Chapter 6: Tianjin Eco-city - Building a Green City from Scratch
Chapter 6 is written by Chen Gang, and it’s about one of the most interesting things Singapore and China have done together. They decided to build an eco-friendly city from scratch. Not renovate an existing one. Not add solar panels to some buildings. They picked a 30-square-kilometre patch of mostly useless land, salt farms and wastewater ponds, and said: “Let’s build a green city here.”
This is the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city.
Why China Needed an Eco-city
Here’s the thing. By the mid-2000s, China’s growth was incredible, but the environmental cost was getting hard to ignore. Carbon emissions kept climbing. Air and water pollution were serious. The country was becoming the world’s factory, but factories need energy, and most of that came from burning coal.
Before the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009, China committed to cutting carbon intensity by 40-45% by 2020. It wasn’t just about looking good internationally. China had a real energy shortage caused by growing demand, wasteful usage, and limited reserves.
Building a model city that could balance economic growth with environmental protection made practical sense. And this is where Singapore came in.
Why Singapore? And Why Tianjin?
Singapore had already done the Suzhou Industrial Park with China (covered in Chapter 5). That was about manufacturing. But China’s priorities shifted. The country didn’t just need more factories. It needed to figure out how to grow without destroying the environment.
Singapore had decades of experience as a “garden city.” It knew compact, liveable urban planning. Small enough to be non-threatening as a partner, experienced enough to bring real know-how.
Tianjin made sense. The central government designated it as North China’s economic centre, the country’s third growth pole after Shanghai and Shenzhen. But unlike those two, Tianjin had environmental protection built into its master plan. At an APEC meeting in 2010, Japan’s Trade Minister suggested Tianjin should be APEC’s first low-carbon city for testing smart grids and renewable energy.
The eco-city sits in Tianjin’s Binhai New Area, which invested over US$2 billion in 2011-2012 to build low-carbon industry. They banned heavily polluting businesses from the area entirely.
The Green Tech
So what actually makes this place different from a regular city? Let me walk through the key stuff.
Wind farms. Tianjin built the Dashentang Wind Farm starting in 2010. It has 26 megawatts of capacity and can power over 50,000 households. Every year it saves the equivalent of 19,000 tons of coal and avoids 6,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions. That’s for one wind farm in one area.
Clean coal technology. The Asian Development Bank loaned $135 million for a 250-megawatt clean coal plant using IGCC (integrated gasification combined cycle). It captures a lot of the nasty stuff. A later phase added carbon capture and storage. Not perfect, but way better than traditional coal plants.
Solar manufacturing. A US-China joint venture made solar cells in Michigan, shipped them to Tianjin for assembly into finished modules for the Chinese market.
Smart grids and green buildings. Hitachi partnered with the eco-city developers for home energy management systems, electric vehicle charging, and smart grid solutions. All buildings had to meet green building standards that combined Singapore’s green mark system with China’s own standards. No exceptions.
Green transport. Light rail through the city, cycling paths, green connectors, and a bus/tram network. The goal: make public transport so convenient people stop relying on cars. Tax incentives for hybrid vehicles too. Target: 90% of residents commuting by foot, public transport, or bicycle by 2020.
The Eco-cell Design
Here’s how it works at the neighbourhood level. The basic unit is an “eco-cell,” a 400-by-400-metre grid with schools, shops, workplaces, and parks built in. Walk or bike to almost anything. Cells connect into neighbourhoods, then districts, then the city. A central ecological core preserves wetlands and rehabilitated water bodies. Compact by design, because density reduces per-person costs for every public service.
What Makes It Different from Other Eco-cities
Chen Gang points out several things that set this project apart.
Government-to-government backing. Most eco-city projects worldwide are private-sector driven. The Tianjin Eco-city is the opposite. Both governments treated this as bilateral relations. The project has a Joint Steering Committee co-chaired by Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister and China’s Vice Premier. A Joint Working Committee handles day-to-day issues. If something goes wrong, it affects the relationship between two countries. That’s serious political weight.
Knowledge sharing, not knowledge transfer. With Suzhou, it was mostly one-way: Singapore teaching China. The Tianjin project was different. China had its own renewable energy expertise. Both sides were learning from each other.
The three harmonies. The project was built around three principles: harmony between people, harmony between people and environment, and harmony between people and economic activities. Sounds like a slogan, but it shaped how the city was designed.
Social Harmony: Not Just a Slogan
Here’s the part that surprised me. About 20% of residential areas were set aside for public, subsidised housing. This was directly inspired by Singapore’s HDB system, where public housing isn’t just affordable apartments. It’s a tool for social integration. Different income levels, different backgrounds, same neighbourhood.
The Chinese team visited Singapore, studied HDB, and were impressed. Not just by the housing, but by how it built community development and social stability.
About 2,000 villagers had to be relocated for construction. In China, forced relocations have a terrible track record. Both sides knew this and paid extra attention. The displaced villagers got jobs and housing in the eco-city.
China was also interested in Singapore’s healthcare and education efficiency. China spends more on healthcare as a percentage of GDP, but Singapore gets better results on almost every health indicator.
The Business Side
The project runs through a joint venture with RMB 4 billion (about US$583 million) in capital, split equally between Singapore’s Keppel Corporation and China’s Tianjin TEDA Investment Holding Company. Qatar Investment Authority also bought a 10% stake.
Samsung signed on for a green central business district. A 130-hectare Eco-Industrial Park launched for cleantech companies. The 3-square-kilometre startup area was completed by 2013, with the full development targeting 350,000 residents.
The Challenges
Chen Gang is honest about the hard parts. Building green hardware is one thing. Getting officials to adopt the right policies and residents to embrace recycling is another. The chapter calls these the “software” and “heartware” problems.
The light rail got delayed. Making all water drinkable was ambitious. And can you convince hundreds of thousands of people to give up cars when car ownership is still a status symbol? The broader question: can Singapore’s social development model transfer to China’s very different political framework? You can’t just copy-paste it.
The Bottom Line
The Tianjin Eco-city is not just an environmental project. It’s a test of whether two very different countries can share knowledge both ways and create a model other Chinese cities might follow.
If it works, Singapore stays relevant as China shifts from manufacturing growth to sustainability. If it doesn’t, both countries lose credibility. As Chen Gang puts it, the real test isn’t the solar panels and wind farms. It’s whether the people running the city have the right mindset, and whether residents actually choose green habits over convenient ones.
Previous: Chapter 5 - Suzhou Industrial Park