Singapore's overseas industrial parks

Abstract

In the early 1990s, the Singapore Government commenced the development of industrial townships in other South East Asian countries, China and India. The largest individual project, the China-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park, was designed to accommodate a population of 600,000 and a workforce of 360,000. The township projects vary in location, scale, participants and progress but are similar in their perceived advantage, as well as sharing common design principles and organization. The city state's positive reputation for infrastructure efficiency and corrupt-free administration (Lim, 1991; Chia, 1997) was to be transplanted to locations where these attributes are less certain. Singapore's linkages to both western business, through the large population of multinational companies (MNCs) in Singapore, and its ethnic affiliation to Chinese business networks that dominate Asian enterprise (East Asia Analytical Unit, 1995), were thought to augment the marketing advantage. As well, Singapore operates within the dominant Asian political management style that favours a minimum of transparent, legalistic and accountable decision-making processes in preference to interpersonal relationships, networking and consensus behind closed doors (Kumar and Siddique, 1994, p. 55). This context enables individual investment privileges and protections for the parks to be negotiated, helped by Singapore's relative economic wealth within the region and reputation as an economic role model (Abonyi, 1994). The common design principle is self containment with respect to the facilities required for industrial production and the focus on attracting foreign branch plants. As far as possible, the aim is to separate the townships from dependency on the surrounding administration and infrastructure, reinforcing the goal of creating privileged pockets of investment. The shared organizational context is the role of the Singapore government-linked companies as the primary facilitators and lead investors in the townships.