Requested about Singapore-China relations, the Prime Minister mentioned they have been “superb”. The 2 nations are within the midst of one other assessment of their free commerce settlement, with negotiations ongoing.
Mr Lee final met China’s President Xi Jinping in Bangkok final November, when the 2 leaders reaffirmed the nations’ shut ties. Singapore’s International Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan additionally made an official go to to Beijing final month.
Mr Lee mentioned that whereas diplomatic relations between Singapore and China have been established in 1990, cooperation started years earlier than.
“There’s belief and mutual understanding. We’ve our completely different views on points, however we work with each other, and we’ve got been in a position to get very substantive tasks going,” he added.
Authorities-to-government tasks similar to Suzhou Industrial Park, Tianjin Eco-Metropolis and the Chongqing Connectivity Initiative have been cited as examples of a profitable working relationship.
The latter matches in with China’s Belt and Street Initiative, which Singapore sees as a manner for Beijing to contribute to the event of the area and combine right into a regional community of cooperation and interdependence, mentioned Mr Lee.
“The area wants infrastructure, the infrastructure wants financing. China is able to doing that – of constructing infrastructure, it could possibly additionally assist to supply the financing, it could possibly additionally develop the commerce and financial hyperlinks with the nations within the area.”
The Belt and Street Initiative offers a framework the place this may be finished, he added.
Singapore might contribute to the initiative by being the place the place tasks are evaluated and financing is obtained. As a centre for arbitration and mediation, Singapore, with its many worldwide regulation companies, can be the place nations on Belt and Street schemes arbitrate points or discover authorized experience, the Prime Minister added.
