China, Singapore set to benefit from closer cooperation

Closer cooperation between China and Singapore will benefit the two peoples and speed up economic recovery from the pandemic, Singaporean senior officials have said.

The comments were made on Friday at the 14th China Journalists' Visit Programme, organized by the Singapore Ministry of Communications and Information. The event took place both online and offline at the Singapore embassy in Beijing and the Singapore Consulate-General in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Xiamen.

Singapore's Senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and National Development Sim Ann said China and Singapore have enjoyed a long-standing friendship and development in cooperation over the past three decades since the two sides established diplomatic ties in 1990.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Singapore-China relations have grown on a good trajectory with frequent high-level exchanges and wide cooperation in many fields, she said.

Since 2013, China has been Singapore's largest trading partner, and Singapore has also been China's largest foreign investor, according to Singapore's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Trade value between the two countries in the first half of this year recorded year-on-year growth of 9.4 percent, reaching over $44 billion, officials figures showed.

It is also the time to explore and utilize all the new opportunities ahead between China and Singapore, she said.

As the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership will enter into force from Jan 1, China and Singapore can expand cooperation in boosting regional cooperation people-to-people exchanges, the minister said.

Singapore's Minister for Finance Lawrence Wong said China and Singapore have already made strong cooperation in many fields but there is a lot more potential to tap in future.

"We are very grateful to China for the strong and close cooperation we have in tackling the pandemic together. We look forward to continuing the cooperation in looking at ways we can deal with the pandemic, especially with the ongoing uncertainties about Omicron and potentially new variants emerging," Wong said.

He said China and Singapore can also strengthen cooperation in the green economy with both moving toward net zero carbon emissions, and the two countries can work together to enhance green technology collaboration.

The digital economy has also been a sector that China and Singapore are both putting more emphasis on and there are "a lot of things we could do to boost the industry", Wong said.