ABSTRACT
In his best-seller The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman (2005) asserted that at the dawn of the twenty-first century, the great wave of globalization, technological advancement, and the rise of China and India not only accelerates the flow of goods, capital, information and ideas as border barriers are lowered, but also signifies a more competitive business environment and mobile population, especially among the well educated and professional middle class. As one of the most successful cities in Asia in attracting multinational corporations to set up regional headquarters, and as part of the ‘interconnected tripartite city’ of the ‘Nylonkong’ network that powers the global economy, Hong Kong relies heavily both on locally trained professionals, and on people with high calibre skills from the Chinese mainland and around the globe (Elliott 2008).
