AS SHANGHAI RISES HONG KONG ASKS: “WHAT’S NEXT?”

(HONG KONG, Dec 10) From building the world’s
biggest dam to engineering blue skies for the
Olympics, China’s leaders have earned a reputation
for achieving improbable goals.
So when the Chinese government declared last
April it wanted to make Shanghai an international
financial centre by 2020, the news sent a ripple of
anxiety through Hong Kong.
The authorities were anointing Shanghai as the
country’s financial centre and Hong Kong, the
financial metropolis on China’s southern coast,
seemed sure to lose out.
T.C. Chan, a well-known Hong Kong banker,
captured the mood. “Will Hong Kong become a
Boston?” he asked. “If you can be a New York, you
don’t want to be Boston or Chicago,” he added,
referring to two American cities that have long lived
in the shadow of the United States’ main financial
and cultural centre.