Chongqing – As Southwest China's Chongqing celebrates the 10th anniversary of the China-Singapore (Chongqing) Demonstration Initiative on Strategic Connectivity (CCI) today, the city is accelerating its entry into the global financial market by strengthening its innovation-driven partnerships with Singapore.

Why is Chongqing’s collaboration with Singapore so vital to its financial transformation? Once an inland city with limited global reach, Chongqing has evolved through the CCI into a major hub for China’s financial opening.

For example, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Chongqing Financial Regulatory Bureau signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to strengthen financial cooperation and explore new models of joint supervision between China and Singapore. It is the first MOU under the CCI framework signed directly between a provincial-level financial regulator in China and a foreign central authority, setting a new milestone for institutional collaboration.

Leveraging the momentum of the CCI's financial collaboration, Chongqing has advanced major reform initiatives, such as the financial opening-up pilot in the China (Chongqing) Pilot Free Trade Zone and the comprehensive pilot program to expand the opening-up of the service industry, both of which aim to promote financial innovation and cross-border facilitation.

The China-Singapore (Chongqing) Connectivity Initiative – New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor (CCI-ILSTC) Trade and Financial Conference opens on June 11 in Singapore. (Photo/Diyiyan TV-CQNEWS)

In 2016, Chongqing was approved to pilot a quota-based reform of foreign debt management, which significantly simplified the filing and registration process for enterprises issuing foreign bonds, shortened approval times, and improved overall efficiency in cross-border financing.

As a result, in August 2016, a Chongqing company successfully issued 500 million U.S. dollars in bonds in Singapore, marking a major breakthrough in the city's financial opening under the CCI.

Another key milestone in Chongqing's financial development occurred in 2024 when the city was approved to launch a high-level pilot program for cross-border trade opening-up. This makes Chongqing the first city in central and western China to receive this designation, enabling it to offer some of the most advanced facilitation for current account transactions in the country.

This shift in policy has already yielded tangible benefits for local businesses. A Chongqing-based e-commerce company, for example, was able to use the cross-border e-commerce settlement channel to directly transfer funds from its Amazon sales platform to its domestic foreign exchange account. 

"Previously, we relied on third-party payment institutions for export receipts, which resulted in slow fund recovery and high handling fees," a company representative said. "Now, the entire process is completed online, with transparent exchange rates, taking only a minute, and it's safe and cost-effective."

Another major driver of this financial cooperation has been the China-Singapore (Chongqing) Connectivity Initiative Financial Summit (CCI-FS), a prominent platform for financial exchange and collaboration. Since its inception in 2018, the summit has facilitated 313 cooperation projects, deepening the financial ties between China and Singapore.

At this year's summit held in Singapore, experts agreed that the finance is a key driver of the CCI. In the next decade, western China and ASEAN will further deepen cooperation in forward-looking areas such as green finance and digital connectivity to improve the cross-border financial services.