Monday, July 30, 2007
How Chinese bump up HK numbers
By Sky Canaves and Tom Mitchell in Hong Kong
Published: July 30 2007, FT
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/c219daa0-3eb4-11dc-bfcf-0000779fd2ac.html
Last year, 40 per cent of the 65,626 babies born in Hong Kong were just visiting. They were born to mainland Chinese mothers transiting the territory on tourist visas and hoping to give their children something that many others have endured terrible hardships for or even died trying to obtain – the right of abode in Hong Kong.
Immigrants made Hong Kong. In each of China’s three decades of Maoist isolation, from 1949 to 1979, a million Chinese slipped through the bamboo curtain to begin new lives in the then UK colony, transforming it from a sleepy entrepôt into a regional export power. One-third of Hong Kong’s 7m people were born in China, including Li Ka-shing, the territory’s richest man.
In pictures: Asia immigration
Modern Hong Kong’s borders, by comparison, are well sealed. In 1980, the colony ended its so-called “home base” policy, whereby residency was granted to anyone who evaded Mao’s border guards and made it to Hong Kong’s urban areas – sometimes after swimming through shark-infested waters. In its place, a strict annual quota system was adopted.
Ten years after China resumed sovereignty over the territory, Hong Kong continues to cap immigration from the mainland at just 150 people a day, or 55,000 a year, with most of the quota reserved for the spouses, children and parents of Hong Kong residents.
For Donald Tsang, Hong Kong’s chief executive, that is not enough. He envisions a future in which Hong Kong could ultimately be home to as many as 10m people. “We are immigrating a lot of people but we are not aggressive enough,” Mr Tsang said in a recent interview with the Financial Times. “We have to continue to invest a lot more in education. We will have to attract a lot more people from all walks of life, all nationaities into Hong Kong to strengthen its place as an international financial centre.”
Mainland mothers giving birth in Hong Kong have been pilloried as opportunistic spongers who often skip town without settling medical bills, and in February the government began demanding a $5,000 (€3,650, £2,470) fee from expectant mothers crossing the border.
In fact, about 36 per cent of the 26,132 mainland mothers who delivered their babies in Hong Kong in the first 10 months of last year were married to local residents, reflecting the degree to which Hong Kong men are increasingly seeking brides in China. Of the 50,300 marriages recorded in Hong Kong last year, 21,400 (just over 40 per cent) involved a cross-border spouse. In 1997 there were just 2,600 such cross-border unions.
“The new measures have been able to introduce an orderly influx of women from the mainland,” says Dr Kwok Ka-ki, who represents the medical sector in Hong Kong’s legislature. “But if the woman is the wife of a Hong Kong resident she should be given different treatment. Sometime down the line the mothers will have the right to come to Hong Kong and the children should have the same rights as their Hong Kong fathers.”
Despite the restrictions, Hong Kong needs new babies. With just 9.6 births per 1,000 people, it now has one of the world’s lowest birth rates. Since 1961, the percentage of the population aged 65 or older has doubled every 20 years. By 2031, more than a quarter of the population will be elderly, putting an impossible strain on the public health system.
“Life expectancy in Hong Kong is the highest in the world. In fact we are higher than Japan,” Mr Tsang says. “But our fertility rate is the lowest in the world. That can only be bridged in the short term by immigration and in the longer term by heavy investment in education and training.”
A rapidly ageing population and plummeting birth rates have given rise to ad hoc policy measures to enhance recruitment of what the government terms “high-quality” professionals.
Since visa procedures for qualified mainland professionals were eased in 2003, about 17,000 have arrived in Hong Kong. But that is far fewer than the government’s estimated shortfall of 100,000 university-educated workers – only one in five members of Hong Kong’s workforce has a tertiary education. And for those who do come, culture shock can be an issue.
“When I first came to Hong Kong it was too compact, too crowded and too noisy. I needed time to adjust to the environment and the long working hours,” says William Liu, the mainland-born head of China research at CLSA, a regional investment bank. He has, he says, since come to appreciate Hong Kong’s cosmopolitan qualities.
Another programme introduced last year, the Quality Migrants Scheme, uses a points-based system to encourage highly qualified foreigners to move to the city. Though it received widespread publicity for attracting several Olympic medallists and piano virtuosos from the mainland, in the eight months after the scheme’s launch less than 20 per cent of its annual 1,000-visa quota had been filled.
In part, this is because young, highly educated Chinese face a wealth of options. Professionals fluent in Mandarin Chinese and English are in demand across the region, especially in home-sweet-home China.
Ellen Shen, who is working in GE Capital’s Hong Kong office on a six-month training visa, is a Shanghai native and looks forward to settling back in her hometown. “There’s always the feeling that it’s not your own place, no matter that it’s Hong Kong with so many Chinese around.
Additional reporting by Robin Kwong ¶ 11:48 PM
Published: July 30 2007, FT
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/c219daa0-3eb4-11dc-bfcf-0000779fd2ac.html
Last year, 40 per cent of the 65,626 babies born in Hong Kong were just visiting. They were born to mainland Chinese mothers transiting the territory on tourist visas and hoping to give their children something that many others have endured terrible hardships for or even died trying to obtain – the right of abode in Hong Kong.
Immigrants made Hong Kong. In each of China’s three decades of Maoist isolation, from 1949 to 1979, a million Chinese slipped through the bamboo curtain to begin new lives in the then UK colony, transforming it from a sleepy entrepôt into a regional export power. One-third of Hong Kong’s 7m people were born in China, including Li Ka-shing, the territory’s richest man.
In pictures: Asia immigration
Modern Hong Kong’s borders, by comparison, are well sealed. In 1980, the colony ended its so-called “home base” policy, whereby residency was granted to anyone who evaded Mao’s border guards and made it to Hong Kong’s urban areas – sometimes after swimming through shark-infested waters. In its place, a strict annual quota system was adopted.
Ten years after China resumed sovereignty over the territory, Hong Kong continues to cap immigration from the mainland at just 150 people a day, or 55,000 a year, with most of the quota reserved for the spouses, children and parents of Hong Kong residents.
For Donald Tsang, Hong Kong’s chief executive, that is not enough. He envisions a future in which Hong Kong could ultimately be home to as many as 10m people. “We are immigrating a lot of people but we are not aggressive enough,” Mr Tsang said in a recent interview with the Financial Times. “We have to continue to invest a lot more in education. We will have to attract a lot more people from all walks of life, all nationaities into Hong Kong to strengthen its place as an international financial centre.”
Mainland mothers giving birth in Hong Kong have been pilloried as opportunistic spongers who often skip town without settling medical bills, and in February the government began demanding a $5,000 (€3,650, £2,470) fee from expectant mothers crossing the border.
In fact, about 36 per cent of the 26,132 mainland mothers who delivered their babies in Hong Kong in the first 10 months of last year were married to local residents, reflecting the degree to which Hong Kong men are increasingly seeking brides in China. Of the 50,300 marriages recorded in Hong Kong last year, 21,400 (just over 40 per cent) involved a cross-border spouse. In 1997 there were just 2,600 such cross-border unions.
“The new measures have been able to introduce an orderly influx of women from the mainland,” says Dr Kwok Ka-ki, who represents the medical sector in Hong Kong’s legislature. “But if the woman is the wife of a Hong Kong resident she should be given different treatment. Sometime down the line the mothers will have the right to come to Hong Kong and the children should have the same rights as their Hong Kong fathers.”
Despite the restrictions, Hong Kong needs new babies. With just 9.6 births per 1,000 people, it now has one of the world’s lowest birth rates. Since 1961, the percentage of the population aged 65 or older has doubled every 20 years. By 2031, more than a quarter of the population will be elderly, putting an impossible strain on the public health system.
“Life expectancy in Hong Kong is the highest in the world. In fact we are higher than Japan,” Mr Tsang says. “But our fertility rate is the lowest in the world. That can only be bridged in the short term by immigration and in the longer term by heavy investment in education and training.”
A rapidly ageing population and plummeting birth rates have given rise to ad hoc policy measures to enhance recruitment of what the government terms “high-quality” professionals.
Since visa procedures for qualified mainland professionals were eased in 2003, about 17,000 have arrived in Hong Kong. But that is far fewer than the government’s estimated shortfall of 100,000 university-educated workers – only one in five members of Hong Kong’s workforce has a tertiary education. And for those who do come, culture shock can be an issue.
“When I first came to Hong Kong it was too compact, too crowded and too noisy. I needed time to adjust to the environment and the long working hours,” says William Liu, the mainland-born head of China research at CLSA, a regional investment bank. He has, he says, since come to appreciate Hong Kong’s cosmopolitan qualities.
Another programme introduced last year, the Quality Migrants Scheme, uses a points-based system to encourage highly qualified foreigners to move to the city. Though it received widespread publicity for attracting several Olympic medallists and piano virtuosos from the mainland, in the eight months after the scheme’s launch less than 20 per cent of its annual 1,000-visa quota had been filled.
In part, this is because young, highly educated Chinese face a wealth of options. Professionals fluent in Mandarin Chinese and English are in demand across the region, especially in home-sweet-home China.
Ellen Shen, who is working in GE Capital’s Hong Kong office on a six-month training visa, is a Shanghai native and looks forward to settling back in her hometown. “There’s always the feeling that it’s not your own place, no matter that it’s Hong Kong with so many Chinese around.
Additional reporting by Robin Kwong ¶ 11:48 PM
