Letters | Hong Kong talent ‘trawl’: why pay to export graduates to the mainland?

Readers discuss the Greater Bay Area youth employment subsidy scheme, and the growing reach of Nato.

Hong Kong

Letters

Published: 11:30am, 7 Mar 2023

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In the past two years, the local workforce shrank by about 140,000, as strict anti-epidemic measures fuelled an exodus. Now, a new scheme threatens to intensify Hong Kong’s brain drain.

In his policy address last year, Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu vowed to nurture and retain local talent while proactively trawling the world for top professionals. Among other policies, the Top Talent Pass Scheme was launched, and immigration arrangements for non-local graduates were relaxed. The government has repeatedly said attracting talent to the city is at the top of its agenda. Paradoxically, however, we are supporting the departure of home-grown talent from our city for the mainland.

On March 1, the government announced the launch of the regularised Greater Bay Area Youth Employment Scheme. Companies operating in Hong Kong and the mainland cities of the Greater Bay Area are eligible to join the scheme. The government will grant a monthly allowance of HK$10,000 per employee to companies which hire Hong Kong graduates to work in the mainland cities for 18 months and which offer a salary of at least HK$18,000.

I wonder how using public money to push graduates to the mainland can help retain local talent. Moreover, I do not see other Greater Bay Area cities offering similar subsidies to encourage their talent to work in Hong Kong. Aren’t the Greater Bay Area cities supposed to work together?

This scheme aims to broaden Hong Kong graduates’ horizons by offering them opportunities to live and work elsewhere in the Greater Bay Area. Learning more about the Greater Bay Area and our motherland can definitely enhance our youngsters’ competitiveness.

However, for Hong Kong to benefit in the long run, these youngsters should then transfer the knowledge gained from the mainland back to our city.

Without an undertaking that these youngsters will return and work in Hong Kong, we are effectively paying to export talent to the mainland, and funding our own brain drain.

Many who left Hong Kong were discontented with the political situation and feeling hopeless about their future in our city. Those who have decided to stay are likely to be more optimistic, and positive towards the mainland. If we send them to the mainland, however, who will remain in our city and what future do we have?

Christopher Ip, North Point

The West makes rules and breaks promises

The op-ed, “Why China should support Ukraine and condemn Russia’s aggression” (March 3), argues that China should not support Russia in its war with Ukraine, which is heavily armed, financed and supported by the United States and Nato in spite of verbal promises decades ago that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation would limit its expansion.

A simple question: what would be the advice for China if Nato was to start encroaching on China’s borders by taking in members from the countries around it?

Nato is already expanding its reach to the Pacific despite its name. What would justify such a move, other than constraining China’s rise?

The US and its allies are interested only in maintaining their hegemony over the rest of the world. They don’t speak of the “international” order any more, but of “rules-based order” – and guess who makes the rules?

George Forrai, Mid-Levels