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narrator: the region of southeast asia and south pacific includes a multitude of small island nations and one large continent country. here we find economic tigers and raw-material producers. state economies benefit from their relative location on the pacific rim, and multinational corporations take advantage of shipping opportunities offered by proximity to the world's largest ocean. we focus on the tiny city-state of singapore. despite being the smallest country in southeast asia and lacking natural resources, it is one of the wealthiest states in the world and the gateway to southeast asia. american computer giant hewlett-packard searched for a base to spearhead its push to asia. man: we basically stock and distribute

hewlett-packard products, mainly computer-related products like pcs-- personal computers-- printers, plotters, scanners and all kinds of related peripherals for personal computers. and we distribute throughout the asia-pacific region, and that covers all the way from korea to india, down to australia. narrator: the company needed centralocation, but that alone wouldoteenough t. a number of cities could claim toe cad near the center of the thriving asian region. in the end, hewlett-packard chose the tiny island state,sing. soin: one of the main reasons we are in singapore is because of the infrastructure. singapore is very centrally located in asia. in addition, we have very good air, sea, rail and port facilities that allow us

to bring things in and take things out very quickly and very efficiently. narrator: singapore has the largest container-handling seaport in the world-- number one in sheer tonnage moved and second only to hong kong in container traffic. singapore's location on the stit of malacca puts it on one of the most important transport routes in the world. woman: singapore sits right at the tip of the peninsula of malaysia. it's kind of in between the south china sea as well as the indian ocean. a lot of ships that want to go from the pacific ocean to the indian ocean, they all have to come down through singapore and then cross over the other... to the other side. in that sense, its location is favorable.

but it also has a natural harbor with nice deep water, and that has facilitated its port activities. narrator: the port is closely integrated with singapore's changi airport, asia's second-busiest. here, freight is exchanged between air and sea. but for such a busy place, singapore is quite small-- just about 400 square miles, only about a quarter the size of rhode island. more than four million people are packed into this tiny island state. 76% are ethnic chinese, 14% are malay and about eight percent are indian. ( indianusic playing ) singapore has a long tradition as a base for foreign traders.

its can be seenr history in the architectural reminders of its days as a british colony. that tradition continues with singapore serving as a popular location as the headquarters for multinational corporations and as a home for their employees. poon: singapore is a great place to live. it's safe, they have schools for their kids, but that all of their factories are either in malaysia an hour to fly to jakarta,ilandl they would rather make singapore their home base, have an office there where they process the information, but really to go out to malaysia and indonesia and thailand for their factories, where the real processing and assembly takes place. narrator: linking materials, processing and assembly to global operations requires the movement of massive quantities of freight.

singapore handles more than 15 million containers a year. its relative location allows it to feed directly into shipping routes linking asia, europe and the united states. singapore is very dependent on american markets. most of its exports go to the united states. in fact,ll of asia is very dependent on the u.s. there are also a lot ofmerican semiconductor electronics companies in southeastsia, and they all use singapore as sort of their export platform toring their products back aftto bring it backoughmbled singapore the uted states. narrator: this re-exporting of products makes singapore very dependent on its hinterlands. poon: more than a hundred percent of its income is derived from expos alone.

muchwhich means to sayare ally re-ebasically singapore acts as an entrepôt port; it behaves like ainrmediaryoint between the hinterland and the rest of the world. it collects products from malaysia, from indonesia, d thent distributes to the markets in the world. narrator: new ships arrive every few minutes. computer systems coordinate their movements, assign berths and allocate the equipment needed to unload. singtheiskil are needes to runm asthat relies on sophisticated the information technologyload. to keep track of the mountains of freight. and all the information's handled by computer technology. there is no way we couldo it manually, because we have something like maybe a thousand orders a day, and we can't track that manually, so it is completely through our computer system.

rrator: byosg singapore,wlett-packb to conduct its business more efficiently. if ourroducts come in by sea, we can get them inurisibutioceerwiin aay. and if icomes by air, sicay it's a lot faster. narrator: changi airport is a vital extension of the seaport. increasingly, goods arrive ship from southeast asia to be air-freighted to places like europe and australia. maximizing its gateway location living sndards here are among the highest in the world ranking in the top 30 globally. in the 20 years before the asian crisis, except for a period in the mid- 1980s and perhaps early 1980s, singapore's growth rate was very stellar-- in the range of seven to ten percent. it took england 200 years was to achievear--

its current standa of living; the same sarof livingyears that engnd has today. narrator: that accelerated development is rof economalizat and a major and integral party t of singapore's economy. this top-down approach differs from other models of economic delopmen singapore's government exerts strongontrol over more an just the economy. the western model of economic development is that when you libelize over moran economy,he economy. then politicaliberalization will also accompany economic liberalization. now, in asia, it's the ectpposite. you have economic liberalizatiog for the last three decades or so and no political liberalizatio until the early 1990s. we sawolitical liberalization taking pce ikoa,

in taiwahas been in powerpore.sy fothe last three decades. so the question is, why were they able to hold on to power for so long at the same time that they were ae to generate economic developmen? w,ome people have termed thatthe country's way of managing economic development the "developmentaltate which means to say that the government puts economic development as its top priority over other sociel goals like democrazation, likand it appearsies, at the population agrees. so there is is social contct between the governme likand it appearsies, at tand the populationes. that as long as the government delivers economic growth-- between the governme and itas pretty goods, at taat keeping its promise

the population is willingtoe 30 years or so-- or procrastination of individual rights, of human rights, of political civic liberties. will this stragy changehaan? my impression is that the social contract tween siaporeans and the government will continue for som. e population is very used to pa. so in someays, i think that the populatio is not ready to be independent, and the government knows that, and basically it's top-down system. is nothat's very strikingndent, and the gin singapore.ws that, narrator: singapore began with a favorable location, but it has succeeded ahead of other locations because of the commitment to investment in people, facilities and infrastructure-- factors which encourage its use as a regional transport hub.

but other regional port locations, like malaysia, hong kong, kaohsiung in taiwan, aneven shanghai are not simply looking on with envy. they are undertaking eir own development programs and steadily attracting more business. singapore is feeling ireasing pressure from their competition. and e late 1990s saw the asian economic crisis-- slowdowns in some soutast asian counies had a domino effect on singapore. to stay ahead, singapore needs to keep finding new ways to set itself apart. it's now a gbal hub ofechnological innovation-- a wired island. singapore s a long-term sttegy to develop into an information society, and that's been one of the major things that's been happening in singapore-- to allow your companies and your headquarters and regional headquarters or international headquarters

to communicate with the rest of the world. poon: singapore is a very wired island. it doesn't have natural resources the way, say, the other countries arou the region have, so what it does is it makes a lot of investments in its people. and when it comes to it, that's people resources. so what singapore has actively been promoting is to try and get the island as wired as possible, which means to say there is all in place an infrastructure that's ready to go when you need to fax, that's ve, to telecommunications. just because it sees itself as aelecommunications hub. sein:we have invey in ports-- both seaport and airport facili-- plus telecommunications facilities. and we have also focused on human resource management, in promoting andeveloping management know-w antechnical know-how to support all ese tivies

it's really a combinatio of all these factors that has made singapore so successful. narrator: tiny singapore has made the most ofts location on one of the wos busiest warways. perched on the pacific rim, singapore has attracted investments by multinational corporations and built itself into one of the region's most successful economic tigers. the region of southeast asia and south pacific includes the continent country ofustralia while several of this region's aeconomic tigersc we will see how australia's physical geographyrces, ause has influenced its economy and explore its changing demograics. hangoosene and stngthened its aits asian connecon,pe austraa seeksto make et

of its location along the pacific m. australia is a dry land. two-thirds of the continent is either desert or semidesert. but is vast, arid landscape has loeen the foundation of a. while much of the enviroent is harsh, large areas of the interior are suitable for grazing cattle and sheep. large are(scows mooinge)ior and beneath the ground are coal, iron, gold. trade in minerals and wool have long spurred australia's economy. man: when you've got the quality of resources, the quality of agricultural lands that exist in australia, you are always going to compete well on worlmarkets. and australia's eay economic development in t 20th century you are always going to compete well on worlmarkets. was driveand investmesiveness in ralin thosereas continue,es,

and right through the '8 and '90s and now into the 21st century, australia remains a highly significant world exporter of rural commodities and of minerals. narrator: although australians dependn the ouack, ey live on the coast. omegin of europeaseme, the nature of the landscape had determined how and where the country's people live. the harshrestcts wherenvironme people can live. there is oy a small part of the continent that canupport agriculture and hence can support population. inact, 90% of the population ve wiin 1ilometers very limited--tn,e ss so we have always looked outsi wiin 1ilometers for e salef our commodities. ss we have needed sometimes processing and administration,

and at processing s keace in cities.ctivity soom some physical pressuresands s evolve to a situationhere we ve a small number of large cities tted around the coasine. narrator: to a sithis situation ve a smallcontinues today. cities in the offices of mitsui, people handle the processing and export of iron ore, coal, metals, chemicals, food, natural gas and wood chips and they do it all without setting foot outside of australia's largest city, sydney. inll, three-quarters of the population live in cities, making australia o ofthe ms in the world. ken o'connor has elored the fus of tewarge cities that lie on the edge of the connent. in effec fromhe earliestimes of tewargthe cities wereie oncontrolling the country,.

but the cities themselves depended upon the export markets d coact withies tthstf world.pended sohe cies on theustralian coast were the gatewayities. they provie connection and they provided linkages between those markets and the restf rural australia. narrator: abegan with the wool industry.t within 5years, sheep grazers had opened up huge tracts of land in search of new pastures. the new land was well suited to wool production, and wool was alsoan ide; it was able to withstand the lo journey back to britain's woolen mills. the low cost of production and the high quality of the wool ensured profitability. by the mid-1830s, austraa's economy was well and truly riding on the sheep's back.

as more new land was opened up, wheat farmers followedthe . evenally, newly developed agricultural techniques and machiry reduced the numbers of people needed to grow and harvest whea while sheep grazing was never labor-intensive. paradoxically, there were more jobs generated in the cities than there were in rural locations. paradoxically, there were more there were jobs in offices,ies there were jobs inhiing companies, narrator: thus, rural wealth created and . urbajobs, and the cies developed into business centers. when railways arrived in the 1850s, freight lines began to stretch inland from these port cities,

bringing ever more commodities to the coast foepn and as industry expanded, animmigration was relied on fourbincreasinglyrew as source ofew labor, most new aivals settle in the coastal cities-- where e jobs were. australia's cities were founded on the externaconnections of its rural production to britain, and the delopment of mafacturing and mining. it remains much the same today except that britain is much less important as a destination for australia's products. the japanese trading company mitsui became australia'slaesexporr for australia's products. of minerals and other primary resources in the 1990s.

miui's regional headquarters are in sydney, even though its business involves mines in the isolated areas of the country's west and north and the farm country of the south. sydney is t only convenientlyocated on australia's coast; sydnit is alsoly in the same time zone as most of mitsui's customers. thus, as asian economies boomed in the 1980s and '90s, sydney did, too. there's a lot of development going on there, and for that, they require a lot of resources, most of which can be provided from here in australia. so if anything, i would say that the asian markets are tending to replace our traditional european markets. and being based here in sydney, mitsui has access to an excellent business infrastructure, because sydney is a regional hub where a lot of asian customers come to do their business. narrator: even japan's slowdown

and the asian crisis of the late '90s iled to hurtustralia. well, the australian economic perfoance was remarkablyurable during e asiaeconomic downturn. tby theime ofdof market. the asiaeconomic crisis, there was a lot of confideein. it had good international financial institutions its stock market puwas performing well, its currency was strong, its fiscal balances werekay. so imany respects, itas seen somewhat as a haven forsian money and asian investments. one consequence of that is that it actually received inflows of moneyat wereg one get out of asiaduring that. that it actually received it was also a period of time when australia was cashing in on the pain... itas getting theains from the pain of the '80s well and truly

so the industries that were internationay competitive as aesult of therestcturings well and truly and competing well i busiss and proy seicesaps with european anamerican companies. andthere was alsol i busa property boom going on, and construction industry will always be a strong generator ofmployment and income. so puttiit meant thatfacto e australian economy sort of flowed through-- sonot withousmalamountscto e aof impact,economy but certainly it didt suffer crisis the way that some ofhe asian ecomies did during thaperiod. narrator: australin has en steadily increasing duringfor decades. airlines shied from primarilyerng europe in the 1970s has en steadily increasing duringfor decades. to foring asian cities in the '90s. closer links with iacaalson in telecommunications. among the millions of voice and data transmissions which travel the world fiber-optic network every day, steadily ireasinnumbare exchae

beeen austaand asian ci. the grow comes steadily ireasinnumbare exchae and major corporations, doin order to do business,on. require telecommunications-- good telecommunications-- to support their business activities. narrator: the shift in australia's focus is also reflected in immigration patterns. after the first british settlement morehan 200 years ago, the go russ of the mid- and te-19tcentury saw a lae inuxofor seeke the go russ of the mid- from britain, europe, anamerica and asia. hundreds of thousands folof migrantswar ii, left war-ravaged britain aneurope to settle in ausalian cities. t now, theace of ausalia is c.

thiss ireld, auburb in the outer west of sydney. the 3years ee igti omountries like vietnam,cambo. o'connor: irfielway places tt migran settled in the postw perio in ausalia greeks, italian and yugoslav communities buileir first homes here. today,owever, the community is made up mainly of people from asian countries. this illustrates athe conctions withhe rest of the wor are important in the shaping of australiacies, narrator: even at times, theseages may hachanging demograicse can promote regionalieties. associated with aujust like any other nations, any other communitiesarou. and we've seenn australia ana numberfommunitiesarou. potical backlashes

against,articularly, and we'vasian migration,a fueled perhapsby some t inegional and rul australia.so a pey fromut in e sh somewre might see a city at's prosperous ansimultaneously a city that's receivi migrants who are doing ry well inside that sydney economy ansimultaneously a city so that's d to, ti suppose, a duaenvy,s one based upon income but perhaps anher one sed aroundthnic or racial lines. narrator: but overal australia's growing asian population one based upon income buserves as a dynamic force aroundthnfor creating lines. increased cuural and economicc. the presence of asi australians, chiefly in our cities, is incrsingly valued and prized know, od, dress, music, culture, as well as thbusiness connectns. you know, we have a new generation of asian-australia thbusbusiness people. who are successfully using their own networks

to forge newtre relao. narrator: relationshs th will further strengthen austraa's links to the region. much as australia's physical geography shapes its economy, soill its changing demographics

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