China and Singapore Embrace Bright Relationships
Since the establishment of diplomatic ties 18 years ago, the two countries, China and Singapore, have developed dramatically to become stable and mature.
China and Singapore established diplomatic relationship in October 1990. Since then there happened some major high level visits, including one by Premier Wen Jiabao and one by then Vice president Wu Yi to Singapore in 2007.
In 2007, Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong and Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew also visited China. This year, there have been visits to China by four of Singapore’s top leaders, including President S R Nathan and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
In a visit to Beijing by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore and China will sign a free trade agreement.
With China’s rapid development, the two countries have promoted cooperation in many fields like trade, education, culture, security and politics, observing the fundamental interests of the two countries and peoples and stimulate peace and prosperity in the region.
Last year, China and Singapore realized a flagship eco-city project in Tianjin to strengthen bilateral ties. Both sides will cooperate to share their expertise and experience to develop a socially harmonious, environmentally friendly and resource-conserving city in Tianjin.
The 30 sq km eco-city project is 40 km from downtown Tianjin and 150 km from Beijing. The goal is to convert non-arable land into a prosperous and active city, where ecological environment is sensitively balanced with urban development.
The first China-Singapore flagship project was the Suzhou Industrial Park, started in 1994, which turned out to be a brilliant success. It helped transfer Singapore’s industrial expertise to China, and became a model for other industrial parks in the country.
In economic field, Singapore and China have continuing strong and extending economic ties.
Shown by the statistics released by the Chinese customs, the year 2007 witnessed a $47.15 billion bilateral trade, making Singapore China’s eighth largest trading partner.
As for the realized investments in China from Singapore, it amounted up to $33.2 billion at the end of December 2007, making Singapore China’s seventh largest foreign investor and the largest investor among the Association of Southern Asian Nations (ASEAN).
The close relationships between China and Singapore are not limited to the economic area, but also in terms of the strong bond of friendship between the two peoples.
The news of Sichuan earthquake triggered enormous sympathy among Singaporeans. The government immediately offered $200,000 in relief assistance, tents and the services of one of four crack rescue teams.
In Singapore, many charity drives raised spontaneously. All of them received tremendous support.
The Singapore-Sichuan Trade and Investment Committee donated almost $1 million. A TV charity event in Singapore on May 25 raised $10 million, pledged to be used to build schools and orphanages in Sichuan. A charity concert was initialed in Chengdu on June 28, involving artist from China and Singapore.
According to China’s Foreign Ministry’s statistics, Singapore’s donations through ministry-related agencies, ranked the third highest in the whole world, after the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
The two countries have also accelerated the pace of people-to-people exchanges, in the form of mutual tourism and education. In 2006, about 828,000 Singaporeans visited China, a year-on-year increase of 9.5 percent. Meanwhile more than 1 million Chinese residents traveled to Singapore, a year-on-year increase of 20.9 percent.
With the rapid growth of educational collaborations between China and Singapore, the Ministry of Education of China (MOE) has established the inspectorate of overseas education to monitor recruitment agencies, in 2004.
According to figures released on the website of the ministry, 20 educational cooperation programs by 15 universities with about 32,000 Chinese students studying in Singapore and 1,500 Singaporeans in China.
In 2006, the two countries signed the Agreement on Culture Cooperation between China and Singapore, which lead to about 200 cultural exchange programs every year.
On January 7, 2008, Singapore and China signed the first bilateral agreement for defense exchange and security cooperation between the countries at the close of the inaugural China-Singapore Defense Policy Dialog.
The agreement formalizes exiting defense activities in the form of exchanges, attendance at course, seminars and reciprocal port calls between the two countries.
All these are projected to strengthen cooperation and promote bilateral understanding.
The official visit of Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hesien Loong to China from Oct 22 to 27, associated with his attendance at the Asia-Europe Meeting in Beijing, will further consolidate relations between the two countries.
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