why is Dubai developing so fast? and what is the reason it developed so fast?
Answers
Explanation:
Dubai is one of the fastest growing cities in the world. Contrary to popular belief, Dubai has close to no oil. Though the UAE has the 6th largest oil reserves in the world, it is almost entirely concentrated in one emirate, Abu Dhabi. Hence the growth that Dubai is witnessing today has very little to do with petro-dollars. Abu Dhabi, on the other hand, has used petro-dollars to fund its rapid development and still has enough reserves to support further groundbreaking growth and investments for a long time.
Dubai's growth has, for the last few years, been massively driven by real estate growth. Dubai has all the superlative buildings in the world, from the tallest building, most luxurious hotel, tallest hotel, largest islands, largest airport, etc. Dubai as a city had 25% of all heavy construction equipment in the world till the 2008 recession! A well publicized (and highly exaggerated by the Western world to cover their trillion dollar deficits) event, the default of payments by DPWorld, led to a sea change in the real estate scene in Dubai. Since foreign investments dwindled due to the massive bad press generated, many other real estate developers were forced to delay projects and this led to a domino effect of defaults. Further, given Dubai's tiny population, it was impossible to sustain the real estate sector with local demand. However today the real estate sector, though nowhere near its glory days, is fast recovering.
Besides real estate, which still occupies a quarter of Dubai's economy, trade and finance are the major sectors contributing to the economy. Though tourism does generate a lot of goodwill for the city, possibly contributing to other sectors, tourism as such has a small contribution to the city's economy. Possibly Dubai's most resilient sector, trade, has contributed massively to Dubai's success over the last century or so. From a small trading village, Dubai has come a long way to become one of the most important ports (sea and air) in the world. Almost everything that crosses from the West to Asia, and vice versa, goes via a Dubai port.
Now coming to the question of UAE vs China, I think it would be very unfair to compare a small country of 8 million people (4 million of which came after 2005) with the largest country in the world. A comparison of Dubai vs Singapore or Hong Kong would be fairer, given the city-state structure of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. However that said, a major reason that growth of the country as a whole isn't as high as these two cities has a lot to do with the unity of the nation. The 7 emirates of UAE were all distinct states till 1971 & hence even today in almost all non-political matters the 7 emirates are independent of each other.