Toast Speech by PM Lawrence Wong at the Official Dinner for Chinese Premier Li Qiang (Oct 2025)

His Excellency Premier Li Qiang,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,

It gives me great pleasure to welcome Premier Li to Singapore.  Premier Li has visited Singapore before, but this is his first Official Visit as Premier.  I am happy to reciprocate the warm hospitality that he had extended to me when I visited Beijing in June this year.

Premier Li’s visit comes as Singapore and China commemorate the 35th anniversary of diplomatic relations.

In fact, our ties go back much further – to the 1970s and the friendship between Mr Lee Kuan Yew and Mr Deng Xiaoping.

But the formal establishment of relations in 1990 marked the start of sustained and mutually beneficial cooperation, and that has continued to grow year after year.

In 1994, we launched our first Government-to-Government project, the Suzhou Industrial Park or SIP.

Premier Li would be very familiar with this project from his time in Jiangsu.

Over the past three decades, the SIP has continually reinvented itself, keeping pace with the transformation of both our economies.

In 2008, we launched our second project, the Tianjin Eco-City, focussing on sustainable development even before this became an international priority or a buzzword.

I was personally involved during my time as the Minister for National Development.

It remains now a pioneering model for high-quality and low-carbon urban development.

Our third project, the Chongqing Connectivity Initiative, marks its 10th anniversary this year.

Unlike the first two, it is not confined by a physical location.

But it focusses on connectivity and modern services – linking our financial systems, logistics and transport networks.

This innovative model has opened up new opportunities for businesses, and continues to drive regional growth.

These flagship projects show how our cooperation has evolved with the times.  They have built trust and understanding between our two countries and laid the foundations for our “All-Round High-Quality Future-Oriented Partnership”.

Today, we are taking our forward-looking cooperation even further with the deliverables concluded during Premier Li’s visit – leveraging our bilateral cooperation to support larger goals bilaterally and also for the region.

The establishment of a national-level Green and Digital Shipping Corridor will enhance connectivity, promote sustainable trade, and strengthen the resilience of supply chains.  In doing so, it will advance the decarbonisation of the maritime industry.

We will combine our complementary strengths to support development across the region.  In particular, through our Third Country Training Programme for ASEAN Member States and Timor-Leste, we will deliver programmes to facilitate climate resilience and the green transition in Southeast Asia.

Building on the success of Suzhou Industrial Park, we will explore ways to extend our collaboration overseas, and to facilitate greater investments by companies into Southeast Asia.

We also look forward to the signing of the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area 3.0 Upgrade at the upcoming ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur – another step forward in deepening regional economic integration.

For 35 years, Singapore and China have been important partners in each other’s development journeys.  I am confident that the new initiatives launched today will continue to bring benefits to our peoples, while contributing to the development of our wider region. 

I look forward to working closely with Premier Li to take Singapore-China relations to even greater heights.

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, may I now invite you to join me in a toast to:

His Excellency President Xi Jinping;
The good health and success of Premier Li and his delegation; and
The enduring friendship between Singapore and China, and between our two peoples.