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Opinion | In the hunt for global talent, don’t forget Hong Kong’s own overseas students, and local workers

  • Young Hongkongers who study abroad are highly-skilled, bilingual, and possess both local knowledge and international experience, and should not be overlooked
  • It is also important to nurture and retain local people, who, despite all the upheavals, have chosen to stay in the city

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People walk near Tower Bridge in London on February 11. While the UK is a popular destination for Hongkongers wishing to study abroad, the country is now facing a cost-of-living crisis. Photo: EPA-EFE
In his maiden policy address, Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu unveiled ambitious initiatives to “trawl the world for talent”, admitting that Hong Kong’s workforce had contracted by about 140,000 over the past two years.
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The proposed initiatives – setting up an Office for Attracting Strategic Enterprises, creating a Talents Service Unit, and launching a Top Talent Pass Scheme, among others – have been welcomed by some, but there are doubts whether measures such as special visas and stamp duty rebates are adequate to lure foreign professionals.
Disappointingly, the government remains reluctant to acknowledge that Hong Kong’s brain drain is, in part, owing to an emigration wave that dates back to 2019, in addition to the Covid-19 pandemic. Good policies require an objective assessment of the actual situation backed by sound data and research.

With no data collected on residents emigrating from the city (the government census records the number of Hong Kong residents staying in the city for less than one month in a 12-month period, regardless of their reasons), the government lacks key information, such as age or occupation, to provide an accurate picture of the outflow of human talent.

What can be observed is that families who have left the city have created vacuums in professions including medicine, education, engineering and banking, mostly at the middle-ranking level, but also at the senior management level.
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Given that bilingual (Mandarin/Cantonese and English) language proficiency and specialised local training are required or useful for most of these jobs, the question is: is tapping foreign talent the solution to Hong Kong’s immediate manpower shortage?

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