Outside In | Look up to Hong Kong? Dubai is carving out its own impressive path
- With its record as a trading hub, pivotal role in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Covid-19 success, and the economic boost from Russian and Jewish immigrants, Dubai can no longer be dismissed as an upstart
Over 16 years ago, Dubai’s foremost English-language newspaper, the Khaleej Times, decided precociously to track the Gulf state’s growing similarities with Hong Kong as it sought to diversify from oil and gas, and transform into a hub for trade, tourism, media, shipping, financial and commercial services.
So too, David Eldon, the widely-respected former head of HSBC: “Dubai looks towards the Hong Kong model and looks to Hong Kong as the place to become.”
Credit to these Hong Kong business leaders for such foresight, but after the dreadful dislocations of the past three years, one wonders if Dubai needs any longer to look to Hong Kong “as the place to become”.
It may not match Hong Kong in size, or as an entrepot for China, but it has realised it does not need to. It continues to diversify firmly from oil and gas, but its hub roles have become distinct in their own right, driven by forces different from Hong Kong’s.
Perhaps most important and deep-rooted are Dubai’s ethnic diversity in a nomadic region with trade and migration flowing in its bones. Oil and gas may have dramatically enriched the region, but they are a more recent economic force than the centuries-old trade along the Silk Road, which has embedded pragmatism and a remarkably tolerant iteration of Islam.