INFLUENTIAL FACTORS COMBINATION AND COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES IN STAGES OF URBAN COMPETITIVENESS——Case Study of Suzhou in China

The urban competitive advantages rely on the combination and interaction of influential factors. As a dynamic progressive process, the city at different time has different competition influential factors combination. Because of this, the urban competitive advantages take on time-series characteristics. Stages of urban competition can be summed up into three ones, the basic factor-driven, the investment-driven and the innovation-driven. The finding of the study on the stages of urban competitive advantages in Suzhou is that in the current stage of Suzhou its competitive advantage is the investment-driven. The investment, especially FDI, plays remarkable functions for Suzhou competition with other cities.