I'm becoming even more confused.
Yes, the intention was for my wife to have only one stopover - on the way back to Australia. Having said that, on the way over to Shanghai she will be travelling with her mother (who is also a PRC passport holder and has never seen Singapore), and she was wanting to go on the free 2 hour Singapore bus tour. But if they both need to apply in advance for visas for a 2 hour tour then it's not worth the bother.

I was wondering SKRan if the example that you gave is something that has been done recently (for example this year) by a PRC passport holder that you may know.

With the Delta airlines visa web page, I'm not sure how up to date and/or accurate this information might be. Ironically, this is consistent with the information I received at the Singapore Airlines office here in Adelaide on Tuesday, as they said PRC passport holders still qualified for this VFTF.

My wife has only entered Singapore once before, which was in Jan 2010 - and it's not going to be a regular event, so I don't see any issues with overuse of the Visa. Essentially, the information we had back then was the same as this:
http://www.etour-singapore.com/singa...ents.html#vftf
ie "96-Hour Visa Free Transit Facilities for Chinese, Indian and CIS Passport Holders"

However, the email I received from the Singapore Immigration and Checkpoints Authority this week, expicitly stated that PRC passport holders DO require visas to enter Singapore. This is actually consistent with what is written on their website: http://www.ica.gov.sg/page.aspx?pageid=96

When just checking out this webpage, I noticed the date "15 Jul 2010" at the bottom of the page. So perhaps the changes were made back then. I've also tried entering "VFTF" and "Visa Free Transit Facility" into the website's search engine, and there are no matches.

So, for the time being, I can only really conclude that:

- There is no such term as VFTF any more in Singapore in terms of these visas.
- The criteria for what used to be known as the VFTF is still the same, with the exception that it no longer applies to Indian nor PRC passport holders.
- The changes were made in Jul 2010.
- The reasons for the changes are unknown.