As more residents leave Hong Kong, experts worry about a brain drain

For the Cheung family, life in British Columbia is sheer bliss compared to Hong Kong. There's the fresh air and wide expanses. Best of all is the schooling system, says 41-year-old Mrs Cheung, who resettled in Vancouver, Canada with her husband and daughter in 2010.

The move has transformed their 13-year-old daughter, Cheung says. "She is much happier here. She suffered a lot of stress studying in Hong Kong. But [in Vancouver] there's no homework, as everything is done in class. She gets to enjoy real extra-curricular activities; she swims and goes to the Girl Scouts after school. It's real playtime."

Cheung's daughter had been doing well at St Francis' Canossian School in Wan Chai, but Cheung says her success came with considerable sacrifice.

"I wasn't sure whether she could really learn anything from the spoon-feeding style of education in Hong Kong. But in the government school in Canada, she only gets several assignments for the whole semester, so there is time to do research and explore."

The ebbs and flows of population movement are part of the rhythm of Hong Kong, and in the globalised world, our city of migrants has become even more susceptible to such fluctuations.

Figures released in August by the Census and Statistics Department show that 4,000 more people left Hong Kong between mid-2012 and mid-2013, than settled in the city. Most of the departures seem to have been made in the first half of 2013; according to the Security Bureau about 3,900 Hongkongers emigrated in the first six months, up from 3,600 people in the same period last year.

Four thousand isn't a large figure. But as observers note, there have been just eight times in the past 50 years with a net outflow of people (see chart).