To my understanding, Suzhou was one of the blue print for China
industrialisation to follow. My MP in Joo Chiat was the first
former CEO there, he told us that doing business in China
come in two chinese words, that is Kuan Xi...translate in english
is call Relationship, if you dun have relationship, you will fail
and fail miserably.
When Singapore was building the Suzhou park, beijing was
building a similar one following what Singapore is doing, after
completion, they support the beijing one with full utilities power
and lower rate for FDI, they then charge Suzhou one with higher
utilites cost and also make it diffcult by causing problem to the
supply resulting in FDI moving else where. Then when LKY visited
Beijing to allow Chinese high ranking to have a share in suzhou,
things changed, if not long long Suzhou will be a waste land.
Chinese are not stupid hor, when i was 15 yo, i visited Suzhou park
as part of my community education, we visited Hyflux Singapore and
beside the company is rice field and banana plantation, OMG, the
infrastructures was so poor then.
we should say SIP is Singapore building MODEL, IT is Singapore
who from start DO not allow all 300 cities from China to fly over
to Singapore to learn how we do Industries.
how can we has the thinking that Suzhou = Singapore, brainless
also will know Chinese has to be major shareholder