By: Tim Hamlett
I first met Ken (a pseudonym) some 20 years in the past, when he was a scholar and I used to be nonetheless a full-time professor. Music introduced us collectively. We traveled with the band to gigs and competitions outdoors Hong Kong. I performed at his marriage ceremony.
In the meantime, he graduated and secured a slot within the officer coaching entry to one of many Hong Kong authorities’s uniformed departments. He turned an official and married a equally lucky girl who was a police officer. They’ve two kids. It appeared Ken was residing the Hong Kong dream: a safe authorities job – the iron rice bowl – with beneficiant fringe advantages, for significant work. Final yr, he shocked his buddies by saying that the couple had been each resigning and transferring to the UK. They left in November.
This has turn into an on a regular basis story in Hong Kong as Nationwide Safety laws handed final yr has made it clear that the territory is not any place for these missing the required enthusiasm for pro-China patriotism and regimentation. Final yr, the federal government admitted that the inhabitants was shrinking at a charge of about 90,000 a yr. In response to this knowledge, an official launch mentioned that “the figures shouldn’t be interpreted as an rising pattern of individuals transferring abroad.” Unofficial calculations put the variety of folks leaving for good at about 1,000 a day, partly off-set by new arrivals, returnees, and so on.
And there have been loads of different figures pointing in the identical course. In August final yr, the Hospital Authority mentioned its workforce had shrunk by 4.9 % of docs and 6.7 % for nurses. The College Principals’ affiliation launched a survey on the finish of November revealing that 1,000 academics had stop the occupation within the final yr. It additionally reported a leap within the variety of principals retiring early.
Happily, maybe, this exodus was accompanied by a drastic drop within the variety of college students. The variety of Major One courses dropped by 64 when the brand new faculty yr began. Some colleges had misplaced 15 % of their pupils over the summer season break. Schooling consultants, used to foraging for locations in most popular colleges, reported that such colleges had been calling them with affords of vacancies.
The emigration pattern is especially marked amongst households with younger kids. Mother and father with no political pursuits may abdomen the revamped election system which guidelines out of competition anybody not trusted by Beijing’s native Liaison Workplace. They’re postpone by the federal government’s ongoing schooling “reforms,” meant to instil patriotism and love of legislation and order.
What this implies in apply is obligatory flag-raising ceremonies with foot drill – even in kindergartens – frequent enjoying of the nationwide anthem, and classes in any respect ranges within the delights of the brand new nationwide safety legislation. The previous Liberal Research topic, devoted to fostering unbiased thought, has been renamed “civic schooling” and modified accordingly. Mother and father accustomed to the much less beautiful components of the Chinese language Communist Get together’s historical past concern their kids might be brainwashed.
Most observers really feel that the migration wave has not but peaked. In response to repression in Hong Kong, the British authorities unveiled a scheme for migrants to maneuver to the UK and keep for 5 years with a path to citizenship. This extends to anybody born underneath British colonial rule, which may cowl greater than 3 million Hongkongers born earlier than 1997. Some British MPs want to prolong it to kids fearing political persecution.
Canada and Australia have tweaked their immigration guidelines to make it simpler for Hongkongers to maneuver. Taiwan can be a well-liked vacation spot.
How a lot mobility is being depressed by Covid restrictions is one other query. The Hong Kong Free Press lately reported that the drastic cutback in worldwide flights was making it troublesome to move household pets to migration nations. Some households chartered non-public jets at a value of HK$150,000 in order that they may journey with their four-legged buddies.
Nonetheless, in the interim, Hong Kong has been comparatively free from each irksome restrictions and rampant infections. If these subside in different places or arrive in Hong Kong, some calculations will definitely change.
What this all means for the longer term relies on who you discuss to. Formally, there is no such thing as a downside, and if individuals are emigrating they’ll come again after they uncover how horrible different nations are. Hong Kong’s Chief Government Carrie Lam mentioned that she “didn’t need the federal government to be asking residents to remain within the metropolis,” a prudent line since so lots of the authorities’s main figures have household connections in fascinating immigration locations, together with Mrs Lam herself.
Extra surreptitiously, pro-government politicians say that the exodus is a welcome clear-out of malcontents and troublemakers, who can simply get replaced. The opposite view was expressed by a South China Morning Submit columnist who lamented that “the flower of Hong Kong” had been leaving. They’re presumably taking a great deal of cash with them, though estimates fluctuate broadly. Withdrawals from the federal government’s obligatory saving scheme on the bottom of everlasting departure shot up from a typical quarterly determine of about HK$1 billion to HK$2.6 billion within the third quarter of final yr.
This can be an underestimate. There have been stories final yr that emigrants by means of the UK authorities’s scheme had been having issue extracting their cash.
A direct prospect is probably a dearth of individuals with notably cellular {qualifications}. Together with faculty principals, academics, docs and nurses there are additionally complaints of shortages of airline pilots and bankers.
A extra necessary query, maybe, is what are the prospects for many who go. Hong Kong’s pro-government media have run a pleasant line in horror tales in regards to the local weather, racism and financial decay of western nations.
Western media have been fairly up-beat in regards to the newest migration expertise. The newly arrived Hongkonger tends to be an informed, work-experienced, family-oriented particular person with life like expectations and the snug thought that no matter ails his new house at the least it has freedom. Anybody who owned a flat in Hong Kong earlier than he left additionally has – due to the territory’s astronomical property costs – a helpful nest-egg.
Shifting is probably extra traumatic for the youngsters, instantly minimize off from relations, buddies and classmates. Mother and father can solely do their greatest. As one father put it, explaining why he had paid by means of the nostril to move the household’s aged guinea pig to their new house, “You do not need them to begin heart-broken.”
Tim Hamlett has contributed to, or labored for, most of Hong Kong’s English-language media retailers. In 1988, he turned a full-time journalism trainer. He formally retired 9 years in the past.