Hong Kong's leader has rolled out a slew of measures to woo global talent but Covid-19 restrictions and the high cost of living are two major hurdles that may prevent them from remaining in the city.
Hwang Eun-hee, an undergraduate from South Korea at the University of Hong Kong, plans to stay in the city to continue her studies after graduation this year, to gain permanent residency after fulfilling the requirement to live here for seven years.
"I don't want to give up my permanent residency opportunity in Hong Kong. I can't speak Cantonese, but I can still speak some Mandarin so I think I can stay here for a few years," said the 22-year-old psychology and biotechnology student.
She will benefit from a scheme that allows non-local graduates to stay in the city for two years instead of one under one of the incentives Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu announced on Wednesday to "trawl the world for talent".
But Hwang, who aspires to become a science teacher, said she planned to return to South Korea once she obtained her residency in Hong Kong, because she felt frustrated with the city's ongoing coronavirus restrictions and high cost of living.
Apart from extending the stay for non-local graduates, Hong Kong will also offer a new two-year visa to individuals who earned no less than HK$2.5 million (US$318,000) annually, and graduates of the world's top 100 universities with at least three years' working experience over the past five years.
The scheme is similar to one unveiled recently by Singapore to lure high-fliers earning at least HK$168,700, or S$30,000, a month, or about HK$2 million annually.
Non-locals who buy first time homes will get a refund on the extra 30% stamp duty paid if they remain in Hong Kong for more than seven years and obtain permanent residence.
Talented immigrants who come to the city will now be allowed to stay for two to three years at a time, instead of only one or two years.
The measures were targeted at stemming a brain drain over the past two years, which saw the local workforce shrink by about 140,000.
The city has also seen a huge drop in the number of work visas being issued since 2020.
According to government statistics, 13,821 visas were issued last year under the general employment policy, compared with 14,617 in 2020. In 2019, a total of 41,793 were approved.
Malin Victor Angell moved to Hong Kong from Norway in 2016 to study marketing at Polytechnic University, attracted by the lower tuition fees compared with the United States and Australia as well as living in an international city.
The 25-year-old marketing executive is weighing up whether to leave the city after obtaining her permanent residency in eight months. The city's coronavirus restrictions took a toll on her finances.
She used up most of her savings to visit her family in Norway during the past two years and has grown weary of being isolated from the rest of the world.
She said the extension of the scheme for non-local graduates might not make much difference because they still needed to live in Hong Kong for another year to obtain residency after completing four years of studies and staying the extra two years granted by the new visa.
But she said she believed Hong Kong still had opportunities for young people like herself because of the city's international companies and community, although she noted it had shrunk over the past two years.
"I still think that the city is a beautiful city. There's always stuff to do, something to explore here. So I think it's a very good city to be living in when you're young," said Angell, who rents a 100 sq ft subdivided flat in Tai Kok Tsui for HK$4,500 a month.
A 36-year-old Canadian expatriate, who asked not to be named, planned to stay in the city for three more years to gain his permanent residency because he believed there were more opportunities to develop his career than in his hometown of Montreal.
But the digital transformation specialist does not plan on buying property in Hong Kong despite the extra stamp duty refund offer.
"Not all expats working here would invest that much money into buying a property. The price is just too high. Those are very committed people who have a plan to stay here for long or have their family on board. I'm clearly not one of them."
Armstrong Lee Hon-cheung, managing director of Worldwide Consulting Group, said the considerations for young talent moving to Hong Kong were upward development opportunities, financial rewards, living conditions and opportunities to go to mainland China.
Pointing to government figures which showed a drop of 50,000 people working in managerial positions from the second quarter of 2019 to the same period this year, Lee said the city also needed experienced professionals to fill a talent shortage.
Lee Quane, Asia regional director at human resources consultancy ECA International, said foreign graduates would stay in the city if there were employment opportunities, meaning companies needed to grow to have a need to recruit them.
He noted that many cities who were competing with Hong Kong had relaxed coronavirus policies.
"A finance graduate or IT graduate will more likely favour a role in Singapore, which has relaxed restrictions in comparison to Hong Kong where mask mandates remain in force with no road map regarding a return to normality," he said.
But Ricky Chiu Yin-to, chairman and chief executive officer of a biotech company, described the new scheme under which a two-year visa would be granted to anyone making at least HK$2.5 million a year as more aggressive than Singapore's approach.
"Allowing those people with a visa without being hired sounds really attractive. The authorities changed their attitude from 'come if you like' to 'come and explore', I think the mentality is more suitable when it comes to luring talent," said Chiu.
