TheEconomistAugust 1st 2020 331I
n September 2018Matthew Torne, a Brit-
ish filmmaker, released the third in his
trilogy of documentaries about Hong Kong.
“Last Exit To Kai Tak” is a bittersweet chron-
icle of five Hong Kongers who, after the dis-
appointment of the pro-democracy “um-
brella” protests of 2014, grapple with what
is left for them in the city, as its liberties are
chipped away by an increasingly bellicose
Chinese government. The burning ques-
tion, as one character puts it, is this: “revo-
lution or emigration?”
For many people, that question has now
been answered. At 11pm on June 30th, one
hour before the 23rd anniversary of Hong
Kong’s return to Chinese rule, the Commu-
nist Party imposed a national-security law
designed to squash Hong Kong into sub-
mission. The city’s reputation as a haven of
free speech within China disappeared
overnight, along with the “one country,
two systems” framework set up in 1997. In
2014 Communist Party leaders waited for
the protesters to lose steam. But by 2020they had run out of patience.
Several people were arrested for violat-
ing the new law on July 1st, but most have
been dissuaded from taking to the streets.
Then, on July 29th, four students aged 16 to
21 were detained for “inciting secession”
on social media. They included Tony
Chung, former leader of Studentlocalism, a
protest group that had called for Hong
Kong’s independence from China. On July
30th Hong Kong’s government said it had
disqualified 12 pro-democracy figures from
standing in elections in September for the
Legislative Council (Legco), Hong Kong’s
(until now) semi-democratic parliament.
As the euphoria of the protests has dissi-
pated and the new reality has sunk in, the
focus for many Hong Kongers has shifted—just as it did a generation before, as the
handover loomed—to emigration.
It is not just the crackdown that is push-
ing people to leave. Hong Kong was already
one of the world’s most expensive places to
live. It ranked above New York, Tokyo and
London in the latest cost of living survey
carried out by the Economist Intelligence
Unit, a sister company of The Economist.
Then came the covid-19 pandemic. The
economy shrank by 9% year-on-year in the
second quarter of 2020. On July 29th Carrie
Lam, the territory’s chief executive, warned
the city was “on the verge of a large-scale
community outbreak”. (Rumours spread
that Legco elections might be postponed as
a result.) A poll by the Chinese University
of Hong Kong conducted in May, after Chi-
na announced its intention to impose the
law, found that half of 15- to 24-year-olds
were considering leaving. “In Hong Kong
people learn to survive, not live,” says Thea,
a 23-year-old who plans to emigrate. “Even
for a middle-class person like me, having
my own flat is like an impossible mission.”
Would-be émigrés have many destina-
tions to choose from. Canada is home to
more Hong Kong-born people than any
other oecdcountry. More than 275,000 of
them emigrated there between 1989 and- A residence permit can be secured by
an investment of just C$150,000 ($112,000),
a sum easily covered by the sale of a pad in
Hong Kong, where the average house price
Voting with their feetOne country, two passports
As student leaders are detained, many residents are considering emigrationChina
34 A translegalvictory
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