This is China! BLOG

Suzhou Gets Serious About IT and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)

I spent half a day last week with local government administrators of the Suzhou Industrial Park International Science Park (SIPIP). Actually, I live quite close to the Science Park, about a three minute drive from there. But the Park is quite different from the rest of SIP, which is a combination of residential, entertainment and manufacturing facilities. SIPIP is SIP’s magnet campus for attracting IT and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) companies to Suzhou in particular, SIP specifically.

My host for the day was the very charming and articulate Daisy Gao and one of her staff Sean Xiao. Daisy directs the promotional affairs of the Science Park. I am looking for new office space in the area, and wanted to find out more about what was happening at the campus.

“Campus” is certainly the right word for the sprawling complex of modern architecture. Young Chinese faces with a frenetic energy abound. The total planned size of the campus is 690 thousand square meters. The focus right now in the area I visited involves four phases, of which three are complete. The fourth phase should be complete by Chinese New Years next year (mid-February). Phase 1 is primarily an incubator building for young companies; Phase 2 focuses on corporate R&D; Phase 3 is a high-rise building with R&D and outsourcing companies; Phase 4 will be two high-rise buildings, one that supports fully-furnished and serviced apartments, and the other an R&D complex.

SIP has developed its reputation throughout the world as the easiest economic development zone in China in which to set up and manage an operation. A great deal of tribute goes to the joint venture structure between the Chinese government, the Singapore government and a handful of Singaporean private investors. Though the relationship was rocky at the outset ten years ago, the development zone has proven to be a roaring success the past five years.

But, as Daisy and I discussed, manufacturing is important to China, but it will not solve what the government calls the 20/30 problem: the University-educated Chinese in their twenties and thirties who are under-employed. Services industries like R&D, IT- and BPO provide a white-collar answer to providing jobs to the millions of graduates churned out of the university system each year.

That’s a lot of brains to soak up.

William Dodson
Suzhou, China