Your Voice: International student’s perspective on working in IT in Hong Kong; forced diversity isn’t inclusion (long letters)

Last spring, I received an email from Stanford’s computer science mailing list regarding an international engineering internship programme offered by the university, which would take place in Hong Kong.

I did not know anything about the city, and I didn’t know anyone there. Nevertheless, I decided to apply and was accepted for a position at Wati, a start-up that assists businesses in reaching their customers through WhatsApp. At the time, I had never travelled alone or worked in an international start-up. After spending the past few months in Hong Kong, I am immensely grateful for the experience and would like to share some of the perspectives I gained during this journey.

Despite having lived in California my entire life, adapting to the work environment in Hong Kong was relatively easy. Like many IT companies in the city, English was the primary working language. Hence, even with my limited Cantonese vocabulary, consisting of “m4 goi1” (thank you) and “naai5 caa4” (milk tea), I could easily communicate with my colleagues.

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The workflow resembled that of my previous software internships in the US, with a ticket system for task organisation and GitHub for codebases and version control. I also received incredible support from my team, who were willing to answer any questions I had.

There were also some interesting differences compared to my previous internships in the US. Previously, I worked with a team of interns on a single project at a medium-sized company. Conversely, at Wati, a smaller start-up, I worked more independently on multiple projects. I collaborated with the Chief Technology Officer and other managers to develop a useful tool for my primary project, building a pipeline to automatically capture data on internal company projects.

Additionally, on my machine learning project, which involved predicting potential customers for Wati, I worked with the sales team to gain insight into the process of identifying promising customer leads. Another difference from my previous internships was that Wati primarily targeted markets outside the US since it relied on WhatsApp, which has a significantly higher user base in other countries. The company also emphasised developing products for the international market more than other companies I have worked for.

I was introduced to the Hong Kong IT industry through Cyberport, which provides mentorship and funding to over 1900 start-ups. I am grateful for the opportunity to connect with other professionals and expand my knowledge of IT.

Annabel Leung Hanxin, 11, German Swiss International School

Diversity in media has been a topic of discussion for years, primarily due to a noticeable lack of it. In fact, the 2023 Hollywood Diversity Report revealed that minorities made up 21.9 per cent of film leads. While diverse representation is very important, what I want to discuss is “forced diversity.”

Forced diversity is when diverse characters are added simply for the sake of inclusion. That isn’t diversity, but rather, false representation, and it removes the significance behind casting diverse actors, making it meaningless.

There have been many instances in which people of colour are cast but have no real character or storyline; they are just used to make it seem like the movie has a diverse cast. For example, the 1999 film She’s All That stars rapper Lil’ Kim and Gabrielle Union, both black women, but they are only there as supporting characters alongside star Rachael Leigh Cook. They are not given real personalities and serve no purpose other than making the movie look more diverse.

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That is not the only problem with forced diversity in Hollywood. Tokenism is when people of colour have roles that fit into a stereotype, leading to the same copy-and-paste character in different pieces of media.

Not only does this generalise minorities as a whole and cause misrepresentation, but it also removes the depth of such characters. Rocky in the Disney Channel Show Shake It Up is a good example of tokenism. Rocky, played by Zendaya, is the main character’s best friend and conforms to racial stereotypes. Tokenism blurs the line between false representation and actual inclusion, and it is important to recognise the difference between them.

There have been many documentaries and films about the oppression of people of colour, such as Lincoln and 12 Years a Slave. While some films accurately portray oppression, others completely miss the point. Sometimes, in a movie about the oppression of people of colour, their white saviours get most of the screen time. Examples include 2009’s The Blind Side, and 2011’s The Help, which focus on white main characters “rescuing” people of colour.

Diversity in media has become a tool to get people into cinemas. Often, people of colour are cast not for their talent or proper representation but as a symbol of “inclusion”, turning it into a trend or something that directors need to tick off their checklist.

The good thing is that some pieces of media are doing this right, such as the 2017 film Coco, which tells the story of a Mexican boy named Miguel while accurately portraying the Dia de los Muertos holiday. But overall, we must learn the difference between real and forced diversity in order to have genuine, accurate portrayals of different cultures, societies and communities in the media.