BEIJING – Singapore will be restarting a high-level bilateral forum with China and it is scheduled to take place in the Republic in June.

Senior Minister Teo Chee Hean said the Singapore-China Social Governance Forum is important as an avenue of discussion for many issues that both countries are facing in social governance.

The forum was last held in 2016.

Mr Teo was speaking during a meeting with China’s security chief Chen Wenqing on March 22.

“We’re planning to meet in June this year in Singapore, and we look forward to welcoming Secretary Chen to Singapore,” Mr Teo said at Beijing’s Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, where the two leaders met for the first time.

Mr Chen is the secretary of China’s Political and Legal Affairs Commission, which oversees the country’s law enforcement apparatus, including the police, courts, and the prosecutor’s office.

Mr Teo was on the last day of a six-day official visit to China – his first to the country since 2019 – during which he also made stops in Sichuan and Zhejiang provinces.

A day earlier in Beijing, Mr Teo had emphasised the importance of bilateral exchanges between government and party officials in a meeting with Central Party School president Chen Xi.

The Singapore-China Social Governance Forum was first held in Singapore in 2012. A meeting in Beijing followed in 2014 for key officials from both countries to share experiences in topics such as managing interracial and religious diversity.

At the third edition of the forum in Singapore in 2016, Mr Teo and Mr Meng Jianzhu, who was then secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission, gave keynote addresses.

The resumption of the forum comes after Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed at a meeting in Beijing in March 2023 that both sides should work towards resuming people-to-people exchanges to pre-pandemic levels.

At another meeting during his 2023 visit to China, PM Lee said he looked forward to the resumption of more high-level exchanges by leveraging institutional bilateral mechanisms such as the Singapore-China Social Governance Forum, said the Republic’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a 2023 press release.

At the meeting with Mr Chen Wenqing in Beijing, Mr Teo said the social governance forum complements two other bilateral forums – the Joint Council for Bilateral Cooperation (JCBC) and the Singapore-China Forum on Leadership – which he had also co-chaired over the years.

These meetings allow regular exchanges between top officials from both sides.

Mr Chen said he was happy to work with Mr Teo to have an “in-depth exchange of views on our cooperation in such areas as social governance, security and law enforcement, and the building of rule of law”.

He described Mr Teo as “an old friend of the Chinese people” for his personal efforts in developing China-Singapore relations and deepening practical cooperation.

“You have made such an important contribution to that. Therefore I want to thank you,” he said.

Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) said in a statement that Mr Teo and Mr Chen welcomed ongoing bilateral cooperation on legal and judicial issues, and discussed ways to work together to tackle transnational crime.

Mr Teo, who had introduced each of the Singapore political office-holders attending the meeting – Senior Minister of State for Sustainability and the Environment and Manpower Koh Poh Koon, Senior Minister of State for Communications and Information and National Development Tan Kiat How, and Minister of State for Home Affairs and Social and Family Development Sun Xueling – said that 2024 is a significant year for bilateral relations, as it marks the 30th year of the Suzhou Industrial Park and the 20th JCBC meeting.

Chinese officials at the meeting included Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Sun Weidong and Mr Cao Zhongming, who was introduced as the Chinese Ambassador to Singapore-designate.

Mr Cao was most recently ambassador to Belgium.

On March 22, Mr Teo held a separate meeting with Chinese Vice-President Han Zheng at the Great Hall of the People, where they reaffirmed the excellent relations between Singapore and China, said MFA.

They discussed ways to strengthen connectivity to support growing people-to-people exchanges, the ministry said, and exchanged views on recent regional and international developments.

Mr Han was previously the top-ranked vice-premier who co-chaired the JCBC six times, including with Mr Teo in 2018.

Mr Han said in his opening remarks that he was happy to meet Mr Teo again, with whom he has had open discussions on common concerns.

The two leaders last met in November 2023 in Singapore, when Mr Han gave a keynote speech at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum, which gathers prominent businessmen and government officials. Mr Teo thanked Mr Han for the welcome, and said that he had good discussions a day earlier with Mr Chen Xi.

“I’m glad that the cooperation on the (leadership) forum between the two sides has been going very well, and that we are taking further steps to increase interactions on human resource development and exchanges,” Mr Teo said, referring to the Singapore-China Forum on Leadership last held in September 2023.