SINGAPORE: China’s Vice Foreign minister Liu Zhenmin met Singapore’s Permanent Secretary for Foreign Affairs Chee Wee Kiong in Singapore on Tuesday (Jan 17) and discussed upcoming bilateral exchanges such as the Joint Council for Bilateral Cooperation to be held next month, and the China-Singapore Forum on Leadership later this year.
According to a post on the website of Singapore’s Foreign Affairs Ministry (MFA), the two co-chaired the 10th Bilateral Consultations between the Singapore and Chinese foreign ministries.
During their meeting, Mr Chee and Mr Liu “reviewed the longstanding and multi-faceted cooperation between Singapore and China”.
MFA added the two sides noted that their high-level exchanges were maintained in 2016, including Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 Summit in Hangzhou and with Premier Li Keqiang at the ASEAN Summit in Vientiane.
Mr Chee and Mr Liu tossing a prosperity salad or yusheng during lunch on Tuesday (Jan 17). (Photo: MFA)
Vice Foreign Minister Liu and Mr Chee reviewed the good progress of the two sides’ government-to-government projects, including the latest Chongqing Connectivity Initiative, MFA said.
Mr Chee also expressed Singapore’s support for China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative – a new area of collaboration which would further build upon Singapore and China’s substantive bilateral ties, MFA added.
The meeting also touched on ways to strengthen ASEAN-China relations and connectivity, “including synergies between the Master Plan for ASEAN Connectivity 2025 and the ‘Belt and Road’ initiative”.
Additionally, the two sides requested that the Singapore Tourism Board and China National Tourist Administration “collaborate and discuss concrete plans to promote tourism between ASEAN and China”, as part of the ASEAN-China Year of Tourism Cooperation in 2017.
