China and Singapore vow more exchanges as Asean welcomes Beijing’s warmer ties with US

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China was ready to elevate its cooperation with Singapore to a “higher level” and create conditions for continuing to resume exchanges that were interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a telephone call with his Singaporean counterpart Vivian Balakrishnan on Wednesday, Wang said China’s cooperation with Singapore had maintained “strong momentum”.

In April, the two countries agreed to upgrade bilateral relations to an “all-round high-quality, future-oriented partnership”, which comes with more cooperation in fields such as trade and investment, the green and digital economies and finance.

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“China is willing to work with Singapore to provide more convenient conditions for the further resumption of personnel exchanges between the two sides to make up for losses suffered during the pandemic over the past three years,” Wang said, according to China’s foreign ministry.

Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Wang and Balakrishnan reaffirmed the countries’ “long-standing and substantive” relationship, and that they looked forward to strengthening people-to-people exchanges.

During the call, Wang and Balakrishnan also traded views on regional and international issues, including the situation in the Middle East.

The Singaporean foreign minister welcomed the “improved tenor” of US-China relations following the meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Joe Biden.

The two leaders met in San Francisco last week for the first time in about a year, agreeing to work together on narcotics control and artificial intelligence and resume military-to-military communication.

China called for cooperation and mutual respect in a statement following the Xi-Biden meeting, signalling a much-needed reset after a downward spiral in US-China relations.

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“China-US relations are of vital importance to the world, and decoupling between China and the United States will have a serious, negative impact on the world,” China’s foreign ministry quoted him as saying.

Southeast Asian countries have increasingly found themselves sandwiched between Washington and Beijing as the rivalry between the two powers deepens, and leaders in the region have repeatedly stressed that they do not want to be forced to take sides.

Foreign ministers from the Asean bloc on Monday released a statement saying they were encouraged by Washington and Beijing’s commitment to maintaining open lines of communication and managing their relationship responsibly.

The statement said Asean stood ready to work together with both China and the US in “promoting the region as an epicentrum of growth … and safeguarding peace, security and development in our region and the world at large”.

South China Morning Post