Re-Engineering Economic Space: The Case of Singapore's Transborder Industrialization 'Gambits' in Asia

The exportability of Singapore's industrial-development model to other Asian environments has been one of the hallmarks of the city-state's regionalization program, together with the state-led, market-driven intervention that has underscored the city-state's development strategies. The paper presents an empirical analysis on the portability of this transborder industrialization strategy, and contributes new insights to the discourse on state-enterprise networks in promulgating transnational entrepreneurial ventures. Empirical evidence from on-site surveys and interviews in Indonesia, China, Vietnam and India will be presented. Our study concludes that, while the calculated, schematised efforts have been remarkable, this attempt at re-engineering economic space beyond the city-state has not fully accounted for the intricacies of either economic, or socio-political, realities in the host environments.