Wealth & Money Quote by Sellapan Ramanathan

The line reads like a diplomatic handshake with a steel brace underneath. S.R. Nathan isn’t romanticizing China’s rise; he’s normalizing it. By calling Chinese progress “natural,” he strips it of menace and reframes it as the predictable behavior of a nation with capacity and ambition. That word choice matters: “natural” moves the story from ideology to inevitability, a rhetorical move that quietly scolds anyone still clinging to the fantasy that China can be frozen in place without consequences.

The sentence also performs a careful balancing act typical of small-state statesmanship. “We cannot expect” is less description than boundary-setting: it tells an international audience, especially anxious Western powers, what Singapore will not participate in - denial, containment-by-moralizing, or feigned surprise. Nathan’s “I welcome” then shifts from passive acceptance to strategic embrace. Welcoming is not surrender; it’s a way of claiming agency in a world where a “world class economy” in China changes trade routes, security calculations, and the psychological pecking order in Asia.

Context sharpens the intent. Nathan spoke from a Singaporean vantage point: a trade-dependent city-state that survives by reading geopolitical weather early and speaking in language that keeps doors open. The subtext is pragmatic: China’s ascent is happening; the smart move is to treat it as an opportunity to engage, shape norms, and prosper - while everyone else wastes time arguing with gravity.