Singapore, China chart next lap for 30-year-old Suzhou Industrial Park

They ink 10-year blueprint, boosting cooperation in emerging sectors

- Joyce ZK Lim

Singapore and China inked a 10-year blueprint for their flagship Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP) project, as Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong underscored the city-state's continued confidence in China's future despite the challenges it faces.

Over the next decade, both countries will grow emerging sectors such as green development, the digital economy and biomedical sciences, with upcoming projects that will help the 30-year-old SIP stay relevant and attract investments from China and beyond, he said in Suzhou on Nov 25.

Speaking at a forum attended by more than 200 government and business leaders, including Chinese Vice-Premier He Lifeng, SM Lee said that even as China faced both domestic and external challenges resulting in slower growth, it would be "short-sighted and unwise" to dismiss the world's second-largest economy.

China has shown that it can take a strategic perspective, maintaining consistent policies over the long term to ride through transient ups and downs, and Singapore is committed to deepening cooperation with it, including through the SIP, he added.

SM Lee was in the eastern coastal province of Jiangsu on the first leg of a six-day official visit to China to take part in a day-long series of activities to commemorate the 30-year milestone of the first intergovernmental project between both countries. It is his first time in China since stepping down as prime minister in May 2024 and being appointed as senior minister.

Launched in 1994 when China was reforming and industrialising its economy, the SIP - a brainchild of Mr Lee Kuan Yew and Mr Deng Xiaoping - was intended as a platform for China to adapt Singapore's development experiences to its own context, and for Singapore to develop an external wing to its economy.