Singapore’s ex-PM Lee Hsien Loong says ‘unwise to write off China’ despite economic headwinds

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 on Friday also said 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 an evening fireside chat at the FutureChina Global Forum, where he discussed Beijing’s economy and his assessment of US-China ties, among other issues.

China’s economy in the third quarter rose at the slowest pace since early 2023, according to official statistics, growing at 4.6 per cent in July to September – 0.1 per cent below the pace in the previous quarter.

“There are some reasons [for] 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 that hold it back – for example, the fact that its population and workforce are not growing – are not things which have to bind and 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”.