36 - Kuala Lumpur – Still Best At Being Middling

Summary

I am sitting in a dear friend's apartment in Hong Kong's Wanchai district, looking across to Kowloon. Well, that's not totally correct. I can actually not see Kowloon at all. The mist is so dense that even the vessels floating in the straits are not really visible.

It is early spring, and the skies are overcast. But beneath this thick air, the streets are buzzing with life, and the deals in the offices and the businesses in the malls are steadily being done.

This is one of the most important business districts in the world. The Economic Intelligence Unit has just ranked Hong Kong the fourth most competitive city in the world—and Asia's second—after Singapore in third place. (New York and London still lead globally, with Paris placed alongside Hong Kong).

I have in fact just arrived from Singapore and have just finished lecturing at a university here on the history of Malaysia—and of course necessarily also on the modern history of Southeast Asia. My mind is therefore filled with the infrastructural pattern for global trade found along the Asia Pacific coastline.

Hong Kong was for quite a while the claw that British mercantilism plunged into the Chinese Imperial belly to attach the ancient dragon to modern global trade. Since then, the two worlds have become entwined, and the Asian Century is now taking concrete shape.

All along the Pacific coast today, we see cities growing beyond comprehension. And if we look at EIU's ranking for Overall Economic Strength, we get a glimpse of the future. The Chinese cities of Tianjin, Shenzhen and Dalian rank first, second and third respectively. Other Asia Pacific cities in the top ten on this list include Guangzhou, Shanghai, Tokyo, Chongqing and Beijing. Only New York (4) and Doha (5) are from outside the region. If we look at the next five cities down this list, we get Qingdao, Chengdu, Suzhou, Hangzhou, and then Singapore at No. 15. Hong Kong comes in at No. 20 along with Hanoi, with Taipei at No. 29.

To be sure, a ranking exercise should not be taken as Gospel truth, but a reputable one such as the EIU's do highlight real trends. While the global future certainly looks more and more Chinese, most cities in the advanced world remain amazingly stable.