The Study of International Financial Centers in Asia
Author: Rossi; Groot
Explaining IFCs: location, distribution and size
Financial centers can be traced back as far as ancient times. One of the oldest cities in the world, Samarkand, for example, functioned as a major commercial center servicing the Silk Road between China and Europe (Minnelli 2006), providing brokerage, credit and allied services to the trade caravans that plied its route. Marrakech, Babylon, Timbuktu and Constantinople too have each functioned as major financial centers at various points in time. In the 18th and 19th centuries, larger financial centers emerged to service regional and international markets as the volume of economic exchanges and their complexity increased. Cities such as Berlin, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Florence, Hamburg, London, Milan, Paris, New York, Rome, Philadelphia, Turin, Venice, Genoa, Shanghai and Zurich, all emerged as leading centers of finance and commerce (Kaufman 2000; Fratianni 2007). Place theory
While the role and functionality of IFCs is relatively uncontested in the literature, less so are the explanatory models explaining their location and the determining variables responsible for their size and spatial distribution? Here the literature is split between four separate but related schools of thought. The first reflects a long tradition of spatial analysis and explanatory variables such as hinterland proximity, geographic clustering and scale economies to explain the size, distribution and services composition of IFCs. Much of this literature has a distinctly geographic-theoretical lens, where the geography of space explains the bespoke configuration of financial centers, their size, distribution and their relationship to the economic hinterlands they service (Bertaud 2004). These result as a consequence of the differing efficiencies to which goods can be supplied to markets relative to the distance that consumers need to travel to acquire them. In Christaller's thesis, goods have differing 'thresholds': the higher the value of the good, the higher the 'range' or maximum distance consumers are prepared to travel to acquire the good. This inverse relationship between the 'threshold' of goods and the 'range' tolerance for purchasing them thus produces a spatial configuration of urban centers that disperses them hierarchically relative to the value order of the services and goods they produce. In Christaller's thesis, this produces distinctive spatial patterns with a relatively small number of large urban centers producing high-order goods
and services separated by wide distances while numerous smaller urban centers producing lower-order goods and services are separated by smaller distances. Likewise, as the size of an urban center grows and the volume of high-order goods and services it produces intensifies, the economic thresholds of the urban center increases, in the process changing the absolute size of the economic hinterland it services and the spatial dynamics of adjacent urban centers. World cities
Strands of place theory can also be observed in more recent literatures that attempt to explain the formation, spatial and hierarchal distribution of financial centers. The 'world cities literature', as Jess Poon (2003) notes, sees a global urban landscape ... dominated by a small number of cities that are distinguished by their higher order functions of control and coordination of global economic flows. These cities are pivotally arranged in a hierarchical network of trade, investment, financial, and even government transactions, and are responsible for creating value up and down the global economic chain. (Poon 2003:136-7).
23 cities controlled 83% of the world's equities under institutional management and accounted for roughly half of global market capitalization (around $20.9 trillion). Six or seven cities head the league; London, New York, and Tokyo combined hold a third of the world's institutionally managed equities and account for 58 per cent of the global foreign exchange market. (Sassen 1999: 77) . Scale economies
Allied approaches explain IFCs and financial clustering as a function of scale economies. Clustering arises from the efficiency gains and reduction in costs associated with financial agglomeration, where the density of financial services firms not only reduces barriers to transaction facilitation but creates information symmetries and knowledge economies that reduce operating and transaction costs. Clustering, for example, produces allied markets and agglomerates skills capacity in financial management, engineering, legal and settlement systems which reduces collective industry costs and allows competition in the provision of services because of market size and specialisation. It also provides employment pools of highly skilled labor that would otherwise require large upfront sunk costs for training and skills development. Further, scale economies and clustering allow for the emergence of trust relationships and of transactional norms that become institutionalized. Issuers of securities, project financiers, underwriters and insurers of structured financial products, for example, are able to orchestrate pools of capital, mediate transactions and secure outcomes with relatively low transaction costs in expedited timeframes. Similarly, scale economies allow for the commoditization of risk and for risk to be spread and on-sold between multiple agents who operate in specialized markets, further reducing transaction barriers.
The effects of scale economies combined with functional specialization are also used to explain the contrasting sizes, distribution and capacities of IFCs. London's and New York's scale advantages in foreign exchange, international bonds and capital markets dwarf the capacities of other European (Paris, Frankfurt) or North American (Toronto, Chicago) financial centers, producing self-reinforcing comparative advantages that deepen specialization and centralization and further enhance the cities' capacities and spatial reach over a global financial hinterland. Size, in other words, rather than distance is what matters and what orders the spatial distribution and hierarchy of London and New York as dominant actors in global capital markets (Poon et al. 2004: 414).
II: Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore: financial sector composition, institutional and policy contexts Hong Kong
Hong Kong has emerged as one of the world's leading financial centers. It is currently Asia's second largest stock market (after Japan), the world's sixth largest foreign exchange market, has one of the world's four largest gold markets, is the second largest funds management center in Asia and ranks as the 12th largest international banking center in external assets (Dong et al. 2006: 22; HKMA 2008a, 2008b). Beyond its formal banking sector, Hong Kong has also emerged as one of the region's foremost money and debt markets, derivatives (futures) markets, silver and gold markets, asset management centers and operates as one of the most open insurance centers in the world (HKMA 2008a).
Established in the 19th century as a British colony and a trading entrecote to service the lucrative market between the West and China, Hong Kong's fortunes have always been reliant on international trade and finance and on its relationship to China more generally (Schenk 2002: 232).2 While Shanghai dominated international finance in the Far East in the early 20th century, civil war and economic chaos in China throughout the 1930s and 1940s witnessed the emergence of Hong Kong as the region's foremost financial enclave. As Catherine Schenk observes, 'the local traditional banking sector in Hong Kong thrived on the chaos in China', benefiting from an influx of Chinese political and economic émgr.és, the relocation of Western business headquarters out of Shanghai, and massive capital in-flight as a result of Chinese hyper-inflation between 1947 and 1949. Shanghai's losses were Hong Kong's gains, with the colony enjoying the swelling talents of mainland émgr.és who bought with them social and business networks that made the colony an intensely networked banking community -- or what Meyer describes as the 'pivotal intermediary hub' of Asia's 'social networks of capital' (Meyer 2000: 242; Schenk 2002: 323-5, 2000: 746-51; Li 2004:1).
In the post-war period, Hong Kong's rapid industrial development coupled with its
entrecote status witnessed huge increases in demand for banking services and expansion of the financial services sector (Jiao 1974: 18; Schenk 2002: 340). By 1954, for example, Hong Kong had 94 licensed banks and hosted some 19 foreign banks, and between 1954 and 1972 witnessed massive expansion in the deposit base of its commercial banks, growing from 1,068 HKD to 24,613 million HKD (Jiao 1974: 23). Yet by far the single most important source of Hong Kong's advantage as a financial center from the 1940s through to early 1970s was its free exchange market (Liu 1997: 583-8; Schenk 2002: 332). While the international system operated mostly under the Bretton Woods set of agreements with limited currency convertibility and a fixed peg exchange rate system, as a British colony Hong Kong enjoyed full access to the 'sterling area' comprised of commonwealth countries (except Canada) who pegged their currencies against sterling (Jiao 1974: 17; Schenk 2002: 332). The arbitrage to be had from servicing this market, coupled with the rapid increase in demand for foreign exchange to satisfy other trading requirements, created a parallel exchange market for Hong Kong dollars (HKD) and, in turn, their exchange into sterling and US dollars (Ghost 1987: 22-9; Schenk 2002: 332). 3 Hong Kong became 'a lacuna in the otherwise closely controlled Bretton Woods system'; cementing its reputation as a 'money city' where deals, finance, exchange and trade made for the lifeblood of the colony (Schenk 2002: 333).
Institutional and regulatory contexts
While Hong Kong's fortunes clearly reflect its legacy as an trade hub and its relationship to China, no less important to its success as a financial center has been the institutional and regulatory architecture supporting business, transaction facilitation, clearing and settlement systems, and the system of regulatory oversight. Indeed, despite its reputation as a 'free city' and what Owen described as 'unique in its correspondence to the classical economists dream world which existed in the golden age before 1914' of laissez-faire, Hong Kong's policy architecture more accurately reflects a position of 'positive non-interventionism ... [as] a deliberate policy choice rather than merely an absence of policy' (as quoted in Schenk 2002: 322). Shanghai
Shanghai's institutional and regulatory contexts, by contrast, belie a very different history. In 1949 Shanghai was Asia's leading financial center, hosting 24 state banks, some 200 private lending, trust companies and financial institutions, and home to the world's third largest stock market behind New York and London (Laurence son and Tang 2005: 147). For more than a century, Its historical success and reputation, however, became its liability under communist rule, with Shanghai inextricably associated with capitalist excesses and a humiliating semi-colonial past.
When Shanghai re-emerged in the late 1970s it was a mere shadow of its former self, no longer a financial hub but transformed into what Wu describes as the 'locomotive of state-led industrialization' -- the industrial cash cow of Beijing (Wu 1999 as quoted in Lai 2006: 3). Apart from the obliteration of the formal regulatory apparatus and institutions responsible for oversight of free market transactions, Shanghai's general support infrastructure was abysmal. As Jiao (Jiao 1974: 29, 32) notes, 'when foreign banks and business firms were again welcomed back in the early 1980s, they found that even basic facilities, such as office buildings and telephones, were lacking'. In a word, conditions were 'harsh' with Shanghai lacking 'decent housing ... supermarkets, international schools, social clubs, cultural centers, [and] concert halls'; all the soft goods necessary to attract and retain pools of highly skilled human capital.
The 11th Five Year Plan laid down the blueprint for Shanghai's redevelopment: a three-phase strategy designed to grow Shanghai as a hub of trade, finance, tertiary services and transportation. In the first phase, Shanghai would establish and consolidate its role as a national financial hub and transportation gateway to central and northern China, a hinterland of some 800 million people. To achieve this, Shanghai would be insulated from intra-national competition and provided with national resources for the development of its physical infrastructure, most of which would be concentrated on the development of the 'Pudding New Area'. Within Pudding, four new zones would be developed, the most important being the Lujiazui finance and trade zone immediately opposite the Bund -- the old city center and former financial sector (Meyer 2000: 234-5; Lai 2006: 7). 6 Allied with this, national authorities would roll out regulatory, institutional and liberalization measures to undergird domestic financial intermediation and financial sector development (Meyer 2000: 234). Second, authorities would consolidate Shanghai's position as a regional financial hub through attracting ever greater numbers of financial services firms and multinational enterprise. As Wu notes, Shanghai was designed to become China's Wall Street, an 'international landing strip to attract foreign finance capital' (Wu 1999 quoted in Lai 2006: 7). And third, authorities would champion Shanghai's emergence as an IFC through the progressive consolidation of the sector. Singapore
Singapore and Hong Kong enjoy an historical rivalry that can be traced back to their days as trade hubs and their British colonial status. In many senses, their experiences betray a common history but played out in different geographic and political contexts (Tan and Lim 2004: 1). While Hong Kong's future has reverted back to the PRC via an interim political agreement designed to ensure the former colony some level of autonomy from Beijing, Singapore's fortunes have been entirely its own since its independence in 1965. As Bryant
(1985) notes, the fact of Singapore's independence singularly explains its subsequent efforts to generate a financial services sector and propel its growth through financial activity. As a small city state of some 239 square miles, Singapore enjoys none of the natural resources, agricultural capacities, and energy or food security of its immediate neighbors. Its economy was and remains entirely dependent on its capacity to generate services and attract capital and investment. Singapore's development has thus been defined by these vulnerabilities.
In the late 1960s the government responded to these vulnerabilities by initiating a series of aggressive development policies, one important component of which concerned the development of financial services as a growth driver in its own right (Bryant 1985: 8). The intent was not simply to grow the domestic banking capacity of the city-state but to 'orient financial institutions in an outward direction, A widening war in Vietnam and increased US dollar expenditures made for tight credit conditions and widening spreads between interest rates in the Euro-dollar market and the US dollar. It thus became lucrative for banks to tap existing dollar reserves in the Asia-Pacific region, creating a natural inducement for foreign (especially US) banks to establish in Asia. Under the advice of the then senior Dutch policy advisor to the Singaporean government, A. Wiinsemius, plans were drawn up to tap this trend and host an Asian Dollar Market (ADM). While Hong Kong was viewed as an attractive destination for such a market, the imposition of a 15 per cent withholding tax on interest income from foreign currency deposits and the unwillingness of Hong Kong authorities to remove this created an opportunistic niche for Singapore. Subsequently, Singapore began a process of liberalization, opening up its financial sector to allow the entry and establishment of foreign banks, the progressive liberalization of the exchange rate control (fully liberalized in 1978), as well as the establishment of a series of favorable tax incentives designed to pull-in foreign banks and financial service firms (Ng 1998: 1). 译文
亚洲的国际金融中心研究 作者：罗西；格鲁特
金融中心概述:位置、分布和规模
金融中心最早可以追溯到古代。世界上最古老的城市之一, 比如：萨姆坎德，它就是一个主要的商业服务中心连接着中国和欧洲之间的丝绸之路，提供经纪业务、信贷和贸易商队联合服务。在那一时期，马拉喀什，巴比伦，廷巴克图和君士坦丁堡都曾是主要的金融中心。在18和19世纪，出现了更大的金融中心服务区域。比如：柏林、法兰克福、阿姆斯特丹、佛罗伦萨、汉堡、伦敦、米兰、巴黎、纽约、费城、都灵、罗马威尼斯、热那亚、上海和苏黎世，都成为领先的金融和商业中心。
位置
对于国际金融中心来说，位置的选择和空间分布很重要。要考虑诸多变量，地理集群和大小、分布等。地理空间解释了金融中心的定制配置：即它们的大小、分布及其与经济腹地的关系服务(博塔得，2004)。比如：瓦尔特·克里斯塔勒在1966年提出的的著名理论，解释城市空间层次结构的重要性。按照瓦尔特·克里斯塔勒的观点，区域位置越好，越方便客户到达，那么其价值就越高，对于金融中心来说，也是如此，一个城市中心的空间配置，对于其能否成为商业区域是很重要的。瓦尔特·克里斯塔勒认为，这产生了独特的空间模式，大型城市中心更容易成为商业中心，随着城市中心的大小和高阶商品和服务的数量的增加，城市中心的经济阈值也在不断地增加，这直接促进了金融中心的形成。 城市
可以观察到，最近的很多文献都在试图解释，形成金融中心的空间分布因素。“世界级城市”更容易成为经济中心区域，杰斯 (2003)指出，看到国际级城市控制和协调着全球的经济流动。这些城市国土面积排列层次网络造就了其贸易、投资、金融的繁荣，创造了全球经济链价值。
23个城市控制了世界上83%的股票，六、七个城市联盟负责制度管理，以及占全球市值的一半左右(约20.9万亿美元)。伦敦、纽约和东京的总和，占到三分之一的全球股票，占全球外汇市场的58%。 经济规模
城市联盟的方法是国际金融中心的一种方式。集群经济，能够增加收益效率以及降低成本，金融服务公司的联盟不仅减少壁垒，提供交易便利，创造了信息对称和知识经济，还可以减少操作和交易成本。聚类，例如，联合生产可以大力提高财务管理能力，完善结算系统，降低集体行业成本，因为市场的竞争规模和专业化，可以允许提供一体化的服务。它还提供了高度熟练的劳动力资源库，节约了一大笔劳动力培训和技能发展成本。此外，规模经济和集群允许出现以最低的成本和最短的时间调解好事务。同样，规模化的商品经济能够降低风险，并进一步降低交易壁垒。
规模经济的影响对金融中心的形成来说是很重要的。伦敦和纽约拥有外汇规模优势，其他欧洲城市(巴黎、法兰克福)或北美(多伦多、芝加哥)的金融中心，都有自我强化的比较优势，专业化和集中化，进一步加强了城市对金融的控制能力。换句话说，重要的是城市规模，而不是空间距离分布，也正因为此，伦敦和纽约才能成为全球资本市场的主要参与者。 香港、上海、新加坡:金融部门构成、制度和政策环境 香港
香港已经成为世界领先的金融中心之一。（翻译归所有，完整译文请到下载）
目前是亚洲的第二大股票市场(位列日本之后)，世界第六大外汇市场，世界上的四大黄金市场之一，亚洲第二大基金管理中心，在国际银行中心的外部资产排名中，居于第12位(董等人. 2006;香港金管局2008)。除了正规银行部门，香港也成为该地区的一个最重要的货币和债务市场、衍生品市场(期货)、金银市场、资产管理中心和世界上最开放的保险中心之一。
19世纪，成为英国殖民地和贸易中心，为西方和中国之间提供服务，成为利润丰厚的市场，香港的命运一直依赖国际贸易和金融。而上海主导国际金融在远东在20世纪初，1940年代中国的内战和经济混乱，导致了香港作为亚太地区最重要的金融区域。正如凯瑟琳所观察到的，在香港当地的传统银行业的到了蓬勃发展，而这时，中国大陆地区正处于混乱中”,随后，很多西方国家的企业都将总部搬迁到上海，在1947年和1949年之间，发生了大规模资本动态的中国超级通胀。上海的损失，对香港是有利的。
在战后时期，香港工业的快速发展加上其银行服务需求的大幅增加，以及扩张的金融服务业。到1954年, 香港有94个持牌银行和19家外资银行，1954年到1972年间，吸收了大规模的商业银行的存款，从1068港币增长到246.13亿港币。然而到目前为止，香港作为金融中心优势的最重要来源，是从1940年代到1970年代初，其作为自由交易市场的身份。国际体系运作大多受布雷顿森林的协定与货币兑换的限制和，但是作为英国殖民地的香港享有完整的优惠权，可以直接与英镑汇兑。并且可以从服务市场的套利，加上外汇的需求快速增长，这些为香港创造了一个平行的美元外汇市场，交易,金融、交换和贸易成为香港的命脉。 机构和监管环境
香港作为一个贸易中心，及其与中国的关系，作为金融中心的成功同样和其重要的制度和监管体系结构是息息相关的，这些都支持了其业务发展、交易便利、清算与结算系统。（本文献翻译归所有，完整译文请到下载）
事实上，尽管有着“自由城”的美誉，但香港的政策架构更准确地反映了“政府的积极不干预政策是一个深思熟虑的政策选择，这对于其金融中心的发展来说是至关重要的”。 上海
上海的政治和监管环境，相比之下,掩盖着一个非常不同的历史。1949年上海是亚洲领先的金融中心，拥有24家国有银行，大约200多家私人贷款,信托公司和金融机构，拥有世界第三大股票市场，位在纽约和伦敦之后。一个多世纪以来，上海一直是中国的现代坩埚，扮演了一个著名的角色，中国的五个“开放城市”源于1842年《南京条约》。其获得了历史成功和声誉，但是，在共产主义制度下，改变上海紧密相关的资本主义过度和羞辱半殖民地的过去情况是其责任。
在1970年代末, 上海不再是一个金融中心，但转化为吴所说的“国家主导的工业化的火车头”——北京工业的摇钱树。除了正式的闭塞监管机构和机构负责监管的自由市场交易，上海
通用的支持基础设施糟糕透顶。“当外资银行和商业公司再次受到欢迎，是在1980年代，他们发现，即使基础设施,如办公大楼和电话等缺乏。总之，条件是“严厉”的，上海缺乏像样的住房……超市、国际学校、社交俱乐部、文化中心和音乐厅等”继续一些软性设施来吸引并留住人才。
第11个五年计划制定了上海的重建蓝图:三大策略的制定旨在大力发展上海的贸易,金融,三级服务和运输。在第一阶段,上海将建立和巩固其作为国家金融中心和交通中心的地位。为实现这一目标,上海将获得国家的提供的基础设施资源，其中大部分是集中在浦东新区的发展。在浦东，四个新区域得到开发，最重要的是对面的陆家嘴金融贸易区的建立，即外滩——旧的城市中心和前金融业所在地。第二，当局将巩固上海作为区域金融中心的地位，主要是通过吸引越来越多的金融服务公司和跨国企业的加入。吴邦国指出，上海旨在成为中国的华尔街，一个“国际着陆跑道来吸引外国金融资本”。第三，当局将通过逐步整合部门，将上海打造成为一个国际金融中心。 新加坡
新加坡和香港有着历史对抗状态，这可以追溯到他们曾经都作为贸易中心和英国的殖民地。在某种意义上说，虽然处于不同的地理和政治环境，但是他们的经历着一个共同的历史。而香港回归到中华人民共和国，未来将通过一个临时政治协议旨在确保来自北京的前殖民地保持某种程度的自治，而新加坡的命运已经完全实现了自治，从1965年开始独立。科比(1985)指出，新加坡事实上的独立解释了随后的努力，产生一个金融服务领域，旨在通过金融活动推动经济增长。这是一个小城市国家，约239平方英里，新加坡享与邻居直接享有所有的自然资源、农业能力、能源和粮食安全的。经济上仍然完全依赖其生成服务，拥有吸引资本和投资的能力。新加坡的发展因此有其局限性。
在60年代末,政府为了改变这些局限性，发起了一系列积极的发展政策，这些都推动了其金融服务业的发展，成为经济增长的引擎(科比1985:8)。其目的不仅仅是城邦国内银行能力的增长,也是“东方金融机构向外扩张的努力，鼓励他们去扮演国际服务角色,而不是仅仅一个国内客户”。在60年代末，新加坡处于有利地放置。扩大越南战争和增加的美元支出推动了其金融的发展。也因此成为亚太地区著名的金融服务中心。新加坡政府计划制定利用这一趋势。虽然香港被视为一个有吸引力的目的地，但是香港征收15%的预扣税，香港当局不愿删除这一创收点，但是这一措施很适合新加坡。随后，新加坡开始自由化的过程，开放其金融部门，允许外资银行的进入，逐步放开人民币汇率控制(1978年完全放开)，以及建立一系列的税收优惠激励政策，引入外资银行和金融服务公司。
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