In Hong Kong, expats leaving the city now far outnumber those arriving. Singapore remains at the top of their favorite destinations, but according to the survey of the South China Morning Post, some also choose to fly to Australia, Canada or the UK.
Borders closed to travelers and mandatory three-week quarantine for residents returning from abroad: these measures, already adopted in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, are far from being felt as positive signals by expatriates settled in Hong Kong, where the number of final departures now exceeds that of arrivals, report it South China Morning Post.
At Asian Tigers, a relocation company, over the past eighteen months the number of customers leaving Hong Kong is three times higher than that of new arrivals. Rob Chipman, its director, explains:
The pleasure of living in Hong Kong was largely due to the total freedom to come and go: going on vacation, returning home, visiting family, going on business trips. The three-week quarantine really tipped the scales.”
Hong Kong and Singapore: two strategies in the face of Covid
The mover Allied reports figures that go in the same direction: customers who left Hong Kong in 2021 were almost twice as many as in 2019. Simultaneously, the company recorded a 43% drop in the number of people moving to Hong Kong.
By contrast, the number of ex-Hong Kong residents moving to Singapore is said to have nearly doubled compared to the pre-pandemic period. A phenomenon that South China Morning Post puts into account the different strategies adopted by the two cities in the face of Covid:
Like mainland China, Hong Kong has a zero-tolerance policy while the Singapore government, believing that it is not possible to escape the virus indefinitely, has decided to learn to live with it. Therefore, the city-state has a looser border policy. Vaccinated travelers from the United States, Great Britain or South Korea are no longer subject to quarantines – a decision welcomed by the business world.”
Threats to Hong Kong’s attractiveness
Chua Hak Bin, an economist who works for the Malaysian banking and financial group Maybank, is not surprised that regional business centers are benefiting from the exodus of expatriates from Hong Kong. But he points out that in the case of Singapore visa restrictions might be an obstacle. While many professionals in the legal and banking sectors are tempted to settle in Singapore, businesses in the city-state are under strong political pressure to give priority to local professionals.
A fact that is probably not unrelated to the fact that many expatriates from Hong Kong opt for other destinations. John Hu of John Hu Migration Consulting, which specializes in processing business visas for countries including the United States, Canada and Australia, saw a 30% increase in applications in 2021. Currently, the firm processes 20 to 50 requests per month.
John Hu’s clients are almost all entrepreneurs or professionals between the ages of 40 and 50. Recent political developments in Hong Kong – most recently the closure of two pro-democracy media outlets – confirm business concerns regarding Hong Kong’s attractiveness, he said.
For economist Chua Hak Bin, the exodus of expatriates is a very worrying sign for the future:
If expatriates no longer feel the same desire to live and work there, Hong Kong risks losing some of its uniqueness and diversity. If companies lose this mix of different nationalities and talents, the city will look more and more like any other Chinese city and lose its status as a global business hub. .”
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