Tianjin Eco City turning into another Suzhou nightmare for Singapore
December 27th, 2009 | 
Author: Written by Our Correspondent
Singapore’s latest foray into China, led by the Ministry of National Development to develop an eco-city in the northern metropolis of Tianjing is turning into another Suzhou nightmare for the island state.
The China-Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP) was set up in 1994 at the outskirts of the Suzhou City in Jiangsu province with the help of Singapore funds and expertise. Singapore owned a 65% stake in the park.
Even as the park was being constructed, the Suzhou City government set up Suzhou New District Industrial Park (SND) right next to SIP. It was the exact replica of the Singapore model.
As the Suzhou City government had a majority stake in SND, it largely ignored the SIP and concentrated on promoting the SND instead.
After incurring losses of some US$90 million over 5 years, the Singapore consortium lowered its stake to 35 percent, raising the Chinese consortium’s stake to 65 percent from 35 percent and reducing the Singaporean share from a planned 70 sq.km. to just 8 sq.km (source: wikipedia)
According to a report in the Sunday Times, tension appears to be building up in the joint Sino-Singapore team as Singaporean and Chinese officials often do not see eye to eye on such things as work priorities and timing.
A Singaporean, who has lived in China for over a decade and works for a company with close dealings with the Eco-City was quoted as saying: “We may have another Suzhou Industrial Park tangle on our hands.”
One problem which continues to plague the project as in Suzhou is the difference in priorities between local officials and the Singaporeans.
Though the project has received strong support from the central government in Beijing, it is the provincial officials the Singapore team have to liaise with and many do not share the vision of their Singapore counter-parts.
To the Tianjin officials who are there only for a short stint, they are desperate to produce quick results which will earn them promotions elsewhere.
For example, while Singapore would like to have Housing Board-style public housing that will cater to low-income Chinese, Tianjin officials have been lukewarm to the idea because they worry over who will stump up the cash to subsidise the apartments.
A Tianjin official apparently told his Singaporean colleague:
“By the time the public housing project is completed, many of us Tianjin officials would likely be promoted elsewhere. Who would still be around to ensure that it is really the poor people who are relocated to this public housing estate?”
Singapore appears not to have learnt its previous lessons from Suzhou – that written contracts count for little in business transactions in China and local officials are often more interested in securing promotions for themselves than the welfare of the people.
There is an ancient Chinese saying: “The mountains are tall and the Emperor resides far away”. The Tianjin provincial government runs autonomously on its own and even the central government in Beijing has to “kowtow” to it in order to get things done there.
Like in Suzhou, the project was supposed to be a joint collaboration between two national governments, but end up being hijacked by the provincial government instead.
For some inexplicable reasons, a state agency – the Ministry of National Development, which is funded entirely by taxpayers’ monies, is directly involved in the Tianjin Eco City.
Asked why it was picked as the lead agency, the MND told The Sunday Times that its ‘expertise in township development is essential, especially in areas such as master planning…and the provision of housing and green spaces’.
It is not revealed how much money that MND has pumped into Tianjin so far. There is no opposition in parliament to hold the ruling party accountable which gives it the freedom to do anything as it wishes without answering to the people.
In China, the officials and businessmen are frequently decried as being in “cahoots” with one another to cheat the people. In Singapore, the officials and businessmen are together in one single “class”.
An earlier Straits Times report in August this year described Singapore’s Minister of National Development Mah Bow Tan as a ”key player” in the development of the Tianjin eco-city, which China and Singapore formally agreed to develop in Nov 2007. He co-chair a joint business council on cooperation between Singapore and Tianjin.
With due respect to Mr Mah, he is hardly the ideal person to fill such a position. An engineer by training, he worked in the civil service
during his entire career before he was plucked to stand in the elections and becoming a minister. He never had any experience working in China before.
The government should never be involved in business at all which should be left to the private sector with the necessary drive, experience and expertise.
Fortunately for Mah, he would never be asked to answer for any mistakes made just like in Suzhou when the Singapore consortium reportedly lost more than USD$90 million dollars in 5 years.
Related articles:
>> Singapore continues to pour money into Suzhou
>> Suzhou Industrial Park becomes model of Singapore-China cooperation
>> Why there was zero “foresight” in investing in Suzhou Industrial Park by The Brotherhood Press
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42 Responses to “Tianjin Eco City turning into another Suzhou nightmare for Singapore”
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Wikipedia is never a reliable source, anyone can edit the information there. Please quote a more reliable source.
Keep on losing money for Singapore, no wonder we need extremely hard working and striving people to make up the loses.
If the people don’t make the government come clean by voting in opposition to query the government, we will further be left in a dark unending labyrinth.
“We the citizen of Singapore must wake up as one united people. Regardless of which opposition party or opposition MP, we still pledge to vote the opposition so as remove the obscurity from the PAP, regardless of whatever cooling day that is to be. So as to achieve a democracy for our nation.” Our aspiration for the coming election.
What is 90 million when 40 billion were already lost?
Why would China want to learn from Spore when China itself is already teaching Africa how to build their country. Check out the International Herald Tribune’s aka New York Times articles on how China is transforming Africa thru large scale infrastructure works, manufacturing, building townships & farming large scale agriculture lands.
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/showcase-91/?ref=asia
Does Singapore have an eco-city. Why build in China. Our politicians and civil servants are acting like businessmen.
Good article, but needs more substantiating. Sources please.
If true, did parliament approve MND’s funding of the project?!
China is in reality a state of multiple semi-independent provinces, run by local officials. The central government at most gives strategic guidance. Any one who has had any sort of experience in China knows that.
Then again, apparently not.
If the moon can build an eco-city. They will go & build it there ! with the expenses of thev tax-payer money.Who’s care
MBT should sell them his idea of making flats “affordable” yet “subsidised” w/o stumping up cash.
my taiwanese friend sent me this link, containing six parts commeting my city state early politic, economics etcs.
interestingly part 4-6 mentioning that our economics model, FT policy, IR coping from taiwan.
what interest me from my taiwan friend that our singapore FT policy different from them – that is taiwan foreign talent policy is to invite their own talented peoples from different parts of the world to return to their proud country to contribute to its present economics relevancy and politic vibrancy ie. economics drive politic not politic drives economics.
really kudos to my taiwanese friend knowing their personal democratic rights.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEYjcn_HMc4&feature=related
A civil servant is no entrepreuner. An entrepreuner who uses others money is no entrepreuner. If what the article suggest is really happening, then we never learn from mistakes, we are perfecting the mistake.
small price for the our newfound “chinamen” lah!
need to buy some more “cheap” labour.
when it comes to ctizens,every cents count;when they dish out 50 cents,they will scour for five dollars back form us.
bravo! bravo!
who are those among us who are less hard driving and less hard striving,one wonders?
the only advantages left for citizens seem to be “handing our jobs over to FTs” and be blamed if those FTs are unhappy and
“kena” slapped left,right and centre by our ministers?!!!
and,that’s for their mistakes?!
this must easily be another world’s first…better get the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS people fast…
XY and Ah Lian
The seemingly confidential statements in this article hints that TR has insider news. I’m not surprised that public servants are leaking things out to TR in anonymity because many civil servants are becoming disgruntled with how PAP is managing Singapore. They are not allowed to openly criticize the government as there is a rule forbidding them from doing so. Plus there will be repercussions on their career. They are also bound by the Official Secrets Act.
While I’m not the person who gave inputs for this article, I would like to lend some credibility to this article with a few facts:
MND had set up a Eco-City Project Office (ECPO) to work on the Tianjin Eco-City.
HDB is also involved in the project (this was not mentioned in the article).
Just look at Malboro Tan’s smirk….Zzz
Those who has traveled to Shu Zhou knows that it is a Shit City. The Singapore side is like crap, with rivers filled with garbage and people having the mentality of typical 3rd world communist country. The China developed side is running in parallel with the Singapore side, and doing much better economically.
Those who still dream of Shu Zhou to give us gains are foolish idiots. The Chinese main forces like FoxConn are movin westwards into ChengDu for even lower costs. It is happening already and soon places like Shu Zhou area will ‘change model’ again.
This article speaks of the great uncertainties, corruption and also changing political landscapes of China. Singapore Garment DO NOT EVEN QUALIFY to run one of China’s major villages.
Good Luck Singaporean. Your CPF will be all gone and you will have to work till death for a life worse than many PRC.
You should travel to China and see for yourself. Sad people.
for the past years, majority of the new hdb flats are built by china construction firms.
what happen to our local SME construction firms , LBian, chipeseng etcs – guess they are outbided by even cheaper, better, faster bidding, sad can’t even compete in their own soils.
no wonder, why are our flats still ‘AFFORDABLE’…..
They will never learn. We really need capable leaders before all our reserves dry up.
Time for change.
“Why would China want to learn from Spore when China itself is already teaching Africa how to build their country.”
You are spot on !!! They have to learn more about merry go round.
There are buildings & buildings all over China and they have professionals working all over the world and here who they can easily canvass for feedback.
Every businessmen around the world know the Chinese HABITUALLY DO NOT honours WRITTEN contracts for a start.
Regardless, Chinese DO NOT follow English common law doctrines applied in commercial world in all Commonwealth jurisdictions including Singapore and USA. Chinese contract law is rule-based completely different from us, SO HOW CAN THEY “LEARNT” ANYTHING CONTRUCTIVELY RELEVANT FROM SINGAPORE’s SYSTEMS and COMMERCIAL PRACTICES except when hyped up by the usual ‘ALWAYS-PRAISED-OURSELVES-AND-OUR- LEADERS NEWS”???
If nothing else, these sex-up hype gives some strange people orgasm of ego trip of self-adolation and self-indugence of their sutpidity published as wisdom.
Suzhou Park saga is first humiliation BUT WON’T BE THE LAST.
They never learn from mistakes and will never learn too. As the Chinese wisdom saying goes – PRIDE BEFORE THE BIG FALL.
More to come.
15 years ago, if China said they needed Singapore expertise, knowledge and experience, it was the fact.
But today, having the same line repeated, yet it is taken as fact, then something is very wrong NOT with the speaker, but with the listener.
It is beyond my layman comprehension that such a big and reliable institution that we have can believe in such simple statement. Or is there other motive?
Time for change
andrew leung
when Suzhou New District Industrial Park {SND) was still in the early stage of construction beside the completed China-Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP)grand opening, there was a joke saying our ‘esteemed’ delegation was led through an camouflage i.e prevented on seeing the on-going construction of SND.
next hearing was many officials of SND piggyback the SIP to attend the management training in singapore on how to manage the industrial parks on tax payers expenses – ‘we’ are really fools again.
why do we still bother to help them. do they need us? really. what expertise can we actually give them for the ecocity. Is singapore an ecocity????
MBT cannot afford to build cheap HDB housing in Singapore BUT he can build cheap Housing Board-style public housing that will cater to low-income Chinese in Tianjing.
Can MBT tell us the cost of each unit there in Tianjing?
If this project failed, we will expect to see another round of property hike (HDB flat price, land price) to cover the lost. The citizen will suffer because of the mistake by the government but the government officials, including PM and ministers, will still “SONG SONG” collecting their million dollars while the citizen will have to struggle to cover their lost/mistake !!!
The China-Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP) made the people of Singapore looked very stupid.
As a tourist to Suzhou (SIP), Singaporean will feel humiliated by the chinese tour guide saying, “look! this is what your govt have done for us, thank you.” “Good, I heard your govt have the guts to come back again after 15 years, and this time to our Tianjing.”
Just becos we have a few idiots, those chinese think we are a nation of idiots too.
YOU SAID:
You can’t build cheap HDB for the people in Singapore.
You can’t control a small flash flood in Bukit Timah.
You can’t control dengue mosquitoes in Bukit Batok.
You can’t even detect 60 rats living in Geylang Serai wet market.
Your people are not hard working and have no drives.
Yet, you can build eco city in Tainjing. Please lah?
To add one more..
After 45 years, your hospitals A&E are still crowded.
So much Singaporean taxpayers money was wasted in SIP, and now, still allow the govt so easily to go into Tianjin to build an eco city for them. What the hell is that?
We really spoiled this govt.
I will vote for more oppositions into parliament to question this govt’s real intention of investing in SIP and Tianjin.
We pay taxes and GST, and our taxpayers money are wasted in such silly Chinese projects especially low cost housing in Tianjin whereas our HDB prices are so ridiculously high here.
This is rubbish.
//soulfly
Singapore’s PAP is afraid those Singaporeans who returned to take up high post here will challenge them.
So, they are asking those non Singaporeans to take up those post.
Easy to remove if these FT don’t want to listen.
No political implications.
It is all about them keeping power.
For that they are milking us of our basic rights.
no way –>Malboro Tan’s smirk mean ’si bei happy lor’….win $$ go pocket lost suck more $$ from us lor….simple as that’s …that’s why he ‘jian siao’……..
Its an honest mistake, lets move on.
i guess our PM will be called CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF “SIN” SAR?
…SINGAPORE SPECIAL ADMINSTRATIVE REGION?
small wonder they are so hurriedly filling up our tiny red dot
with PRCs this and PRCs that!
…SIN SAR better faster convert the whole economy into casinos,drug syndicates,prostitution(child and adults),money
laundering etc and tranfer the arms like banking and finance or
commerce to Shanghai?!!!
EXCUSE ME, mbt has no experience working at the “People’s Republic of China” and poor proficiency in speaking and writing Chinese language!!!
This idiotic imbecile can not even speak proper Chinese, so do not expect him of the basic understanding of Chinese culture as necessary and essential for success in China.
Well, his assistant, the million-dollar smos gf proclaims vociferously and loudly that she is in Tianjing eco city to UNDERSTAND THE PROGRESS during the most recent “joint-venture-working-committee-meeting”, mind you, a million-dollar smos traveled all the way to China by SIA FIRST CLASS and stayed in FIVE STAR HOTEL just to understand the progress of the eco-city.
Singapore’s Taxpayers are really RICH to pay their POLITICANS million-dollar to talk nuts and utter rubbish!
Hence, both need to be voted out by next “G-Erection” so as to save the taxpayer’s million-dollar taxes.
Small change compared to the billions lossed to ang moh banks.
Hey, we are damn charitable, we work hard, save and then donate to others, no wonder everyone loves Singapore.
BTW has this anything to do with the recently announced hefty deficit by HDB in a region of 2 over $billion??
We have nothing as compared to China,the Chinese can easily put MBT in their watch pockets!!
Look they are sending their kind to the moon,and here we are trying to teach them to suck eggs!
Build eco-city with them? Their knowledge of eco-buildings far far advance than any of our so called elites!
What they have in abundance is land,and some stupid fool come along and offer to develope any piece of land ,they will more than happy to oblighed! They have nothing to loose
and everything to gain! After developing the land and eventually become prosperous they will take over and ran the whole show! So who is the stupid fool here? You still don’t get it???
when you have politicians in businesses to drive economics that is not their monies, no accountability, so be it….let move on….. our million$ministers, the best we can have – A-team ….. real sad for my city state…..again Fools rush in !!! never learn their lessons, please get Real!
looking at Mah… you already know you have a ‘winner’ in the making. The way he looks… yup…says its all
Housing-board style ???
They even have companies here building our public houses.
WELCOME ALL TO CHINA. NEW AGE WAYS OF DOING BUSINESS.
AFTER SIGNING LEGALLY BINDING AGREEMENT WITH FORTESCUE METALS GROUP, THE CHINESE DECIDED SOME ARM-TWISTING WOULD BE FITTING TO MUSCLE ANDREW FORREST, CEO, OF FORTESCUE METALS GROUP, INTO GIVING THE CHINESE 80% OF THE IRON-ORE PROJECT BEYOND WHAT WAS AGREED IN THE CONTRACT.
THE DETAILS ARE UGLY AND REVEALED IN THE COURT CASE IN AUSTRALIA.
HERE IT IS
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/beijings-lesson-for-fortescue-chief-andrew-forrest/story-e6frg8zx-1225814240932
VULGARITY AND MAFIA LANGUAGE WERE EMPLOYED IN THREATS MADE.
SINGAPOREAN POLITICIANS GOT THESE KIND OF BUSINESS EXPERIENCE????
Or maybe they never will learn even from Singaporeans with lots of business experiences inside China – CHINESE DO NOT HONOUR WRITTEN CONTRACTS and more usually break your arm after that. AND THEY DID THAT TO ALL FOREIGNERS – AMERICANS, EUROPEANS, SINGAPOREANS, AMERICANS ETC ETC.
That is why their enterprises abroad encountered so much credibility problems.
SO HOW CAN THEY LEARN ANYTHING FROM SINGAPOREANS WHOSE BUSINESS MODEL IS PROBABLY REGARDED AS STUPID, GULLIBLE AND PROBABLY NOVICE OF BUSINESS ACUMEN???
Only Singaporean fools believes in the “wisdom” of their own foolishness. The Chinese must be secretly laughing at us being their most unworthy ancestral rejects with the SMALLEST (brain size) of no wit and talent.
guess,PRC will be sending us a couple more pandas to make
it the “GANG OF FOUR”?
Where have all the “money” gone,long time passing…
we work hard for our money;hard-driving and hard-striving but
who squander them away? you?… me or them?
don’t worry…….the ruling party has access to the account…..money no problem….what suzhou ?!….small amount compare to GIC investment…………they can only hope every election sure win or ……………………………..
The Suzhou provincial government did make used of Singapore “effort” (Singapore’s software-management & hardware-blue print) to produce immediate & maximum result for their political agenda, then they copied the master plan all over China. Now look around in China, they can built train system at 350~400km/hr by themselves (and recently working with France to built big plane, very soon they will buy less Boeing or airbus), do you think these technology are solely developed by them. They paid and expect to benefit themselves. It is just business. No one will take care of Singapore’s benefit except for Singaporean.
If I am correct, this time Singapore works with Tianjin official “under Beijing’s supervision”. (we do learned from the past experience) But this venture is still a trade off. Most importantly, this time our Ministers need to know how to better benefit Singapore. Maybe we can improve the technology for Singapore’s own benefit or sold these concept to others. Let see how these “high paying” “top of the crop” people works in this project. Again, Singaporean is watching, you know (and we are not stupid). hence I reserve my comments for now.
In a ironic way, we thanks our neighbor (especially dr. m) that we are force to produce world-class water treatment plant & desaltification plant. With limited land, we have one of the best waste disposal system that many envied. Now we can rip others with these technology.
I recall Secondary History that not too long ago (maybe a few hundred years ago in S E Asia) many sea-ports prosper for a few generation and later disappear due to new & better sea trade port & route. I hope we understand our strength so that we can prosper longer. It is sad if Singapore become history that prosper for a few generation.