China and Singapore announce substantial completion of the follow-up negotiations on the upgrade of the Free Trade Agreement

On April 1, witnessed by Premier Li Qiang of the State Council and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore, Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao and Minister of Trade and Industry Yan Jinyong of Singapore jointly signed the Memorandum of Understanding between the Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China and the Ministry of Trade and Industry of Singapore on announcing the substantive completion of the follow-up negotiations on the upgrading of the China Singapore Free Trade Agreement, confirming the substantive completion of the follow-up negotiations on the upgrading of the two countries' free trade agreement. The teams of both parties will continue the follow-up work such as text legal review and translation, fulfill their respective domestic procedures, and sign the agreement as soon as possible.
This agreement is the first time that China has adopted the negative list model in the practice of free trade agreements to make service and investment opening commitments. On the basis of the original upgrade agreement, the two sides have further improved their commitment to trade in services and investment openness, added new telecommunications chapters, and incorporated high-level economic and trade rules such as national treatment, market access, transparency, and the digital economy. The two sides also jointly confirmed that the opening measures in the field of trade in services and investment will not be withdrawn, and pledged to each other in the form of an agreement that "the door to opening is becoming wider and wider.". The agreement is an important measure and practical action for China to align with high standards of international economic and trade rules and expand its opening up to the outside world, which will effectively promote China Singapore economic and trade cooperation to a new level.
In 2008, China signed a free trade agreement with Singapore. In 2018, the two sides signed an agreement on upgrading the free trade zone to improve the level of rules in areas such as trade facilitation, rules of origin, economic and technological cooperation, and e-commerce. In December 2020, the two sides upgraded the agreement again, launched follow-up negotiations, and promoted further liberalization of bilateral service trade and investment based on the negative list model.