Suzhou industrial park is a success
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N SUZHOU (JIANGSU) - CHINA'S Jiangsu province hopes to repeat the success formula of Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP) in its northern region, with the help of the park's Chinese and Singaporean developers.
The joint-venture company managing SIP told The Straits Times it is ready to export its experience.
One possibility is to support the building of an industrial zone in the northern city of Suqian, Jiangsu's least-developed city.
The 'spirit of cooperation behind the SIP' should be extended to other parts of the province, Jiangsu governor Liang Baohua told Singapore's Minister of State for Trade and Industry Lee Yi Shyan when they met in the provincial capital Nanjing last month.
Jiangsu, which is located in eastern China, is one of the country's wealthiest provinces.
The Suzhou park, in southern Jiangsu, has been a key growth engine for the province, chalking up about 25 per cent growth for each of the last two years.
During that time, it has attracted a total of 981 foreign-funded projects worth US$9 billion (S$14 billion) in contractual value.
But SIP is more than that. It is also a full-fledged township. The 70 sq km of land is clearly divided up for industry, services, commerce, private and public housing, public utilities, schools, hospitals, parks and recreation.
Some 900 foreign companies call the park home, as do 260,000 foreign and local professionals and their family members.
SIP's top Singapore executive Goh Tien Jin believes it is the 'way of thinking' of the 12-year-old park's management which Jiangsu's leaders seek to replicate elsewhere.
Mr Goh, executive vice-president of the China-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park Development Company (CSSD), said: 'SIP officials understand the decision-making process of investors.
'They know how to manage tax income, such as by reinvesting it in infrastructure, and to share fruits of the park with residents through social welfare schemes.'
Suzhou is the only Chinese city with a provident fund scheme modelled on Singapore's Central Provident Fund.
Mr Goh said the SIP is keen on joint investments in new industrial parks with local governments of other cities.
The park is also gearing up for an expansion to incorporate logistical and Customs supervision facilities located just outside its premises.
The move will enlarge the SIP by another 10 sq km, thus ensuring enough industrial land for long-term growth and facilitating smooth logistical flow of goods within the compound of the park.
CSSD now faces the challenge of enhancing the park's R&D and services capabilities.
It must do this to stay competitive for other industrial parks with lower land and labour costs are absorbing SIP-style management know-how.
Firms based in the park applaud the minimal red tape and pro-business environment, but say a major challenge is finding trained staff in specialist R&D fields or in the services sector.
The city of Suzhou is not known for having premier universities.
To make up for that, the SIP helps its companies by hiring staff from other cities, as well as by developing customised training programmes within the park.
The park is also wooing providers of better-quality service in areas such as retail, health care and education
Straits Times 16 Oct -
Success should not just be confined to verbal claims without concrete facts and figures.
How much Singapore's taxpayers' money have been dumped into the Suzhou
Industrial Park Project?
Why is it until now, for more than 12 years, there is still no detailed information
released to account to the citizens whose money had been used to finance that project?
How much profits had been made or losses incurred over the last 12 years?
Can the govt show us some truthful figures and unadjusted statistics? -
More propaganda by the govt, insisting that we have achieved success when we have barely scratched the surface, and invested a fortune in Suzhou with little to show for.
The Chinese govt must be laughing all the way to the bank at such naive 'entrepreneurs' the Singapore govt is turning out to be. -
66 is a strong number
Suzhou of ocurse can be a success
Anyways, all these things are say say only. SG people easy con...
Don't take all the stuff you read in the papers so seriously since its some party's propaganda engine..
Read and laff... -
Ruight on!... misty...Originally posted by mistyblue:66 is a strong number
Suzhou of ocurse can be a success
Anyways, all these things are say say only. SG people easy con...
Don't take all the stuff you read in the papers so seriously since its some party's propaganda engine..
Read and laff... -
Give me the direct tangible benefits to Singapore.
Give me the figures for the net returns to our investments.
Give me cold and hard statistics, and I'll believe them.
Give me empty rhetoric and normative statements, and I'll toss them out. -
Man..., why bring up this Suzhou matter?
It's already an old joke... -
HAHAHA ........ A success? For who?
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There should include this as a case study into our local business degree classes.Originally posted by pearlie27:HAHAHA ........ A success? For who?
"Applying corporate denial: A nation context" -
I have met with senior Chinese officials, mostly at the level of mayors from various Chinese cities. Their conclusion supports the Straits Times article that SIP is indeed a great success, following initial problems. As Khaw Boon Wan mentioned previously when he was in Trade and Industry, the amount of foreign investment into Suzhou could well exceed that into Singapore.
The figures speak for themselves.
Critics who are content to bury their heads in the sand will become fossilized whilst others who jump on to the opportunities in China are becoming rich. -
I'd be inclined to believe you, if I see pigs flying around in the haze anytime today...Originally posted by oxford mushroom:I have met with senior Chinese officials, mostly at the level of mayors from various Chinese cities. Their conclusion supports the Straits Times article that SIP is indeed a great success, following initial problems. As Khaw Boon Wan mentioned previously when he was in Trade and Industry, the amount of foreign investment into Suzhou could well exceed that into Singapore.
The figures speak for themselves.
Critics who are content to bury their heads in the sand will become fossilized whilst others who jump on to the opportunities in China are becoming rich. -
You have been con.Originally posted by oxford mushroom:I have met with senior Chinese officials, mostly at the level of mayors from various Chinese cities. Their conclusion supports the Straits Times article that SIP is indeed a great success, following initial problems. As Khaw Boon Wan mentioned previously when he was in Trade and Industry, the amount of foreign investment into Suzhou could well exceed that into Singapore.
The figures speak for themselves.
Critics who are content to bury their heads in the sand will become fossilized whilst others who jump on to the opportunities in China are becoming rich.
Suzhou II and history repeat itself.
If majority of sg pp thinks that way, i will need to park my asset somewhere else.....
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Acquisition of Shin was also a success even though there were minor hiccups.
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Depending on your perspectives laOriginally posted by Rock^Star:Acquisition of Shin was also a success even though there were minor hiccups.
If i am in her shoe of cause, it will take time for the Thai public to accept the fact
If i am in her f-in law, then WTF -
That's why you remain poor whilst Singaporeans who have made use of the opportunities in Suzhou have become rich.Originally posted by justcooler:You have been con.
Suzhou II and history repeat itself.
If majority of sg pp thinks that way, i will need to park my asset somewhere else..... -
Originally posted by oxford mushroom:
How many amongst the 4.5 million Singaporeans have the financial capacity to seize those available " opportunities " in Suzhou so as to become rich ?
That's why you remain poor whilst Singaporeans who have made use of the opportunities in Suzhou have become rich.
Suzhou was a disaster for the Singapore Government is an established fact, in which LKY had openly acknowledged in an oblique way, and which led to the Singapore Government divesting itself of its majority share to the Suzhou Provincial Government.
Since the Suzhou Government took over the responsibility of managing the Industrial Park, it began to see profits.
MM LKY had openly stated that the Suzhou Provincial Authority was playing a clever 'double game' of operating a parallel park - that duplicates the Singapore Suzhou piece - and was promoting very successfully their own development instead.
With the naive quality displayed by our supposedly shrewd leadership, which other national, state, or provincial governments will not want to repeat the Suzhou model on their own turf ?
One fact remained hidden in the opaque world of THE POWER OF ONE, is the actual final amounts that were invested to bring the Singapore Suzhou Park to the state of completion prior to handing over to the Suzhou Authorities.
It will probably remain a secret piece of official document until some other Alternative Party take office in the future, and open all the secret cupboards to reveal every piece of skeletons accumulated for the last 46 years since independence. -
well if opposision took over what will singapore be lie?
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I have said it once; I'll say it again.Originally posted by oxford mushroom:I have met with senior Chinese officials, mostly at the level of mayors from various Chinese cities. Their conclusion supports the Straits Times article that SIP is indeed a great success, following initial problems. As Khaw Boon Wan mentioned previously when he was in Trade and Industry, the amount of foreign investment into Suzhou could well exceed that into Singapore.
The figures speak for themselves.
Critics who are content to bury their heads in the sand will become fossilized whilst others who jump on to the opportunities in China are becoming rich.
You say that 'the figures speak for themselves'.
So give us the figures for the net returns to our investment in Suzhou. -
Originally posted by fudgester:
Just look at the profits since 2001:
I have said it once; I'll say it again.
You say that 'the figures speak for themselves'.
So give us the figures for the net returns to our investment in Suzhou.
SUZHOU - NINETY minutes by car from financial hub Shanghai lies one of China's prime magnets for foreign investment - a Suzhou township created in the spitting image of Singapore.
Driving along neat tree-lined roads past well-manicured parks, pastel-hued condominiums and a miniature lake, one experiences a severe sense of dislocation. This could be Pasir Ris or the Kallang Basin area, not an industrial zone in eastern China.
It is a far cry from the crowded, dusty factory towns that took root at a similar stage of China's economic development.
The Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP) is a 12-year-old joint project by the Chinese and Singapore governments.
Conceived as a showcase for the city state to share the lessons of its economic development, the 70 sq km park bears the Singapore stamp of methodical town planning.
It has clearly demarcated districts for industry, business, research and development, logistics, housing and recreation.
Some 900 companies, including big-name multinationals such as Samsung, Siemens and Panasonic, are based in the SIP.
Their glittering glass-and-steel factories sit alongside pockets of greenery; unsightly power cables are tucked away underground.
The park's wealth and influence loom larger than its small size.
Though it occupies only 4 per cent of land in Suzhou, it contributes some 15 per cent of the city's gross domestic product and 26 per cent of Suzhou's foreign investment. The park's total output last year was 58 billion yuan (S$11.6 billion) - about 50 times what it achieved when it first started 12 years ago.
Due in part to the park's ripple effect, Suzhou has the fastest-growing economy of any city in eastern Jiangsu province, itself one of China's best-developed regions.
In August, the Chinese government approved the expansion of the park by another 10 sq km, even as it enforced strict controls on land usage and over-investment elsewhere in the country.
It was not so long ago, however, that the area occupied by the SIP was just farmland, populated by villagers instead of some 260,000 foreign and local executives and their families.
'Our cars used to get stuck in the dirt tracks,' recalled businessman Goh Toh Sim, the park's former top Singapore executive and a 10-year veteran of the project.
For him and other Singaporeans who helped develop the park, this is a microcosm of China's growth path, an accelerated and occasionally bumpy process of opening up the economy and applying the lessons of other countries.
As it evolved from a basic manufacturing centre to a value-added information technology and services hub, it took a leaf from Singapore's own economic development, say Chinese executives at the park.
'Singapore started with manufacturing, and now it has become known for services. Our association is so close, it is inevitable that we would follow Singapore's pattern of development,' a Chinese spokesman for the SIP Administrative Committee told The Straits Times.
Put the two together and you get all the ups and downs of a bilateral marriage that has since flowered into a success story other parts of China want to emulate.
The disagreements of old have been well documented.
Five years ago, Singapore pulled back and took a minority share in the project. It felt undercut by local government officials on a partnership inked with the central government in Beijing.
Interviewed by The Straits Times, Singapore's Minister of State for Trade and Industry, Mr Lee Yi Shyan, said that through the SIP, 'Singapore companies learned how business is done in China. We don't assume things are done the same way as back home anymore.'
Mr Lee, who was International Enterprise (IE) Singapore's chief executive before entering politics this year, spent over a year in Suzhou in the late-1990s as one of the park's senior executives.
Singapore started out with a 65 per cent stake in the project but found the local Suzhou authorities less than supportive, as they had less to gain by channelling resources into the park.
The turnaround in the park's fortunes began when the two countries swopped stakes in 2001, with the Chinese side becoming the majority shareholder. That year, the park posted its first profit of US$7.6 million (S$12 million) and has not looked back since.
A current top Singapore executive, Mr Goh Tien Jin, believes the switch coincided with China's entry into the World Trade Organisation, when a lot of foreign investment began pouring into China.
'Also, when the Chinese took over as the majority shareholder, they became more active in giving support and policy incentives to these investors,' said Mr Goh, who is executive vice-president of the China-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park Development Company (CSSD).
Far from hurting Singapore's reputation, the park has now become the city state's best-known brand in China, say insiders.
Mr Goh Toh Sim, who left CSSD for Singapore-based regional firm Ascendas in 2004, told The Straits Times that he had visited major cities across China 'and every city asked me to help them build another SIP'.
Ascendas, which develops economic zones and office space, has offices in 10 Chinese cities, including Suzhou.
Now CEO of Dragon Land, a Singapore-listed company dealing in Chinese real estate, Mr Goh Toh Sim told The Straits Times: 'We are seeing a lot of the practices we brought in with SIP duplicated all over China.
'Whether it is 'one-stop approval' for foreign companies or a 'pro-business' mindset, the same tune is being sung by other industrial parks.'
National and provincial leaders have even waxed lyrical about the Suzhou park, calling it a 'fresh flower' that could spread its 'blossoms' elsewhere in China.
Singapore has trained nearly 1,000 Suzhou officials in all aspects of township planning and management, including financial discipline and customer service. Another 50,000 industry professionals from other parts of China have visited the park as observers.
Minister of State Mr Lee said the park had raised Singapore's profile in official and business circles.
For Singapore firms trying to get a foothold in China, the magic word Suzhou gives them 'a good reference site which is easily understood in the Chinese context'.
'Today, when people talk about the park they say, 'Indeed, it is a very far-sighted, well-planned township',' he said.
(Straits Times 16 Oct) -
It's a strait time report what, no big deal
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If they can suppress info on Shin, i'm not surprised. We are living in a state where info is selectively dished out.Originally posted by justcooler:It's a strait time report what, no big deal -
a successful failure?
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selectively dishing out and putting out false information is different..Originally posted by Rock^Star:If they can suppress info on Shin, i'm not surprised. We are living in a state where info is selectively dished out. -
well, i'm not sure abt the false info part but what i'm saying is that ST is selectively dishing out info on ShinOriginally posted by Ito_^:selectively dishing out and putting out false information is different..