Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli on Wednesday wrapped up an official visit to Singapore, pledging to further promote ties between China and the Southeast Asian nation. During his less-than-48-hour stay in the city state, Zhang met respectively with Singaporean President Tony Tan Keng Yam, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean and Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam. Zhang said China and Singapore are facing great opportunities as the two marked the 25th anniversary of diplomatic ties this year. He said the main task of his visit is to implement the consensus reached by the Chinese and Singaporean presidents at their meetings in Beijing in July, comprehensively sum up outcomes of the cooperation in the past 25 years and push forward new progresses of key projects. Calling Singapore "an important partner and a special friend of China," Zhang said China is willing to develop and map out bilateral ties always from a strategic height and long-term perspective. China would like to maintain close high-level exchanges of visit with Singapore, increase mutual trust, explore cooperation potentials and enhance cooperation on economy and trade, investment, finance, science and technology, environment, human resources and social governance, he said. China encourages enterprises from both countries to conduct cooperation on infrastructure construction in countries along China"s One Belt One Road initiative, and jointly explore market in a third country so as to further forge ahead bilateral cooperation in the new era, Zhang said. One Belt One Road initiative, proposed by Xi in 2013, is aimed at reviving the ancient trade routes that span Asia, Africa and Europe. On China-ASEAN relations, Zhang said the ties are facing new opportunities as next year marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment of China-ASEAN dialogue relationship, while Singapore takes turn as a coordinator country of China-ASEAN relations. China is ready to work with Singapore to carry out proposals raised by leaders of both countries, promote healthy and stable development of China-ASEAN strategic partnership so as to make greater contribution to regional development and prosperity, the vice premier said. Singaporean leaders hailed the traditional friendship and sound development of cooperation with China. The remarkable achievements it has scored since its reform and opening up policy in 1978 are not only conducive to regional peace and stability, but also provide new opportunities to Singapore, said Tan. Lee said Singapore is willing to maintain the good momentum of the development of bilateral ties and actively expand new areas of cooperation in the hope of advancing bilateral ties and China- ASEAN ties. On Tuesday, Zhang and Teo co-chaired the 12th meeting of China- Singapore Joint Council for Bilateral Cooperation, a high-level institutional mechanism established in 2003 to oversee the entire range of bilateral cooperation. The two leaders also presided over the 17th China-Singapore Joint Steering Council Meeting for the Suzhou Industrial Park and the eighth China-Singapore Joint Steering Council Meeting for the Tianjin Eco-city. Both sides agreed to speed up the negotiations of a third intergovernmental project in West China so as to launch its construction at an early date. Viewing the new project "a strategic cooperation project," both sides hope that the project will focus on modern connectivity and modern service industry and form a network and radiate the vast western part of China in order to promote local social and economic development. China and Singapore currently have two flagship projects -- the Suzhou Industrial Park in east China"s Jiangsu province and the Tianjin Eco-city in north China"s port city of Tianjin. Both sides acknowledged the progresses the two projects have scored so far and set up new goals and tasks for the next stage. Both sides agreed to establish an overseas investment service platform in Suzhou Industrial park and turned Tianjin Eco-city into an innovation-driven exemplary zone of green development. They also reached consensus on new initiatives to boost internationalization of RMB, the upgrading of a bilateral free trade agreement, economic transformation, financial cooperation, cultural and people-to-people exchange as well as sustainable development. The two countries signed four documents of cooperation, including the establishment of the China Cultural Center in Singapore. Zhang is the first Chinese leader to visit Singapore in the wake of Singapore"s general election in September. China is now Singapore"s No.1 trading partner while Singapore is China"s largest investment source. Statistics from the International Enterprise Singapore show that two-way trade between China and Singapore grew to 95.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2014, up from 2.8 billion dollars in 1990. |
