Ms Grace Fu, Minister for Sustainability, and the Environment, Advisor to Business China,
Business China Board Members，
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
1. Good afternoon and a warm welcome to the sixth Business China Distinguished Leaders (Closed-Door) Dialogue. I am very pleased to see many familiar faces here at Raffles hotel at the end of an extraordinary year. I would also extend my warmest welcome to everyone online.
2. It might have been hard to sustain existing programs let alone launching new ones under the pandemic in the past two years. Yet, Business China managed to launch The Distinguished Leaders Dialogue Series in January 2020 with Senior Minister Teo Chee Hean, who shared his views on Singapore’s challenges and opportunities in a multi-polar world.
3. As we entered the pandemic and later emerged from the circuit breaker later in 2020, we held our 2nd dialogue entirely online with Minister Ong Ye Kung in October. Minister shared three imperatives for Singapore to move ahead and to restore our economy.
4. We continued our 3rd virtual session with Minister Chan Chun Sing who spoke of our principled stance in managing US and China relations. Our 4th dialogue session was with Minister Gan Kim Yong in April this year. Minister shared with us the work done by the multi-ministry task force and some important considerations for opening up.
5. In September, we welcomed ESM Goh as our 5th guest speaker, where he spoke candidly on questions concerning lives and livelihood in Singapore and answered critical questions from the audience on US and China’s influence in the region, Singapore’s relevance to China, as well as the politics and leadership succession in Singapore.
6. As we round off 2021, an extraordinary year with many ups and downs, Business China would like to spotlight on the road ahead and ask if we can have a sustainable and predictable future.
7. Today we take the world “sustainability” for granted, as it has become a readily understood term. But back in the 60s, when our late founding prime minister Mr Lee Kuan Yew started the annual tree-planting day, all we knew was that we had to protect the environment we lived in or we paid the price of pollution. The tree-planting program which started in 1967 succeeded in planting 55,000 new trees by the end of 1970.
8. We have come a long way since then, with the introduction of the Singapore Green Plan in 1992, and the updated SGP in 2012 and subsequently the SGP 2030, we have taken firm actions, over the years to ensure that Singapore will head into a sustainable future.
9. The recently concluded COP 26 climate change summit, where Minister Grace Fu attended and delivered the national statement, further affirmed Singapore’s resolution and contribution towards global climate ambitions. We have pledged to half 2030 peak emissions by 2050 and to achieve net zero emissions as soon as possible. I am sure Minister Grace would say more later.
10. With the new, more infectious Omicron variant making its appearance in many countries, the road to recovery is now shrouded with some uncertainty. There are many questions in our mind. Is our national plan to transition from pandemic to endemic still on track? Beyond Omicron, will there be new variants? How do we strengthen our economy and society to be more resilient? On top of all these, we have to deal with the ramifications of climate change. I need not say much as we could witness for ourselves the increased frequency of extreme climate events around the world in recent times.
11. This afternoon, we are most honoured to have Minister Grace Fu at our 6th Distinguished Leaders Dialogue. Minister’s mission in the ministry is not only highly relevant to Singapore today but would remain critically important to Singapore’s well-being and security in the future.
12. Minister began her career in the private sector. Having held positions in UOB and later in Haw Par Group, Minister then joined PSA in 1995 and held the position of CEO, PSA Southeast Asia and Japan.
13. Minister entered politics in June 2006 and was appointed to the Ministry of National Development as Minister of State. She went on to hold key positions in Education, Information Communications and the Arts as well as Environment and Water Resources. In 2015, Minister was appointed the Minister for Culture, Community and Youth, and Leader of the House. On the bilateral relations front, Minister was also involved in several committees, including as co-chair of the Singapore-Zhejiang Economic and Trade Council, the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city Joint Steering Council, the Ministerial Committee on Ageing and the Economic Strategies Committee. Most importantly, Minister became Advisor to Business China since December 2019.
14. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me to warmly welcome Minister Grace Fu to address us.