Opinion | Hong Kong can live with cosmetic changes. Just don’t change its core

The city’s unique tapestry will remain strong as long as it keeps embracing the attributes that attract talent from the mainland and beyond

Reading Time:3 minutes

Published: 9:30am, 3 Nov 2025

Hong Kong is bouncing back, especially in finance, defying predictions of decline after the 2019 unrest and the 2020 national security law. The Hong Kong stock exchange has surged to the top of this year’s global rankings as the world’s largest initial public offering venue, with over 300 companies queuing up to list their shares.

This resurgence signals resilience, but it also ignites a deeper debate: what kind of Hong Kong is emerging?

Concern has swirled around the recent influx of mainland Chinese and whether their arrival will erode the city’s social fabric, hastening its slide into “just another Chinese city”. These worries surfaced vividly in my conversations with academics who hail from the mainland and foreign journalists revisiting after years away.

Such concerns, while understandable, are misplaced. The catalyst for this unease lies in the government’s post-2020 talent schemes to address the exodus of locals and foreign residents.

Since 2022, the government’s talent schemes have drawn extraordinary interest, as evidenced by the half a million applications, more than 330,000 approvals and over 220,000 arrivals, mostly from the mainland.

Commuters head to work, passing through Hong Kong MTR Station, on February 18. Photo: Jonathan Wong.

The impact is impossible to miss. Stroll through the financial centre of Central, and the crisp cadence of Mandarin arguably rivals Cantonese as the lingua franca, spilling beyond tourist traps into boardrooms and back alleys.

Select Voice

Choose your listening speed

Get through articles 2x faster

1.25x

250 WPM

Slow

Average

Fast

00:0000:00

1.25x

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The city’s unique tapestry will remain strong as long as it keeps embracing the attributes that attract talent from the mainland and beyond

The city’s unique tapestry will remain strong as long as it keeps embracing the attributes that attract talent from the mainland and beyond