The New York Times, 4 Mar 2009, KEITH BRADSHER
SINGAPORE — As trade withers around the world and freighters sit empty at anchor, some of the most vulnerable economies are proving to be small, extremely globalized trading centers like Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan — and that is prompting a rethinking of their economic development strategies.
Half a century of swiftly growing exports, accompanied by an expansion into international services like finance, has transformed all three economies’ urban areas into some of the world’s most modern cities. Millions of farmers have been lifted out of poverty. But that progress has now been thrown into reverse with some of the world’s steepest plunges in economic activity.
In Singapore, where manufacturing still dwarfs finance in employment and share of economic output, tens of thousands of factory workers have been cut back to three or four days a week and their wages per hour reduced as well.
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