S’pore’s Lee warns US against isolating China over Ukraine

Bloomberg

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong warned the US against isolating China over the war in Ukraine by framing it as a battle between democracies and autocracies, which would complicate an already fraught relationship between the two powers.
“You have to be very careful not to define the problem with Ukraine in such a way that automatically, China is already on the wrong side,” Lee said.
“We all have a problem in Ukraine,” he continued. “I think if we talk about sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, a lot of countries can come along. Even China would not object to that, and would actually privately strongly support that.”
Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has tested ties between the US and China already strained by a host of security and economic issues from Taiwan, to the South China Sea, telecommunications technology and trade. Asian nations like Singapore have long sought closer ties between the two in order to cooperate on other global issues like climate change and a response to the pandemic.