Shanghai’s economy exceeded the size of Hong Kong’s for the first time in at least three decades after stimulus spending helped China skirt the global crisis and lead the world out of recession.
Shanghai’s GDP grew 8.2 percent to the equivalent of US$218.3 billion last year compared with a 2.7 percent contraction to US$210.7 billion for Hong Kong, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. The preliminary reading on Shanghai was published in January and Hong Kong’s release came last week.
The figures highlight 30 years of free-market policies that have spurred China to become the world’s third-largest economy and its No. 1 exporter. Shanghai’s rise may fan concern in Hong Kong that the Chinese city will regain its position as China’s dominant financial center after surpassing the former British colony as the nation’s biggest port and stock-market operator.
“Hong Kong’s role as the bridge linking China and the West is diminishing due to the further opening up of China,” said Hubert Tse, a partner at law firm Boss & Young in Shanghai, who moved to the city from Hong Kong in 2003.
Bloomberg data giving US dollar comparisons for the cities’ economies back to 1981 showed Hong Kong previously leading Shanghai.
David Cohen, an economist at Action Economics in Singapore, said: “Based on those nominal figures, converted at the prevailing rates, it would appear that the Shanghai economy is slightly larger.”
At the same time, China’s data may have less credibility.
Jian Chang, a Hong Kong-based economist at Barclays Capital Asia Ltd, said there were “always doubts and questions,” because provincial numbers fail to tally with national figures.
Tse, a Hong Kong native, is wagering that Shanghai, the birthplace of HSBC Holdings Plc and American International Group Inc, will regain its prewar role as China’s financial capital.
“Shanghai has a population of around 19 million people, which is almost three times that of Hong Kong, and a fast-growing economy, so it is not surprising” that the Chinese city’s GDP is now larger, Hong Kong Government Economist Helen Chan said in an e-mail on Thursday.
From the late 19th century until the Chinese Communist Party took control of China in 1949, Shanghai was “an international city hooked into the world economy” and Hong Kong was only a “colonial outpost,” said Kerrie MacPherson, a University of Hong Kong professor who specializes in urban history.
Their positions “reversed after 1949 with the anti-capitalist policies of the newly minted” People’s Republic of China, MacPherson said in an e-mail on Thursday.
Hong Kong trounces Shanghai on output per person. The most recent per-capita GDP figures, for 2008, show Hong Kong with US$30,977 and Shanghai at US$10,713.
Hong Kong’s attractions include a UK-based legal system, lower tax rates and the free flow of funds. China hasn’t allowed full convertibility of the yuan, limiting its international use, and Hong Kong itself is serving as a test bed for such transactions.
“It’s very hard for Shanghai or any other cities in China, even in Asia” to replicate the strengths of Hong Kong, Mark Clifford, executive director of the Asia Business Council, said in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong ranked No. 3, compared with Shanghai’s 10th place, in the September Global Financial Centers Index, compiled by consultants Z/Yen Group and based on cities’ attractiveness to financial-services professionals.
“A degree of competition between Hong Kong and other major Chinese cities like Shanghai is bound to exist, and this is natural and indeed healthy,” Chan said. “But there is also plenty of room for cooperation between the two cities.”
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