Inside Out | Hong Kong plays catch up in Asean after two decades of wasted opportunity

Back in the 1980s, as a young Financial Times correspondent based in Hong Kong and wrestling with the challenge of understanding what was going on in China as it emerged from its hermitage years, I fought constant battles with my bosses back in London.

I was fighting to get them to devote more manpower, more attention and more newspaper space to what I saw as hugely significant shifts occurring in the world economy, driven by China’s decision to re-engage the world.

My battles were in vain. It took until the 1990s for the FT, and other western publications, to “pivot” to Asia – and that was more driven by political fascination with the 1997 transfer of sovereignty that the tectonic upheavals occurring economically.

Why the deaf ears? Because at that time, the FT and most of Britain’s businesses were preoccupied with positioning forcefully in a rapidly unifying Europe. For the FT there was a particular concern to make sure the rapidly-internationalising Wall Street Journal did not capture leadership among international business readers interested in Europe – regarded as the UK’s “back door” market.

For most of corporate Europe at the time, Asian developments were ignored as companies manoeuvred to capture market share across Europe’s market that was then about 300 million strong. It provided my first practical introduction to the reality that even the most competent management teams had limited bandwidth, and that energy being focused on one set of priorities – in this case opportunities in Europe – must inevitably be at the expense of others – like opportunities in Asia.