Spotlight: China, Singapore resolute in shaping closer, customized partnership

In the years to come, China and Singapore will strive to build a partnership of all-round cooperation keeping with the times, and gear up for negotiations on upgrading a seven-year-old free trade agreement (FTA).

The consensus was reached by visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Singaporean counterpart, Tony Tan Keng Yam, only a couple of hours after Xi's arrival in the garden state of Singapore on Friday.

RELATIONS KEEPING ABREAST WITH TIMES

No countries but Singapore could have such an exceptional relationship with China, analysts said.

Describing bilateral relations with the wording of "keeping pace with the times" is "rare but appropriate," said Zheng Yongnian, director of East Asia Institute of National University of Singapore (NUS).

Singapore has played different roles at different phases of China's modernization. Chinese cities have learnt from Singapore, while Singapore is always seeking opportunities to cement cooperation with China.

Back in 1978, China was initiating the reform and opening-up drive. It was not just pure coincidence that drove Deng Xiaoping, then Chinese vice premier, to go to Singapore to explore the city-state's recipe for modernization.

In Deng's well-known speeches made during a tour of south China in 1992, Deng praised Singapore as the model to learn from.

"Singapore acted as a think tank for China's reform and opening-up in the 1980s. From the 1990s to the first generation of the 21st century, the city state played a vital role in China's drive to seek foreign capitals and industrialization," said Chen Gang, a research fellow with the East Asia Institute of NUS, citing the Suzhou Industrial Park as a solid example.

Established in 1994 as the first intergovernmental project between China and Singapore, the park has been regarded as a model for China's collaboration with foreign countries. It has so far attracted 26.7 billion U.S. dollars in foreign investment, as more than 90 Fortune 500 enterprises have invested there.

As China's economy developed, environmental protection became a concern. Tianjin Eco-City, the second government-to-government project between China and Singapore, was established to learn from the garden city's magic to advance the economy in an environmental-friendly way.

Looking forward, "as China grows to be an influential power in the international arena, proposing initiatives like the 'Belt and Road' initiative and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, China and Singapore are learning from each other," said Chen.

UPGRADING FTA ISN'T ANTI-TPP

The existing China-Singapore FTA was signed in October 2008 as the first comprehensive bilateral FTA that China has signed with another Asian country.

Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said the deal had played an important role in boosting two-way trade and investment, and had became an important pillar for the close relationship between the two nations.

However, as China and Singapore plan to upgrade the deal, those narrow-minded keep playing up the hypothesis that, with such efforts to renew free trade agreements with countries in the region, China is "attempting" to counter the effect of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal.

But, the real case is that, as Chinese Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng put it last month, China is open to any trade mechanism as long as it follows the rules of the World Trade Organization and is advantageous to the economic integration of the Asia-Pacific region.

"China hopes the TPP pact and other free trade arrangements in the region can complement each other and contribute to Asia-Pacific trade, investment and economic growth," Gao said.

Lee also believes in the purity of China and his country's desire to refresh their free trade deal.

In an interview with Singaporean newspaper Lianhe Zaobao published Friday, Lee said that as China transforms its economy and enterprises from both nations go globally, both sides realize the importance of an upgraded FTA, which should meet increasing needs from enterprises.

Also, Singapore's Senior Minister of State Josephine Teo has earlier pointed out that as Chinese firms need Singapore, a financing hub, to reach the Southeast Asian market, Singapore should also look for more opportunities in China's western region to meet consumers' demand there.

ALL-ROUND PARTNERSHIP

Few, if any, countries could compare with Singapore in the depth and width of cooperation with China, as the two countries, though in a sharp contrast in size and population, share many cultural similarities.

In 2014, bilateral trade hit 79.74 billion dollars, a 28-fold increase over two decades ago.

Beyond cooperation in economy and finance, education and people-to-people interactions between the two countries also flourish.

Su Ge, president of the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS), said China-Singapore ties are a paragon of friendly cooperation between big and small countries.

As the two countries observe 25 years of formal diplomatic ties with Xi's visit on Friday and Saturday, students are traveling to Singapore to learn the "Singapore Model" now more than ever.

Official statistics show that nearly 250,000 Chinese government officials have been trained in Singapore.

Zhao Jun was among those who traveled to study there. In 2000, Zhao was working at the Ministry of Agriculture and won a Singaporean scholarship at the NUS LKY Public Policy School, where he received a master degree in public policy.

"The world-class faculty at the LKY school renewed my out-of-date knowledge in public policy in areas such as economics, political science and sociology," Zhao recalled. "The mind-blowing two years thoroughly remolded me." Endi