Hong Kong and Singapore are two metropolises that sharing uncountable similarities on many aspects.
Both are small and densely populous city-stated located in East Asia, having similar development path and history, lacking natural resources, being praised as one of the Asian Tigers and the freest economies in the world, sharing similar advantages on several fields. Because of the combination of broad similarity, Hong Kong and Singapore are often compared with each other and are generally regarded as a pair of rival.The modern history of Singapore started with the establishment of the British port on the island by Stamford Raffles in 1819. It rapidly became an important port in Southeast Asia benefited from its strategic location in the southern tip of Malaysia peninsula, the middle point of India-China route and the central of Southeast Asian Islands.
The British Colony era ended in Singapore’s short merger with Malaysia which soon ended in the separation from Malaysia two years later due to the disagreement between Singapore’s ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) and Malaysia’s Alliance Party.Singapore became an independent republic on 9 August 1965. The road beyond independence was full of difficulties and obstacles, including the dangers of being attacked by the surrounding countries, shortage of natural resources and land. Singapore government started the long-term planning of economic development focusing on modernization and industrialization and soon become one of the Asian Tigers economies and one of the most developed nations on the world.
(Fund 2006)Hong Kong was colonized by the British Empire in 19th century as a result of the British victories in the Anglo-Chinese Wars. Under British’s colonization, Hong Kong was transformed from a little undeveloped village to a major entrepot for global trade, especially the trade between China and the West. The early development of Hong Kong was highly dependent to the exogenous factors. After 1949, the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the entrepot trade in Hong Kong faced a critical strike due to the poor relationship between China and the West.Hong Kong then transformed to a territory of industry and manufacturing and enjoyed unprecedented growth in the 1950s.
However, the newly risen manufacturing industry shortly faced a declination in impact in Hong Kong’s economy, replaced with the greater reliance on service sector, noteworthily the fast development of finance industry. After the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997, Hong Kong remained the similar position and developmental strategy before 1997 and no significant differences seen in economic aspect.Sharing the similar developmental experience of being an entrepot, being industrialized, and gaining greater reliance on service sector, the future evolution and competition of the two cities are considerable. Like many other developed countries in all around the world, high-tech industry became a major development goal in both city-states: both Hong Kong and Singapore government claimed developing high-tech industries as a target to achieve.
Hong Kong’s concern for development of high-tech industries began in late 90s, after the Handover, whilst Singapore started slightly earlier at about 80s.High-tech industry is a newly developed concept that no single measurement for identifying high technology industries is widely preferred and accepted, although it is typically recognized by its great dependence on science and technology innovation. High-tech industry is difficult to be included in the traditional industry classification, since high-tech industry is a mixture of second and tertiary industries but inappropriate to regard it as second or tertiary industries because it includes both goods and service-producing industries and the significant uniqueness of the scientific, technological, innovative industry.High-tech industry is a broad concept, which included a wide range of activities ranging from manufacturing to service-providing, such as manufacture of computer, communications and other electronic equipment, aerospace products, medical equipment, software development, internet services, scientific consulting, and research and development activities. The variety of high-tech industry diversifies the development strategies around the world and different nations specialize in different areas of high-tech industry based on their own feature and advantage.Since Hong Kong and Singapore are small and densely populous city-state, land is an extraordinarily scarce resource of both states and this becomes a natural constraint limited types of high-tech industry can be developed in Hong Kong and Singapore.
However, when comparing the exact situation of high-tech industries in these two regions, statistics revealed that Hong Kong is actually far lagged behind Singapore in high-tech industries development, or in other words, Hong Kong is not comparable with Singapore in this field.In 2010, the high-technology exports in current US$ of Hong Kong is $1,105,610,241, while the same year performance of Singapore is $126,981,502,643, about 10 times larger than Hong Kong. The gap between is actually widened in past decades that in 1992, the high-technology exports in current US$ of Hong Kong is $ 4,719,403,988, comparing with Singapore’s $21,773,042,951 (High-technology exports (current US$) 2011)which was only five times larger than Hong Kong.This was the results of both Singapore’s progression and Hong Kong’s stagnation or even declination.
Let us contrasts the difference by the percentage share of high-technology exports of manufactured exports of the two city-states: in 2010, Singapore’s high-tech exports accounted 50% of its total manufactured exports, while Hong Kong’s high-tech exports only accounted 16% of total manufactured exports, (High-technology exports (% of manufactured exports) 2011) yet Hong Kong’s manufacturing sector is relatively smaller than Singapore’s.The data unveil the fact that the difference between Hong Kong and Singapore’s high-tech industries development is surprisingly huge, although the two cities shared broadly similar features such as education level, infrastructures, aggregate economic performance and the same goal on developing high-tech industries. The critical dissimilarity between Singapore and Hong Kong casing the totally different performance on high-tech industrial development is the role of government of two places, which is recognized as a deep-rooted difference between two city-states.Hong Kong government is not to blame, for the reason that actually both cities’ government is famed in their high efficiency. It is the ideology held by the government cause the deviation of their performance. Traditionally, Singapore government acts an active role in Singapore’s economic development; they try to achieve long-term goals to lead the nation’s growth.
On the other hand, Hong Kong is usually described as a model of laissez-faire (Buder 2009) society since the official implementation of the positive non-interventionism in 1971.Hong Kong government believes that the absence of government intervention is good for the economy, and the only role of the government is to create the regulatory and provide infrastructure to facilitate the market operation and economic growth. Based on the beliefs, Hong Kong government never acts as a role of leader or guide in economic development of Hong Kong, but to be a supporter who helps Hong Kong in adapting the alteration of outer environment.Hong Kong experienced twice industrial restructuring: from a entrepot to an industrial center, and from a manufacturing center to a global financial hub.
Both of the restructuring were not a result of the government’s plan, but a natural adaptation under market mechanism. Therefore, Singapore government has been acted as a planner for a long time so that it has higher ability to mobilize the economy by addressing policies and promotion yet Hong Kong government has fewer tendencies to drive Hong Kong economy into evolution.Although both of two governments claimed to place developing high-tech industries at a high priority, the actual execution of the policies and promotions hugely differed in depth and strength. The new and high-tech industries were first introduced as a key to promote economic restructuring and to enhance Hong Kong’s long-term competitiveness in the 1999 Chief Executive’s Policy Address, (1999 Policy Address n.
d. ) following with the construction of the Science Park and the Cyberport.Singapore government started promotion of high-tech industries earlier at about 1980s to 90s. The establishment of the National Science and Technology Board (renamed A*STAR in 2001), replaced the former Science Council, is the milestone of the high-tech industrial development in Singapore.
(About A*STAR 2012) Singapore surpassed Hong Kong in its highly centralized and systematized lead on high-tech industry development plan, showing their wise vision and ability of achieving long-term developmental goals.Singapore’s high-tech industries are centralized to the A*STAR (Agency for Science, Technology and Research), which is directly under Ministry of Trade and Industry, one of fifteen Ministries of Singapore, overseeing 14 biomedical sciences and physical sciences & engineering research institutes and 6 consortia & centers. It has a clear and organized structure that managed all affairs about high-tech industries development in Singapore.Hong Kong do not have a single separate government bureaus, departments, agencies or authorities managing the affairs of developing and facilitating high-tech industries like A*STAR in Singapore, but the function is divided in several government department and public corporation unlike the clear layer and organization in Singapore. The technology and innovation affairs is under the Commerce and Economic Development Bureau which is responsible for a range of activities such as commercial relations, investment, industry, tourism, market competition, consumer protection, etc.
The Innovation and Technology Commission is one of the nine agencies subordinated to the Commerce and Economic Development Bureau aimed to promote and support R&D (research and development), and technology transfer and application. (The Innovation and Technology Commission 2012) The Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI) founded by the Government of Hong Kong SAR in 2000 is a public corporation which related to the development of high-tech industries in Hong Kong.This shows that, Hong Kong lacks a centralized and powerful organization to be responsible for the development of High-tech industries comparing with Singapore. It may due to the positive non-interventionism tradition of Hong Kong government that government are highly relied on the free market mechanism to make economic decision rather than having long-term planning by the visible hand. Some data provides more accurate and quantified evidence to us to understand the difference of the output in two city-states.
R&D (Research and development) is the most notable characteristic of high-tech industries. The more input in R&D, the more the industries can achieve. Hence, the share of the research and development expenditure in GDP is an important indicator to measure the attention paid by different countries. The share of R&D expenditure of GDP of Singapore in 2008 was 2. 7%, higher than the world average of 2. 1%, while the proportion of R&D expenditure to GDP of Hong Kong in 2008 was only o.
7% (Research and development expenditure (% of GDP) 2012), even far less than the world average which included many developing countries.This could be the critical reason why Hong Kong resulted in such a poor performance in high-tech industry sector, since fund is the main factor determining the effectiveness of R&D. Other than funds, developing high-tech industries required many well-educated and skilled talents. A critical measurement on the intensity of professionals is researchers in R&D per million people.
There were 5834 researchers per million people in Singapore in 2008, while there were only 2663. 7 researchers per million people in Hong Kong in 2008.Singapore doubled its number in researchers per million people than Hong Kong and it is obviously an advantage over Hong Kong. Both Singapore and Hong Kong built up a well-developed education system that both city-states owned famous universities ranked top 200 of the world, such as University of Hong Kong (QS, QS World University Rankings 2012), the Chinese University of Hong Kong (QS, QS World University Ranking 2012), Nanyang Technological University (QS, QS University Ranking 2012), and National University of Singapore (QS, QS World University Ranking 2012) etc.But good universities do not imply sufficient supply of researchers engaged in the high-tech industries, since not all university graduates are suitable to work at the high-tech industries. Different universities specialized in different academic fields fostering talented workers fulfill different industries’ needs.
The famous example of the linkage between university and industry development must be the U. S. Silicon Valley, the most distinguished high-tech industry centers in which the largest high-tech companies located is surrounded by the greatest universities in science and technology the world such us the Stanford University, the Caltech, providing professional labor forces to the industry. (Albanesius 2008) The success story of Silicon Valley becomes a model of all other “Science Park” around the world, (Lecuyer 2005) including Hong Kong, certainly.After the construct of developing high-tech industries in 1999 CE policy address by Mr Tung Chee-Wah, the Cyberpot and the Science Park developed afterward, neighboring two of the top local universities – the University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong respectively.
However, the similar effect of Silicon Valley had not been seen. It is not because of the quality of the foreign students are better than local students, but the main reason is the lack of cooperation among different government department.Developing high-tech industry is not only the obligation of the Economic department, but also need the appropriate long-term education policy to ensure the stable supply of professional labor forces to sustain the development of high-tech industries, and also guarantee the outlook of graduates who has taken the related degree on the newly developed industries so that both corporations and university students can feel confident to join the development of the new industry.The situation in Hong Kong is observable that the students show strong preference to business-related degrees, narrowing the variety of Hong Kong’s profession and it is obviously an obstacle to develop high-tech industries since most of the best students avoid to choose science or engineering degree for which the talented labors are highly demanded by the high-tech industries.
