When conversations in Singapore turn to souring geopolitics, there are some who cannot resist pointing out the upside. Of course nobody wants a new cold war, assures one former top official. But if such a situation were unavoidable, and blocs started forming more rigidly and confrontationally around a US-China split, Singapore might be better positioned than anyone to play both sides.Yet as companies and investors position themselves for what could well be a difficult 2023, little over the past 10 days has resolved the question of whether the November 14 talks between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping set some sort of floor on deteriorating relations, or whether they will continue falling dangerously as many had projected. The cold war lexicon provides easy filler for the gaps created by all this uncertainty.

Lurking behind this ominous shorthand, though, is a more intriguing, Singapore-specific nuance. Even without the risks of a new cold war, the hazards associated with deglobalisation and decoupling merit serious attention from everyone. And Singapore, perhaps sooner than anyone else, appears to have tacitly accepted both as inevitable.

There are several areas where the signs of this acceptance are already showing. The first, according to people close to Singapore’s two sovereign funds and other large institutional investors, is an acknowledgment that investment criteria have significantly changed. The relative certainties of the globalisation era are eroding fast, confides one. Everything must now be scrutinised through a geopolitical lens and with an assumption that pure economic logic, in a world where companies are forced to second-guess or hedge against geopolitics, may no longer be paramount in corporate decision-making.