Hong Kong needs additional highly skilled immigrants from mainland as city’s population shrinks, think tank urges

Hong Kong should intensify its ­efforts to attract skilled immigrants, especially from the mainland, as the population will shrink by 2039 if immigration policies go unchanged, a high-profile local think tank says.

In its latest report, Our Hong Kong Foundation said local authorities should raise the quota of immigrants to alleviate social pressures caused by an ageing population and a labour shortage.

“Even Donald Trump is not against highly educated immigrants,” Professor Liu Pak-wai of Chinese University’s Institute of Global Economics and Finance, the report’s leading writer, said.

But he emphased the quota should be expanded in phases to allow the city’s infrastructure capacity to catch up. Hong Kong has the second oldest population in Asia after Japan, with 15 per cent of people aged 65 and above, according to a UN report in 2015.

Liu said such a demographic structure would cause “severe social issues” in the future as retirees tended to spend less and consume more public resources, while investment in education and technology would be hit.

The foundation, led by former chief executive Tung Chee-hwa, urged the government to act now, as its survey showed the population would shrink at an increasing rate from 2039 and the labour force would decline from early 2019, based on current policies.