HK’s population shrinks by 89,000 in just 12 months

Kong’s population kept falling at a record pace over the past 12 months, as people left the city in the wake of the pandemic and the national security law that curtailed protest and dissent.

The city saw an outflow of 89,200 residents in the year that ended in June, leaving its population at about 7.39 million, according to government data released Thursday. That maintains the 1.2 percent rate of population decline set at the end of last year, the biggest drop in at least six decades for the city.

“Concern over the national security law has played a major role in driving the latest wave of migration of local residents, especially for young families, as well as expats who chose to leave the city,” said Tommy Wu, lead economist at Oxford Economics in Hong Kong. The pandemic also had a key impact on cross-border movements and migration to Hong Kong, Wu said.

Hong Kong, which swelled in the post-war era amid waves of mass migration from the mainland, has suffered only two bouts of population decline since 1961. Both came amid political unrest and disease, including when the overall population shrank by 0.2 percent amid the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome and protests against an earlier security law in the 2002-03 period.

The recent declines have been sharper, amid a historic recession spurred on by the pandemic and political protests that intensified in June 2019. Last year, China decided to impose its own security law on the former British colony, raising questions about the “one country, two systems” framework that had underpinned its success as a financial center.

Some Hong Kong residents with foreign passports or other connections overseas have sought to relocate recently, especially to the UK, which in January opened a pathway to citizenship for holders of British National (Overseas) travel documents. In the first quarter of this year, the UK received more than 34,000 applications and granted 7,200, according to Home Office data.

Since 2020, Hong Kong also saw deaths outpace births for the first time in the six-decade period, the government data show. The current population figure includes the inflow of 13,900 people holding one-way permits and a net natural decrease of 11,800 people due to births and deaths.