Eighteen bilateral cooperation projects were signed between Wuxi, Jiangsu province, and Singapore during the first leg of a three-nation tour of an economic and trade delegation from the city, led by Mayor Zhao Jianjun.

The Wuxi Singapore Sci-Tech Innovation City, one of the key projects signed at a meeting on Friday, represents a milestone in Wuxi' cooperation with the island country.

The planned city, with an area of 50 square kilometers, will optimize and reorganize the overall space of the existing Wangzhuang subdistrict of Wuxi Singapore Industrial Park and Comprehensive Bonded Zone to build four landmark industries for integrated circuits, intelligent equipment, biomedicine, renewable energy and new-energy vehicles, according to the Wuxi publicity department.

It will also build three characteristic industrial headquarters in economy, sci-tech services and e-commerce, as well as two industries of the future — AI and 3G semiconductors — to the department said.

It will be forged into a first-class science and technology innovation city with great international influence, high-end industrial chains, characteristic functional areas and modernized communities.

At the meeting, Zhao expressed his gratitude to Singaporeans for their concern and support for the development of Wuxi. He briefly introduced the economic and social development of the city in recent years and recalled the city's three-decades of cooperation with Singapore.

He called Singapore a pearl on the main road connecting the Pacific and Indian oceans, while Wuxi is known as "the Pearl of Taihu Lake" in the southern Yangtze River Delta region.

Thanks to Wuxi's strong industrial base and favorable investment environment, coupled with the international influence of Singapore's partners, the Wuxi Singapore Industrial Park has quickly become a hot spot for attracting international investment.

As of December, Singapore had invested in more than 700 enterprises in Wuxi, with a cumulative investment of $16.4 billion, 70 percent of which is in the high-tech and service sectors.

As of February, Wuxi enterprises had invested in 61 projects in Singapore, with an agreed investment amount of $1.06 billion.

Last year, Wuxi's imports and exports to Singapore hit $4.12 billion, an increase of 11.1 percent year-on-year, according to the city government.

The Wuxi delegation will next head to South Korea and Japan to continue their communication and investment promotion campaign.

After nearly three decades of development, despite its limited area of less than 4 sq km, the Singapore Industrial Park has attracted more than 100 high-tech manufacturing enterprises. The park has become a model to display Wuxi's achievements in reform and opening-up.

In Wuxi's history of international exchanges, Singapore has stood out as a friendly, trustworthy and reliable partner. In 1976, Lee Kuan Yew, then Singapore's prime minister and the modern city state's founding father, included Wuxi on his first visit to China.

In September 1992, Lee, then senior minister of Singapore, visited Wuxi with then-Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore Ong Teng Cheong. It was on this trip that Lee decided to work with the local government to jointly invest and launch the first industrial park involving Singapore in China.

In late 1993, Wuxi New District Development Group and a consortium from Singapore led by Sembcorp Group concluded an investment contract to jointly develop the Wuxi park.

In early 2020, the park was rated as one of the first batch of international industrial cooperation parks by the Department of Commerce of Jiangsu province.