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This book provides an original, clear approach to the development of business in China from 1500 to the 1990s, and sheds new light on the strengths and weaknesses of Chinese business today. The book assumes little background in China or Chinese business practice.

Cities and regions in Asia are facing problems that cannot be adequately managed by traditional urban planning. Competition and local protectionism have often hindered infrastructural development and regional integration. In southern China, an area embracing one-fifth of China and one-third of its population, the economies and societies of nine provinces, together with Hong Kong and Macao, face many barriers to regional collaboration. Fiscal regulatory conflicts, land and housing reform, and bottlenecks in immigration and transport have stymied efforts to develop infrastructure that could spur economic growth and greater prosperity for the entire region. This book examines regional integration and its barriers in southern China in a comparative framework using perspectives on development and globalization from Europe and North America. Supported by maps and charts, this collection discusses the theory, challenges, and practice of development in an area comprising nearly a third of China's population.

The world economy is facing unprecedented challenges brought by the still unfolding global financial crisis. At this critical juncture in history, China's economic performance and financial stability are closely watched across the world. This book examines corporate governance reforms in China as an economy in transition—from a planned economy to a market economy—in the context of globalization and the country's accession to the WTO. The book interprets China's experience as a gradualist transition strategy, which is appropriate given the existing constraints imposed by China's limited political, legal, and regulatory framework. This approach also compares favorably with the radical privatization program (shock therapy) in Russia. In China, institutional innovations play a key role in discovering a better way to the market, even though such transitional institutions may not fully comply with a full market economy. Meanwhile, mutually supporting and complimentary structural reforms of China's enterprises, banks, and stock market should proceed hand in hand in order to achieve effective and sustained results during the transition period.

This book describes how Hong Kong surmounted the great currency crisis of 1982–83. The book rationalizes why and how the Hong Kong Monetary Authority evolved from a pure currency board to a near central bank, why the linked rate system was put in place, and how it works.

This book is a practical guide to initial public offerings. This book explains the pros and cons of turning private businesses into listed companies. The book details the strategies, procedures and documentation for different forms of listings, and describes the process of marketing and pricing an international IPO. The book includes many real-life case studies, sample documents, an extensive glossary of terms, and a review of listing requirements for major stock exchanges. It also discusses recent developments in global equity capital markets. The book is applicable to any financial jurisdiction, including emerging markets with vibrant IPO activity in the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

With the merger of the MTRC and the KCRC in 2007, the history of Hong Kong's railways turned a new page. The two government-owned corporations were exceptionally profitable. Yet, this commercially successful railway model was not without social costs and political controversies. This book examines the governance history of the MTRC and the KCRC over the past three decades, and sheds light on the challenges to Hong Kong's railway after the merger. The book discusses complex relationships between railway management, government policy, and politics. Critical issues are analysed, including corporate governance; railway-property development; funding and managing new projects; mismanagement and controversies; public accountability; and passenger interest in fares, choice, and convenience. The book compares how differently the MTRC and the KCRC dealt with the government, civil society, the market, and with each other to achieve commercial objectives and tackle public interests issues in a post-industrial society, where public expectations are rising despite constraints in democracy.

Protecting Free Trade is the story of a paradox that both limited and stimulated Hong Kong’s post-war economy. In order to preserve its access to open markets, Hong Kong was obligated by international agreements to accept restraints on its exports; and in order to sustain growth, Hong Kong had to subject its largest industry — textiles — to a massive network of restrictions. Protecting Free Trade examines how Hong Kong handled, by negotiation, attempts by developed economies to limit international trade through protective measures. The central argument is that, far from stifling Hong Kong’s industry, restrictive international trade agreements were the stimulus for economic success by creating a sellers’ market in which Hong Kong was the dominant supplier. Lawrence Mills was deeply involved in many of the critical economic issues that Hong Kong faced in the 50 years leading up to its return to China in 1997. In Protecting Free Trade he examines the constitutional paradox of Britain's international responsibility for, but different trading interests from, Hong Kong. He explains why, for the strategic defence of its interests, Hong Kong depended on international trade arrangements and bilateral restraint agreements. Protecting Free Trade also examines the role of the Commerce and Industry Department, which Mills headed, and of its principal advisory boards. It details the bureaucratic systems, including controversial quota controls, that were necessary to give Hong Kong’s businessmen stability and room for manoeuvre in fast-evolving markets.

The 2007–2009 global financial crisis was predictable and avoidable, but American and British regulators chose not to intervene. They failed to implement their own policies because of an Anglo-American “regulatory culture” of non-intervention that dominated financial regulation worldwide. Hong Kong—the international financial center of an increasingly prosperous China—defied world opinion and made stability its priority. This policy has ensured Hong Kong's robust performance over the last 15 years, and it made possible Hong Kong's impressive contributions to financing China's economic take-off and to the modernization of its financial institutions. This book is a scathing indictment of regulatory inertia in the West. It provides original insights into the causes of financial crises and pays special attention to China's attempts at reform and Hong Kong's place in China's financial modernization.

This book tells an instructive tale of Hong Kong's tax system from 1940 (when taxes on income were first introduced in the territory) until the present day. For Hong Kong's own historians and political scientists, it supplies cogent but previously neglected evidence of the influence of the territory's business interests. For students of British imperialism, it provides a compelling case-study of relations between London and a recalcitrant colony. For Hong Kong's own tax professionals, it corrects the notion that the territory's tax system was the product of governmental design. And for tax theorists and taxpayers everywhere, it suggests how it might be possible to structure a combination of very light taxes and very low public spending so as to win broad popular support.

This book is an analysis of the policies adopted throughout the Asia Pacific region that have led to an explosive growth of the telecommunications sector. Part one reviews global best practices across a range of key issues while part two examines markets across the region.

This book focuses on the electric rice cooker and the impact it has had on the lives of Asian people. This account of the rice cooker's globalization aims to move away from Japan-centric perspectives on how “Made in Japan” products made it big in the global marketplace, instead choosing to emphasize the collaborative approach adopted by one Japanese manufacturing giant and a Hong Kong entrepreneur. The book also highlights the role Hong Kong, as a free port, played in the rice cooker's globalization and describes how the city facilitated the transnational flow of Japanese appliances to Southeast Asia, China, and North America. Based on over forty interviews conducted with key figures at both National/Panasonic and Shun Hing Group, it provides an insight into the process by which the National rice cooker was first localized and then globalized. Interspersed throughout are personal accounts by individuals in Japan and Hong Kong for whom owning a rice cooker meant far more than just a convenient way of cooking rice. The book includes over sixty images, among them advertisements dating back to the 1950s that illustrate how Japanese appliances contributed to the advent of a modern lifestyle in Hong Kong.