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| World media agrees on Hong Kong's prime role ( 24/02/2003 ) | |||||||||
"With a population of 30 million, including some 11 million employed by Hong Kong companies, the delta now accounts for around a third of China's exports," reported the Wall Street Journal (January 24, 2003). "In other words, however much Shanghai and other cities supplant its role elsewhere in China, Hong Kong still has more than enough business on its doorstep, so long as the city retains its status as the hub for the PRD." The Financial Times recently featured a series on the PRD, and reported on January 22: "The Pearl River's reputation as the emerging workshop of the world appears well deserved. In factory after factory, bosses recount the same story: the migration of capacity to this region is picking up, Chinese workers are not only cheap but diligent. The supply chain is virtually mature." "The irony is that for all the attention the subject of integration between Hong Kong and the PRD is receiving, the region is already one of the most interdependent areas in the world," continued the Financial Times on January 29. "A recent report by UBS Warburg estimates that the greater PRD region has become the world's ninth largest exporter, ahead of Mexico and South Korea. International business platform for the PRD "Since China began to open up its economy more than 20 years ago, Hong Kong has become the primary executive suite of the export-oriented China Inc. Factories in the PRD, either owned by Hong Kong businessmen or doing subcontracted work for them, have enabled China to build leading global shares in the toy, garment and consumer electronics industries, and employ 11 million people." "The Pearl River Delta region benefits from links with Hong Kong, its international orientation, its history of reform, its flexibility and decentralised development, its ability to attract skills and resources, and its clusters of internationally successful industries,'' wrote Michael Enright and Edith Scott in the South China Morning Post on December 12, 2002. "Hong Kong has been a source of investment, technology, information, management and knowledge of markets. Through its links with Hong Kong, the PRD region has superior access to the global economy." The Trade Development Council (TDC) recently unveiled its strategies for a comprehensive package of initiatives for marketing the two regions. They include promoting the PRD and Hong Kong as Asia's preferred manufacturing base and business services centre, promoting the "Greater PRD" as the stepping stone to the mainland market, and encouraging PRD enterprises to use Hong Kong as an international business platform. "There is a new momentum in Hong Kong's economic relationship with the PRD, thanks to the further opening up of the mainland economy under China's WTO commitments and the relocation of manufacturing from advanced industrial economies," said TDC international director Alan Wong. Related links: | |||||||||
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