Identity-Based Asymmetry: The Chinese Dilemma in Singapore–China Relations

As an increasingly confident China flexed its cultural muscles globally and sought to court overseas Chinese, multiethnic Singapore with a Chinese majority population found itself in a predicament: how far could it capitalise on its cultural affinity with China while rejecting the superpower's framing of it as a Chinese society? This article explains Singapore's “Chinese dilemma” through the lenses of domestic and regional politics. It further conceptualises Singapore's predicament rooted in its ethnic demographic composition as a form of identity-based asymmetry that exists when a stronger state with symbolic authority over shared cultural markers exploits overlapping markers in the weaker state to impose its identity claims. Singapore's strategies in resisting China's identity co-optation and its influence operations also offer practical lessons for other states faced with identity-based asymmetry.