Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong made a five-day go to to China final week, a distinguished show of pleasant and constructive relations that stood in distinction to US Secretary of Protection Pete Hegseth’s feedback about “malign Chinese language affect” on the Shangri-La Dialogue protection summit in Singapore on Might 31.
After assembly with President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Qiang and different Chinese language officers in Beijing, Wong joined World Financial Discussion board President Borge Brende on stage at “Summer time Davos” in Tianjin. The messages from their conversations have been clear: shut consideration is being paid to the significance of relations between Singapore and China by either side, globalism is way from lifeless and nations are discovering methods to maneuver past US protectionism and diktat.
On June 24, Wong wrote on X: “Productive assembly with President Xi this morning. We agreed to additional deepen cooperation consistent with our distinctive ‘all-round high-quality future-oriented’ partnership.” He then added, “Amidst a extra unsure exterior surroundings, we’re dedicated to working collectively to foster continued peace, stability and shared prosperity for the area.”
Established in April 2023, that partnership covers commerce and funding, environmentally sound (“inexperienced”) improvement, the digital financial system, meals safety, the monetary sector, aviation, and people-to-people exchanges. It’s backed by a “shared dedication to multilateralism, help for the needs and ideas of the United Nations Constitution, adherence to worldwide regulation, and …the principles primarily based multilateral buying and selling system as embodied by the World Commerce Organisation.”
Wong’s go to got here within the run-up to the 35th anniversary of the institution of diplomatic relations between Singapore and the Individuals’s Republic on October 3, 1990. However ties between the 2 date additional again, to Lee Kuan Yew’s conferences and discussions with Deng Xiaoping when the latter visited Singapore in 1978.
Commenting on this historical past, Prime Minister Wong identified that “President Xi is in a novel place, I believe, to have engaged and met all of the prime ministers of Singapore: Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Chok Tong, Lee Hsien Loong and, now, me.”
Of their assembly, Prime Minister Wong and Premier Li “recommended the numerous progress in bilateral cooperation over the previous 35 years, underscored by the three Authorities-to-Authorities tasks in Suzhou, Tianjin, and Chongqing.”
These tasks are:
- the China-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park;
- the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-Metropolis city improvement enterprise; and
- the China-Singapore (Chongqing) Demonstration Initiative on Strategic Connectivity, which promotes hyperlinks in monetary providers, info & communications, and transport & logistics.
Wong and Li additionally “welcomed the sturdy momentum within the ASEAN-China Complete Strategic Partnership and regarded ahead to signing the ASEAN-China Free Commerce Space 3.0 Improve later this yr.”
After the assembly, the 2 leaders witnessed the signing of the next paperwork, as detailed by Singapore’s Ministry of Overseas Affairs:
- Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Ministry of Regulation of the Republic of Singapore and the Ministry of Justice of the Individuals’s Republic of China on Authorized Expertise Growth;
- Letter of Intent (LOI) to Collectively Discover Establishing a Senior Officers Alternate Programme between Singapore and China;
- LOI to Develop a Third Nation Coaching Programme between the Ministry of Overseas Affairs of the Republic of Singapore and the China Worldwide Growth Cooperation Company of the Individuals’s Republic of China;
- Information Alternate Settlement between the Mental Property Workplace of Singapore and the Nationwide Mental Property Administration of the Individuals’s Republic of China.
Wong and Li “additionally took word of the launch of the China-Singapore over-the-counter (OTC) bond market association. This permits chosen Singapore-based banks to supply buying and selling and custody providers for onshore RMB bonds, and improve worldwide buyers’ entry to China’s bond market by means of Singapore.”
Wong additionally met with Vietnam’s Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh at “Summer time Davos,” the place they talked about cooperation in areas together with renewable power and meals safety. “This,” he wrote on X, “builds on the Vietnam-Singapore Complete Strategic Partnership (CSP) launched earlier this yr.” Singapore, mentioned Wong, “is doing one thing like greater than 20 industrial parks in Vietnam.”
This yr’s occasion, formally the 16th World Financial Discussion board (WEF) Annual Assembly of the New Champions, attracted about 1,800 contributors from world wide, this time below the theme “Entrepreneurship for a New Period.” It was the eighth time that the occasion was held in Tianjin.
Wong spoke at size with WEF President Brende about the necessity to reform and protect the world financial order by way of a “versatile multilateralism” that stops “the jungle rising again” below the “rule of the sturdy.”
For instance, he mentioned that
just a few nations, like-minded nations, Singapore working with Japan and Australia, we now have come collectively to provoke a joint assertion initiative on e-commerce. And after 5 laborious years of negotiation, right this moment, greater than 70 nations have agreed on the primary algorithm for digital buying and selling – it’s the constructing block for the primary set of world guidelines on digital commerce. And I give these illustrations to indicate that it’s potential to replace, evolve, enhance the multilateral system and international establishments that we now have right this moment. It’s painstaking work however there is no such thing as a different.
Singapore, he mentioned, constructed commerce and funding hyperlinks with its nearest neighbors, Malaysia and Indonesia, then Vietnam and different members of ASEAN, and now,
for the entire of ASEAN, we’re methods to higher combine ASEAN and make us extra united, have the ability to provide a extra aggressive single market to buyers. So that’s inside ASEAN.
However exterior of our area, we’re additionally partaking completely different blocks. We have already got very shut hyperlinks with China, Japan, Korea, India in Asia. However we’re partaking exterior of Asia, for instance, with the EU, with the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council: the inaugural ASEAN-GCC-China Summit held in Kuala Lumpur on May 27], with Latin America. So we’re looking for methods to strengthen hyperlinks with like-minded entities in every single place world wide.
As President Trump’s commerce struggle takes its toll, such efforts have acquired a brand new urgency. The June Survey of Skilled Forecasters (economists and analysts who carefully monitor the Singapore financial system) carried out by the Financial Authority of Singapore confirmed a discount on this yr’s projected financial progress to 1.7% from the two.6% projected in March – an abrupt slowdown from the 4.4% GDP progress recorded in 2024.
Tensions over commerce and different geopolitical issues have been rated as the best draw back threat to the Singaporean financial system, adopted by rising rates of interest and international financial slowdown. Respondents to the survey additionally signaled concern over tighter monetary circumstances.
Manufacturing has taken a very massive hit. Modifications in median forecasts of 2025 macroeconomic indicators from the March to the June survey embody: manufacturing +2.9% to -0.3%, non-oil home exports +2.8% to +1.0%, finance & insurance coverage +4.0% to +3.3%, development +3.4% to +3.3%, wholesale & retail commerce +2.7% to +2.2%, lodging & meals providers +2.0% to +1.5%, and personal consumption: +3.5% to +3.1%. The development sector is holding up with help from the Changi Airport Terminal 5 and different longer-term tasks.
In late Might, DBS Financial institution senior economist Chua Han Teng wrote that “Continued elevated international commerce coverage uncertainties are prone to dampen enterprise confidence, which have already turned down.”
US President Trump’s so-called “reciprocal” tariff on Singapore is simply 10% (the identical as the present baseline tariff), however people who could be utilized to the remainder of Asia are significantly increased: 46% on Vietnam, 36% on Thailand, 32% on Indonesia, 32% on Taiwan, 25% on South Korea, 24% on Japan, and many others. Then there may be the 25% tariff on autos, and proposed tariffs on semiconductors, prescribed drugs and different merchandise that are actually into account, plus a number of tariffs on China that at the moment add as much as efficient charges of greater than 30% on most Chinese language items.
That is all damaging for Singapore, which lives on commerce and funding. The China and ASEAN are Singapore’s largest commerce companions, every accounting for a couple of quarter of its imports and exports, US is Singapore’s largest international investor, and Singapore is China’s largest international investor.
The “reciprocal” tariffs have been “paused” till July 9, however the White Home now says that that date is “not crucial,” leaving hope for negotiated reductions, but in addition, given Trump’s penchant for altering his thoughts, continued uncertainty.
In a ministerial assertion on US tariffs and their implications issued on April 8, Wong wrote that, “In Singapore’s case, we now have an FTA with America. We impose zero tariffs on US imports, and we truly run a commerce deficit with the US – which means we purchase extra from them than they do from us.”
Due to this fact, “If the tariffs have been really reciprocal, and in the event that they have been meant to focus on solely these with commerce surpluses, then the tariff for Singapore must be zero.”
“However nonetheless we’re being subjected to the ten% tariff. We’re very disenchanted by the US transfer, particularly contemplating the deep and longstanding friendship between our two nations. These aren’t actions one does to a good friend.”
However, at Summer time Davos Wong mentioned:
We need to be mates with each America and China, and to have good relations with them, cooperate on win-win areas. However it’s not simply us; all of Southeast Asia want to do the identical. And inside ASEAN particularly, no single nation in ASEAN could have the identical measurement and scale, however whenever you add ASEAN up altogether, collectively, we’re not small.
We’ve got appreciable heft. We’re 700 million folks, a large financial system, and ASEAN has the flexibility to form its personal future, to form its personal future. ASEAN was the sector for proxy wars through the Chilly Conflict. We don’t need that to occur once more. So ASEAN’s method could be very clear. We reject zero-sum competitors.
“I do know everybody displays and tracks what we are saying and what we do very carefully,” he mentioned, “making an attempt to parse each hidden which means behind each phrase, behind each motion, whether or not we’re shifting nearer to 1 or the opposite. However that’s not how we take a look at issues.”
Actually, there is no such thing as a signal whatsover that American authorities stress is constraining relations between Singapore and China. Quite the opposite, the 2 Asian nations have appropriated the phrases rules-based international order, free commerce and multilateralism, that are not related to the US. And they’re working collectively on a variety of sensible actions that appear completely alien to the Trump Administration’s view of what’s or what it want to be occurring in Asia.
Comply with this author on X: @ScottFo83517667
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