Hong Kong to the UK: now a one-way ticket
What will the influx of citizens from the former colony mean for Britain, asks
A‘We will never be able to go back to Hong Kong, but are proud of it and don’t want to give it a bad name’
sk a thousand people what is the biggest question Britain faces on the subject of immigration, and most would probably cite the trickle of desperate people attempting to enter the country across the Channel in small boats. A lot would talk about the post-Brexit exodus of east Europeans and how difficult that has made getting a builder. It is likely not one would be concerned, pleased, or have any view at all on what could turn out to be the biggest ever immigration to the UK: the potential legal arrival of three to five million Hong Kong Chinese people – 70 per cent of the former colony’s population – as they find life under Beijing rule ever more intolerable.
Indeed, since the Hong Kong British National (Overseas) visa launched a year ago tomorrow, the influx of Hong Kongers has been proceeding apace without anyone seemingly noticing. According to the latest data published by the Home Office in November, the UK received 88,000 applications (some 2,500 a week) and granted 76,000.
Almost all intend to stay; few see any prospect of ever returning to the home they still love. For many, who don’t just dislike their new communist rulers but have already offended them by expressing their views, even to return on holiday would be dangerous.
The new arrivals are predominantly not the wealthy Hong Kongers who have been buying up luxury properties in London and investment properties across the country for years, but what in Hong Kong would be called “grassroots” people and here we would call middle class – corporate and civil service employees, IT specialists, engineers, accountants, business owners and their families.
Educated, motivated, often strongly Christian, with democratic ideals, good English and – importantly – not inconsiderable funds, they share a desire to make a new life and, as all say, “not to be any trouble”.
And these prospective model British citizens are arriving daily in their hundreds, with boxes of possessions, children, grandparents and even pets. One Hong Konger, starting a fairly modest job last month that he had already lined up with a luxury goods company in London, told his new colleagues he had spent £3,000 shipping the family guinea pig in the cargo hold: “You don’t want to upset the kids before they’ve even arrived in the country,” he said.
Having scrutinised the advantages and attractions of hundreds of possible places to live – property prices, school league tables, hospitals and train links – online, from 6,000 miles away, the newcomers are fanning out across the country, some arranging home rentals for a year (rent paid upfront, as they have no credit history) to get a feel for an area and pooling information with people back home on WhatsApp groups. Others are diving straight in and buying newbuilds, which many Chinese people love. Some of the more traditional are said to be nervous of secondhand houses because of concerns about ghosts, or just a dislike of used possessions. Others still are buying two newbuild homes on the same development. Or three. One will typically be for the family, the second for the elderly parents, the third to rent out to provide the basis of an income.
Most buyers pay cash. House prices in Hong Kong, even out in the rural New Territories, are at London levels and selling even a small property can pay for a lot of bricks and mortar in places you might not expect to be on Hong Kong people’s radar, like Warrington (where sales are hitting double figures on one new estate), Ebbsfleet in Kent (ditto) or Okehampton in Cornwall.
There are areas the new Hong Kongers favour, such as Kingston and its surrounds in south-west London, but “Hong Kong buyers are location agnostic,” says James Holmear, sales director of Redrow, one of the many housebuilders assiduously cultivating the burgeoning market. “Most of our houses have a Thirties, arts and crafts design they love, so they’ll say, often on video calls while they’re still in Hong Kong, ‘We want that house.’ We’ll say, ‘Yes, but where would you like it?’ And they’ll reply, ‘Where are you building them?’ And often, when they’ve researched it, for schools in particular, they’ll buy off-plan before they’ve even arrived here. They move very fast.” Redrow has sold nearly 100 new homes to Hong Kongers since July.
When it comes to employment, the newcomers are typically flexible and pragmatic, while focused and ambitious. Two years ago, Mike Hui, 38, was in the thick of the democracy protests in Hong Kong as a photographer with the radical tabloid, Apple News, which the Beijingcontrolled authorities closed down last June. What was happening to his homeland stopped him sleeping and made him cry. “I’m a reporter, but I am a Hong Konger more,” he says.
He and his wife, Ardis, who was a training officer for a restaurant chain, saw the way things were going early and got out with their five-year-old daughter, Ellie, before the newspaper was shut down. They headed for Leeds, popular with Hong Kongers and where Hui has a cousin. They brought just 20 boxes of possessions – as well as a not insignificant £1.2m from the sale of their house in the New Territories.
For now, Hui is delivering meals for a Chinese takeaway, while his wife works in a warehouse. But they have already bought a three-bedroom Redrow semi, which will adjoin a house bought by friends from home. And Hui is already doing freelance photography – as well as thinking of setting up his own Chinese takeaway. Meanwhile, Ellie loves her new school.
The Hui family’s is a classic story of the Hong Kong newcomer, with its themes of foresight, bravery – they had never been to the UK – self-reliance and financial savvy. There is another sub-theme, too; they are vocally grateful to Britain – and specifically to the Conservative government – for letting them take refuge here, and are patriotic towards their new country.
“We will never be able to go back to Hong Kong,” says Michael, a young former democracy campaigner, now living in Kingston, “but we’re still proud of it and we don’t want to give it a bad name.” Previously an event organiser, he quickly trained as a men’s barber when he got to London. He is now planning his own salon – before long, he hopes, a chain of them.
And therein lies one of many peculiar features of this wave of immigration, which could soon make ex-Hong Kongers one of the most sizeable groups to settle in the UK.
Economists have taken note that almost half plan to start their own business – and have the money to do so – that most are aged 30-50, and all are well educated with good English and more than 10 years’ experience in a professional field. Making them a huge asset – especially to a tired old country with 2.5m job vacancies.
Politically, however, it is treading on thin ice to applaud a huge influx of anglophile, entrepreneurial Chinese people, suggesting as it does that other waves of immigration have been less successful for one reason or another. Which would be rather hurtful to millions of already successful, patriotic immigrants and their children born here. So, search for a public figure of Right or Left saying outright that the Hong Kongers are an asset and you will not find much – even though they patently are. Conservatives, additionally, must have realised that three million or so new citizens who are effectively fleeing socialism – and are hugely thankful to British Tories – could be quite helpful at the ballot box in the near future.
Left-wing commentators, meanwhile, have already been growling that ‘the good migrant narrative’ is racist, even if it is celebratory. Academics, similarly, have weighed in against stereotypes of Hong Kongers’ self-reliance and industriousness.
The bald fact is, however, that the ex-Hong Kongers are a very unusual immigrant population. Some have drawn parallels to previous waves of talented, educated settlers whose lives had been made intolerable by hateful dictators, but rose quickly to the top of all walks of British life. Think only of the Jews fleeing Hitler in the 1930s and the Ugandan Asians thrown out by Idi Amin in 1972. But numbers in each case were tiny – there were just 28,000 Ugandan Asian refugees – and both groups arrived in Britain largely penniless. Most now fleeing Hong Kong are bringing their money with them and are, as one technology company boss keen on employing as many as possible said last week, “Plug and play – they are ready to work, and work smartly, from day one. We have been hugely impressed.”
What about the other pervasive stereotype, of genius Hong Kong-born children? A teacher at a small working class primary school in Nottingham which has taken nine refugee pupils – making them the largest minority group on the roll – confirms that it may be exaggerated, but on the right lines.
“Not one of these kids has been a problem for us. There’s no need to support them with additional English. They’re highly motivated. One lad who doesn’t say much in class just aced it and got 40 out of 40 in his Year 5 arithmetic test, and also did amazingly well in English. The teacher was really surprised, but we found that they were way ahead of us at his school in Hong Kong.”
There are a couple of culture shocks, the teacher adds. “They’re masked up all the time, while our Covid measures amount to opening a window.”
To spend any time with the new generation of Hong Kong refugees and see the UK through their enthusiastic, grateful eyes is also rather salutary for any native-born Brit a little jaundiced about today’s UK.
Pastor Johnny Chan, who came to Leeds in 1969 and worked as a dentist, now leads one of the city’s five Chinese Christian churches; his, between the Emmerdale Farm studios and the Headingley cricket ground. Sunday services now attract almost 300 people, including 40 or 50 new immigrant families. “We Chinese think when we go to a new place, we have to respect the people, the traditions and the law of the land,” he says. “And for the new people, freedom, democracy, British culture and the rule of law are wonderful things that they experienced in the past and are now seeing taken away at home.
“Also, they are startled by the courtesy here. We Chinese aren’t as courteous as the British. All our people say they’re made incredibly welcome here. We hear lots of stories about neighbours giving people furniture, of them teaching our people how things work that they’ve never seen before – like central heating.”
Ask about anti-Chinese racism and he laughs. “The answer is really, no. Not a thing. But you know,” he smiles, “we Chinese can be pretty racist ourselves. We are not about to accuse others without getting our own house in order. We’re just incredibly grateful to the British government for allowing potentially three million-plus Hong Kong folks to come here.”
Pastor Chan warns that stories of unhappy Hong Kong immigrants will inevitably come up – but that the British should be a little sceptical about them. “Propaganda is the one thing the Chinese Communist Party is good at,” he says. “When there were stories of empty supermarket shelves and petrol shortages, they made sure the media in Hong Kong went big on it to discourage people from leaving.”
Hong Kongers who are loyal to Beijing are a rarity, but not unknown. Christine Lee, a solicitor in Birmingham and London named earlier this month by MI5 as an agent working covertly for the Chinese government, reportedly came with her parents from Hong Kong to Northern Ireland in 1974.
Such stories are highly anomalous, however. In Mill Hill, north London, Lore Chan and her husband Bernard, also a dentist but no relation of Pastor Johnny in Leeds, are active in helping and encouraging new Hong Kong people to settle through the Chinese church in Brook Green, Hammersmith.
“There’s a lot for the new people to give up,” Mr Chan says, but “they’re very positive. As long as their children settle in school, that’s their priority.” Professionals can struggle a little with having to slip down a rung or two into lower quality jobs. “Others go to great efforts to keep up their status and income. Many work through the night online, doing their Hong Kong job, often in finance or tech, and not telling anyone they’re in the UK.”
“But overall,” his wife says, “the benefit of having been in a British colony helps.” And for many, the lifestyle here is a pleasant surprise. “It’s less crowded, less of a headache, less claustrophobic both physically and mentally, less materialistic. You spend more time with [your] family. They want to leave their past behind and look forward to a new future.
“Some of our younger people, like my sister, who was born here, used to say they felt they were born in the wrong country, because they loved Hong Kong so much. But you don’t hear that any more.”
‘When there were empty shelves and petrol shortages here, [Beijing] made sure the media in Hong Kong went big on it’