Chongqing, which is the leading laptop manufacturing base in the world, has been chosen by China and Singapore to become the site for their next bilateral development project. (Photo : www.usa.chinadaily.com.cn)
CChina and Singapore have chosen Chongqing, a metropolis in southwestern China, to become the site of their third government-to-government (G-to-G) project, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
The Chongqing project was part of the various agreements the two countries signed on Saturday, Nov.7, between President Xi Jinping and Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
According to the report, China and Singapore have already undertaken two G-to-G projects: one was the Suzhou Industrial Park, which was established in 1994 in East China's Jiangsu Province; and the other is Tianjin Eco-city, inaugurated in 2008 in the port city of Tianjin in north China.
The Chongqing project has been dubbed as "modern connectivity and modern services" and has been groomed to become an important nodal point for China's "Belt and Road" initiative, which seeks to revive China's ancient trade routes that span across Asia, Africa and Europe.
In an interview published on Friday, Nov. 6, with Singaporean newspaper Lianhe Zaoao, Lee said that Singapore is expecting that the Chongqing project will "suit China's development needs and fit in China's major plans, including the Western Region Development, the Yangtze River Economic Belt, and the Belt and Road Initiative."
The Singaporean leader also hopes that the new project would be the start of a new stage in bilateral cooperation.
Chongqing, one of the four municipalities directly under the Chinese central government, has a robust economy and has been one of China's fastest-growing cities since 2014. Its economy is reportedly expanding at 11 percent in the first three quarters of 2015.
According to official data from Singapore, the southeast Asian country has been China's largest foreign investor since 2013. Between 1990 and 2014, Singapore's investment in China totaled $72.3 billion, the report said.
President Xi arrived in Singapore on Friday, Nov. 6, for his first state visit to the city-state as Chinese president, at the invitation of his Singaporean counterpart, Tony Tan Keng Yam.
