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The Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) conducted a telephone survey from 28 September to 9 November 2023 to gauge public views on Hong Kong people’s intention of emigrating overseas or moving to mainland China. The main findings are as follows:

The respondents were asked to rate Hong Kong’s liveability on a scale from 0 (very unliveable) to 100 (very liveable), with 50 indicating a neutral attitude. The current average rating from respondents for Hong Kong’s liveability was 56.5, which was the same as last year.

When asked if they would emigrate overseas if they had the chance, 37.7% of the respondents said yes, which was significantly higher than last year (28.4%), by 9.3 percentage points. Of those who would like to move, 33.2% had prepared to do so (equivalent to 12.3% of the total number of respondents). The percentage of those intending to move who had prepared to do so had not changed significantly from last year. The percentage of the whole sample who had prepared to move increased by 3.1 percentage points compared to last year, but the difference was not statistically significant.

Of those inclined to go, except for the 28.3% who had not yet decided where they would move, the most popular destination was the UK (14.2%), followed by Australia (12.2%), Canada (11.0%) and Taiwan (10.6%).

Aggregated and sorted from the respondents’ open answers, the top four push factors for respondents intending to move were “collapsing liberty, human rights or freedom of expression” (17.7%), “excessive political disputes/unstable politics” (15.1%), “undemocratic political system” (14.2%) and “poor living environment/congested living space” (11.2%). The top four pull factors were “good living environment/ample living space” (21.4%), “more liberty/freedom of expression” (14.4%), “family members’ preference/family reunion/having relatives and friends there/having right of abode” (13.6%) and “low cost of living/low consumer prices” (9.8%).

Among those inclined to move overseas, around half (49.9%) never worried about their life after migration; but 18.4% of the respondents were disturbed about “insufficient income or savings”. “Difficulty in finding a job” (15.9%) and “failure to adapt or integrate into the local society” (14.9%) 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, around three-tenths (28.8%) answered that they were not, and 22.8% said they had “never thought about migration”. However, 14.8% admitted they chose not to migrate because of the fear of “failure to adapt or integrate into the society” and 9.1% replied that they were worried about “difficulty in finding a job”.

More than half of the respondents (58.2%) reckoned that the current “tidal emigration” is a loss to the long-term development of Hong Kong, while a quarter of them (25.6%) did not see any impact. Only less than a tenth (8.9%) had a positive outlook.

The survey also asked about respondents’ intention to move to mainland China. One-fifth (20.3%) of the respondents said they would like to do so, almost double last year (11.3%); the percentage differences between 2023 and 2022 were statistically significant. The top four push factors were “excessive consumer prices” (36.1%), “poor living environment/congested living space” (20.3%), “high-flying housing prices” (13.4%) and “fast-paced/stressful life” (10.6%). The top four pull factors from mainland China were “lower consumer prices” (43.9%), “good living environment/ample living space” (30.6%), “better air quality/less pollution/peacefulness in life” (11.0%) and “family members’ preference/family reunion/having relatives and friends there/having right of abode” (9.0%).

The survey employed a dual-frame sampling design that included both landline and mobile phone numbers. A total of 708 respondents aged 18 or above (landline: 366; mobile: 342) were successfully interviewed,[1] with response rates of 39.7% (landline) and 44.4% (mobile). 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.

[1] The data collection period of the survey was between 28 September and 9 November, before the UK government and the Australian government announced on 4 December and 10 December respectively that they would tighten their immigration policies. Hence, it is uncertain whether policy changes affected respondents’ answers.