China does not plan to invade Taiwan in 2027: US intel report

The Annual Threat Assessment report said that Chinese leaders "do not currently plan to execute an invasion of Taiwan in 2027, nor do they have a fixed timeline for achieving unification".

Chinese ships patrol as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conduct military drills on Pingtan island,
in eastern China’s Fujian province, the closest point to Taiwan, on Dec 30, 2025.
(Photo: AFP/Adek Berry)

19 Mar 2026 

WASHINGTON: China does not currently plan to invade Taiwan in 2027 but seeks to take control of the self-ruled island without force, said an annual US intelligence report, which drew ire from Beijing on Thursday (Mar 19).

Singapore appoints UK firm Mott MacDonald to study nuclear energy technologies

The Energy Market Authority said no decision had been made to deploy nuclear energy in Singapore.

A photo of nuclear power plants. (File photo: iStock)

Chelsea Ong

02 Sep 2025 

SINGAPORE: The Energy Market Authority (EMA) has appointed the Singapore office of British firm Mott MacDonald to study advanced nuclear energy technologies, it announced on Tuesday (Sep 2).

'So tiring' to be friends with Singaporeans, says French woman

Amandine Honvault got lots of responses to her cheeky video.
SCREENGRAB: NEWTOSINGAPORE/TIKTOK

Sep 1, 2025

"Their expectations are unmatched," says the woman, tongue in cheek.

Megan Khung deserved better. It takes all of us to keep other children like her safe

 Video: "Hope she rots in hell..." Worst Mom Ever

Megan Khung died after her mother Foo Li Ping's boyfriend Wong Shi Xiang punched her in the stomach.  
PHOTOS: CCXXCXCX/INSTAGRAM, SHIN MIN DAILY NEWS READER, INSTAGRAM

Theresa Tan

APR 11, 2025

The death of four-year-old Megan Khung, who suffered horrific abuse at the hands of her mother and her former boyfriend, has shocked many Singaporeans.

Topmost on people’s minds are these questions: Why did Megan have to die? What more could the child protection authorities and social service agencies have done to save the child?

Lawrence Wong on implications of US tariffs for Singapore

PM Lawrence Wong on implications of US tariffs for Singapore | Full video

Trump is a moron who doesn't understand Tariffs. Sure, if the tariff makes imports more expensive, the exporting countries will probably sell less to the US. BUT, the US citizens/residents will pay MORE for the goods they need. So a microwave oven that used to cost $100, would now cost $130 or more. And the common folk will have to pay that price. 

About "Signalgate"

Video: Signalgate. It's Worse Than You Think. || Peter Zeihan

The Atlantic magazine publishes US attack plan mistakenly shared in chat group

MAR 27, 2025

WASHINGTON – The Atlantic magazine on March 26 published what it said was the entire text of a chat group mistakenly shared with a journalist by top US national security officials laying out plans of an imminent attack on Yemen.

Why I don’t complain that Singapore is boring

Finding any city interesting is a lot like falling in love. The getting-to-know-each-other stage has to be meaningful and purposeful on both sides, a communications specialist said.

Commenting on complaints and criticisms that Singapore is "boring", Ms Larissa Santhana Nair (pictured) suggested that we simply need to put in more time and effort to discover everything our little island has to offer. (Photo: CNA/Nuria…see more

Larissa Santhana Nair

31 Jan 2025 

If you Google “boring countries”, you’ll likely see Singapore mentioned in the top results – and probably more than once. We’ve all heard such complaints and criticisms. (Perhaps we’ve even uttered them ourselves.)

In defence, many people would point out our culture in food, shopping and Singlish. Singaporeans do things: Get together with friends. Go to Johor Bahru in neighbouring Malaysia for supper or shopping. Visit clubs and bars (if one is old enough). Queue for … stuff. Rinse and repeat.

Pope Francis commends Singapore's policies supporting the vulnerable, hopes for special attention to poor and elderly

Pope Francis also highlighted the risk of focusing solely on pragmatism or "placing merit above all things", consequently excluding the marginalised from benefiting from progress. 

Pope Francis and Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam at the pope’s state address on Sep 12, 2024. (Photo: CNA/Syamil Sapari)

Ang Hwee Min

12 Sep 2024 

SINGAPORE: Pope Francis has commended Singapore's policies to support the most vulnerable, adding that he hopes special attention will be paid to the poor and the elderly. 

New "United Front"? Chinese Agents in South East Asia?

Firstpost is an India-based, obviously biased, anti-Chinese, news channel. So they would highlight or feature any news item that would put China in a bad light. But they do also cover the news about China, like this story about Linda Sun and Alice Guo.

Tommy Koh 'not convinced' by Income Insurance's reasons for sale to German insurer

"Income is not a loss making company in need of rescue," he said.


Ilyda Chua

August 01, 2024

Tommy Koh said that while he is a "friend and admirer" of NTUC Enterprise chief Lim Boon Heng, he was "not convinced" by Lim's press conference outlining the reasons for the sale of Income Insurance.

This is Singapore. This is what I Identify with.

 A twenty minute interview with two Naturalised Citizens.

One was born in Shanghai China, came to Singapore in 1997, then applied for Citizenship in mid-2000 (2004 or 2005). 

The other was born in Malaysia, grew up in Malaysia, studied there, but completed his education in the UK, worked there for a while before being sent to this part of the world, and worked from Singapore for some time and became a citizen in 2011.

40yo NUS alumnus says “Singapore Dream” is a ‘nightmare’ because ‘he has no wife, no house, no children, no car, no nothing

ByAnna Maria Romero 

MAY 22, 2024

SINGAPORE: A graduate of one of Singapore’s top universities had advice for everyone, writing in a social media post that the Singapore Dream can turn out to be a nightmare, depending on one’s choices.

Will the Indian economy ever surpass that of China?

Alicia García-Herrero

Apr 30, 2024 

India’s growth rate is clearly higher than that of China, especially since 2022, and there is no expectation this trend will
change any time soon. Photo: Bloomberg

Had I asked this question ten years ago, the answer would have been clear cut: Impossible. But things are changing. The Chinese economy is five to six times bigger than that of India, but India’s growth rate is clearly higher than that of China, especially since 2022, and there is no expectation this trend will change any time soon. This means that, unless a major shock hits the Indian economy, it will continue to converge in size with that of China for at least 30 years until India completes its urbanization process. Whether this will make the Indian economy bigger than that of China is hard to tell since it will depend on how fast China will decelerate but also how long India will continue to benefit from its current long-hanging fruits to create growth, from urbanization, a growing population and a very favourable external environment as the most obvious hedge for the West against the rise of China.

Singapore's response to Economist's "sneering" article about Singapore's leadership transition

First, Shanmugam response:

So the Economist noted that Lawrence Wong would only be the 4th PM in 59 years. Whereas, anybody knows a true and thriving democracy like, for example, the UK should burn through PMs like they were past their "best before" date.

How China became a Military Superpower

 TL;DR - They hack their way:

How Deng and his heirs misunderstood Singapore

MARK R THOMPSON 

01 FEB, 2019



As official China celebrates the four decades of “reform and opening” that began in late 1978 to early 1979, it is instructive to recall the role Singapore played in this process. The fulsome eulogies for Lee Kuan Yew offered by Chinese officials in 2015, beginning with Xi Jinping himself (who has been noticeably less enthusiastic in his praise for Deng Xiaoping given China’s top leader’s “family feud” over who deserves the most credit for the reforms), are just the most obvious indication that Lee and the “Singapore model” more generally have played (quite literally) an oversized role in China’s rapid transition from Maoism to “Market-Leninism”. Appropriately, Lee was honoured late last year as one of the foreigners who helped China most in its reform process.

The future of ‘communist capitalism’ in China

The question of whether Xi-ism is killing Deng-ism is growing 

MARTIN WOLF

MARCH 13 2024 

What is the economic future of China? This question raises many specific issues, notably China’s persistent macroeconomic imbalances, the threat of population decline and worsening relations with important parts of the outside world, above all, an increasingly hostile US. But underneath all of these lies a deeper one: is “communist capitalism”, that seemingly self-contradicting invention of Deng Xiaoping, inexorably fading away under Xi Jinping? Will China’s regime ossify and, in the end, collapse, as the Soviet Union did? 

Comment: Public Housing in Singapore - One big disguised Ponzi scheme?

[From a FB post in Sept 2009]

There has been a raft of letters to the press about how the surging prices of public housing is making it impossible for young couples and families to afford housing in Singapore.
In particular, house-hunters have pointed fingers at the Cash-Over-Valuation (COV) that sellers are demanding. HDB has replied to say that they strive to provide affordable housing, and COV are an instrument of the market over which HDB has no control.

So a flurry of letter followed about how HDB might tweak the system (to the benefit of the young house hunters of course). Such as banning COV, and increasing the supply of new flats.
http://heresthenews.blogspot.com/2009/09/cash-over-valuation.html

  

China’s Lessons from Russia’s War

Jun 17, 2022

KEVIN RUDD

For Chinese President Xi Jinping, a Marxist-Leninist dialectician, the events in Ukraine won’t fundamentally alter China's grand historical ascent. As a cautionary tale, Russia's military failures will simply impel China's leadership to make even more substantial preparations before seizing Taiwan.



MELBOURNE – Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, two views quickly emerged in the West about what lesson China would take from the war. The first suggested that NATO’s failure to deter Russia – or to defend Ukraine directly – would inspire China to advance the timetable for a planned invasion of Taiwan, or even to capitalize on the chaos brought about by the war to attack the island immediately. But after Russia’s military ran into significant and unexpected challenges early on, an alternate line of analysis emerged suggesting that China has now been significantly deterred from ever attempting to take Taiwan.

The REAL Reason (well, one major reason) why Taylor Swift Chose Singapore

Infrastructure.

Ruben Pinatacan responded to a query (on Quora) about whether the Philippines could have hosted the Eras Tour:

"Regardless of the Singapore’s incentive to the promoter or organiser of the Eras Tour, the Philippines cannot afford to host the Taylor Swift concert because of the costs involved as well as lack of adequate infrastructure to hold the concert. Both Araneta Coliseum or the MOA Mall can only accommodate 9,600 spectators; while Melbourne is 96,000; Sydney is 86,000; Thailand is 51,000 and Singapore is 55,000. Where else the Philippines will hold the tour. The Eras Tour is not cheap after all. The economy is not good and in tatter; and poverty is prevalent all over the country. Just for a note, the Swifty tour in SEA started in Thailand in 2014, but for the coup it was cancelled. The Philippine organisers should have have woken up but for the money issues, they cannot afford. Salceda should wake up to reality that the government or the private organisers cannot afford the tour."