Is Shanghai or Bangkok the new Singapore?

[Dontwannamisstheboat]

About 7 expat friends I know are heading off for new jobs in either Shanghai or Bangkok. What's happening? According to an old hand here Singers is passe and will be even worse off in 10 years time compared to booming opportunities in Bangkok and Shanghai. The advice is to catch the boat now in those two places or it might get too competitive later. What do you think?  

[SM Lee]

agree, in a few years time it will be like Hong Kong here...

[Return Ticket]

I think in S.E. Asia the population of Thailand (60m) makes Thailand a more attractive market for most things than Singapore. I think poor infrastructure and corruption is what stopped companies going there in the past. Things are improving quickly, if they continue to do so, I do think Thailand will be the place to be in S.E. Asia.
Obviously with 1.3bln people China is even more attractive, though bringing so many people up to a decent GDP per cap. will be very challenging.
I don't think Singapore is finished, because at the end of the day, the population is so small that it should possible to find some niches which it can excel at above all others. But it does seem that it is not the rising star at the moment. I can't see how putting so many eggs into the bio-tech basket will fix it.

[GC]

Not Shanghai in the medium term.
SOEs are burdened by hundreds of billions of unrepayable debt , national banks are insolvent, worker unrest is increasing, Tibet is always a thorn in their side, the Taiwan issue can only distract the population from their own government for so long, WTO really starts to kick in in 3-4 years and the CCP are doing NOTHING to fix any of these except issue slogans and try to fire up nationalism.  
A lot of economic fundamentals changed in the decade after 1978, but bugger all since then.  
Expect an implosion by 2010 & there is a limit to the number of people the CCP can machine-gun to stay in power.  
It's a cool city though.

[Guido]

The cost of doing business in both Shanghai and Beijing is prohibitive for a lot of companies and already people are looking to the southern cities for cost relief.

English is the language of business which makes it hard to set up shop in BKK or China for  multi national.

KL and Jakarta are muslim cities which in recent times is like having the kiss of death placed on you.

The most attractive city in the region to do business in is actually Sydney. Executive salaries are low in comparison to SE Asia, Infrastructure is cheap and the labour pool has an attractive depth to it...language skills are also in abundance. The main thing that kills Sydney is the 38 hour working week and the tyrany of distance.

I work for a MNC with in excess of 100k employees worldwide. Our regional headquarters are here in Singapore and in strategic planning sessions, this subject often comes up. We know we have to lessen our dependance on Singapore however there is no other city in the region that can step up to the plate.

Singapore needs to change to stay competitive, we all know that. Bangkok, in my opinion, is a far better city to be posted to. The cost of living is insanely low (but watch that going up) which is where Sinagpore shoots itself in the foot a little. However, us expats can be attributed some of the blame for that. Take us all out of here and watch real estate settle back to it's 'true' value....

Anyway, I wouldn't be cashing in my CPF just yet....

[I've often been told ...]

... that unless you speak pretty good Mandarin, if not fluent, your chances of getting a good job in China are pretty low.  Would that be true?

[want_to_believe]

we just opend our first manufacturing site in asia ...and we did this in BKK, not in china. Why? Because setting up a business in china is still very complicated if you don't want to have a stupid " on the paper " joint venture  with a chinese company. Also , we found out that professionals in Thailand speak better englisch , normal joung factory workers are willing to learn english and the do very quickly , the Thai people have an absolute great work attitude , dealing with the gouvernment officials is 100 time easier than in china and the wages are not not that different from china.

[captain]

What do you guys think about Saigon, or Vietnam in general ?
I'd like to explore opportunities there.
Do you think it will follow a similar path to China's ?