On 1 April, in the presence of Premier Li Qiang and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao and Singapore Minister for Trade and Industry Yan Kim Yong signed the Memorandum of Understanding between the Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China and the Ministry of Trade and Industry of Singapore on the Declaration of Substantial Completion of the Follow-up Negotiations on the Upgrade of the Singapore-China Free Trade Agreement (FTA), confirming the substantive completion of the FTA negotiations between the two countries. The MOU confirms the substantive completion of the follow-up negotiations for the upgrading of the FTA between the two countries. Teams from both sides will continue to carry out follow-up work such as legal review and text translation, and fulfil their respective domestic procedures to sign the agreement as soon as possible.

The agreement is the first services and investment liberalisation commitment in China's FTA practice using the negative list model. Building on the original upgraded agreement, the two sides have further increased the level of services trade and investment liberalisation commitments by adding a new telecommunications chapter, incorporating high-level economic and trade rules such as national treatment, market access, transparency and digital economy. Both sides also jointly confirmed that there will be no backsliding on liberalisation measures in the area of trade in services and investment and committed to "opening the door wider and wider" to each other in the form of an agreement. The agreement is an important step and practical action for China to align itself with high-standard international economic and trade rules and expand its opening to the outside world, and will give a strong impetus to China-Singapore economic and trade cooperation to a new level.

In 2008, China and Singapore signed a Free Trade Agreement (FTA), and in 2018, the two sides signed an FTA upgrade agreement to upgrade rules in areas such as trade facilitation, rules of origin, economic and technical cooperation, and e-commerce. in December 2020, the two sides upgraded the agreement again and launched follow-up negotiations to promote further liberalisation of trade in services and investment between the two sides on the basis of the negative list model.