Hong Kong is becoming less of an international city

Vegan restaurants do not usually serve beef. But 2084, a plant-based joint in Hong Kong’s New Territories, hopes doing so will help it attract more customers this year. “All the expats are gone,” says Naz Farah, the owner. “Now a lot of mainland Chinese are coming and they don’t like vegan food.” Across the road a once-popular Western takeaway has already closed. A bustling Chinese restaurant stands in its stead.

The demography of Hong Kong (with a population of 7.5m) is changing as the city tries to reverse a brain drain that has seen around 200,000 workers leave in recent years. In 2023 the government lifted strict pandemic controls and announced a slew of new visa schemes. But this “trawl for talent”, as the city’s chief executive, John Lee, calls it, has netted a rather homogenous catch. The city granted just 8,000 visas to Westerners between January and November 2023. Ten times as many went to people from mainland China.