The Glittering City States of Asia: Hong Kong and Singapore

Of the eight countries studied it would be difficult to find another pair with so many obvious similarities and still many substantial differences. Both Singapore and Hong Kong are exceedingly small entities, virtually city states, which have grown straight up — literally vertically — in recent years. They have a common British colonial background and legal structure, and initially developed their economies on the basis of entrepôt (re-export) trade between the metropolitan countries of Europe and the resource-rich countries of the Far East. In both cases, too, this re-export trade caused the logical development of the banking, insurance, shipping, communications, and other such infrastructure necessary to support their bustling trade. Finally, both cities suffered a severe setback in development when traditional economic relations with their closest neighbours, China and Malaysia respectively, soured in the postwar period (the 1950s for Hong Kong and the 1960s for Singapore).