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teaching at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy
(LKYSPP), was expelled from Singapore and permanently banned from the country.
The Ministry of Home Affairs (responsible for internal security and counterespionage)
said in a statement announcing the expulsion that Huang had been “identified as
an agent of influence of a foreign country” who had “knowingly interacted with
intelligence organizations and agents of the foreign country and cooperated with
them to influence the Singapore Government’s foreign policy and public opinion in
Singapore. To this end, he engaged prominent and influential Singaporeans and gave
them what he claimed was ‘privileged information’ about the foreign country so as to
influence their opinions in favor of that country. Huang also recruited others in aid of
his operations.”3 The statement went on to say that Huang gave supposedly “privileged
information” to a senior member of the school of public policy in order that it be
conveyed to the Singapore government. The information was duly conveyed to very
senior public officials who were in a position to direct Singapore’s foreign policy.
The intention, the statement said, was to use the information to cause the Singapore
government to change its foreign policy. The statement concluded that Huang Jing’s
collaboration with foreign intelligence agents was “subversion and foreign interference
in Singapore’s domestic politics.”

The Singapore government has not named the foreign country. In 1988, Singapore had
expelled an American diplomat for interference in domestic politics. But it is generally
accepted that Singapore’s moves in Huang Jing’s case were directed at China.

Implications for ASEAN

There has been no systematic study of Chinese influence operations in ASEAN member
states. As a major economy contiguous to Southeast Asia, China will always naturally
enjoy significant influence even in the absence of such operations. However, anecdotal
evidence suggests that Singapore’s experience is generally consistent across the region.
The differences stem mainly from lax governance standards in other ASEAN member
states and their lower level of development. Economic inducements and the greater
dependence of these countries on Chinese investment, under the general rubric of the
Belt and Road Initiative, seem to play a more prominent role.

A common factor is the focus on overseas Chinese communities. Such operations are
leading China into sensitive territory in Southeast Asia, where the overseas Chinese are
not always welcome minorities. China’s navigation of these complexities has in many
cases been clumsy. Malaysia provides a particularly egregious example that betrays a
form of cultural and political autism. During the 2018 Malaysian general elections, the
Chinese ambassador to Malaysia openly campaigned for the president of the Malaysian
Chinese Association (MCA) in his constituency. This was a blatant violation of the

Appendix 2

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