Friends from afar

ONE of the remarkable features of Singapore’s foreign policy under Lee Kuan Yew was the country’s ability to maintain close relations with Taiwan without jeopardising relations with China. As if wishing to underscore the point, Taiwan’s president, Ma Ying-jeou, made an unprecedented visit to Singapore on March 24th to pay respects to Mr Lee a day after his death. It is extremely rare for a Taiwanese president to be admitted into a country that is not one of Taiwan’s dwindling number of formal diplomatic allies—22 at the last count. Upon his arrival in Singapore, Mr Ma was treated by Mr Lee’s family as a personal friend and invited to join the family wake. Then, a few hours later, he flew back to Taiwan.

China insists that Taiwan is a renegade province with no right to conduct its own diplomacy. Since he was first elected president in 2008, Mr Ma has done nothing to rile China with freelance diplomatic moves. Until his flying visit to Singapore, he had visited no country that has diplomatic ties with China, other than stopovers in transit. Even after Mr Ma’s plane had taken off, his office would not confirm his trip, given the diplomatic sensitivities. Although couched as a personal visit, not a formal one, this is still a diplomatic coup for Taiwan.