Good English is Hong Kong’s passport back to the world community

With the right messaging, the government can encourage better English with a sense of inclusivity and integration – without neglecting Mandarin or Cantonese culture
As a financial city, Hong Kong must embrace English if it wants to become China’s most potent ambassador

Vijay Verghese

Published: 8:15am, 15 Dec 2022

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It is an odd reflection of our times that while several Hong Kong universities are rated highly on global lists, English proficiency in the city is generally seen as steadily dropping.

Hong Kong has five institutions in the top 100 on the 2023 QS World University rankings (Singapore has two). The city also has top-100 placings in other major surveys. This was highlighted by Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu in his inaugural policy address, where he focused on “unleashing the potential of students” and attracting fresh talent.

But something is awry. Education First’s 2022 English Proficiency Index – based on the Standard English test results of 2.1 million adults from 111 countries and regions – ranks Hong Kong at just 31st place. Singapore is No 2. Hong Kong may not appear too bad, with Switzerland (29) and Italy (32) for company. Yet in 2011, Hong Kong was ranked 12th of 44 places surveyed. In 2012, it was 25th of 54.

This world city banks on its international competency founded on English, the lingua franca of global commerce. Emerging from the Covid-19 silo, Hong Kong’s multinationals and small and medium-sized enterprises in need of multilingual talent are scraping the barrel. Bright students are emigrating. For many businesses, declining human capital is an existential problem.

Whither English? The abrupt and poorly managed switch to Cantonese mother tongue instruction in secondary schools in 1998 was an own goal. Schools had to adapt to “biliteracy and trilingualism”. The intent, sensibly, was to promote fluency in English and Chinese, with conversational ability in English, Cantonese and Mandarin.

But the policy lacked clarity and there was huge variance in its adoption. Whereas pre-1997, about 90 per cent of secondary schools taught most subjects in English, by 2019, just 30 per cent used English as the medium of instruction.

Hong Kong has a long colonial history. Yet, it has motored on with Cantonese. Many from Guangdong escaped here to avoid painful cataclysms as a new Communist China took shape. This reinforced cultural conformity. Ranks closed further when social upheavals spilled over the border, encouraging a siege mentality.

English teacher Ginny Schiefer teaching a class at St Teresa’s School in Stanley on October 14, 1977. Photo: Sunny Lee

Times have changed. Attitudes have not. Therein lies the rub. Part of the population has embraced all things Chinese while the rest, shaken by the protest fallout, is raising the drawbridge.

It is telling that Hong Kong students abroad often opt for Cantonese-language associations, insulated from the host country culture, simply because of reticence when it comes to speaking English. A higher secondary school survey last year revealed that 65 per cent of students thought the English they were taught lacked real-life application.

English proficiency and teaching should be encouraged while promoting Mandarin and protecting Cantonese culture. There is no contradiction here. This would help stretch intellectual horizons and offer a broader understanding.

It is time for Hong Kong to fully embrace multilingualism. This is the norm in much of Europe. Belgium has three official languages, Switzerland four. India has a bewildering 121 languages, 22 of these official, and thousands of dialects, while Singapore has four official languages.

The Hong Kong government can revisit this issue with clear resolve and the right messaging to encourage not just language competence but a sense of inclusivity and integration. The city must come together and heal to make the most of its prodigious talent.

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To be sure, English has been under pressure with the shredding of the globalist fabric and the emergence of nationalist leaders demanding a return to the mother tongue.

Following the Hong Kong protests, the United States again became the Svengali for any apportioning of blame, from the city’s malcontents to those deemed less than patriotic. Yet, American and British universities remain in great demand, and rightly so. Language is not an issue of kowtowing to a particular country but of amassing knowledge.

China showed how. As the young communist country grappled with reconstruction, it was apparent that much technical research was bypassing it, as material was unavailable in Chinese. In 1978, this prompted Deng Xiaoping to encourage a long march of students to foreign universities. The success of that knowledge transfer is keenly evident today in China’s economic heft.

Hong Kong must now find direction and purpose. Ironically, English is its passport back to the world community, where it can also become China’s most potent ambassador.

Vijay Verghese is a long-time Hong Kong-based journalist and columnist