IN the past week, I have experienced two of the most phenomenal and fearsome examples of competition I am likely to see for some time.

It started with an afternoon trip to marvel at Dubai's premier hotel, Burg Al Arab.

Unless you can afford to be a resident, you are left to admire the dramatic sail-shaped, seven-star idyll from the balcony of the nearby five-star Jameira Beach that would hold pride of place in any normal nation's portfolio of top hotels.

The North East Chamber of Trade was privileged to be in the United Arab Emirates to sign an important trade agreement with the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and I was travelling with our international trade director Brendan Murphy who had visited the area nearly a decade previous.

"I had expected they would have finished building Dubai by now," he said. And yet, with over a quarter of the world's cranes reputed to be in the region and development stretching for miles into the previously barren desert, there is no sign of let up in the race to build one of the world's most important economic centres.

That is, except, that near neighbour Abu Dhabi, the federal capital of UAE, has designs of its own on becoming a world hub and with 80 per cent of the Emirates' oil resources, it has a healthy bank balance to play with.

Abu Dhabi is learning fast from the diversification that has catapulted Dubai into an economic league that few areas in the world can challenge.

Perhaps the most obvious signal of its intentions is the plan for an £8bn investment to drive passenger numbers at its airport up to 20 million by 2010 and eventually to 50 million.

The second example would have to be the skeleton framework of a new skyscraper on Shanghai's most renowned landscape - the Bund.

The new building is already level with the Shanghai Hyatt, the city's tallest building, and shows no sign of reaching its pinnacle. The aim, we were informed by our interpreter, is to build the tallest building in Asia. It appears that it is not enough merely to build premier office space - the honour goes to the one who can boast the biggest specimen.

The serious point in all of this is that both areas have the economic growth and the financial muscle to tackle these mammoth projects. They also have political systems that are conducive to such major schemes.

We should try and take advantage of the great advances being made in these two centres.

We should have the ambition to compete on the global stage - after all, it is less than a day's travel away.

* James Ramsbotham is the chief executive of the North East Chamber of Commerce