Opinion | Young Hongkongers are anxious, unhappy and leaving. What can Hong Kong do?
David S. Lee says even bright young people in Hong Kong are not confident they will lead better lives than their parents. The authorities and businesses have to realise they have a moral duty to everyone in the community
The bustle of activity that signals the start of a semester naturally turns my thoughts towards my students, widely considered among Hong Kong’s best and brightest. They are young people who tick the right boxes and have gained coveted spots at a select university.
The intense competition for job opportunities with fading appeal, the resignation at perhaps never being able to buy a home in Hong Kong, the obstacles to social mobility: they are all realities confronting and frustrating many students.
Last year, a student described in an essay how the pressure, and the failure, to buy a home in Hong Kong caused his parents’ marriage to break up and his family to fall apart. Reading this student’s essay was the saddest day of my teaching life, not only because I felt his pain, but also because I knew his experience was a microcosm of life in Hong Kong. Stress and anxiety about an uncertain future pervade the minds of many of Hong Kong’s young adults.
In class, I frequently ask: “Do you feel you will live a better life than your parents?” The students are free to define “better”, yet rarely do half of them answer in the affirmative. Interestingly, when I ask the same question in class in mainland China, the responses are fairly consistent with those of my students in Hong Kong. However, if my students’ parents had been asked the same question, they would probably have overwhelmingly agreed that they would live better lives than their parents.