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174 was activated to pressure the government to change position. Singapore’s experience in 2016-17 holds lessons for other ASEAN member states. On the surface, China claims that it does not interfere in the internal affairs of other states. At the same time, it is led by a Leninist party that embraces the ideas of the United Front as a key tactic. Translated into foreign policy, by its nature United Front work involves lobbying, coercion, co-optation and other influence operations—some of which are legitimate, others of which are not. China’s self-declared role as the representative of all Chinese people around the world and its stated position that all Chinese are obliged to help China further complicate its position in Singapore, which is 76 percent Chinese. This multifaceted and contradictory approach is deployed within an overarching narrative of China’s inevitable and unstoppable rise and America’s equally inevitable and absolute decline. This narrative and others are propagated by various means: WeChat with Chinese-speaking populations, social and mainstream media, whispering campaigns, business, clan, and cultural associations, and conventional agents of influence reporting to Chinese intelligence organizations, who cultivate what Lenin called “useful idiots.” AHistory of Influence Chinese influence operations in Singapore are not a recent phenomenon. China’s United Front activities in the late 1950s and 1960s sought to export China’s communist revolution to Southeast Asia and were part of an open political struggle. But even after China’s proxies in the political contest were defeated, China continued to try to shape public opinion in Singapore. This attempt differed from the 2016-17 episode mainly in the means deployed, which reflected the technologies available at the time. On May 15, 1971, the Singapore government announced the arrest and detention of three individuals under the Internal Security Act. The government press statement revealed that “officials of a communist intelligence service based in Hong Kong” had between 1964 and 1968 given loans totaling more than 7 million Hong Kong dollars at the “ridiculously low interest rate of 0.1% per annum” to an ethnic Chinese businessman to start an English-language daily newspaper named the Eastern Sun.' The newspaper commenced publication in 1966. In return for the loans, the Eastern Sun was required not to oppose the PRC on major issues and to remain neutral on minor issues. In 2004, China deployed intense pressure on Singapore when then deputy prime minister Lee Hsien Loong paid an unofficial visit to Taiwan. The Chinese were trying to get Singapore to cancel the visit. Singapore adheres to a “One China Policy,” but if Appendix 2 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020633