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A telephone survey was conducted from 27th October to 1st November 2016 by Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong to gauge public views on new immigrants from the mainland China. 743 respondents aged 18 or above were successfully interviewed, with a response rate of 39.3%.  The sampling error is + or – 3.60 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

Major findings are summarized as follows:

The survey results showed that the attitudes of local Hong Kongers towards new immigrants from the mainland China were not as negative as popularly portrayed in the media and  research. Although more than one-quarter (27.3%) of the respondents rejected or strongly rejected mainlanders to migrate to Hong Kong, another group of roughly the same size (26.3%) would accept or strongly accept them. The rest (41.7%) were neutral. Two-tenths of the respondents rejected having new immigrants from the mainland as their neighbours, whereas approximately three-tenths (29.2%) were willing to take them as neighbours. The rest (46.0%) were neutral. Roughly a quarter (25.1%) of the respondents would not let their children marry new immigrants. Three-tenths of them (31.0%) on the contrary did not think that was a problem and accepted it. The rest one-third were neutral about it. Respondents were overall even more tolerant of their young children playing with the children of new immigrants. Only 9.0% of the respondents rejected it. More than half (51.3%) of them proactively accepted it. The rest 35.8% were neutral about it.

As for the specific consequences of new immigrants to Hong Kong, although more than half of the respondents (56.7%) acknowledged that new immigrants would strain social welfare programs, only a little more than a quarter (27.9%) believed that they would actually take away jobs from local Hong Kongers. In the meantime, some positive consequences were also recognized. About one-third (34.6% and 33.2% respectively) thought that new immigrants could slow down the ageing population in Hong Kong, and bring more people into the  labour force, thereby enhancing its economic competitiveness. 

Hence, the negative attitudes of local Hong Kongers towards new immigrants from the mainland China largely came from worries about the negative consequences in social and economic resources, but less from discrimination originated from their identity. Nearly half (48.5%) of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that Hong Kongers should not reject new immigrants because we were all Chinese. Only 14.3% disagreed with the statement. In addition, 40.8% of the respondents also believed that Hong Kong media tended to report new immigrants negatively, roughly equal to the size of those who believed that the media stood neutral.

The survey also showed that local Hong Kong people encountered more new immigrants on single entry permit for family reunion than those who were professionals and experts in some fields. Specifically, only 9.1% of the respondents often encountered new immigrants who were professionals, whereas 15.3% of them often encountered those on single entry permit. In contrast, one third of the respondents had not encountered any new immigrants who were professionals, whereas only 14.3% of them had never encountered those on single entry permit.