Singapore Revokes Professor's Entry Rights Over `Subversion'

(Bloomberg) -- Singapore has revoked the permanent residency of a prominent academic after he allegedly used his position to covertly advance the agenda of an unnamed foreign country at Singapore’s expense.

The Ministry of Home Affairs said in a statement on Friday on its website that it revoked entry and re-entry rights for Huang Jing and his wife, Shirley Yang Xiuping, both U.S. citizens.

Huang was director of the Centre on Asia and Globalization, and Lee Foundation Professor on US-China Relations, at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. A university spokeswoman said the school didn’t have an immediate comment. Huang said by text message he had no comment.

According to the ministry statement, Huang interacted with foreign agents and intelligence organizations and then tried to influence foreign policy and public opinion in Singapore. The statement doesn’t identify the foreign country he allegedly acted for.

“To this end, he engaged prominent and influential Singaporeans and gave them what he claimed was ‘privileged information’ about the foreign country, so as to influence their opinions in favour of that country,” the ministry said in the statement. “Huang also recruited others in aid of his operations.”

In one instance, Huang gave supposedly privileged information to a senior member of the Lee Kuan Yew School for it to be conveyed to the Singapore government. It was passed to senior public officials who were in a position to direct Singapore’s foreign policy, though the government declined to act on it, it said. The statement did not detail the information.

‘Foreign Interference’

Huang is an “internationally recognized expert on Chinese politics, China’s foreign relations and security issues in Asia-Pacific,” according to a biography on the school’s website that is no longer available. He won the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize in 2002 for his book “Factionalism in Chinese Communist Politics.”

In addition to his position at the school, Huang has been a board member for Keppel Land Ltd. since 2014.

“Huang used his senior position in the LKYSPP to deliberately and covertly advance the agenda of a foreign country at Singapore’s expense,” the ministry said in its statement. “He did this in collaboration with foreign intelligence agents. This amounts to subversion and foreign interference in Singapore’s domestic politics.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Dan Murtaugh in Singapore at dmurtaugh@bloomberg.net, Keith Zhai in Singapore at qzhai4@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rosalind Mathieson at rmathieson3@bloomberg.net, Andrew Janes

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