It would be “very unwise to write off China” despite the economic headwinds Beijing is battling, Singapore’s former prime minister Lee Hsien Loong says, stressing that both the US and China share the same “danger of underestimating one another”.
Lee also said on Friday the city state welcomed Chinese entrepreneurs and businesses but warned that they must abide by local laws and integrate into Singaporean society.
The senior minister was speaking at a fireside chat at the FutureChina Global Forum on Friday evening, where he discussed China’s economy and his assessment of US-China ties, among other issues.
China’s economy rose at the slowest pace since early 2023 in the third quarter, according to official statistics, growing at 4.6 per cent in July to September which was 0.1 per cent below the pace in the previous quarter.
“There are some reasons which we can be confident that this is a country which is going to be there for a very long time,” he said. “Even the factors which hold it back, for example, the fact that its population and workforce is not growing, are not things which have to bind and to paralyse it.”
He explained that Beijing’s recent move to gradually raise the retirement age from 60 to 63 and 55 to 58 over the years, for men and women respectively, would allow for “better use of the population”.