Visiting the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, attending the 16th Summer Davos Forum held in Tianjin… Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s visit to China attracted the attention of the outside world.
From June 22 to 26, Lawrence Wong was invited to pay an official visit to China. This is his first visit to a country outside ASEAN after he was re-elected as Singapore’s Prime Minister in May.
China and Singapore are friendly neighbors and important partners. Since the establishment of diplomatic relations, the relationship between the two countries has developed steadily. Especially in recent years, the leaders of the two countries have maintained close exchanges, promoting the continuous deepening of the traditional friendship between China and Singapore, and the continuous improvement of bilateral relations. In 2023, China-Singapore relations will be upgraded to an all-round, high-quality, forward-looking partnership.
During this visit, the Chinese President met with Lawrence Wong, and Premier Li Qiang and Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress Zhao Leji held talks and meetings with Lawrence Wong respectively. The two sides exchanged in-depth views on China-Singapore relations and international and regional issues of common concern.
China and Singapore should firmly grasp the general direction of friendship between the two countries, always view and develop China-Singapore relations from a strategic height and long-term perspective, and ensure that the direction is not deviated and the momentum is not reduced.
Xu Liping, a researcher at the Institute of Asia-Pacific and Global Strategy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that after his re-election, Lawrence Wong chose China as the first country to visit outside ASEAN, which fully reflects his high attention to the development of China-Singapore relations. At the critical juncture of the 35th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Singapore, this visit plays a connecting role in the development of bilateral relations.
Du Lan, deputy director of the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies of the China Institute of International Studies, believes that this visit continues the tradition of close cooperation between the two countries, especially the close high-level exchanges and smooth bilateral strategic communication between the two sides, which will help the two sides deepen the partnership and mutual trust between the two countries and provide a political guarantee for the bilateral relationship to “stay on track and maintain momentum.”
According to reports, Lawrence Wong’s accompanying team includes several ministers in charge of diplomacy, transportation, trade and other fields, which is interpreted by the outside world as Singapore’s intention to expand cooperation with China in these fields and create new growth points.
Economic and trade relations and economic and technological cooperation are the key areas of China-Singapore cooperation. Since 2013, China has been Singapore’s largest trading partner for 12 consecutive years, and Singapore has been China’s largest source of new investment for 12 consecutive years. Looking to the future, both sides are committed to opening up more space for cooperation. The outside world noticed that after the talks on the 23rd, the two prime ministers jointly witnessed the signing of a number of cooperation documents such as talent training, intellectual property rights, and third-party cooperation.
Duran pointed out that China and Singapore have complementary advantages in technological innovation and industrial application. The two sides have explored the cooperation potential in the fields of green economy and biomedicine, which is conducive to promoting the focus of cooperation to high value-added industries.
In fact, based on the complementary advantages of both sides, China-Singapore cooperation has continuously stimulated the engine of win-win. In recent years, hundreds of signed projects within the framework of China-Singapore cooperation have been steadily advancing, and government cooperation projects represented by Suzhou Industrial Park have continued to go deeper and more practical, setting a benchmark for regional cooperation.
During this visit, the leaders of China and Singapore mentioned “digital economy” and “artificial intelligence”. Xu Liping said that these two fields are emerging industries, which are conducive to avoiding the red ocean competition in traditional fields, and are expected to become new growth points for China-Singapore cooperation, and also demonstrate that China-Singapore cooperation is forward-looking.
Singapore advocates a free and open international trade environment. Before the visit, Lawrence Wong revealed in an interview that he would focus on the importance of maintaining a rules-based multilateral order at the 16th Summer Davos Forum. During this visit, Lawrence Wong said in Beijing that Singapore “is willing to strengthen communication and cooperation with China on regional and multilateral platforms to safeguard free trade and the multilateral trading system”.
“China and Singapore work together to safeguard multilateralism and free trade, which will offset the current anti-globalization, economic fragmentation, and especially trade protectionism, and will help maintain an open, inclusive, and cooperative order in the Asia-Pacific region and inject stability and sustainability into the turbulent world.” Duran said.
Xu Liping believes that the world economy needs open cooperation, not unilateralism and protectionism. China and Singapore hold high the banner of multilateralism, which reflects the voice of most countries and helps promote economic globalization in a more open, inclusive, inclusive, and balanced direction.