Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli on Wednesday wrapped up an official visit to Singapore with many deals and broad consensus between the two countries.
During his less-than-48-hour stay in the city state, Zhang co-chaired with Singaporean officials three high-level institutional mechanism meetings: a meeting of China-Singapore Joint Council for Bilateral Cooperation, and Joint Steering Council meetings for the Suzhou Industrial Park and for the Tianjin Eco-city.
As annual meetings of the three vice-premier-level mechanisms, all the talks are held in China and Singapore alternately. The meetings were held in Suzhou last year. Singapore agreed to further promote the international use of the renminbi.
Under new initiatives, the existing cross-border RMB initiatives between Singapore and the China-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park and Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city will be now citywide in Suzhou and Tianjin.
The expansion will give more financing options to Suzhou and Tianjin companies and provide financial institutions and investors in Singapore additional avenues to deploy their growing RMB liquidity in Singapore.
Meanwhile, the two sides agreed to speed up the negotiations of a third intergovernmental project in western China so as to launch its construction at an early date. Viewing the new project "a strategic cooperation project between the two countries," both sides expressed the hope that the cooperation could form a network and play a big role in the social and economic development in the vast western part of China.
They also reached broad consensus on issues including the upgrading of a bilateral free trade agreement, economic transformation, financial cooperation, cultural and people-to-people exchanges as well as sustainable development.
The two countries signed four documents of cooperation, including the establishment of the China Cultural Center in Singapore. Zhang's visit came as the two countries celebrated the 25th anniversary of forging diplomatic ties earlier this month.
He is also the first Chinese leader to visit Singapore in the wake of Singapore's general election on Sept. 11. Upon arrival on Monday, Zhang met with his Singaporean counterpart Teo Chee Hean.
On Tuesday afternoon, he met with Singaporean President Tony Tan Keng Yam and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
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 grew to 95.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2014, up from 2.8 billion dollars in 1990.
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