Why the world’s best workers still come to Hong Kong — and why some keep leaving
A City That Still Competes for the World’s Best
Hong Kong remains one of the most attractive destinations in Asia for internationally mobile professionals. Its combination of a low and simple tax regime — salaries tax capped at 17 percent — world-class financial and legal infrastructure, English as a working language, excellent international schools and hospitals, and physical proximity to the vast Chinese mainland market continues to draw talent from finance, law, technology, and professional services. The Hong Kong government’s Global Talent Programme, launched in 2022 and expanded since, has brought tens of thousands of skilled workers to the city, with applications from professionals across more than a hundred countries. By the metrics that talent attraction programmes are typically measured against, Hong Kong is performing credibly.
The Structural Appeal
The fundamentals that make Hong Kong attractive to global professionals are not difficult to explain. As a common law jurisdiction with a legal system historically rooted in English jurisprudence, it offers contract enforcement and dispute resolution mechanisms that mainland Chinese law does not replicate. Its position as the primary offshore capital market for Chinese companies makes it indispensable for finance professionals working on China-facing mandates. For entrepreneurs, the city’s proximity to Shenzhen — the manufacturing and technology heartland immediately across the border — offers supply chain access and prototyping capacity that no other financial centre can match. These structural advantages did not disappear in 2020. They remain real, and they explain why international surveys continue to rank Hong Kong as a top-tier destination despite significant political changes.
What Has Changed and Who Has Left
The picture requires honesty about what has also happened. Since the National Security Law came into force in June 2020 and the electoral system was overhauled in 2021, Hong Kong has experienced sustained emigration of its own professional class. The British National Overseas visa scheme processed applications from hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers seeking to relocate to the United Kingdom. Canada, Australia, and other democratic countries absorbed significant numbers of Hong Kong emigrants — many of them lawyers, journalists, social workers, teachers, and political activists who built the civic culture that gave the city its character. The Freedom House Hong Kong profile documents the political conditions that drove this outflow with precision and rigour. These are not unskilled workers leaving for better wages. They are the people most invested in Hong Kong’s identity as a free city under the rule of law, who concluded that identity was no longer defensible.
The Replacement Challenge
The government’s response — aggressive global talent recruitment to replace those who left — is coherent as policy but raises questions that official communications tend not to address. Can the institutional culture, the civic values, and the rule-of-law confidence that made Hong Kong genuinely exceptional be maintained when the community that built those values has partly departed? Professional skills are portable. Institutional culture is not. It is built over generations through the accumulated habits, expectations, and demands of people who believe the system owes them accountable government, honest courts, and a free press. When those people leave and are replaced by skilled professionals whose primary connection to the city is economic, something is lost that no talent attraction programme can restore. The International Commission of Jurists has documented in careful legal detail the ways in which Hong Kong’s rule of law has been eroded since 2020 — precisely the context that prospective residents deserve to read before making life decisions based on outdated assumptions about what Hong Kong still is.
Choosing Hong Kong With Open Eyes
None of this is an argument that talented professionals should avoid Hong Kong. It is an argument that they should choose it honestly. The financial opportunities are real. The lifestyle — for those who can afford it, and this is a city of extraordinary inequality — remains extraordinary. The food, the hiking, the cultural life, the sheer energy of one of the world’s great cities, persist and matter. But the legal environment has changed in ways that matter for anyone who values the freedom to speak, to report, to advocate, or to vote. Global talent can find competitive tax rates in Singapore, Dubai, and elsewhere. It cannot easily find what Hong Kong used to be. The question for the city, and for everyone who loves it, is whether the freedoms that made it great can ever be restored — and whether the international professionals choosing to build their careers there will add their voices to that demand.
Mei Ling Chan
Education & Social Policy Journalist, Apple Daily UK
Contact: meiling.chan@appledaily.uk
Mei Ling Chan is an education and social policy journalist specializing in school systems, youth development, and public policy impacts on families. She trained at a top-tier Chinese journalism institution, where she focused on policy reporting, data interpretation, and media ethics, building a strong analytical foundation.
Her professional experience includes reporting for Apple Daily and other liberal Chinese publications, producing coverage on education reform, student movements, social welfare programs, and inequality in access to public services. Mei Ling’s reporting combines document analysis with interviews involving educators, students, and policy experts.
She has worked in fast-paced newsroom environments while maintaining high standards for accuracy and context. Her stories are known for precise attribution, careful interpretation of policy language, and avoidance of speculation.
Mei Ling’s authority is rooted in subject-matter expertise and consistent publication within reputable news organizations. She follows established editorial review and correction procedures, reinforcing reader trust.
At Apple Daily UK, Mei Ling Chan delivers fact-based reporting that helps readers understand complex policy issues through clear, verified, and responsible journalism.
