Abstract
Two city-states in Asia, Hong Kong and Singapore, are discussed as historical illustrations of different roles played by the state in the process of economic development and globalization. The analytical comparison is guided by a proposed set of five dimensions of the global city: the economic, political, administrative, socio-cultural and physical dimensions. The findings from the comparative analysis supported three assumptions: that the most realistic alternative for the economic development of the city-state is globalization; that state intervention is an important but not always a determining factor in the process of globalization of the city-state; and that the political dimension helps to explain the different paths toward globalization taken by Singapore and Hong Kong before the latter's transition into China's Special Administrative Region.
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