The Kevin Bacons of emerging markets: still HK and Singapore

chart from here

Played this game in one of my NewRuleSets.Project "economic security exercises" (sorry, but I haven't yet reconstructed those pages on the new site--soon!) atop World Trade Center 1 back in 2001 with Asia, using the example of the Kevin Bacon game.   The KBG says you can link anyone in the world to Kevin Bacon in six steps or less (six degrees of separation notion I demonstrated in Great Powers (between me and John Adams--as in me to my grandpa to TR to John Hay to Abe Lincoln to John Quincy Adams to John Adams).  The chart above links Indiana U alumni to Bacon in five steps.  

We presented all the players with a list of every emerging market in Asia and then had them rank-order their top picks for desirable free-trade agreement groupings from the perspective of the US, EU and Japan.  The winner, or most often top ranked, was Singapore.  All three sides wanted it in any FTA they could access.  On that basis, we dubbed Singapore the Kevin Bacon of foreign direct investment in Asia, meaning you wanted to put your money there because it presented the tightest possible financial connectivity to the most amount of regional emerging markets.

Now, in our exercise, we didn't break HK out from China, something we skipped in deference to several prospective Chinese guests at the request of Cantor Fitzgerald.  In the end, they didn't show up anyway because their visas were rejected (right after the EP-3 spy plane incident).  It was a bad choice on my part to give in on that, because virtually all of our players told me later that Hong Kong would have been right up their with Singapore for the same reasons--a highly desirable third-party on any investment deal because they brought local knowledge and the best local rules.

Anyway, check out the tables from a recent FT full-pager on emerging markets:

China is clearly the biggest overall magnet/deal-maker, but note the high numbers of deals for HK and Singapore--way out of proportion to their size.  That's because they're supreme pass-through FDI conduits, both into and out of Asia.

That's why, whenever I hear of small states in the PG or around Africa (like Mauritius) expressing the ambition to position themselves as the next Singapore or Hong Kong, I spot a player that's looking to get in front of a big money flow--like Asia into Africa.

In fact, that's one of my mantras shared with Steve DeAngelis:  whatever the globalization trend, you want to "get in front of the money"!