Hong Kong is already one of the world’s most densely populated places. It has recently been announced that over the last year, its population declined by about 1.5 percent. Some commentators have expressed their worries about this change. But in my view, a declining population (within certain limits) is going to be better than a further population increase.
Just what comprises a place’s population is a matter that leads to different viewpoints. Take the rich Gulf state of Kuwait, for example (where I used to live). From its population of 4.2 million, fully 70 percent are expatriates, making the original inhabitants a minority in their own country.
In Dubai, supposedly an Arab emirate, it is difficult to meet an Arab there! Of its 3.5 million population, only some 15 percent are Arab UAE nationals. About a quarter of a million of their many expatriate workers are Chinese, while most of the rest (67 percent) come from India and Pakistan. When the original population numbers — as happened in the USA and Australia — are swamped by new arrivals, it is certain that serious changes need to be faced and overcome.
Bearing in mind that Hong Kong is also one of the least-affordable urban centers for living, the pressure to offer sufficient housing, employment, medical care and social services to all the residents is reduced as the population declines. Famously short of space — especially of available building land — Hong Kong’s great struggles to provide enough decent housing for all its people will become somewhat easier to manage as the population declines.
To his credit, Hong Kong’s new chief executive, John Lee Ka-chiu, has rightly vowed to increase the availability of more living accommodation here tenfold in the near future. The new Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government has correctly identified the longstanding shortage of decent housing in this overcrowded city as a major irritant, and is seeking ways to rapidly alleviate this divisive social shortcoming. Achieving that should also have a positive effect on the birthrate in this aging city. To many young Hong Kong couples, they can’t even dream of gaining what is normal elsewhere — owning an apartment in the city, never mind a house with a garden, in which to raise a family.
But offering incentives to such potential parents to start a family could be an effective way to address the declining population. If newlyweds were to be given priority housing, added to which could be more generous provision of maternity and paternity leave from their busy Hong Kong jobs, the birth rate would likely shoot up.
To work toward the end of those dreadful and degrading subdivided flats and “cage homes” represents a burning issue that our new government should strive toward achieving.
And for all those politically disaffected youths, who after all the protests and violence of recent years decided to leave Hong Kong, they could instead do more for Hong Kong’s future by marrying and starting a family here.
These days, new immigrants to Hong Kong from the Chinese mainland (with one-way permits at the available rate of 150 per day, since the handover) comprise about a seventh of the total Hong Kong population. Many of them are of working age, so represent additional potential members of the Hong Kong workforce, to address any shortages in labor as the general population numbers continue to decline.
And then there is the brain drain: When many of our brightest youngsters gain scholarships to study at overseas universities, not all of them will ever return to Hong Kong to work.
People have different views as to whether such situations are a good or bad thing. In my original home city of London, the original inhabitants nowadays comprise only about 43 percent of the total. That certainly adds to the internationalism of the place, which offers rich cultural diversity.
On the other hand, mass migration over recent years has had a startling effect on some places. The Greek island of Lesvos, for example (where I also used to live), with its own population of only about 100,000, has over recent years received many thousands of international migrants, of which many are from Afghanistan. Clearly, the receiving population has struggled to cope with such numbers.
So, is a continuing reduction in Hong Kong’s local population a threat, or an opportunity? I believe that it is a bit of both. If the present gentle downward trend of population numbers continues, then it will still be a long time before Hong Kong’s “original” residents become outnumbered by newcomers. Thus, the unique traditional Hong Kong ways of life will be preserved for many decades yet. But if these rates of population decline accelerate, then doubtless Hong Kong will change: a change that not everyone would welcome.
The author is a veteran commentator on Hong Kong social issues.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.