Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (left) and Chinese Premier Li Qiang meeting in Beijing on June 23. - ST
SINGAPORE: Chinese Premier Li Qiang will make his first official visit to Singapore from Oct 25 to 26 at the invitation of Prime Minister Lawrence Wong.
This marks the first trip to Singapore by a Chinese premier in seven years, after former premier Li Keqiang visited the Republic in 2018.
“Together with Prime Minister Wong’s official visit to China in June this year, this exchange of official visits celebrates the 35th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Singapore and China in 2025 and reflects our excellent bilateral ties,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) said in a statement on Friday (Oct 24).
Li will receive a ceremonial welcome on Oct 25 and have a bilateral meeting with PM Wong.
The two leaders will then witness the exchange of several memorandums of understanding and agreements relating to green development, the digital economy, as well as training and development, MFA said.
On Oct 26, Li will call on Acting President Eddie Teo, who is chairman of the Council of Presidential Advisers, as President Tharman Shanmugaratnam is overseas on leave.
Li will also engage with business leaders from Singapore and China at a Singapore-China Business Roundtable that will be hosted by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade and Industry Gan Kim Yong.
Li, who took office as China’s eighth premier in 2023, will arrive in Singapore fresh from China’s Fourth Plenum, a four-day conclave of the Communist Party’s top leaders to chart the country’s economic and social development strategy over the next five years, from 2026 to 2030.
After his two-day visit here, Li will travel to Malaysia to represent China at the 47th Asean Summit in Kuala Lumpur, where other major world leaders, including Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and US President Donald Trump, will gather.
PM Wong’s upcoming meeting with Li in Singapore will be their fourth in less than two years since the former took over as Singapore’s head of government in May 2024.
In October 2024, PM Wong held formal talks with Li in Vientiane, Laos, on the sidelines of the 44th and 45th Asean summits.
The leaders later had a brief exchange in Kuala Lumpur in May during the Asean-Gulf Cooperation Council-China Summit.
Their third meeting was in Beijing in June, in a trip that marked PM Wong’s first introductory visit to a country outside of South-east Asia since taking the top job here.
There have been several other high-level bilateral exchanges between Singapore and China in 2025, including meetings between DPM Gan, Chinese Vice-President Han Zheng, Vice-Premier He Lifeng and Commerce Minister Wang Wentao in Beijing in September.
Later in the year, a meeting of the 21st Joint Council for Bilateral Cooperation (JCBC) will be held in Chongqing. This meeting, held alternately in Singapore and China, is a top-level annual platform that sets the strategic direction for bilateral cooperation.
The JCBC meeting will also coincide with the 10th anniversary of the China-Singapore (Chongqing) Demonstration Initiative on Strategic Connectivity, a government-to-government project that has led to a doubling of investments by the Republic in Chongqing, from US$5.7 billion in 2015 to US$12.7 billion (S$16.5 billion) in 2024.
Since 2013, Singapore has been China’s largest foreign investor, while China has been Singapore’s largest goods trading partner.
Total bilateral trade in 2024 amounted to $170 billion, up 1.8 per cent from 2023. - The Straits Times/ANN
