SINGAPORE: Suzhou Industrial Park, the largest cooperative project between China and Singapore, saw an economic growth of 8.3 percent in 2014 despite an overall economic slowdown in the country.
Its gross domestic product (GDP) reached 200 billion yuan ($32.5 billion) in 2014. Its import and export volume was $80.3 billion during the same period, according to the administration committee of the park here the other day.
The park, inaugurated in 1994 in East China’s Jiangsu province, was proposed by the late former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who died early Monday at the age of 91.
Lee Kuan Yew visited Suzhou nine times between 1992 and 2011, according to the committee.
So far the park has attracted $26.7 billion of foreign investment into 5,200 programs. More than 90 of the Fortune top 500 enterprises have invested in 150 programs in the park.
The park, which covers an area of 278 square kilometers and accounts for 3.4 percent of the city’s land area, has created 15 percent of the city’s GDP.
With the park serving as a role model for China’s economic cooperation with foreign countries, a number of such industrial parks co-hosted by China have been established domestically and abroad.
