Guangdong governor, Ma Xingrui, is on a four-day business mission with 75 officials and businessmen in Singapore.

And one of his first ports of call was with Education Minister Ong Ye Kung.

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With Guangdong Governor Ma Xingrui. It is his first trip to Singapore and he is bursting with curiosity about Singapore.

A post shared by Ong Ye Kung (@ongyekung) on Aug 23, 2018 at 10:40pm PDT

Both Ong and Ma are the chairmen of the Singapore-Guangdong Collaboration Council, which oversees the city-to-city bilateral collaboration.

After their meeting, Ong and Ma co-headlined the Sino-Singapore Knowledge Forum (SSFK), held at Four Seasons Hotel on Friday, Aug. 24.

Here are the highlights:

Singapore & China have the same position on trade

Ong reiterated the importance of maintaining open trade relations:

“The current trend of trade protectionism, Brexit and global economic slowdown has brought the world huge uncertainties.

This is why the two major themes for this year’s forum - “open trade” and “innovation” are extremely important.

Both Singapore and China are working towards this particular direction now.”

Ong commended China on the accomplishments it had achieved, since it opened up its economy 40 years ago, adding that the world's second-largest economy's position on open trade is beneficial to both the region and also investors worldwide.

Singapore & Guangdong have good relations

Ong said both Singapore and Guangdong province enjoy good relations and can learn from each other.

Furthermore, he said that around 40 high-level Singaporean officials will be visiting Shenzhen city next week for a knowledge exchange.

He said:

"Singapore and China can learn from each other to improve and progress in exploring new opportunities."

He added that Singapore welcomes businesses from the latter to invest here, as well as for Singapore businesses to go over and invest.

Guangdong province has been Singapore's top provincial trading partner for 29 consecutive years, and Singapore is the province's fifth largest investor.

Trade between them amounted to around RMB29.7 billion (S$5.94 billion).

Earlier this morning at the Singapore-Guangdong Collaboration Council's ninth meeting, 14 Singapore companies, including CapitaLand and ComfortDelGro, signed agreements to collaborate with Chinese companies in Guangdong province.

In addition to continued collaboration in areas such as smart city development and biomedical sciences, Ong hoped to deepen cooperation in basic and higher-level education and people-to-people exchanges.

Forum held since 2013

SSFK, a flagship project of Sino-Singapore Guangzhou Knowledge City, has been taking place annually since 2013, and is co-organised together with Business China.

It is attended by high-ranking officials from Singapore and Guangdong province.

This year's forum focuses on the collaboration and development strategies between China and Singapore.

This is the first time the forum is held in Singapore after five successful years in Guangzhou.

Following his speech, Ma also met Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean in the latter half of the day.

While neither Teo nor Ong got a hug (yet) from Ma, the extensive collaborations with the 14 Singapore companies shows that our relationship with the province is pretty solid.

Top image via Ong Ye Kung Facebook