SHANGHAI
Mutually stimulating competition How do Hong Kong and Shanghai fit together in China’s maritime jigsaw. Splash attended a recent, high profile conference to find out
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here has been a lot of talk in the past about Hong Kong’s long-held role as an international finance and shipping centre being replaced by Shanghai with debate on which one will eventually come up as the lead in China as well as in the region. Shanghai’s growth has been striking, and China’s biggest city and home to the largest boxport in China and the world has been very ambitious to regain its past glory. Whether the rise of Shanghai will continue to be a cause of concern for Hong Kong or their relationship will evolve into a more complementary instead of rivalry in nature, remains to be seen. Panellists at the recent TradeWinds Greater China Shipowners Forum believe the two major shipping hubs can work together to build on their own comparative advantages but also to improve weaknesses to better serve the maritime industry. Wah Kwong’s executive chairman, Hing Chao, said he reckons there’s always going to be a level of competition,
which he thinks is healthy and mutually stimulating, but also sees the role of Hong Kong and Shanghai as complimentary on so many different levels. “I believe they are very much synergetic,” he told delegates attending the conference. “If Shanghai can be identified as the capital of shipping within China for domestic shipping and a hub, I do not see the role of Hong Kong diminishing particularly as economic growth in the Asia Pacific region, particularly China, has been driving global economic development for the last two decades and may well remain that way for the foreseeable future,” Chao said. Chao also noted that while Shanghai is at the moment consolidating, whereas before we could see resources in China in shipping being a bit more scattered between Shanghai and Beijing, Hong Kong has also stepped up its game, passing a very important law to make it “hopefully” a much more attractive place for leasing companies with a much more favourable and friendly tax regime and overall
business environment. “If you compare the two I’d say there’s mutual strengths, while they overlap, they do complement each other very well,” Chao maintained. In terms of strengths and weaknesses between both hubs, Mark Young, chief executive of bulker player Asia Maritime Pacific (AMP), said that more and more shipping operators and technical management companies have been relocating to Shanghai, while Hong Kong in terms of actual activity has just been stable. Nevertheless, he pointed out that there might be more for Asia than just these two great hubs. “I know Hong Kong is traditionally strong in finance, arbitration, insurance, and all these things will probably stay in Hong Kong for quite a long time. But I can see the competition is not just between Shanghai and Hong Kong, I think we will probably mention Singapore in the future, so in some way shipping has been decentralised in Asia. Trying to talk about just Hong Kong and Shanghai is a little bit of a simplified situation,” Young suggested.
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