Hong Kong’s population reaches 7.58 million – a 0.3%/19,400 increase year on year. After some 30,000 births and 50,000 deaths, that means a net inflow of around 40,000…
The government spokesman said that various measures to attract talent and import labor continued to bring people from around the world to Hong Kong…
Brian Kern has another angle…
…[his estimates] should be regarded as indicative rather comprehensive—an incomplete portrait and an almost-certain undercounting. But the updated numbers do give a fuller picture of emigration patterns and provide more concrete evidence that a substantial exodus of about five percent of Hong Kong’s 2020 population of 7,481,800 has occurred.
Kern says the main destinations for emigrating Hongkongers from 2020-mid-2026 have been: the UK (234,000); Taiwan (59,000); Canada (54,000); and Australia (33,000).
Compared to countries like Syria and Venezuela, which have seen immensely higher levels of emigration, five percent may not seem like so very many, but it’s worth emphasizing that about one in twenty people moving away from a well-developed, economically stable society that is not at war or suffering some other catastrophe is almost unheard of.
…That brings the total number who have left Hong Kong with the intention of settling abroad to 384,269—about 5.1 percent of Hong Kong’s population in 2020, when the exodus began. And that’s including only the four countries for which statistics are most readily available. An educated guess is that the overall number by now most surely exceed 400,000.
From 2020 to 2024, there was an average of about 5,625 Hong Kongers per month emigrating. From 2025 to the middle of 2026, the average has been 2,595. That’s a reduction of more than half, a big decrease, but emigration is still occurring at a pace perhaps somewhat faster than expected, especially considering, as we will see below, that there are backlogs in Australia’s and Canada’s processing of applications for residency through Hong Kong-specific immigration programs.
Anecdotal evidence, falls in junior/secondary school enrolment and Census Dept district population figures from the last few years all suggest that much of the 5% are younger people with kids and/or educated/middle class. In other words, an even larger portion of those groups left. Hence the Hong Kong government’s strenuous efforts to attract more immigrants from the Mainland (or ‘around the world’).
5% is nothing. They are being quickly replaced by more politically palatable mainalnders anyway.
Anecdotally I know of one local politically yellow BNO person who moved to the UK and after two years was disillusioned. Hard to blame him when the west is eating its own tail and has plenty of its own problems. Now he is a Greater Bay Area citizen enjoying cheap eats in Shenzhen. He hated the food and weather in the UK.
There must be a research that can be set up that involves setting up a mic in different areas and use (*whisper*) AI to determine the mix of dialects on the street.
Because my brain tells me in central putonghia accounts for about at least a quarter of Central lunchtime pedestrian chatter. I went to ICC for a mooring meeting recently, and I swear I didn’t hear any Cantonese on the way towards the offices.