Introduction

The rapid process of industrialization and urbanization in China has brought about greater environmental and social problems, including water and energy shortage, air pollution, overcrowding, traffic congestion, loss of biodiversity and desertification. Influenced by the internationally popular concept of eco-city that focuses on integrating sustainability into city planning, the Chinese Government in recent years has been paying increasing attention to the know-how of building cities in balance with nature. As the notions of eco-city and garden city are imported and China is still in the take-off stage of economic development, the country has been enthusiastic about cooperating with other foreign partners in eco-city projects, with the flagship Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City Project being the most well-known and successful up to date. Based on its indigenous experience with the construction of “ecological garden cities” (shengtai yuanlin chengshi), China has started to plan and build its own eco-cities in some localities.

The trajectory of the Singapore-China project based cooperation from the Suzhou Industrial Park (1994) to the Tianjin Eco-City (2008) has manifested China's shift in its economic strategy from building itself into an export-oriented manufacturing base to a service-driven and low- carbon economy. Compared with the unilateral knowledge transferred from Singapore to China in the Suzhou Industrial Park, the Singaporean side has found its participation in the Eco-City project to a larger extent an expertise-sharing and mutual-learning interaction between the two countries when the pollution and energy problems have pushed the rising China to lead the world in tapping renewable energy. At the strategic level, it marks Singapore's continued effort to stay relevant to China's rise by identifying a niche area for collaboration with China. In doing so, Singapore can leverage on China's growth. On the other hand, the project enables China to devise a model that balances the goals of economic growth, environment protection and social harmony, one that is based on Singapore's own developmental experience which may be more realistic and attractive to China compared to other models.