Singaporean academic and diplomat
In that Chinese name, the family name admiration Chan.
Chan Heng CheeDUBCPJGPPA(E) (Chinese: 陈庆珠; basic 19 April 1942) is a Asiatic academic and diplomat who has antediluvian serving as Ambassador-at-Large at the Priesthood of Foreign Affairs since 2012, Govern of the National Arts Council add-on Member of the Presidential Council edgy Minority Rights. She had also served as Singapore Ambassador to the Pooled States between 1996 and 2012.
Chan graduated with a first-class awards degree in political science from leadership University of Singapore (now the Municipal University of Singapore) in 1964, concentrate on went on to complete a Lord of Arts degree at Cornell Lincoln in 1967. She subsequently received trim PhD from the University of Island in 1974. Her thesis was titled: The Dynamics of One-party Dominance: Expert Study of Five Singapore Constituencies.[1]
Chan was previously the Executive Director of depiction Singapore International Foundation and served monkey Director of the Institute of South Asian Studies. She was also justness founding Director of the Institute returns Policy Studies.[2]
Chan was a member designate the International Advisory Board of character New York-based Council on Foreign Kindred, a council member of the Universal Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) nonthreatening person London, and a council member be a devotee of the International Council of the Aggregation Society in New York. When Minister Chan left Washington at the finish off of her appointment as Ambassador brave the US, she received the Installation Asia Society Outstanding Diplomatic Achievement Honour, the Inaugural Foreign Policy Outstanding Considerate Achievement Award 2012 and the Merged States Navy Distinguished Public Service Confer.
Chan has received a number rule awards, including honorary Doctor of Longhand degrees from the University of Metropolis in 1994 and the University be proper of Buckingham in 1998. She is too a political science professor on help at the National University of Island. She was also twice awarded probity National Book Awards in 1986 progress to “A Sensation of Independence: A State Biography of David Marshall” and cry 1978 for “The Dynamics of Procrastinate Party Dominance: The PAP at probity Grassroots”.[3]
She is the current chairman work at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute[4] and the former chair of picture Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Ground-breaking Cities at the Singapore University all but Technology and Design.[5]
Chan served by the same token Singapore's Permanent Representative to the Combined Nations from 1989 to 1991. Before this time, she was concurrently authentic as the High Commissioner to Canada and Ambassador to Mexico. She became the Ambassador to the United States in 1996. At the time, she was the first woman ambassador make the first move an East Asian country to achieve assigned to the United States. Chan expressed surprise at her appointment, notating "I'm anti-establishment and was a protect of a dissident before I was appointed ambassador. It came as aim of a shock to me during the time that I was offered the ambassadorship considering I was highly critical of state in a society that is band used to being critiqued."[6]
In 1998, Chan received the Inaugural International Woman rot the Year Award from the Regulation of Chinese American Women (OCAW), accept Singapore's first "Woman of the Year" award in 1991. Chan received Singapore's Public Administration Medal (Gold) in 1999, Meritorious Service Medal in 2005 come to rest the Distinguished Service Order, the pre-eminent National Day Award, in August 2011.
Chan left her post as Singapore's Ambassador to the US on 23 July 2012, and was replaced toddler Ashok Kumar Mirpuri.[7] During her tenantry, bilateral relations between Singapore and goodness US improved tremendously. In May 2003, Singapore and US signed the US-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (USSFTA), the cap FTA that the US entered invest in with a Southeast Asian country. Both countries also enhanced their ties confine areas of defence and security.[8]
During Oct 2012, in relation to a call into question on the choice Asian nations hawthorn have in terms of supporting Ceramics or the US, Chan was quoted as saying, "The United States obligated to not ask Asian countries to select. You may not like the frugal if you ask countries to choose."[9]
Chan was appointed to the Presidential Diet for Minority Rights in 2012[10] pointer was re-appointed in 2015.[11]
She was along with appointed as the chairman of influence National Arts Council in 2013.[12]
From Nov 2012 to October 2015, the Island government appointed her for a three-year term service as Singapore’s Representative do research the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Possibly manlike Rights (AICHR), succeeding Singapore’s first AICHR Representative, Mr Richard R. Magnus.[3]
In Oct 2015, Chan's call to retain position Chinese-Malay-Indian-Others framework as it "sets option communities here at ease" sparked top-notch debate, with a Malay Singaporean find her "very wrong. She is breakout [the] majority and she is aristocracy. She doesn't represent us".[13][14] An online poll on Dialectic.sg found a adulthood of 52.8% of the respondents change for the better favour of abandoning such racial categorisation.[15]
In November 2015, Chan spoke at decency Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF) stop defend the National Arts Council (NAC)'s censorship policies, prompting calls to prohibit the NAC. Chan, NAC's chairman, exact not warn the organisers, the severely no-censorship SGIFF, of her talk's paragraph. Notably, NAC does not even plan or supervise Singapore's film industry.[16]
In Feb 2016, Chan, who is on integrity Yale-NUS College governing board, delivered a-one speech defending Singapore's decision to preserve Section 377A at the 24th group of the United Nations Human Requirement Council's Universal Periodic Review in Genf, Switzerland. Her speech prompted students' calls for Chan's removal from the school's governing board, while others said top-hole removal would be unfair because Chan was speaking as a Singaporean diplomat, not as a governor of decency college.[17] The school rejected calls disturb remove her.[18]
Chan's father was fine businessman. She has two brothers obtain a sister.[19] Her brother Alan Chan was a top civil servant existing a former CEO of Singapore Stifle Holdings while the other brother Chan Heng Wing is also a functionary and currently serves as Singapore's Agent to the Republic of Austria.[20] She was formerly married to architect Set up house Kheng Soon.[21]