BETWEEN RISING POWERS: CHINA, SINGAPORE AND INDIA By Asad-ul Iqbal Latif, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Price not mentioned

The title of this book recalls Prithvinarayan Shah, Nepal’s creator, famously describing his kingdom as a yam between two boulders. Asad-ul Iqbal Latif’s boulders are also India and China, but Singapore is no helpless yam at geography’s mercy. It might be likened to a little dynamo that is ticking away as, having deliberately positioned itself between Asia’s two giants, it tries to galvanize them into interaction for its own benefit.

This is probably the first book to consider Asia’s political equations in triangular terms. Singapore has long seen itself as the midwife of a new entente and though Latif does not mention it here, in the middle Nineties, the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies where he is based played a role in a high-powered Indian team’s study tour of Chinese special economic zones. On its way back from China, the delegation expounded the relevance of SEZs to India at a seminar organized by the ISEAS. Now, thanks to the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement signed in 2005, Singapore is a more active catalyst in India’s trading and investment relations with the West than with China.

Things might change as India seeks to realize its Asian destiny. The exercise would include consolidating ties with Singapore to make the most of an economic link that has undergone dramatic transformation and coming to terms with a China whose intentions are still far from clear. That last statement is not endorsed in a survey whose purpose is really to delineate Singapore’s search for space. Since Latif describes Singapore as China’s principal interlocutor, facilitating its entry into “a global order presided over by the advanced capitalist democracies” (read the US), much of the book is a lengthy and detailed explanation of what modern China is all about. That, too, serves a valuable purpose. Not too many writers who are not of China’s race or ideological persuasion would dare to undertake such an exposition. Latif is all the more readable for doing so with a precision that is totally devoid of passion. Moreover, his vast research enables him to find an apt quotation for every point of view that might be contested.

But his otherwise lucid exposition of Singapore’s engagement of China which, he says, has been crowned with success leaves unsaid an underlying reality. It is no secret that Lee Kuan Yew’s initial courtship of India was to enlist a protector against China which was then seen as a subversive power. There is enough evidence to indicate that in spite of Singapore’s sustained and successful engagement of China, the basic objective has not changed except that the threat is now perceived as economic rather than political. To that extent, engagement, too, might be a form of containment.

The much shorter “Engaging India” chapter is also more neutral but also extremely well-informed. On a contemporary note, he makes the point, overlooked in Indian media commentaries, that the controversial Sethusamudram Canal’s “strategic purpose is to enhance the (Indian) Navy’s ability to move warships between India’s east and west coasts and to different parts of the Indian Ocean.”

The book should be read in India for its interpretation of the Tiananmen Square massacre, discussion of the Asian Values debate, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Taiwan or the US role in Asia. These are viewed from an explicitly Singaporean perspective, which is an additional point of interest, for the author of this conceptually pioneering work is a former Calcutta journalist who has made Singapore his home.