Grant Lee wrote: > > HK and Singapore are entrepots, and > > they are city-economies, which indicates the need to qualify the > > significance of their numbers > > It seems to me that if no "western" state is very similar --- and I'm not > convinced this is the case --- to HK and Singapore it would have a lot to > do with the latter being extremely small, densely populated city states and > therefore more focused on foreign trade.
The international stats (e.g. World Bank, WTO) seem to highlight only Singapore and Hong Kong as being major re-exporters. This is presumably due to historical, colonial and geographical factors as much as their size. If you want a fascinating glimpse into how it works in Hong Kong (the tolling operations, rundown of manufacturing, use by transnationals etc) have a look at "Intermediaries in Entrep�t Trade: Hong Kong Re-Exports of Chinese Goods", by Robert C. Feenstra Department of Economics, University of California, Davis and National Bureau of Economic Research, and Gordon H. Hanson, Department of Economics and School of Business Administration, University of Michigan and NBER, December 2000. Also published as NBER paper W8088. It's on both Hanson's (http://webuser.bus.umich.edu/gohanson/gohanson.html#WorkingPapers) and the NBER web sites. I wrote up some of this when looking at the consequences for New Zealand of a FTA with HK (currently under negotiation but faltering) - see http://canterbury.cyberplace.org.nz/community/CAFCA/publications/Trade/GlobalisationByStealth.pdf > > > The > > best recent candidate for the 'imperial' club is probably s. Korea, but, > > hello, this country is divided in half, occupied by US nukes... > > Forces which, some would argue, have assisted the South Korean national > bourgeoisie in the same way that the capitalist economies of Japan, Taiwan > and the old West Germany grew significantly as "armed camps". > Though what is happening to the S Korean national bourgeoisie post-1997 financial crisis, with many of the most powerful corporations being wound up or sold to European and US TNCs? > > I think the difference between > > presenting a NZ passport and a Malaysian passport helps clarify the social > > relationships in world imperialism. > > That would depend on where they travelled to I think. What do "social relationships" mean when discussing imperialism? New Zealand (along with Australia) takes an imperialist position in the South Pacific, where it is a relatively big fish amongst tiny ones. But that is hardly a fertile source of resources: New Zealand's income and living standards would barely change if that role disappeared. New Zealand's main role is as a footman to the imperialists, and its role in the S Pacific reflects that - carrying the good words of neoliberalism to the governments there, acting as policeman when needs be. But as footman, it mainly gets crumbs from the imperial table in terms of trade access and dependence on their capital. Australia has a stronger imperial role (especially north of it in PNG, E Timor, etc) but in reality is not much different in the pecking order to New Zealand. > I note that the HK and Singaporean outward FDI figures cited are higher than > any of the European states you have cited, except Switzerland. Again, I suspect a large part of their outward FDI is in fact from branches of companies from other countries. In Hong Kong's case that is esp mainland China, but also all the usual suspects. I looked at that in New Zealand's case: In 12 of the 72 cases I listed from statutory approvals over the last decade, no genuine Hong Kong investment was involved, and an additional five included Hong Kong investors among third country investors. Countries represented whose investors were using Hong Kong as a base to invest in New Zealand (in addition to investors from Hong Kong itself) include Australia, Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Monaco, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Switzerland, the U.K., and the U.S.A. In addition, in two instances, New Zealand investors were using Hong Kong companies to invest here. In addition, a large part of HK businesses' time seems to be spent circulating their capital through tax havens (see the info I gave in my previous post). Even 15-16% corporate tax rates still provide incentives for tax avoidance apparently. But that certainly does not mean all, or even the majority of "their" outward FDI is sourced elsewhere - both HK and Singapore (in that case, often the Singapore government) now have very strong national capital. Bill
