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New | The dragon has two eyes

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A combination photo of Hong Kong and Shanghai's skylines. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Are Hong Kong and Shanghai rivals? Enemies? Partners?

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The history of modern China has seen these two port cities intertwined. 

After the Revolution, entrepreneurs from Shanghai escaped to the then-British colony of Hong Kong to both make their fortune and make its own.  Decades passed, and as China revolutionized into socialism with Chinese characteristics, first Hong Kong became the outward-looking port for China and Shanghai, bringing investment in and goods out. Then it became the deal-making home for foreign-bound Shanghainese companies, giving their contracts a legal domicile, then their IPOs a securities listing.

Shanghai, too was good to Hong Kongers, giving its factories land, its entrepreneurs real estate holdings, its businesses a market, its children a training ground in rebuilding a great world capital.

Each city is a proud speaker of a distinct patois, a proud wearer of a distinct fashion, a proud creator of a distinct style, thinking itself a part of, yet apart, from the ordinary.

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Hong Kong has a population of seven million, but a place on the world stage many times that large because of its status as a financial centre, a legal centre and a trading centre. Shanghai is a massive 24 million people, but its importance is hugely greater as it claims its rightful position as the financial capital of the world’s second largest economy.

Rivals? Enemies? Partners?

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