Hong Kong's expatriate population has more than doubled over the past decade - due mainly to an influx of domestic helpers from Southeast Asia who have freed more women to enter the workplace, according to analysts.
The numbers of Westerners including Americans, Canadians, Britons and Australians mostly held steady and defied pre-1997 fears of an exodus after the handover, but there has been some decline in their numbers.
Academics say the drop has been due mainly to the economic downturn but also believe the change in sovereignty and political climate has contributed.
The overall large rise in expatriate numbers was attributed to an influx of maids from the Philippines and Indonesia.
The total number of foreign residents rose from 251,200 in 1991 to 526,510 last year, according to Immigration Department statistics.
Much of the increase was recorded during the economic boom years between 1991 and 1997 and was curtailed with the onset of the Asian financial crisis in 1997-98, according to Shen Jianfa, associate professor of geography at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
'The decline in the number of Japanese in Hong Kong has been very dramatic because of the economic problems in Japan,' he said. A number of Japanese financial institutions and companies have closed offices in Hong Kong over the past five years, driving the number of expatriate Japanese down from the peak of 21,800 in 1996 to 14,900 last year.
