On November 11, 2009, visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao met in Singapore with Singaporean Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew.

When talking about China-Singapore relations, Hu said the Sino-Singaporean ties have maintained a sound momentum of development and enjoy a profound basis. The cooperation between the two countries has been going smoothly and has broad prospects. He said the development of the Suzhou Industrial Park has made great achievements and the Tianjin Eco-city project has also developed smoothly. The effective implementation of the Sino-Singaporean Free Trade Agreement (FTA) marked that bilateral economic and trade cooperation has entered a "closer, more mature new stage," said the Chinese president, adding that bilateral cooperation has brought tangible benefits to both peoples. Hu spoke highly of Lee's important contribution to the development of the bilateral ties.

As next year will mark the 20th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral diplomatic ties, both China and Singapore should take advantage of this opportunity to tap the potential and wisdom to open a brighter future for the bilateral friendly cooperative ties, said Hu. Hu made a three-point proposal for further developing the bilateral ties. First, to maintain close contacts between the leaders of the two countries, exchange views and opinions on the basis of frankness, and push forward bilateral ties along the right direction. Second, to make full use of the roles of the Sino-Singaporean FTA and the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area, strengthen bilateral pragmatic cooperation in various areas, and cultivate a new growth point for cooperation. Third, to maintain closer people-to-people contacts, cultural and knowledge exchanges, learn from each other and promote economic and social development of their respective countries.

Hu pointed out that the Chinese people celebrated the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China not long ago. China has made enormous development achievements in the past 60 years, the past 30 years of reform and opening-up in particular. The economic power and comprehensive national strength have remarkably improved and the Chinese people, once inadequately fed and clad, are leading a fairly comfortable life on the whole. However, we are keenly aware that China is still a developing country and the contradictions and problems we encounter in the development process are unprecedented whether in scale or in complexity. There is still a long way to go before China can build in an all-round way a moderately prosperous society at a higher level to the benefit of its more than one billion population and then basically realize modernization and achieve common prosperity for all people. China must adhere to the road of peaceful development to fulfill its development goals. China will press ahead with its reform and opening up and carry out friendly cooperation with the rest of the world based on mutual benefit and win-win outcome. Meanwhile, as China has the largest population in the world and boasts vast land and rich resources as well as the market with huge potential, it can achieve the development goals by mainly relying on its own conditions and strength.

Lee said he was very glad to meet President Hu in Singapore and congratulated Hu on the great achievements China has made, saying China's maintaining stability and continuity in its development is of great significance to the region. Singapore welcomes China to make greater economic achievements and is pleased to see China playing important roles in regional and international affairs, said Lee. Enhancing the Singapore-China bilateral cooperation conforms to the common interests of both sides and Singapore will fully develop cooperation with China in various sectors, he added. As China is one of the largest trade partners of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), strengthening ASEAN-China ties in an all-round way will contribute to peace, stability and prosperity of the whole region, said Lee.

Ling Jihua, Wang Huning and Dai Bingguo attended the meeting.