March 21, 2024
HANGZHOU – Singapore hopes to work with China’s eastern coastal province of Zhejiang and its businesses for mutual benefit, including in new areas such as the digital economy, said Senior Minister Teo Chee Hean in the provincial capital of Hangzhou on March 20.
Speaking at a meeting with Zhejiang Party Secretary Yi Lianhong while on a six-day official visit to China, Mr Teo said that Singapore’s cooperation with Zhejiang – the birthplace of tech giant Alibaba – had moved from traditional areas into new ones such as pharmaceuticals.
The Singapore-Zhejiang Economic and Trade Council, the main bilateral collaboration platform comprising government and private-sector representatives from both sides, in 2023 announced a new work group to drive cooperation in the digital economy.
“Zhejiang has some of the most dynamic digital companies in the world, and we hope to see how we can partner together with those companies and with Zhejiang as well,” Mr Teo said.
He also expressed the hope that Zhejiang companies, many of which were looking to explore new markets abroad, would find Singapore to be a useful springboard for such ventures.
Affirming the strength of bilateral relations, Mr Yi said there were 1,774 Singapore companies in Zhejiang and 491 Zhejiang businesses in the Republic as at end-2023.
Singapore and Zhejiang should tap their strengths to explore new growth areas, and deepen cooperation in areas such as education, science and tech innovation, he added.
While in Zhejiang, Mr Teo visited the Singapore-Hangzhou Science and Technology Park, an integrated business park run by Singapore’s CapitaLand. The first two phases of the park were jointly developed by CapitaLand and a Chinese company, while the third phase was a joint venture between CapitaLand and Mitsubishi Estate, a Japanese company.
There, he toured the premises of Mirxes, a Singapore company that uses RNA technology to develop diagnostic tests for diseases such as cancer.
Mirxes, a spin-off from A*Star, entered China in 2016.
The country is a key market for Mirxes’ lead product, an early-detection blood test for stomach cancer. This is as China sees almost half a million new cases of this cancer a year, said the company’s co-founder and chief executive, Dr Zhou Lihan.
Hangzhou was Mirxes’ location of choice in part because the city has clinical institutions that are renowned across the country, which the company works with for product testing, he said.
As the medical industry is highly regulated in China, basing Mirxes at the Singapore-Hangzhou Science and Technology Park was useful, as the park helped introduce it to the relevant government agencies and other contacts in the city, he added.
The company has completed clinical trials in China for its stomach cancer blood test – the largest early-detection cancer trial in China to date – and looks forward to bringing even more Singapore technology through Hangzhou to China, said Dr Zhou.
Mr Teo also toured Supcon Technology, a Zhejiang industrial artificial intelligence company, in Hangzhou’s Binjiang district. It develops process control and industrial automation solutions for the manufacturing and engineering sectors.
Supcon has established its international headquarters in Singapore, with the registration process completed as of February 2024, said the company’s chairman and chief executive Cui Shan.
The Singapore office, located at Nexus @one-north, will carry out functions such as research and development and business globalisation. Supcon’s cumulative investment in Singapore is expected to exceed $10 million by 2024, he added.
Supcon is recruiting staff from the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University, and is also discussing cooperation with A*Star, he said.
In Hangzhou, Mr Teo was also hosted to dinner by Zhejiang Vice-Governor Lu Shan, and met with a group of Singapore business leaders.
He departed in the evening for Beijing, where he will meet senior Chinese leaders. Mr Teo’s visit to China, which began in Sichuan, will conclude on March 22.