overseas Chinese”, who should remember and support their motherland.

The Nationalist Government was grateful to the Chinese community in Singapore for its support in the escalating war against Japan in the 1930s and, before that, funding given to Sun Yat Sen to enable him to launch the 1911 Revolution.

The CCP had a special interest in Malaya and Singapore, where it had a hand in establishing the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) in the 1930s.

… Kwa Chong Guan is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University.