Bhutan prays it can be India's Hong Kong

The Himalayan kingdom seeks to reincarnate as a financial centre.

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King Jigme of Bhutan recalls that when he was studying in America, his classmates would scoff in disbelief when he told them there were tigers and elephants in his Himalayan homeland. Like many foreigners, they thought of it as a place of snow-clad peaks and alpine meadows. Even those who had visited were unlikely to have strayed to the subtropical lowlands that border north-east India.

Now, 25 years later, King Jigme is on a fresh mission to enlighten the world about this southern sliver of his realm. And this time, it is not just about the wildlife. In December, he unveiled plans for a new city there that would ultimately cover 1,000 sq km, making it bigger than Singapore. Powered mostly by hydro-energy, it is designed to house a million people, including digital nomads, Buddhist pilgrims, crypto entrepreneurs and wealthy expatriates. Bhutan's current population is 780,000.

King Jigme is not the only world leader with the city-building bug. Think of Saudi Arabia's Neom development or Indonesia's future capital, Nusantara. But Bhutan's project, Gelephu Mindfulness City (GMC), stands out in three ways that could help it to avoid the Ozymandian fate of many such grandiose schemes.