HISTORY: The ancient city of Suzhou was built in 514 B. C. and was famed as the “Heaven on Earth” of China many centuries ago.Throughout its history of more than 2,500 years, the pattern of the city proper has remained the same with paralleled rivers and streets and crisscrossed water lanes. Its location has remained the same. Suzhou has always been an economically well developed city. Since the tenth century, it has become the economic and cultural center of the southeastern coastal areas and one of the most developed areas in China.

CULTURE: The Wu culture represented by Suzhou is embod ied mainly in the local folk arts and handicrafts of Suzhou, which hold a rather high historical and cultural position. The Suzhou pintan (a folk art form of storytelling and ballad singing in Suzhou dialect) spread through Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai for more than 300 years. People from home and abroad are overwhelmed with appreciation after they experience this art. Elegant vocal music, laughing, plucking, singing and acting are combined with the performances of sheng (the male character type in Beijing Opera), dan (the female character type), jing (the face-painted character type), mo (the middle-aged or old male character type) and chou (clown). Being a well known “home of silk” in China, Suzhou has more than two hundred years of history in embroidery. The Woodcut Spring Festival, pictures of the Peach Flower-bed and other folk crafts in Suzhou are all full of vitality and skilled craftsmanship that attract the world's attention.

ECONOMY: The foreign investment in Suzhou has come to focus on large and hi-tech projects. In 2003, the additional contractual foreign investment reached 12.496 billion USD with actually utilized foreign capital of 6.805 billion USD. By the end of 2003, the accumulated contractual foreign investment was 35.56 billion USD with actually utilized foreign capital of 34.7 billion USD . 172 projects in Suzhou are invested by 91 MNCs among the Fortune 500. At present, there exist in Suzhou nearly 7, 000 foreign-invested enterprises, 5, 000 of which are in operation.

IT DEVELOPMENT: In order to enhance its capability and creativity in technology development, Suzhou has paid more attention to introducing the research and development organizations of foreign-invested enterprises. More than 10 world-renowned multinational enterprises have established their development organizations in Suzhou including Phillips, Motorola, Acer Computer and Fujitsu Film, etc.
About sixty-five percent of the total overseas investment introduced into the city is from advanced or burgeoning industrial countries of Europe, America and the Asia-Pacific Region. Just in the city proper there are more than 100 joint ventures and foreign-invested enterprises with internationally advanced technology, the investment of which averages 20 million US dollars.
Twenty large-scaled manufacturing bases have been set up specialized in hi-tech products, such as Lgitech Mouse, Acer and Phillips Monitor, Epson crystal vibrator and LCD, AMD and Hitachi semiconductor and integrate circuit. Some of these products have achieved a big share in the global market.
Suzhou welcomes tourists and investors from all over the world. With its unique charms and flourishing vitality it is making every effort to cooperatively make itself even more splendid in the new century.

Details please visit the following websites:

http://www.aroundsuzhou.com/english/eindex.htm

http://www.suzhou.gov.cn/English/index.shtml