3 ms·

SG's value-add was as a door into China (and India and ASEAN). China has strict capital controls so it makes FDI risky. During the 1990s when there were open q

SG's value-add was as a door into China (and India and ASEAN). China has strict capital controls so it makes FDI risky. During the 1990s when there were open questions about HK's status, a lot of the business community (and at least 10% of HKers) immigrated to SG to operate there. During the 2000s, the PRC made some good faith attempts at assuaging investor sentiment in HK, and that slowed the business and financial services outflow from HK to SG as HK had added linkages to Mainland China that SG would never have. Now that I can IPO or M&A in China and India with Singapore level valuations, I have no incentive to retain more than a minimal operational presence in Singapore in order to act as a capital funnel to the others.

re-thc 9mo ago
And during the 2010s-2020s the flow from HK moved back to SG since China started their major changes in HK.
- alephnerd 9mo ago
  I'd say it went 50-50 Mainland-Singapore. By 2019, if you were a Chinese company that only intends to operate within China, you had no reason not to move legal and leadership operations to Shanghai. On the other han, I'd you were a foreign investor, HK de facto become "yet another Chinese territory" which meant it's not a good hedge for an ExChina/China+One strategy which is executed in ASEAN or India, which made Singapore become somewhat attractive. Basically, the only loser was HK. That said, this is all business and financial services - no one was actually dedicating serious effort building sustained R&D capacity in either HK or SG when you can hire the people who you would have had to apply PRs (no one who is worth hiring would accept a work visa when they could work for an American company and L1/2 to America) for directly in China, India, and increasingly Vietnam.
  - re-thc 9mo ago
    > If you were a Chinese company that only intended to operate within China, you had no reason not to move legal and leadership operations to Shanghai. Where's the example where you're a Chinese company with most revenue in China (for now) but do sell elsewhere and anyhow, there are lots of reasons to not 100% stick to China, e.g. gaming companies have moved to Singapore in masses (at least some capacity) due to time and time of gaming crackdowns and censorship
    - alephnerd 9mo ago
      Gaming and Social Media in China is slightly different given how significant western capital was in the sector in the 2000s and 2010s compared to other portions of the Chinese tech industry. For example, the whole ByteDance/TikTok imbroligo is due to Susquehanna trying to exit it's Chinese investments which are locked within China. During the 2019-23 period, boards in startups that had Western investors increasingly demanded that either Chinese investors buy them out or that they shift domicile so an alternative path to exit could be found.

re-thc 9mo ago

And during the 2010s-2020s the flow from HK moved back to SG since China started their major changes in HK.

alephnerd 9mo ago
I'd say it went 50-50 Mainland-Singapore. By 2019, if you were a Chinese company that only intends to operate within China, you had no reason not to move legal and leadership operations to Shanghai. On the other han, I'd you were a foreign investor, HK de facto become "yet another Chinese territory" which meant it's not a good hedge for an ExChina/China+One strategy which is executed in ASEAN or India, which made Singapore become somewhat attractive. Basically, the only loser was HK. That said, this is all business and financial services - no one was actually dedicating serious effort building sustained R&D capacity in either HK or SG when you can hire the people who you would have had to apply PRs (no one who is worth hiring would accept a work visa when they could work for an American company and L1/2 to America) for directly in China, India, and increasingly Vietnam.
- re-thc 9mo ago
  > If you were a Chinese company that only intended to operate within China, you had no reason not to move legal and leadership operations to Shanghai. Where's the example where you're a Chinese company with most revenue in China (for now) but do sell elsewhere and anyhow, there are lots of reasons to not 100% stick to China, e.g. gaming companies have moved to Singapore in masses (at least some capacity) due to time and time of gaming crackdowns and censorship
  - alephnerd 9mo ago
    Gaming and Social Media in China is slightly different given how significant western capital was in the sector in the 2000s and 2010s compared to other portions of the Chinese tech industry. For example, the whole ByteDance/TikTok imbroligo is due to Susquehanna trying to exit it's Chinese investments which are locked within China. During the 2019-23 period, boards in startups that had Western investors increasingly demanded that either Chinese investors buy them out or that they shift domicile so an alternative path to exit could be found.