Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Singapore + China - Free Trade Agreement

"China is Singapore's third-largest trading partner and Singapore is China's eighth-largest trading partner."

The article cited above is here and goes on to discuss the Free Trade Agreement reached after two years of working on it between Singapore and China.

Singapore is a fascinating experiment that has remained ahead of its time in being a successful, let's say a terribly successful, city state when compared to the other current sovereign city states of the World - Monaco, San Marino and Vatican City. Today, Dubai and other Gulf megalopolis are attempting to build their "Singapore". Other close competitors to Singapore (non-sovereign) city states are Hong Kong and Macau, perhaps City of London.

Click here to read about some inspiring quantitative details on Singapore from The World Fact Book, a small place with a population that is less than that of Denmark.

The FTA between Singapore and China will resolve/cover some of the sticking points as cited in the article:

"... the deal covers trade in goods, rules of origin, trade remedies, trade in services, movement of persons, investment, customs procedures, technical barriers to trade, sanitary measures and economic cooperation."

At a population of approximately 4.5 million, $62 billion in trade with China shows that Singapore's strengths cover more than manufacturing. Here is an example of what Singapore was thinking and doing about four years ago - unrestricted research for bioscientists. With such foresight, I believe Singapore will continue to lead all sovereign and non-sovereign city states of the World for at least half if not all of the 21st Century.

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