Hong Kong has been suffering a brain drain after years of enduring first anti-democracy crackdown and more recently Zero Covid lunacy. The Telegraph has the story.
The brain drain that Hong Kong is suffering from as tens of thousands of mainly middle-class, educated professionals seek to escape has become so extreme that even Carrie Lam, the city’s Chief Executive was forced to acknowledge it this week.
“It’s an unarguable fact that we have a brain drain and some senior management of some corporates have left Hong Kong,” she said on Wednesday.
Ms. Lam tried to blame it on the city’s coronavirus restrictions, which have isolated the city with 21-day quarantines on arrival, flight bans and shut infected people away in sparse Government facilities.
But the city has seen more and more people leaving ever since the turbulent pro-democracy protests of 2019.
Hong Kong’s population plunged at a record pace in the 12 months that ended in June 2021, officially putting it at about 7.39 million.
Many Hongkongers have come to the U.K., which opened its doors to them following Beijing’s democracy crackdown.
By December 2021, the U.K. had granted 97,000 visas to Hongkongers under the BNO visa scheme it opened to its former colony in response to the unrest. The Government estimates that by 2026 about 320,000 people will take up the visa, which offers a path to permanent British citizenship.
More than 22,500 Hongkongers have also taken up Canadian permanent residency, work or study permits in 2021, up 256% from 2019.
It’s an exit that does not appear to be slowing down – 43,200 left between March 1st and 15th this year, with over 5,000 recorded on March 6th alone – triggering a bout of hand wringing.
“For a city with a rapidly ageing demographic, financial and legal systems built around high-end human capital, and a culture enriched by overseas workers, the brain drain is both detrimental and disappointing,” opined the South China Morning Post recently.
Teachers and other academics have been particularly hard hit. [John] Lau said he knew he had to leave after the arrest in January last year of 47 prominent pro-democracy figures, including several opposition politicians, who were charged with conspiracy to commit subversion.
He said he did not fear an “imminent” threat but thought it was wise to plan ahead as his pro-democracy views were known.
The academic world had already been shaken by suspicions that colleagues with a history of rights activism had mysteriously failed to have their contracts renewed. Many feared they were secretly being observed and monitored in the classroom.
Worth reading in full.
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I find may things to admire about China, Zero Covid strategy NOT among them.
The annual Yulin dog festival is reason enough to stop me admiring anything about China, except the scenery, I suppose.
The wholesale trampling on human rights is enough to discourage me from admiring anything about China. The Yulin dog festival is just one reason among many I could think of.
Wholesale Trampling on Human Rights – see: the West 2020-to present.
Beats blood pudding.
Bummer for the 22,500 who chose Canada.
Best of luck getting zero covid. The human race will die out before that occurs.
That’ll do it. Oops, no it won’t, forgot about the Wuhan bats.
Humanity is already dead, now all we have is govern-mentality
You’re part of the proof that it isn’t.
Well said!
Yes, but if it saves just one life…!
Someone on the Telegraph’s China desk has read the South China Morning Post. But if senior management in the “corporates” are leaving Hong Kong, it won’t be anything to with “democracy”, “monitoring in the classroom” (what, like “Prevent” in Britain?), or Covid policy (how does that affect, say, HSBC?). Uncertainty, yes, that certainly does sound like a big factor, but the article doesn’t talk about that with any real depth. Among other things, that might require looking at what might happen soon to economies based on financial bubbles (or “hubbery”) – and we can’t have that 🙂 Or more generally, what might happen to economies that don’t produce shee-yit.
But I’m all in favour of using the term “brain drain”, even if the first time a British journalist heard the term was when she read it in the SCMP a few days ago.
How about Chris Evans at the Torygraph mentions where British “brains” tend to drain to?
But oh no…that’s not seen as a problem, is it?
Brains have been draining in this country, indeed the world, for ages. Nearly as empty as my deadly diesel guzzling car.
The brain drain really took off here in Britain in the 1950s (when it was widely recognised, and called by that specific term), having started in the 1940s, and the traffic is mostly to ONE country – the United States of America, which sticks its hands in academic circles in almost every country in the world, using the Fulbright Program etc.
Something like half the professoriat at the top universities in the US is from abroad.
I’m the only person I know who uses the term “brain drainer” to refer to an academic who has upped sticks to the USA.
I once had a conversation with a Cambridge academic who referred to one of his colleagues, an Eastern European guy who had emigrated to the US and more recently gone to Saudi, whom he described as having been “bought” by Saudi. I snapped that before then he had been bought by the USA, and he gave me such a dirty look. “Oh…b-b-but, the reasons were different…” Yeah right. The reasons were NOT different. The reasons were the same: career reasons, money. Many of the more ambitious British academics, and also scientists working outside of academia, see the USA basically as “head office”. There’s a taboo in Britain against speaking about US influence here, which includes the brain drain.
Where are British brains going?
Florida and Texas look good at the moment but if it gets really shitty I can’t seem them being safe. One might have thought Russia before we started a war with them. Prior to Ukraine you had a country with lots of space, commodities, reducing debts, positive interest rates, dumping the dollar and buying gold. What’s not to like? Sure it’s corrupt but everyone knows that unlike here where most of the public (sheeple) seem to think our government and institutions are looking after us because they said so!
Where are British brains going?
Not to Australia – and we seriously need some brains down here.
In one of the more stupidly governed states, the immensely resource-rich Western Australia, there is a similar exodus; as leading business executives head off for parts of Australia that are not so insanely wedded to Covid restrictions.
I’m tempted to brain drain. Being married to a British military officer doesn’t help, but I’ve been offered jobs in the US and Switzerland in the past year.
Resisting the corona lunacy is most important decision right now, and on balance I think the U.K. is probably safer than many places at present.
You could just say it’s the CCP’s policies in general, covid amongst them.
Can you tell us where they are going please!
I thought they were all coming to Britain, aren’t they?
If you were moving abroad where would you go? I’d go to America, probably Stephen King country. Last place on earth I’d think of going to is the UK even though I have lived here all my life.
Most American states the ‘least bad’ places to live for two reasons: (1) safe from American bombs and missiles (2) have moved on from Covid hysteria.
You can disappear in the US more easily than other Western nations if you’re prepared to live on the outskirts of society.
I’d be less dismissive of England than you. Better than pretty much anywhere else, including some ‘red’ states in the US. Florida and South Dakota are very much outliers.
My wife’s company employ people globally part time, some in Hong Kong. She’s noticed that some of the addresses of these people have changed from HK to the UK.
I guess London property prices won’t collapse after all!
There was a time when a HK brain drain would have benefited Australia. Things will get better once we can dispose of the so called leaders with the Closed For Business (And Everything Else) mentality.
Are things getting any better in Oz ?
It’s getting better in bits and pieces. South Australia, vax mandates are being lifted for police and emergency services. Here in WA there’s a court case underway challenging the mandates for our police. Details about that here.
With the federal election looming there is a strong undercurrent of support for the freedom friendly minor parties. Overall the various governments are realising that the citizenry are very well aware that the narrative is falling apart in other parts of the world. Also business is getting tired of the whole shitshow – staff refusing jabs, jabbed staff sick, customers staying away.
Is Masky Mark still threatening punishment for “years to come” for those who dare to disobey His Holiness by refusing to bare their arms for his injections?
I haven’t heard much of that lately. Even the ABFuckingC is running stories now about tossing masks. Admittedly, it was April 1, but I suspect there’s only one fool involved here.
It’s slowly falling apart around the High Pontiff’s ears. If I read this tweet correctly, he wants us all to be freaked out because the unvaxxed 1% make up 31% of hospitalisations. Doesn’t that mean, therefore, that vaccinated folks account for 69% of hospitalisations?