Chapter 42 41. Suzhou Industrial Park: Learning from the good example of Singapore

The Suzhou Industrial Park is a symbol of China's efforts to learn from its East Asian neighbors and join the so-called "flying geese model" after opening up. On February 26, 1994, Singaporean Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew and then Chinese Vice Premier Li Lanqing signed an agreement on the transfer of public administration software to develop and manage the Suzhou Industrial Park in Diaoyutai, Beijing. Singaporean Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and Chinese Premier Li Peng also attended the signing of the agreement Activity.The Sino-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park is located on the east side of the historical name Suzhou. Although Suzhou has no airport, visitors can easily arrive from Shanghai's Hongqiao Airport or Pudong Airport.The administrative area of ​​this park is 288 square kilometers, with three towns under its jurisdiction and a registered population of 300,000. Among them, the planned area of ​​the Sino-Singapore cooperative development zone is 80 square kilometers.The goal of establishing this industrial park is not just to attract investment. The two parties hope that by transplanting the urban construction experience of Singapore, one of the Four Tigers, this industrial park will be established as a "high-tech industrial park with international competitiveness and a modern, landscaped garden." , an international new urban area”.At present, Suzhou Industrial Park accounts for about 3.5% of Suzhou’s land, 5% of its population, 7% of its industrial electricity consumption, 1% of its sulfur dioxide emissions and 2% of its COD emissions, creating about 15% of the city’s GDP. , Local general budget revenue and fixed asset investment, about 25% of registered foreign capital, foreign capital received and total import and export.

Before 1970, the People's Republic of China did not recognize the existence of an independent Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew said in his acclaimed memoir.Chinese radio and newspapers refer to Singapore as part of Malaya; the official media constantly blames the "Singaporean authorities"; The pragmatist Lee Kuan Yew has been China's most ardent observer. In October 1971, the permanent representative of Singapore to the United Nations voted for China to join the United Nations, and issued a statement that almost seemed to be written by the Chinese themselves: Singapore only recognizes one China, and Taiwan is a part of China. Therefore, the Taiwan issue belongs to China's internal affairs. It can only be resolved by the Chinese people, including the Taiwanese.

The change in the attitude of the People's Republic of China towards Singapore occurred in 1970.Subsequently, in 1976, Lee Kuan Yew visited China at the invitation of Premier Zhou Enlai.However, as a Chinese, Lee Kuan Yew still has doubts, worrying that China will treat Singapore, which is also dominated by Chinese, as a "relative country". In Chinese history, most of the small countries around China have maintained a strange relationship with the Chinese central government. .He later recalled, "In order to ensure that no one would think that we were visiting China as Chinese descendants, our 17-member delegation included Rajaratnam, a Jaffna-born Tamil foreign minister, and a Malay Political Undersecretary McMurder. They will attend all the meetings, and the meetings will be conducted in English.” It is a pity that when they visited Beijing, Zhou Enlai had died of illness; Deng Xiaoping still did not come back.

The real honeymoon between China and Singapore came after Deng Xiaoping came back.Like Lee Kuan Yew, Deng Xiaoping was a realist.Deng Xiaoping unabashedly expressed his goodwill towards Singapore. When Deng Xiaoping visited Singapore in 1978, Lee Kuan Yew said to Deng Xiaoping, "Our Chinese in Singapore are descendants of southerners from Guangdong, Fujian and other places in China. Our ancestors were all illiterate and landless farmers. There is nothing that Singapore can do that China cannot do.”At that time, Singapore was already regarded as part of the East Asian economic miracle because of its high-speed economic growth; while China had just ended the ten-year Cultural Revolution turmoil, and Deng Xiaoping began to drive China's economic recovery.Lee Kuan Yew recalled that Deng Xiaoping was silent at the time.Later, Lee Kuan Yew saw that Deng Xiaoping made a speech to the media during his second southern tour in 1992, saying that Deng hopes that Guangdong will catch up with the four Asian tigers within 20 years. "Singapore's social order is considered good, and they manage it strictly. We should learn from their experience and manage it better than them."At this time, Lee Kuan Yew realized that "he had accepted the challenge I quietly threw him at the dinner party 14 years ago."In fact, as early as September 1988, Deng Xiaoping had already expressed China's intention to learn from Singapore. He said to Lee Kuan Yew: "Because we lack experience, but skills can be learned, including learning from Singapore."

Deng Xiaoping's evaluation of Singapore triggered a frenzy of government officials and delegations from various places in mainland China to visit Singapore. "With Deng Xiaoping's approval and encouragement, hundreds of delegations, mostly unofficial, came to Singapore from China. They brought tape recorders, video cameras and record books to learn from our experience. Singapore was recognized by their top leaders. They put us under the microscope and studied in detail any characteristics that they found attractive and could be replicated in major Chinese cities," Lee Kuan Yew said in his memoirs.

Among them, the most significant learning from Singapore is the Suzhou Municipal Government. In September 1992, Lee Kuan Yew and Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Ong Teng Cheong visited Suzhou together. “Suzhou back then was full of dilapidated scenes and the river was dirty and muddy. But I had a whim, thinking that we had a way to redevelop Suzhou into a beautiful city. Develop an industrial and commercial zone adjacent to the lot.” Apparently, Suzhou government officials had the same idea as Lee Kuan Yew.After lunch, the then mayor of Suzhou, Zhang Xinsheng, suddenly pulled Lee Kuan Yew aside and asked, "Singapore has US$50 billion in reserves." Foreign exchange reserve figures.

In Lee Kuan Yew's memory, the next conversation was that Zhang Xinsheng suggested: "Why don't you consider bringing 10% of it to Suzhou for investment, so that we can also implement industrialization like Singapore? I guarantee you special treatment and ensure Singapore's The investment was successful." Lee Kuan Yew's answer shows his understanding of China's political system: "Smart and capable mayors are always promoted quickly. Then?" "Okay, my successor may cause you trouble at first, but after a long time he will have to follow the route I set out. What Suzhou people want is the Singapore they see on TV and newspapers, where there are jobs, a Housing, a garden city.”

"You don't have the power to give us an oasis to develop a mini-Singapore. You have to have the mandate from the central government to do that." In December, Zhang Xinsheng told Lee Kuan Yew that he had submitted his proposal to Deng Xiaoping's office, and that the mayor's close ties to Deng Xiaoping's son, Deng Pufang, gave him the opportunity to submit the proposal. Later, Lee Kuan Yew wrote to China's Vice Premier Zhu Rongji at the time, clarifying the construction plan of the Suzhou Industrial Park, "A government-to-government technical assistance agreement, the content stated that in Suzhou a lot of about 100 square kilometers, transfer us in attracting foreign investment. , knowledge and experience in building industrial parks (what we call 'software'), and at the same time develop housing and business centers. In addition, Singaporean consortia and foreign investors will also jointly develop Suzhou Industrial Park with the Suzhou Municipal Government. The entire development project is expected to be completed in 20 It will be completed within a few years, but we may encounter some difficulties in adapting Singapore's way of doing things to China's incomprehensible national conditions."

Lee Kuan Yew also gained support from Chinese political leaders including then Premier Li Peng, Vice Premier Li Lanqing and later President Jiang Zemin. On February 26, 1994, Lee Kuan Yew and then Deputy Prime Minister Li Lanqing signed an agreement to transfer public administration software to develop and manage Suzhou Industrial Park in Diaoyutai, Beijing. Then Singaporean Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and Chinese Premier Li Peng also attended in person. In 2000, the Suzhou Industrial Park’s Office for Learning from Singapore’s Experience published a paper titled “Deepening Learning from Practice—Review of Suzhou Industrial Park’s Six Years of Learning from Singapore’s Experience”, which elaborated on the Singaporean experience that Suzhou Industrial Park wanted to learn from:

"Singapore, as a city-type country, has experience in urban construction and management comparable to any city in the world. Management, traffic management, development zone construction and other aspects have accumulated successful experience; as a highly market-oriented country, it has developed a large-scale It is quite unique in terms of attracting foreign investment and establishing a sound and effective legal system; as a country with relatively successful social civilization construction, it pays attention to effectively combining Eastern cultural traditions with Western legal systems in accordance with national conditions. Social and political stability, improving the cultural quality of the people, strict social management, clean government, eradicating corruption, and combating social evils, etc., are also references and inspirations for us.”

This dry government report, as well as two collections of essays edited and published by Suzhou Industrial Park that draw on Singapore's experience, all show that Suzhou and Suzhou Industrial Park have almost all-encompassing ambitions to learn from Singapore, from Singapore's role in attracting foreign investment, developing Its economic achievements, its unexpectedly orderly urban planning, its housing policy of home ownership, its talent policy and higher education system, its garden-like city, its secret of good law and order and governance of corruption. But obviously, the economic success of the Suzhou Industrial Park is more eye-catching. A report published in the "People's Daily" published on May 11, 2000 said that the Suzhou Industrial Park is a wonderful mystery.This commendable report wrote: "This place located on the banks of Jinji Lake in the north of Suzhou was just a low-lying tile house six years ago, but in just three years, it completed the first phase of 8 square kilometers of high-standard development. The development zone has created a record of an average investment of more than 30 million US dollars for a single project; in 5 years, it has been ranked among the top ten industrial parks in Asia selected by the British authoritative magazine "Enterprise Forecast"..." It is immersed in the six-year history of Suzhou Industrial Park. Attracted 36 Fortune 500 companies, and introduced foreign investment of 7 billion US dollars in total. Among the economic miracles that rank among the top three among more than 40 open areas in the country, it is also mentioned at the end of the article that Suzhou Industrial Park learns from Singapore's provident fund management system and neighbors central strategy. Lee Kuan Yew expressed some dissatisfaction with Suzhou Industrial Park in his memoirs.He believes that the Suzhou local government pays too much attention to the economic goals that Suzhou Industrial Park can achieve, while ignoring other Singaporean experiences. "The top leaders in Beijing are very clear that the essence of the Suzhou Industrial Park plan is to transfer Singapore's knowledge and experience in planning, construction, and administrative management to jointly develop a comprehensive international town integrating industry, commerce, and residence. To attract high-quality investors. However, the Suzhou municipal government has deviated from the right track in order to protect narrow local interests, and is drifting away from its core goals. We want to show them the Singapore model, how to attach importance to financial control, blueprint master planning, and provide investment or provide continuous service, that's our software. But what they want is the real hardware, which is the high-rises, roads, infrastructure that we can build, and the huge sums that we can attract through our international connections and reputation foreign investment." Another point of Lee Kuan Yew's displeasure is that he believes that the Suzhou municipal government has reneged on its original promise and "instead used its links with Singapore to develop Suzhou New District, another industrial park developed by the municipal government itself, while manipulating the price of land and infrastructure so that the The new area is more competitive than the industrial park.” In fact, regardless of these, it can be seen that what Lee Kuan Yew tried to export to Suzhou was a set of experience from Singapore, many of which involved the interests of the government. He wanted to recreate a Singapore; while the local governments in China, including the central government, What they want is to achieve rapid economic development without disturbing the status quo of the government.This is the difference between Lee Kuan Yew and Suzhou, and it is also the goal that Lee Kuan Yew could not achieve from the very beginning.