Is the welcome for foreigners in Hong Kong starting to wear thin?

A loosening of the mainland’s permanent residency system to attract more overseas talent would seem to point to a foreigner-friendly environment. Last year, 1,576 foreigners were given the equivalent of green cards,163 per cent more than in 2015. But as promising as the rise may be, it has to be remembered that China has a population of 1.35 billion.

Encouraging words to talented foreigners also do not sit easily beside measures clearly aimed at limiting outside influences. The “great firewall” of censorship blocks large chunks of the internet and – on paper at least – only 34 foreign movies can be imported each year. There are tight restrictions on music and books, and academics are urged to make less use of imported textbooks to stem infiltration of “Western values”.

It is part of Xi’s ideological campaign to protect the “political, legal and moral bottom line”. But it seems to be about more than ideology and keeping the Communist Party’s hold on power; foreign firms operating on the mainland see what is happening in terms of protectionism.

But while Hong Kong doesn’t look down on foreign companies or their products and keeps the most open of minds about outsiders, our non-Chinese judges are seen by some as not being so necessary. The mouth-frothing from across the border during the annual sessions of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and the National People’s Congress against the supposedly slow pace of localisation of judges has won support from Hongkongers eager to show their worth to Beijing. It has to be wondered how long it will take for such sentiments to extend to others in society, such as teachers and academics.