Purpose China’s government wants Hong Kong actors to integrate it with the Greater Bay Area (GBA) and with the global economy, thus making it a leading world region. State banks of China in Hong Kong are expected to participate in this integration, but little is known about their networks within Hong Kong and the GBA. This paper argues that network structures and relations of China’s state banks position them as pivotal actors in the growth of the GBA. Design/methodology/approach Social network theory is used to examine China’s state banks in Hong Kong. Websites of financial firms and government entities reveal network structures and relations of state banks. Interpretations of how financial activities of state banks relate to foreign banks and to business in the GBA are based on news articles. Findings Results reveal how China’s state banks network with each other and with foreign financial firms in Hong Kong and their network relations in the GBA impact their role in integrating the GBA with the global economy. Originality/value This paper contributes to the literature, including financial geography, on financial firms which uses social network theory. Researchers give limited attention to the network structure and relations of China’s state banks in Hong Kong and the GBA. This paper demonstrates how their networks determine their integration of Hong Kong and the GBA with the global economy.

Abstract Organizations whose membership includes financiers seem to be optimal settings for financiers to enhance their network relationships. Many of them are prestigious organizations with which financiers socially identify, and the organizations confer high status on financiers. This implies that they are high-quality professionals. Only a small share of financiers, mostly senior executives, gain social capital from their participation in business organizations. A significant minority of them do not belong to any, and this includes senior executives. Family-orientated organizations, such as those related to schools, sports activities, and country clubs, generate few network benefits. Special-purpose clubs are venues for the elite to meet, but they are rarely used for business. Financiers do not combine business with participation in religious organizations. They also do not leverage network contacts from organizations based on social concerns. Their key network relationships are created throughout their career as part of their ongoing business.

In 'On capitalism's cusp', Jamie Peck critiques prior explanations of capitalist variegation. His 'zones of friction, seams, cusps, and fault lines in a world of inconstant conjunctions' offer a template for his critique of the Greater Bay Area initiative of China's government, and of Hong Kong's role in it. This framework also provides a means to rethink the internal and external challenges Hong Kong faces, even as its status as a global financial centre remains secure. While Peck sets out a broad-brushed framework, its specifics await future development.

Critics claim the 2019 protests in Hong Kong undermine it as a leading global financial centre. Drawing on the 'geography of finance' research and its focus on financial networks as a means to explain how financial centres operate and other empirical evidence, this article argues that Hong Kong's status as the leading Asia-Pacific financial centre and as head of China's financial centre networks is secure for three reasons. China's government will continue to support it; Hong Kong's financial networks possess extraordinary scale and sophistication; and no viable alternative centre has emerged to challenge Hong Kong as Asia-Pacific leader.

China’s extraordinary economic growth over recent decades underpins the top global rank of its financial centres of Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing. Hong Kong is China’s window to global capital, an Asia-Pacific leader, and one of the top three global financial centres, along with London and New York. Shanghai is the commercial-financial centre, and Beijing is the political-regulatory centre of China. Government policy supports stock- and bond-connect programmes among its exchanges, Fintech, internationalization of the renminbi, and its ‘Belt and Road’ initiative and associated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). These directly and indirectly strengthen China’s internal financial centre networks and the centres’ global links. The government’s political and economic policies maintain Hong Kong as a premier global centre. China controls its banks, and its strength as a large economy will help mitigate the impacts of a global financial crisis.

The Hong Kong (HKEx) and Singapore (SGX) exchanges remain conflicted about high frequency trading (HFT), reflecting the environment of private and public sector actors in which the HKEx and SGX operate. Neither exchange has resolved these conflicts, leaving the HFT controversy simmering and limiting the amounts of such trading occurring on their exchanges. Competitor exchanges in Asia, however, are more supportive of HFT. With the aid of technology providers which enable HFT, the HKEx and SGX significantly improved their trading infrastructures. At the same time, these providers developed data centres at other exchanges and built fibre-optic connections which permit low-latency trading across Asia. Traders in Hong Kong and Singapore access these exchanges, potentially undermining the HKEx and SGX.

Shenzhen, China, aspires to be an international financial center; however, its financial sector occupies an anomalous position in China's networks. The sector is tightly integrated into mainland networks, and Shenzhen's local banks provide access to Hong Kong's networks. Nonetheless, the city's proximity to Hong Kong, the Asia-Pacific center of financial networks, confers few incremental benefits compared to those received by other mainland centers. The proposed Qianhai financial district, which is to be a laboratory for opening China's capital accounts, does not differentially boost Shenzhen because other financial centers will be allowed to experiment. A network theory of financial centers provides the explanatory framework for interpreting Shenzhen in China's financial center networks. Empirical analyses focus on Shenzhen's network ties with the Mainland and with Hong Kong. Shenzhen's future rests on the capacity of its financial firms to participate in the networks of South China, as well as to operate across the Mainland.

By the late twentieth century, Hong Kong had entered the public and private consciousness as one of the world’s greatest business centers. In the background looms its mysterious past as a port in the “Orient,” a place of intrigue, trade, shipping, and smuggling of drugs and gold. This chapter develops the argument about the social networks of capital, and it is integrated with an interpretation of Hong Kong’s rise as the decision-making, management center of Asia from the 1840s to the early twentieth century. Then, the city’s transformation during the Cold War era is examined, and this sets the base for interpreting Hong Kong’s current position as corporate management and business services center of the Asia-Pacific. The discussion of several recent examples of the city’s enhanced integration with mainland China points to possible trends that may impact the city’s future. Finally, an examination of threats to Hong Kong since 1950 highlight how the city’s political-economy has maintained resilience under uncertain conditions.

The world cities of Hong Kong and Singapore, former creations of British colonialism, gained prominence as global financial centers primarily from decisions of firms headquartered in the core of Europe and North America to base their senior management in Hong Kong for Asia-Pacific and Singapore for Southeast Asia. This study uses qualitative interviews with financiers in both cities to examine how they use their networks to produce financial services from core-contending centers in a regional economy containing mostly core-contending, semiperipheral, and peripheral countries. The results reveal that Hong Kong's and Singapore's financiers and their firms gain competitive advantages in producing financial services from their network exploitation of their access to sophisticated information, knowledge, and expertise about Asia.

The controversy over high-frequency trading (HFT) highlights the nexus of global exchanges. They are under pressure from three sets of actors—their customers (firms that trade on their exchanges), their regulator, and government–political officials—in an operating environment transformed by technology firms providing new capabilities for exchanges and their counterparties. This chapter compares and contrasts major global exchanges in terms of how these actors pressure them with respect to the trade-off between commercial viability and fairness and how the exchanges have responded to these challenges. Because the various actors have different agendas, exchanges face a dilemma. Efforts to accommodate one set of actors may generate opposition from another set. Competition among global exchanges for business encourages them to mobilize regulators and government–political officials to support their efforts to deal with HFT, but many exchanges face regulators who are attempting to control HFT. These relations define the nexus within which global exchanges must operate.

The Economic History ReviewVolume 67, Issue 3 p. 880-881 BOOK REVIEW David Koistinen, Confronting decline: the political economy of deindustrialization in twentieth-century New England ( Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013. Pp. xii + 331. ISBN 9780813049076 Hbk. $74.95) David R. Meyer, David R. Meyer Washington University in St LouisSearch for more papers by this author David R. Meyer, David R. Meyer Washington University in St LouisSearch for more papers by this author First published: 09 July 2014 https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0289.12076_27Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume67, Issue3August 2014Pages 880-881 RelatedInformation

The large state banks of China-the Bank of China, China Construction Bank, and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China-dominate China's financial sector. Reform of these banks has been a major policy effort of China's government because their financial weaknesses exert a drag on the economy. This reform has led to significant improvements in the large state banks. Nevertheless, they face three recurring problems: limited access to expert knowledge about international finance, non-performing loans, and corruption. These problems are rooted in the network governance of the banks. The Chinese government needs to continue transforming this governance to make the large state banks globally competitive.

Job mobility of investment bankers operates in a "small world" organized around banks in global financial centers. Networks of job mobility of leading investment bankers who worked at Citigroup in Hong Kong at some point in their career are constructed from websites and newspaper articles. Confidential interviews complement these sources. The results demonstrate that Hong Kong's investment bankers are key nodes in the global network of job mobility. Inter-city job changes involving London and New York with Hong Kong consist of small-world intraorganizational linkages, and local job mobility in each center also operates through small-world networks.

areas. Moreover, they make a convincing case that urbanization involves multiple tracks rather than a linear progression from the urban core, and that processes such as rescaling and repositioning of urban and rural areas are more important than the form of urbanization. The notion that the Chinese experience can help revise assumptions of urbanization is both intellectually exciting and useful in furthering debates about area studies and regional geography (Ma 2002; Yeung and Lin 2003; Pannell 2003; Wei 2006). Both theoretically and empirically, the book is an important contribution to advancing the scholarship of urbanization and globalization. It is a must-read for students, researchers, and practitioners in all disciplines who are interested in China’s development.

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Wealth, Waste, and Alienation: Growth and Decline in the Connellsville Coke Industry. ByKenneth Warren. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001. 270 pp. Maps, photographs, tables. Cloth, $35.00. ISBN 0-822-94132-5. - Volume 76 Issue 1

The release of the first paperback edition of Cotton City 16 years after its initial publication provides an opportunity to reflect on Harriet Amos's approach to explaining antebellum Mobile's growth. At least eight reviews, including those in major historical journals, appeared following publication; thus, this review will not repeat their general coverage. In brief, Amos argued Mobile's dependence on the cotton trade tied it to external centers of capital in New York, London, and Liverpool; and northern, and to a lesser extent English, business people who moved to Mobile to participate directly or indirectly in the cotton trade became city leaders. This link to the cotton trade pervaded much of urban life Amos details in discussing immigration, labor, city government, social services, railroad development, and the secession crisis.