China-Singapore economic and trade interaction is expected to accelerate

From February 19 to 21 this year, Singapore's Foreign Minister Vivian paid a three-day visit to China. Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang said in his meeting with Vivin that China is willing to continue to learn from each other and cooperate with Singapore for win-win results. The two sides should deepen the docking of development strategies, deepen the high-quality joint construction of the "the Belt and Road", improve the "overall planning", "competitiveness" and "driving force" of cooperation, and promote the improvement and upgrading of cooperation. In an interview with the media, Weiwen said that a series of talks were "very effective" and said the key word of the trip was "return to normal".

Deepen cooperation

As both members of RCEP, Sino-Singapore economic and trade exchanges have now reached a higher level. In 2022, China's import and export growth to other members of the RCEP reached 8 countries with a double-digit growth rate, of which the import and export growth rate to Singapore exceeded 20%.

In 2022, China and La Nouvelle-Zélande signed four memorandums of understanding covering green development, digital economy, e-commerce and the construction of new land and sea channels.

At the same time, the investment of Chinese enterprises in Singapore is also very active. For example, Weilai Automobile is listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange, and Kexing Biological plans to set up scientific research facilities and international business headquarters in Singapore.

In the future, during this visit to China, the two sides said that they would prepare for high-level exchanges in the next stage, give full play to the role of bilateral cooperation mechanism, and promote key cooperation projects "better and better".

Resume direct flight

Before the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, China was the world's largest source country of outbound tourists. In January this year, the Singapore Tourism Administration estimated that the number of Chinese tourists will reach 30% to 60% of the pre-epidemic level (about 3.6 million per year) in 2023. The recovery of the tourist heat between China and Singapore depends largely on the recovery speed of flights between the two countries. During this visit to China, the two sides agreed to speed up the resumption of direct flights in an all-round way to better facilitate personnel exchanges between the two countries.

Singapore Airlines said recently that Singapore Airlines will gradually encrypt passenger flights from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to Singapore from March 1. Singapore Airlines will increase the number of flights from Beijing to Singapore from 3 to 1 per day, and the number of flights from Shanghai to Singapore from 4 to 2 per day, and the number of flights from Guangzhou to Singapore from 3 to 1 per day. In addition, Kuhang, a low-cost airline of Singapore Airlines, also plans to restore the number of Chinese flights to more than half of the pre-epidemic level by June. Kuhang said that the number of flights to China would gradually increase from 14 to 57 per week. At the same time, Beijing will carry out two daily round-trip flights to Singapore from June, Shanghai will carry out three daily round-trip flights from June and four daily round-trip flights from October.

Looking forward to the future

In recent years, Singapore has established economic and trade cooperation mechanisms with many provinces and cities in China. This time, the economic and trade cooperation between Beijing and Singapore is expected to continue to deepen and expand.

On February 20, Yin Li, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and secretary of the Beijing Municipal Committee, met with Wei Wen. Beijing is willing to work with Singapore to deepen economic and trade cooperation, constantly improve the scale and quality of the two places' economic and trade, strengthen mutual learning and mutual learning in the construction of business environment, and provide excellent services for each other's enterprises to carry out trade and investment activities in the region. In the future, the two sides will strengthen scientific research cooperation around key areas such as artificial intelligence and digital economy, close personnel exchanges between the two places, and further expand cultural and tourism cooperation; We will jointly deepen exchanges and cooperation in urban governance, and exchange and learn from each other's practices and experiences in smart city construction, social security system, and commercial space planning.

As soon as the end of Viven's visit to China, enterprises have been active. According to Singapore media reports, Singapore CapitaLand Investment Company recently announced the establishment of the China Data Center Development Fund, which is committed to investing in two large-scale data center development projects in Greater Beijing. It is expected that China's data center development project will be completed in 2025, and the IT load will exceed 100 MW. The two data centers will meet China's strong demand after completion in the future.

The momentum of further cooperation between China and Singapore may be stronger in the future.