The industrial park was established in February 1994, as part of the reform and opening up campaign in the 1990s, and is unique in its joint governance by Chinese and Singaporean officials.

[1] While the park struggled at first, and attracted international notoriety following a very publicized falling out between the two sides, it quickly began making a profit due to highly desirable real estate and the presence of many large global corporations, and remains an economic engine for the city.

[2][3][4] After rounds of discussions and site surveys, both governments decided to join hands in developing a modern industrial park in the east of Suzhou.

[5][page needed] Suzhou was chosen as the site due to its proximity to the financial hub of Shanghai, as well as its educated and skilled labor pool.

[6] The Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP) charged high rents in its early days, in part to pay off the expensive new facilities it built for investors.

[7] This created a contradiction, according to one writer of the now-defunct Far Eastern Economic Review, who suggested that "investors were looking to Suzhou for costs lower than Shanghai's, and the SIP was charging Shanghai-style prices".

[6][7][8] As part of their partial pullout, Singapore recalled all but three of its civil servants involved in the project,[7] and sold power and water treatment plants to their Chinese partners.

[9] By 1999, the New York Times reported that the project "is heavily in debt", and had been losing an average of 23.5 million United States dollars annually, according to Singaporean partners.

[8] The New York Times also suggested that "the project was supposed to transfer Singapore's management skills to Chinese bureaucrats and to teach China how to build and run "business-friendly" commercial parks.

But it ended up straining the close relations between Singapore and China and bringing home to Singaporeans the often unpredictable, and sometimes underhand, business culture of the Communist mainland".

[8] Singapore's senior minister, Lee Kuan Yew conceded that the project had not turned out as planned and had made him more cautious about investments in China, claiming that difficulties arose in signing agreements with the central government, but were then implemented by local officials who "have their own imperatives".

[7] That year, Singapore's top official remaining in the project, Goh Toh Sim, called the previous public disagreement "water under the bridge", and estimated that the SIP would make a profit of $7.5 million by the end of 2001, and be listed on the stock market by 2004.

The Straits Times noted in a 2014 article that despite only comprising 3.4% of Suzhou's land area and 5.2% of its population, it contributed 15% of the city's economy.

[6] As of 2019, the industrial park has contributed about 119.11 billion dollars in tax revenue since its inception, and has achieved more than $1 trillion in foreign trade volume.

[12] While real estate prices throughout Suzhou surged during this period, the South China Morning Post noted that real estate in the industrial park proved to be especially desirable thanks to the high-quality school systems and jobs in the area, resulting in the park having the most expensive residential properties in the entire city.

[15]: 94  Zhongxin Group handles secondary land development, attracting investment and companies to the park, and daily operations.

[21] Suzhou Dushu Lake Higher Education Town, one of the government's key projects, is located in the industrial park.

[citation needed] Located east of Dushu Lake, it has a total area of 25 square kilometres (9.7 sq mi), and expects to have around 400,000 people by 2016, 100,000 of whom will be students.