1992.

Singapore is rapidly becoming the business heart for the whole of the Southeast Asian continent, and will undoubtedly replace Hong Kong's strategic influence when Hong Kong is returned to China in 1997. Singapore will also gradually replace Hong Kong as the new stable financial platform of this whole region. It is the melting pot of many ethnic groups; many Asian merchants were brought there during the British Colonial period to help build the Empire, and now are part of an enlarged multi ethnic population.The Island of Singapore, which is also the capital, is part of a 224 square mile area off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula. An Independent State since 1965, comprising the main is