SINGAPORE - The business community needs to have a voice in state-to-state interactions, which need to be holistic, including in trade, economics, and culture, said Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen on Wednesday .
"Our engagements with and inter-dependence on each other cannot be solely based on the military but need to be holistic and include areas such as trade, culture and economics," he said at the Shangri-La Hotel. First, the United States will longer accommodate China's rise, after having, along with other Western powers, facilitated its accession into the World Trade Organisation in 2001 after economic reforms shifted it away from autarky in 1978.
"The roots of the US-China strategic competition go beyond just trade deficits or currency fluctuations. They stem from fundamental differences in operating systems which pit the two largest economies and militaries against each other - this is a long game. The potential to consume all countries is there in our inter-connected world," he added.
Dr Ng said that these questions were what the first defence minister, Dr Goh Keng Swee, and Singaporeans of the pioneer generation had asked themselves, adding that these were not questions only for Singapore but for all countries. He was asked by Germany's Ambassador to Singapore, Dr Ulrich Sante, what message he had for Germany's small and medium-sized enterprises that might be interested to come to Singapore.