Hong Kong's loss can be Tokyo's gain if it plays its cards right

Benjamin Qiu is a partner with the law firm Elliott Kwok Levine & Jaroslaw in New York specializing in Chinese cross-border disputes and transactions. Sam Goodman is senior policy director of China Strategic Risks Institute and co-founder of the New Diplomacy Project, a foreign policy think tank in London.

According to a joke circulating on the Chinese internet, it took America 100 years to turn New York into an international financial center but it took China just three years to turn Singapore into one.