Thousands of Exodus Residents from Hong Kong, What’s Up?

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – As many as thousands of citizens and expatriates flocking to leave Hong Kong. This was done not because of war, but because of the Covid-19 policy in China’s special area which does not support the climate of community activity.

In the report CNBC International, Hong Kong lost about 93,000 residents in 2020, followed by another 23,000 in 2021. For this year, the number is likely to grow.

“In recent years people have thought of leaving, but in the last six months there has been a massive exodus,” said Pei C, a Hong Kong resident.

One of the important points of the Covid-19 policy that most residents did not accept was the policy that separated Covid-positive children from their parents earlier this year.

Pei adds that 60%-70% of his friends have left in the last six to 12 months. This figure includes individuals who have businesses and families in Hong Kong as well as those who have been strongly committed to living in the past.

“A lot of parents are, understandably, terrified, so they book themselves the first flight,” he said.

In this exodus, most of the city’s residents went to Singapore. The CEO of relocation company Silk Relo, Kay Kutt, said people were attracted to the ease of doing business, family friendliness, tax incentives and Singapore’s open borders.

In fact, he also mentioned that the number of consumers asking to move to Singapore reached a record high in the last 40 years. He admitted that his company had reached its maximum service capacity.

“We can’t keep up with capacity. We don’t have enough people to serve what’s going on in the market,” he said.

Apart from Singapore, some Hong Kong residents also moved to the countries of origin of expatriates who were previously in their city. The destination countries are the United States (US), England, Australia, and other European countries.

Not only to Singapore and Western countries, Kutt said there were also many companies and residents moving to Japan, South Korea, Thailand and Dubai.

“We see companies choosing Tokyo,” he said, pointing out that previously Tokyo was only a place for companies that wanted to access the Japanese market.

[Gambas:Video CNBC]