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The world cities of Hong Kong and Singapore: Network hubs of global finance

International Journal of Comparative Sociology

Published online on

Abstract

The world cities of Hong Kong and Singapore, former creations of British colonialism, gained prominence as global financial centers primarily from decisions of firms headquartered in the core of Europe and North America to base their senior management in Hong Kong for Asia-Pacific and Singapore for Southeast Asia. This study uses qualitative interviews with financiers in both cities to examine how they use their networks to produce financial services from core-contending centers in a regional economy containing mostly core-contending, semiperipheral, and peripheral countries. The results reveal that Hong Kong’s and Singapore’s financiers and their firms gain competitive advantages in producing financial services from their network exploitation of their access to sophisticated information, knowledge, and expertise about Asia.