ABSTRACT
The six million people of tiny Hong Kong have the fourth highest gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in the world (HK$189,400 or some US$25,000), after the US, Switzerland and Kuwait. In the March 1997 budget the government announced a projected surplus of HK$31.7 billion for 1997–8 and accumulated reserves of HK$359 billion by March 1998. But despite Hong Kong's economic achievements over the past three decades, poverty remains an important issue. Hong Kong has been transformed from a city of poor migrants in the 1960s into one of the most affluent and influential cities of the world in the 1990s. The growth of prosperity has been extraordinary and made possible by the conjunction of many factors. Initially, cheap labour for manufacturing in Hong Kong itself, and more recently from the employment by many Hong Kong companies of cheap labour in southern China.
