Banking and Monetary History Conference: Hong Kong’s Current Challenges in Historical Perspective”

Mr. Leo F. Goodstadt made a presentation on ‘Business Came First: The evolution of monetary policy in Hong Kong, 1935-80’ at the conference.

Hong Kong’s path to prosperity has been very different from other Third World societies. It has been described as ‘an unprecedented industrial colony that amazed the world’. Its economic performance in the second half of the last century was a record of sustained and largely self-financed success. By 1961, this small city on the south China coast, largely populated by refugees, had eliminated unemployment; and by the middle of the decade, it had become the West’s leading source of light industrial products. Its growth rates were, arguably, unparalleled in economic history, and real GDP increased each year without exception from 1961 until 1998. Economic expansion was never hindered by a shortage of the capital needed to finance high-speed growth. Yet, the modernisation process was financed without foreign aid and with little foreign direct investment, and the main source of development capital was its banking system.

This conference was organised by Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research. Click to read more.