The Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) conducted a telephone survey from 9 October to 25 October 2024 to gauge public views on Hong Kong people\u2019s intentions of emigrating overseas or moving to mainland China. The major findings include:<\/p>\r\n
The respondents were asked to rate Hong Kong\u2019s liveability on a scale from 0 (very unliveable) to 100 (very liveable), with 50 indicating a neutral attitude. The current average rating for Hong Kong\u2019s liveability was 60.8, which was statistically significantly higher than that of last year (56.5).<\/p>\r\n
When asked if they would emigrate overseas if they had the chance, 34.1% of the respondents said yes, 3.6 percentage points lower than last year (37.7%), but the difference in percentage distribution was not statistically significant. Of those who would like to move, 26.6% had prepared to do so, which was 6.6 percentage points lower than last year (33.2%), but the difference was not statistically significant. The percentage of the whole sample who had prepared to move (9.0%) decreased by 3.3 percentage points compared to last year (12.3%); the difference was also not statistically significant.<\/p>\r\n
Of those inclined to go, apart from the 27.6% who had not yet decided where they would move, the most popular destination was Australia (12.7%), followed by the UK (10.4%), Canada (9.7%) and Taiwan (7.9%).<\/p>\r\n
Aggregated and sorted from the respondents\u2019 open answers, the top four push factors for respondents intending to move were \u201cdismal economic situation\/overcast economic future\u201d (23.8%), \u201cundemocratic political system\u201d (14.9%), \u201cexcessive political disputes\/unstable politics\u201d (14.1%), and \u201cpoor living environment\/congested living space\u201d (12.5%). The top four pull factors were \u201cgood living environment\/ample living space\u201d (25.4%), \u201cmore liberty\/freedom of expression\u201d (15.5%), \u201cfamily members\u2019 preference\/family reunion\/having relatives and friends there\/having the right of abode\u201d (11.4%) and \u201cdemocratic political systems\u201d (10.2%).<\/p>\r\n
Among those inclined to move overseas, 48.3% never worried about their life after migration; however, 21.5% were concerned about \u201cdifficulty in finding a job\u201d. \u201cinsufficient income or savings\u201d (20.5%) and \u201cfailure to adapt or integrate into the local society\u201d (14.0%) were another two common concerns. On the other hand, when respondents who had no plan to move abroad were asked whether the reasons were related to concerns about life after migration, 18.0% answered that they were not and 28.1% said they had \u201cnever thought about migration\u201d. However, 17.9% admitted they chose not to migrate because of the fear of \u201cfailure to adapt or integrate into the society\u201d and 9.1% replied that they were worried about \u201cinsufficient income or savings\u201d.<\/p>\r\n
About three-fifths of the respondents (59.8%) reckoned that the current \u201ctidal emigration\u201d is a loss to the long-term development of Hong Kong, while a fifth of them (20.8%) did not see any impact. Only about a tenth (10.5%) had a positive outlook. There were no statistically significant differences in the percentage distribution between this year\u2019s and last year\u2019s surveys.<\/p>\r\n
The survey also asked about respondents\u2019 intention to move to mainland China. One-fifth (20.7%) of the respondents said they would like to do so, almost the same as last year (20.3%). The top four push factors were \u201cexcessive consumer prices\u201d (46.9%), \u201cpoor living environment\/congested living space\u201d (27.9%), \u201chigh-flying housing prices\u201d (13.8%) and \u201cdismal economic situation\/overcast economic future\u201d (9.0%). The top four pull factors from mainland China were \u201clower consumer prices\u201d (54.8%), \u201cgood living environment\/ample living space\u201d (42.6%), \u201caffordable housing prices\/easier to own a residence\u201d (10.9%) and \u201cstable social order\/good public security\u201d (7.0%).<\/p>\r\n
The survey employed a dual-frame sampling design that included both landline and mobile phone numbers. A total of 711 respondents aged 18 or above (landline: 201; mobile: 510) were successfully interviewed, with a response rate of 56.4% (landline: 45.9%; mobile: 60.6%). The sampling error is estimated at plus or minus 3.68 percentage points at 95% confidence level. Furthermore, the data in this survey was weighted based on the probability of the respondents being selected via dual-frame sampling design and relevant age-sex distribution of the population published by the Census and Statistics Department before analysis.<\/p>","show_as_achievement":false,"achievement_category":[],"show_as_clarification":false,"show_as_announcement":false,"photos":null,"attachments":[{"text":"Tables 1-16 (Chinese version only)","link":"","file":212759}],"video_source":"","video_file":"","add_play_button":false,"video_caption":"","show_migration":false,"original_id":0,"photos_original":null,"attachments_original":null},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cpr.cuhk.edu.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/press\/212760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cpr.cuhk.edu.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/press"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cpr.cuhk.edu.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/press"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.cpr.cuhk.edu.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/press\/212760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":212764,"href":"https:\/\/www.cpr.cuhk.edu.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/press\/212760\/revisions\/212764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cpr.cuhk.edu.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cpr.cuhk.edu.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}