Singapore has more exposure to China�s governance and public policies than India�s. For 10 years Singapore trained nearly 1,000 officials from Suzhou to plan, manage and develop an integrated township called the Suzhou Industrial Park. We trained them in various disciplines with the emphasis on the planning and management of an integrated city with industry, services, commerce, private and public housing, public utilities, schools, hospitals, parks, golf courses and recreational areas, sited all to be in 70 sq km. There were many difficult problems in the early years because of our different mindsets, although we share similar, but not identical, language and culture.� However despite the travail, after 10 years the results are startling.
They have not only learned about the specific areas in which we instructed them, but they have observed how we have cleaned up Singapore and its waterways, greened it, planned, built and managed our public housing and town planning.�
In 1994 Suzhou was dilapidated, canals stagnant and fetid, shorn of its charm as the �Venice of China�. Now they have flushed the canals and greened up their banks. Boutique restaurants, hotels, shopping malls and all the attractiveness of a well-lived modern city that preserved their old buildings, spruced up and refurbished. They studied what we have done in Singapore.� What we took 40 years to do they were able to adopt, adapt and implement in 10 years.
Over a thousand Chinese officials, selected by different centres, the Communist Party�s Central Organisation Department, the Central Party School and the China Association of Mayors, have been studying Singapore�s system, its economic and social development, public administration, anti-corruption practices, financial management, human resource development, social security and taxation system, urban planning, management and social development.� Several of them have taken Master�s degrees at NUS and NTU in Public Management, Public Policy and Business Administration and Managerial Economics.
They have selectively incorporated and bud-grafted specific policies they find useful. In several Chinese cities where Singapore�s Housing and Development Board has done public housing projects, they have been able to replicate these townships with improved designs for the flats to suit their different climatic conditions. The speed at which they have learned has no parallel anywhere else.
In India, Singapore's EDB and a JTC-led consortium invested in the International Technology Park of Bangalore (ITBP). It is a self-contained oasis, with independent power supply.�� The Park has become an icon showcasing India's accommodation of MNCs.� The Indians have duplicated such "oases" in other cities, including the Hi-tech Park in Hyderabad and Tidel Park in Chennai. But the rate of replication appears slower than in China.� Could it be bureaucratic inertia? Or are Indian private enterprises and consumers slower than the Chinese in the diffusion of technology and innovation, from one player to the next and one industry to another?
