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Minister says Singapore keen to douse growing US-China tensions
- Trade and industry minister Gan Kim Yong said the increasing friction between the superpowers has ‘serious consequences for the rest of the world’
- He added the city state is open to facilitate US-China talks to repair their relationship
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Singapore’s top trade official said the city state is willing to facilitate a dialogue between the US and China to repair their relationship, as he described growing tensions between the world’s biggest economies as detrimental to the world.
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US-China tensions “have serious consequences for the rest of the world,” Gan Kim Yong, Singapore minister for trade and industry, told Bloomberg Television on Thursday. “Singapore as you know has always wanted to do business with both.”
Singapore’s economy relies heavily on trade and is vulnerable to shocks resulting from disruptions in commerce, especially involving China, the city state’s No 1 trading partner. The latest trade tensions stem from the US’s effort to clamp down on China’s access to critical semiconductor technology and to impose export controls.
“All of us are concerned and watching this development very closely,” Gan said, referring to the export controls. “Singapore’s interests and interests of the rest of the world are for the US and China to have a stable relationship as well as a constructive one,” he added.
Singapore and other Southeast Asian governments have been focused on building their relationship with the US around talks on the White House’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework.
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