Graduation Year

2020

Date of Submission

5-2020

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Government

Reader 1

Minxin Pei

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Abstract

While in democratic countries, the public-private relations are well studied, in the two citystates of Hong Kong and Singapore, where the regime are semi-democratic, the problem of how private businesses interact with the government is less examined. Renowned as two of the “Four Asian Tigers,” both Hong Kong and Singapore have enjoyed strong economic growth during the last century, but the propellent of the economic advancements for the two are different. The Hong Kong government, as a pro-business regime, has relied heavily on private businesses to lift up the markets, while Singapore, given the pro-state regime, has counted on the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) as the main players in the economy and have to some degrees marginalized the private businesses. Taking the real estate sector as the subject of study, this paper traces back in the history of developments to see how the government of Hong Kong has allowed and sponsored the privatelyowned property developers in Hong Kong to enjoy so much wealth as well as political influence and to “capture the state” of Hong Kong. Furthermore, this paper tries to explain how the government of Singapore, in taking a different path treating the private firms in the real estate sector, has assigned tasks to the private property developers to fulfill its political needs that the SOEs cannot complete. As a conclusion, one could see how state capture could take various forms under different kinds of regimes, and how private firms could survive accordingly.

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