Hong Kong- The Best Of East And West

Hong Kong energizes its economy with technology startups.

- Susan B. Barnes

OVERLOOKING STUNNING VICTORIA

Harbour, Hong Kong is a vibrant, cosmopolitan city in which soaring skyscrapers, world-class infrastructure and international businesses co-exist in harmony with rich cultural traditions, serene green spaces and its 7.39 million residents, who enjoy the best of East and West.

Hong Kong continues to rediscover and define itself. Though the region’s history dates back more than a thousand years, its more recent history is certainly relative to the city as we know it today, and likely how it will continue to grow and move forward. In 1842, China’s Qing Dynasty was defeated in the First Opium War and ceded Hong Kong Island to Great Britain. Hong Kong remained a British colony for more than 150 years, serving as a center of international trade and growing as a major manufacturing hub beginning in the early 20th century.

On July 1, 1997, Hong Kong “returned to the Motherland” and became a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China under the principle of One Country, Two Systems. Under this principle, Hong Kong enjoys a high degree of autonomy, including an independent judiciary and rule of law, freedom of speech, a capitalist economy and free trade.

That autonomous capitalist system and free trade remains vital to Hong Kong’s growing economy, evident in the accolades the city enjoys, including being named the world’s freest economy for the past 24 years by the U.S.-based Heritage Foundation; ranked second globally in the World Competitiveness Yearbook 2018 published by the Switzerland-based International Institute for Management Development; ranked the fifth-easiest place in the world to do business, according to the World Bank’s Doing Business 2018 report; and ranked sixth globally of 153 places, and the first among Asian economies, in Forbes’ Best Countries for Business 2018 survey.