Rivals more than ever

摘要

Coastal China's pre-eminent city, Hong Kong, has a great disadvantage. It is more than 1,500km (940 miles) from the capital, Beijing, and its leaders do not belong to the Communist Party's ruling elite. This remoteness from China's political pulse leads to a nagging, nervous question: will Shanghai, 1,200km away and much nearer to Beijing, recover its pre-communist status as China's greatest city, and once again outshine Hong Kong as a business and financial centre? Worse, isn't that what China's leaders, especially President Jiang Zemin and his powerful "Shanghai clique", secretly want? As Hong Kong's economy struggles to recover from the battering it suffered in the Asian financial slump of 1997 and the recent global slowdown, the mood is glum. While the former British colony still teeters on the brink of recession, the Chinese mainland's economy grew by 7.3% last year, and Shanghai's by more than 10%. If average growth rates over the past decade continue, Shanghai's GDP will match Hong Kong's in 15 years. In 20 years, its GDP per person will catch up too. China's growth figures are of course exaggerated, and double-digit growth will be very hard for Shanghai to sustain. But that is not much comfort to Hong Kong.