Hongkongers are increasingly being recruited by Japanese firms who have traditionally hired their own nationals to work as executives around the world.
Grooming Hong Kong talent fluent in Japanese, English, Putonghua and Cantonese for senior management positions in their overseas offices will also help cut costs and boost staff morale.
This had not always been the case, said Dr Yoshiko Nakano, an associate dean at the University of Hong Kong's faculty of arts for outreach and development.
'Japanese companies tended to see Hong Kong workers - regardless of how proficient in English or Japanese - as second fiddle,' Nakano said. 'They basically were in assistant roles for a very long time, and didn't have much of a chance of being promoted to a higher post.'
In the past, Hong Kong graduates would be hired to work in the local offices only, but now, they were viewed as 'global talent' and sent to Tokyo for management training, she said.
Nakano put the change down firstly to costs. Hiring Hongkongers to run their local offices was cheaper than deploying executives from home. 'Japan has been suffering from a recession since the 1990s, so companies had to find ways to run their offices more effectively,' she said.