抄録
Since 1971, the United States' disengagement from Vietnam and its rapprochement with China have brought about dramatic changes in international relations in Asia. Among them was the ASEAN nations' normalization of their relations with China. Singapore, a small city-state with a predominantly Chinese population, needed close ties with its ASEAN neighbours for survival and played down its "Chineseness." In 1975, while reiterating that it would be the last in ASEAN to establish diplomatic ties with China, Singapore sent its Foreign Minister, S. Rajaratnam, to Beijing to improve bilateral relations. By the next year, however, when its Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew visited China, Indochina had been communized and ASEAN had closed ranks to withstand the communist threat. This prompted Lee to emphasize Singapore's ASEAN identity rather than to foster closer ties with China.
After Lee's visit, conflicts among the communist countries over Indochina drove Singapore further into ASEAN identity and dissociation from China. In late 1978, when Deng Xiaoping, China's Deputy Prime Minister, visited Singapore, it pronounced emphatically that its future was with the ASEAN nations and denied all special links with China. Singapore's escalating emphasis on ASEAN identity and the "de-Sinicization" dictated chiefly by international factors illustrate a small nation's strategy for survival.
