EVEN though the International Herald Tribune only has a circulation of about a few hundred thousand copies, it is circulated in more than 100 countries around the world. The New York Times and Washington Post are its two bosses and the paper draws from the best of the content in these two outstanding newspapers. The Tribune is a quality newspaper and is also highly influential.

The Tribune has been running smoothly for years, but at one point it suffered a setback in Singapore. Not only was the paper accused of offending the Singapore authorities, but it was also compelled to apologize and pay compensation of several hundred thousand US dollars.

In 1995, an article on the paper's editorial page included a short paragraph that laconically compared Singapore's politics to an imperial dynasty. The description prompted Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew, his son Lee Hsien Loong and Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong to sue for libel.

Within a short few months, the libel suit ended with a ruling declaring the Tribune guilty and awarding US$678,000 in damages. Even more incredible was that New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and Washington Post chairman Donald Graham -- two long-standing fighters for press freedom in the US -- caved in to the Singapore government, making apologies and obediently paying the compensation. They even gave up their right to testify during the lawsuit.

Singapore is known worldwide for its control, litigation and punishment of foreign reporters and media. The Tribune case was just one of many. According to a 1986 publication law, Singapore is entitled to prohibit the importation of foreign publications or reduce their circulation. Moreover, foreign journalists are now and again deprived of their press permits. The reasons for Singapore's punishments of foreign media and reporters range from "incorrect, one-sided reports" to refusal to run "corrections" verbatim. A few world-famous media groups -- the Los Angeles Times, Time, the Asian Wall Street Journal, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the Economist and so on -- have all experienced punishment in Singapore.

As Singapore is perceived to be of immense importance among Asian countries, foreign media groups cannot help but raise the white flag in the face of the ravages of that country's efforts to bring the media to heel. The compensation ruling that the Tribune accepted in 1995 provoked harsh criticism from the US media, which demanded that the newspaper withdraw from Singapore in protest. The Tribune, however, decided to swallow the humiliation due to the fact that the Singapore market accounted for 10 percent of its global circulation. Even the Far Eastern Economic Review, which at one point angrily announced its withdrawal from Singapore, later returned under very exacting conditions.

Lee Kuan Yew has filed many lawsuits against the media and he has won each of them. He is not only a role model for politicians in Singapore, but also a perfect example to practitioners of litigation. In a speech delivered in the same month as the Tribune lost its legal battle, Goh proclaimed the Western media to be "the second biggest threat" facing Singapore. Ever since its defeat, the Tribune has never published any articles critical of Singapore. What's more, articles by New York Times essayist William Safire, who is inclined to launch diatribes against Singapore's politicians, will never be published in Singapore.

Recently, some political figures in Taiwan have followed Lee's ways in a silly manner. They seem to be learning Lee's mean side, rather than his good side. They even seem to view him as a role model for litigation. I wonder what they could be thinking?

Nan Fang-shuo is the publisher of The Journalist magazine