The English proficiency of Hong Kong people not only lags behind Asian cities such as Singapore and Manila, but is in jeopardy of being overtaken by the mainland's leading cities, according to former security chief Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee.
Mrs Ip said Hong Kong faced a 'monumental challenge' in maintaining its grasp of the English language.
Mrs Ip, who returned from her master's studies at Stanford University in July, said one of her teachers, a linguistics professor, believed that the proportion of Hong Kong's population which was 'truly bilingual' was no more than 2 per cent.
'The English language proficiency of the average man in the street is on the decline,' she said in a speech at the Y's Men's Club of Hong Kong on Thursday.
'One hears complaints about the poor command of English of local graduates from multinationals and our own local employers.'
Mrs Ip said while Hong Kong did not lack older Chinese people who were more comfortable with English than Chinese, examples of young people were 'few and far between'.