This booklet examines Hong Kong's importance as an international city and suggests how and why Hong Kong should be further strengthened as an international city.
THE IMPORTANCE OF HONG KONG
AS AN INTERNATIONAL CITY
Hong Kong is one of the world's most
international cities. Our remarkable success as a city is quite out of proportion to our geographical size, our population and our natural resources. It is the result of making the best of Hong Kong's only two natural resources: our geographical position and our deep-water port. Private initiative and hard work, an imaginative and responsive development of our infrastructure and communications, a simple and re- strained tax system, a sensitive application of the policy of “positive non-intervention” in trade matters, and an open society that encourages enterprise have all contributed to the following measurable achievements:
Economic Growth
A per capita gross domestic product of HK$75,214 (US$9,600) in 1988, which is a two-fold increase in the space of five years.
An average rate of unemployment between 1979 and 1988 of 3%, dropping to as low as 1.4% in 1988. A 60% increase in the level of real household income in the same period. And an increase in the proportion of the workforce engaged in the service sector from 41% in 1971 to 57% in 1988.
Commerce and Industry
An average growth in trade between Hong Kong and China in the last 10 years of 39% per annum, and a merchandise trade between the two places amounting to HK$289 billion (US$37.05 billion) in 1988, making Hong Kong China's largest trading partner. In 1987 trade with Hong Kong accounted for 27% of China's overall external trade, and nearly 80% of Hong Kong's re-exports were related to China.
HIT
Hong Kong is currently the source of 70% of external investment in China. Between 1.5 and 2 million people in Guangdong Province are directly or indirectly employed by Hong Kong businesses.
Kwai Chung Container Port: the world's busiest container port. handling + million containers a year.
A position as the world's eleventh largest trading entity, sixth if the European Economic Community is counted as a single market, with a total value of overseas trade in 1988 of HK$992 billion (US$127 billion), which is six times that of 1979. An average annual growth in domestic exports between 1978 and 1988 of 11% in real terms, which is almost three times the growth rate of world trade. An entrepot trade amounting to HK$275 billion (US$35 billion) in the value of re-exports in 1988, which represents a thirteen-fold increase over the value in 1979. A flexible and adaptable manufacturing sector, which exports 90% of its products to an increasingly diverse overseas market. Hong Kong is the world's second largest exporter of toys, watches, fans, artificial flowers, sails and candles, and the world's largest exporter of fur clothing, imitation jewellery, electric hair dressing apparatus and electric lamps.
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