On August 1, the Ministry of Commerce of China and the Ministry of Trade and Industry of Singapore held a meeting of chief negotiators for the fourth round of negotiations on the upgrade of the free trade agreement via video. The two sides conducted in-depth discussions on topics such as relevant chapter texts, service trade and investment negative lists, and made positive progress. The two sides agreed to actively promote the negotiation process and strive to achieve substantive results at an early date.
The China-Singapore Free Trade Agreement Upgrade Protocol was implemented in October 2019. According to the upgrade protocol, the two sides announced in December 2020 the launch of the upgrade follow-up negotiations, and are committed to using the negative list method to conduct service trade and investment liberalization negotiations, and comprehensively improve the level of bilateral trade and investment liberalization and facilitation.