Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong gave a wide-ranging interview to CNBC ahead of his official working visit to the United States from Oct. 22 to 26 at the invitation of President Donald Trump.

The interview, which will air on Saturday, Oct. 21 at 6.30pm, covered bilateral and international issues, Singapore economy and domestic politics.

For those who have no time to read the transcript, here's a rundown of the main points on bilateral and international issues from his interview.

1. Singapore and US has a "deep-multi-faceted relationship" based on "basic strategic congruence of views"

PM Lee said in the interview that he hopes to develop his relationship with the Trump administration during his upcoming visit. He also revealed that Singapore Airlines hopes to sign an agreement with Boeing to buy more planes.

He also pointed out that both countries enjoy deep cooperation over many years in areas such as trade, investment, defence and security.

"It's a very sound relationship that's based on the basic strategic congruence of views, about the world, about the region. And deep co-operation over many years, in the economic sphere, trade, investments; in security and defence area, we've trained in the U.S., the U.S. forces use our facilities, we've fought together in Desert Storm, and now in the coalition against ISIS. So there's, it's a deep and multi-faceted relationship."

2. Singapore will work with President Trump

Ahead of his meeting with President Trump in the White House on Oct. 23, PM Lee said that Singapore will work with the US leader on things he wants to do.

"I think every administration has a settling in process. There is always an adjustment between what you can say during a campaign and what you find are the possibilities and imperatives when you win the election, when you enter the Oval Office. The Trump Administration is not different. Perhaps the adjustment is bigger in this case because President Trump represented such a radically different rethink to so many things which the American policy intelligentsia had considered to be shared conventional wisdom but reality and forces of events press down on every president."

3. Singapore does not wish to choose between China and US

In response to questions on whether countries like Singapore and ASEAN now pivot more towards China, given US's withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), PM Lee said "one way or the other", China is getting a lot of attention as it is successful and growing, and "all the countries in Asia want to be their friend and want to benefit from China's development and success".

He said it’s easier for Singapore to manage the relation between US and China if the two countries have stable and good relationship, but it becomes harder when it becomes strained.

"Well, it's never easy to be a small country next to a big neighbor. If you have one big neighbor only, that's not easy to manage. If you have two big neighbors, well in some ways you have more friends but in other ways you have to make more difficult choices."

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Given our good relations with both China and US, we hope we do not have to “pick sides”.

"If there are tensions between America and China, we will be asked to pick a side. It may not be directly, but you will get the message that: we would like you to be with us and are you with us. If not, does that mean you're against us? And that's to put it gently."

"We hope not to have to pick sides. We have such substantial relations with both. China's our biggest trading partner, America is somewhere near there. And very important partners in many other areas well, including security. We hope we will be able to maintain these relationships."

4. Singapore-China relations are good and forward-looking

PM Lee said in the interview that bilateral relations are good and forward-looking, and that there will always be issues where two sovereign countries don't completely see eye to eye.

"But fundamentally, there are no basic conflicts in our perspectives. And we both wish to do more together bilaterally, and also in the context of ASEAN."

He also highlighted the opportunities to further develop relations.

"Singapore has big investments in China, all over, in many of the provinces. And the Chinese are growing their activities in Singapore too. Their banks are here, thousands of Chinese companies are here. With the Belt and Road, I think there is opportunity for them to use Singapore as a base for financing, for regional headquarters, for all sorts of activities. And I see no reason why that shouldn't happen."

5. On the South China Sea issue, both countries understand each other better now

PM Lee said "every pair of countries will have issues where, 'I wish you'd agreed with me. You wish I'd agreed with you'" and it's the case between Singapore and US, and also between Singapore and China.

On the South China Sea issue, he thinks both countries "understand each other's position clearer now". He reiterated Singapore's position on the South China Sea, which he thinks "bears repeating".

"In the case of the South China Sea, our position has always been that we are not the claimant state. We have no claims. So we don't take sides on those claims: who owns which island. But we do have an interest in freedom of navigation in the rule of international law, in the peaceful resolution of dispute, and in ASEAN having a role in an issue which is this important in our neighborhood. "

He also differentiates our position from other ASEAN countries, highlighting that there are different considerations of these countries:

"Our position as Singapore is not the same as that of the claimant states because we are not a claimant state. The position of a country which is like Laos, which is land-locked and has a border with China, cannot be the same as the position of the Philippines, which is an island nation, an archipelagic nation and has a claim on the atolls and reefs. And if we look at Myanmar, it doesn't even have a shoreline on the South China Sea, it's on the Andaman Sea."

6. As ASEAN chair, Singapore is the honest broker, not the Commander-in-Chief

PM Lee also said that Singapore’s role as ASEAN chair next year is to bring parties together to help produce a consensus, which is important as that’s the way ASEAN works.

"As chairman, we are not the Commander-in-Chief. We are the honest broker. We are coordinating ASEAN, we are bringing the parties together in order to help to the degree that we can to produce an ASEAN consensus because ASEAN works by consensus. And unless all the countries go along and most of the countries agree, you cannot take an ASEAN position, and that is all the more so in the case of the difficult issue like the South China Sea where the strategic interests of the different ASEAN countries are not entirely the same… So the interests do not all exactly, fundamentally align, and therefore when you make a consensus, that consensus can only be to the degree that these countries do share a common perspective."

Top photo from MCI