allowance. If, for example, you’re
offered a salary of HK$1,800,000 per
year, you might receive an additional
HK$150,000 per month, along with the
freedom to choose how you’ll allocate
it to housing, schooling and utilities
payments.
That said, organisations understand
housing and schooling fees in Hong
Kong are huge factors in deciding
whether to accept a position here. But
it has also been suggested that media
and industry reports exaggerate rental
prices in Hong Kong by only factoring
apartments in Central. Regardless,
to help facilitate relocating an expat,
companies still often need to offer
a housing incentive to negate the
employee’s worries.
Not only is the number of high-
paying packages dropping, but the types
of expatriate packages in Hong Kong
are becoming more diverse, with more
expatriates receiving compensation
packages close to that of local colleagues.
“Certainly, we are still seeing a
majority of executives from the banks
coming to Hong Kong, but in other
industries we are looking at more
junior placements,” says Yves. “These
days, many [expats who are] moving
to Hong Kong are often single or very
young couples.”
Beyond borders
So if they’re not coming to Hong Kong
in the high numbers of bygone days,
then where else are expats going? The
natural shift for many expats who have
been building businesses in Hong Kong
is often to move to mainland China.
Josh Ho, a financial analyst who has
lived in Hong Kong and Shanghai says,
“Hong Kong is billed as the gateway
to China, but it’s still not ‘real’ China.
Doing business with the major cities,
such as Shanghai and Beijing, is hard.
There is a cultural barrier of sorts. You
might as well just move there.”
Perhaps for the first time there
is a greater shift of expats moving to
other Southeast Asian destinations.
Singapore has long been a key market
for expats to transfer to. Yves from
Santa Fe explains, “Our biggest traffic
line is the Singapore-Hong Kong route.
We have 25 to 30 moves to Singapore
every month, with around 20 coming
back this way. Over the last few years
we’ve seen a number of head offices
move from Hong Kong to Singapore,
but we’ve also seen them move back. It
all depends on how much business they
have in China.”
The hotly contested debate of
“Singapore or Hong Kong?” seems to
shift backwards and forwards as much
as those who move between the two,
but for many expat families with young
children, the lion city currently seems to
be more appealing.
A lot of it has to do with schooling.
Stories of expat families pulling out,
even at the final stages of negotiating
a transfer to Hong Kong, when they
encounter the notoriously difficult school
enrolment system, are not uncommon.
With an educational system that easily
matriculates all your kids into the same
school, and the much-cited cleaner air,
Singapore is an attractive outpost for
those with children.
One such expat is Catherine
Freeman, who moved to Singapore
earlier this year. “I loved Hong Kong
dearly, but when an opportunity [in
Singapore] came up for my husband at
a comparative salary, we knew it was
time to leave,” she says. “I’d put up with
taking our two children to different
schools, both of which were not our first
choice, for long enough. Since we moved
here, I’ve wondered why we didn’t do it
sooner.”
Remote corners
It’s not just the big cities like Singapore,
Shanghai and Tokyo that are drawing
expats. Rather than returning to their
home countries where economies
may still be stagnant, once they feel
ready to move on or an assignment
has ended, many expat families are
looking into other options. Cheap flights
and improved technology are making
it possible to have a great quality of
life in cities once deemed remote or
“hardships”.
