BEIJING – In 1993, then 41-year-old Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was the guest of honour at an international debating competition held in Singapore.

He chatted and joked with participants, including those from the winning team representing Shanghai’s elite Fudan University, and the professor who led them to victory.

That professor was a fresh-faced 38-year-old Wang Huning – who is today the fourth most powerful leader in China and the man behind the country’s most important political theories of recent decades.

On Friday, as now Prime Minister Lee sat across from the soft-spoken bespectacled man in a cavernous room at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, he told Mr Wang that President Halimah Yacob had reminded him they had met three decades before.

“I looked up the records and was very happy to find an old photograph of us together after the finals of the last debate,” said PM Lee to Mr Wang, who chuckled.

“I hope you’ll keep it as a memento of our friendship and good cooperation.”

Mr Wang had met Madam Halimah in 2019 when she was in Beijing for the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilisations.

PM Lee told Mr Wang that Singapore had worked with successive Chinese leaders over many years.

“Our leaders, both old and new in Singapore, are ready to work with China to continue to strengthen our bilateral relations which are deep and strong, and will still broaden and deepen, and have broadened and deepened even under the difficult conditions of Covid-19,” he said. 

Calls of “old friend” rang out in another huge room at the Great Hall earlier, when PM Lee met Mr Zhao Leji, China’s third-ranking leader.

Mr Zhao is ranked third in the Politburo Standing Committee – the pinnacle of power – after President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang.

Mr Zhao, head of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, greeted PM Lee warmly, saying: “We have met so many times, we are old friends.”

In response, PM Lee said: “As you have said, we are very old friends who have met many times before.” He noted that their most recent encounter was in Singapore in 2017. The Chinese leader was then co-chair of the Singapore-China Forum on Leadership, which brings together senior officials from both countries for leadership development and training. The Singapore co-chair has been Senior Minister Teo Chee Hean.

“Since then, our bilateral cooperation has continued to strengthen, and our cooperation projects between the two governments have thrived,” PM Lee said.

The meetings came on the third and final leg of PM Lee’s official visit to China this week, to reconnect with top Chinese leaders, after the 20th party congress in October 2022 and the recently concluded annual parliamentary sessions, or lianghui, resulted in a refreshed team. 

Mr Zhao said PM Lee was one of the first foreign leaders to visit China shortly after the new government was formed.

That “fully reflects the importance you attach to the China-Singapore relationship”, said Mr Zhao in his welcome remarks to the Singapore delegation.

He said the bilateral relationship had maintained a “good momentum of development”, and that the two countries have “forged a path of all-round cooperation that has kept pace with the times and set an example of high-quality cooperation in the region”.

PM Lee said China had set out forward-looking priorities during the party congress and lianghui, adding that the strong bilateral ties offer a firm foundation for further cooperation.

Bilateral projects have evolved in accordance with China’s development, he noted.

The Suzhou Industrial Park has moved from being a model for industrial development to a hub for high-tech innovation and the biomedical and biochemical industries.

The Tianjin Eco-City project also marks its 15th anniversary in 2023, and officials from both sides are looking at new areas of cooperation.

The third intergovernmental project, the Chongqing Connectivity Initiative, plays a “bridging role in Singapore’s BRI”, by connecting western China to South-east Asia and beyond, said PM Lee, using the abbreviation for China’s Belt and Road Initiative, an ambitious global infrastructure strategy.

The New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor – a trade and logistics passage linking hundreds of ports in about 100 countries with an operational centre in the western Chinese city of Chongqing – serves as an important supply chain for the region, especially during the pandemic, the Singapore leader added.

In Beijing, PM Lee also met the capital city’s party secretary Yin Li.

Mr Yin, who became the top Communist Party official in charge of Beijing in November, hosted PM Lee to lunch.

In his welcome remarks, Mr Yin said that even though it was the first time he was meeting PM Lee, he has met Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan three times in two years and Singapore’s Ambassador to China Lui Tuck Yew five times.

“It is safe to say that we have very close interactions and relations,” said Mr Yin, who was accompanied by Beijing mayor Yin Yong.

PM Lee told the Beijing party chief that Singapore has good relations with cities and provinces across China.

“Our people have been talking to each other,” PM Lee said. “You said meeting me, my Foreign Minister, my ambassador one, three, five times. I think we should continue this progression, and in future there will be many reasons to meet seven, nine, 11 and more times for many different cooperation projects.”

PM Lee’s week-long trip to China, which ends on Saturday, also included the southern city of Guangzhou in Guangdong province, where he visited the Guangzhou Knowledge City – a joint project to promote high-tech industries by Singapore and China – and met Guangdong party chief Huang Kunming and Singaporeans at a reception. In Hainan, PM Lee spoke at the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference.