January 8, 2026 · 《Ming Pao》
As the country enters its “15th Five-Year Plan” period, it is time for Hong Kong to consider more forward-looking planning in order to integrate with the national development strategy.
In a previous article, we noted that although Hong Kong’s total population has remained broadly stable, in recent years there has been a phenomenon of large-scale in- and out-migration occurring simultaneously. Because the Census and Statistics Department does not publish gross in- and out-migration figures — only net migration (the difference between inflow and outflow) — the previous article had to draw on a range of administrative statistics to estimate the gross flows. The estimates indicate that in the past two years Hong Kong recorded approximately 450,000 non-local entrants (see table) and 426,000 Hong Kong residents leaving, with the two almost offsetting each other and a net inflow of only 24,000. Although the total population has changed little, its composition (age distribution, skills and income levels, place of residence, and length of stay) has changed significantly due to the large influx of non-local talents, giving rise to a range of policy challenges.1
Table: Inflow of non-local persons to Hong Kong, mid-2023 to mid-2025
| Inflow channel | Persons (10,000s) | Share |
| Seven major talent schemes | 29.00 | 64.4% |
| One-way permit entrants | 7.60 | 16.9% |
| Low-skilled workers | 3.00 | 6.7% |
| Non-local students | 2.70 | 6.0% |
| Foreign domestic helpers | 2.66 | 5.9% |
At the same time, Hong Kong is actively recruiting talents and importing workers. If this momentum continues, as the Chief Executive has said, Hong Kong may not rule out developing into a “10-million-population metropolis” in the future. To accommodate a population of that scale, however, infrastructure, housing, education and other areas all need to be planned in advance; otherwise, conflicts are easily triggered.
This article is divided into two parts, exploring future development scenarios for Hong Kong. The first part assumes that large numbers of non-local talents will continue to arrive but Hong Kong residents will also continue to leave, with the two roughly offsetting each other (as has been the case in the past two years), and analyses the policy challenges that arise when the population total remains relatively stable but its composition undergoes major changes. The second part will assume that the population rapidly expands towards the “10-million-population metropolis” envisioned by the Chief Executive, and examine how urban planning and policy would need to adapt.
1. Unpacking Population Numbers and Structural Change
Although Hong Kong’s population growth has been stable in the past two years, the composition of the population is changing rapidly, giving rise to a range of policy challenges. In the 22 years from the handover to the outbreak of COVID-19 (1997 to 2019), one-way permit holders were by far the largest source of in-migration over the long term, averaging around 48,000 per year and accounting for more than half of all in-migrants.
But the picture in the past two years is entirely different: talents have become the new mainstay, and the share accounted for by one-way permits has dropped sharply. Government figures show that the seven major talent schemes together brought in around 430,000 persons (including dependants). As we have argued elsewhere, the talent schemes may be subject to abuse, with an estimated “abuse rate” potentially as high as 30%; stripping out this 30% “water”, a more reliable estimate is around 290,000, accounting for about 64% of the total 450,000 in-migrants.2 Added to this, the Education Bureau reports that non-local students increased by 27,000, accounting for 6% of total in-migrants. In other words, highly educated talents make up roughly 70% of in-migrants, while the less educated account for only 30% — a picture starkly different from that before 2019. Statistics show that in the past two years, 76,000 new one-way permit holders and 26,600 foreign domestic helpers were added, accounting for 17% and 6% of total in-migrants respectively, with a further reported 30,000 low-skilled imported workers accounting for 7%.
2. Hong Kong’s Population Becoming More Mobile
Increasing numbers of Hong Kong people now live in Hong Kong only on a short-term basis — they form a “mobile population”. Hong Kong residents can be divided into “permanent residents” and “non-permanent residents”. The recent large influx of non-local persons has pushed up the share of non-permanent residents. At the same time, both permanent and non-permanent residents are increasingly not residing in Hong Kong for the whole year; instead, they travel between different places for cross-border work, transnational mobility, or because they hold multiple citizenships. This article refers to such persons as “short-term residents”.
The rising share of “short-term residents” among permanent residents is very evident. Under the population statistics, “mobile residents” are permanent residents who stay in Hong Kong for at least one month but less than three months in a year; those who stay three months or more count as “usually resident” population.3 Between 2019 and 2025, the number of mobile residents rose from 196,000 to 280,000, showing that more and more Hong Kong permanent residents are no longer usually resident in Hong Kong.
There are many reasons for the rise in population mobility. With Mainland–Hong Kong integration, for example, travel between the two places has become increasingly convenient, and more people are choosing to live in the Greater Bay Area. “Cross-border families” are also becoming more common — their family members may be spread simultaneously across Hong Kong, the Mainland and other countries, owning homes or holding passports in multiple places. Globalisation, too, means that more people work in different countries within a single year. In addition, a series of past political events (such as the 1967 riots, the 1997 handover, and the 2019 social unrest) have triggered waves of emigration, sending many Hong Kong people abroad — and many have since returned.
The share of “short-term residents” among non-permanent residents may also be increasing, because a substantial portion of those who come to Hong Kong under the Top Talent Pass Scheme may not stay long-term. However, because the statistical definition of “mobile resident” covers only permanent residents, this situation is not fully reflected in the official data.
In sum, among both permanent and non-permanent residents, an increasing number follow a short-term residence pattern. The high mobility of the population greatly complicates government population projections and adds to planning uncertainty.
3. Implications for Population Policy and Planning
As in- and out-migration scale up in tandem and length of stay becomes more volatile, Hong Kong’s population projections face unprecedented uncertainty. The Government must therefore invest more in population projection work and update projections more frequently to reflect the latest trends. On the socio-economic planning side, the Government also needs to adopt more flexible strategies — adjusting existing plans in line with the latest population changes rather than relying on long-term fixed assumptions.
To this end, population policy must be led at a higher level, with stronger inter-bureau coordination — including keeping abreast of the latest population and mobility data across bureaus, jointly assessing policy impacts, and developing more adaptive planning models. Only through overall coordination and institutionalised cooperation can Hong Kong maintain planning accuracy and reduce the risk of policy mismatches in this new era of high mobility.
4. Implications for Housing Policy
In recent years, the Government’s housing policy has increasingly emphasised rebuilding the “housing ladder”, seeking to help residents “get on board” by widening the home-ownership pathway. In public housing, for example, the supply of subsidised sale flats has increased relative to that of public rental housing — a direction worth affirming in itself — but the main beneficiaries of these measures remain local residents who meet the permanent-residence eligibility criteria.
With the large influx of non-local talents, however, if the Government is to truly respond to changes in population composition, it must place greater weight on the role of the private housing market. On the one hand, the incoming talents are mostly highly educated and relatively well-paid, and they have a real demand for high-quality private housing — not “nano flats”. Yet the latest Long Term Housing Strategy report still adheres to the long-standing 70:30 public-to-private housing supply target. If talents continue to be imported in the future, this structural tilt towards public housing is likely to cause serious shortages of mid- to high-quality private housing in the longer run.
On the other hand, Hong Kong also needs to provide more suitable accommodation for “short-term residents”, such as serviced apartments and student hostels. Such short- and medium-term accommodation arrangements often require coordination with land-use zoning and urban design. The authorities have taken some initial steps in this direction — for example, the latest Long Term Housing Strategy has revised upwards its projection of accommodation demand from non-local students — but overall supply still has considerable room to expand.
At present, high-quality private housing is still mainly concentrated along the Victoria Harbour waterfront. As the Northern Metropolis is intended to develop high-value-added and innovation-and-technology industries in the future, the Government must pay attention to its living environment in order to retain talent. The authorities must plan to build more high-quality private housing in the Northern Metropolis — and at appropriate densities — so as to retain first-class firms and talent, and avoid the imbalance of “industries in the north, but housing still on Hong Kong Island and in Kowloon”.
In sum, beyond continuing to rebuild the housing ladder and expanding the supply of subsidised sale flats, future housing policy must also comprehensively review the public-private split, the structure of the private market, and the planning support for short-term accommodation, if it is to truly adapt to this new round of population flows and structural change.
5. Implications for Education Policy
Education policy is another key area of planning. As more and more high-end talents from overseas and the Mainland come to Hong Kong to work, they and their families have clear educational needs — including more schools offering international curricula and international schools, as well as high-quality primary and secondary schools offering the local HKDSE curriculum.
International school places at the primary and secondary levels are already saturated, and the Government needs to plan more international schools in the Northern Metropolis to meet the educational needs of local students and the families of incoming talents. At present, international school places total only 47,000, with utilisation already at 90%. Location is also a consideration: most quality schools are still concentrated along the Victoria Harbour waterfront. If the Northern Metropolis is to host innovation-and-technology, professional services and other high-value-added industries, the authorities must reserve land and work with school-sponsoring bodies so that, as high-value-added jobs move north, quality education can also move north in step.
Furthermore, on the local-school side, the number of Mainland students enrolled in Hong Kong primary and secondary schools continues to rise, and the student mix in schools is becoming more diverse. This poses new challenges for schools and teachers — including language, curriculum alignment, and cultural adaptation (for example, whether primary-school test papers should permit the use of simplified Chinese characters). Schools clearly need more policy support and professional training resources. This is not only an assessment issue; in a more diverse society it also touches on how to balance learning equity, social integration and cultural inheritance. The issue requires a high-level, long-term and prudent approach, and should not be decided solely on the basis of short-term political mood.
6. Implications for Healthcare Policy
Because new immigrants generally cannot enjoy the heavily subsidised public healthcare services before they obtain permanent resident status, their demand for local healthcare differs from that of local residents. On the one hand, some new immigrants may have greater demand for private hospitals and clinics — especially in the Northern Metropolis, where the future population is expected to grow substantially and where there may be considerable demand for private hospitals. On the other hand, because medical costs on the Mainland are relatively low, many new immigrants will very likely continue to rely on Mainland medical services, especially those in Greater Bay Area cities, to meet their day-to-day and most of their medical needs; it is only after they obtain permanent resident status that they will have a stronger incentive to use Hong Kong’s public healthcare. At the same time, more and more local residents are choosing to seek medical care north of the border in order to reduce costs or shorten waiting times. This cross-border use of healthcare resources makes the projection and planning of Hong Kong’s healthcare demand highly uncertain.
In any case, as the Northern Metropolis population is projected to grow to around 1.5 million in the future, brand-new medical facilities are essential — even setting aside the uncertainties of migration. The Government has already announced plans to build a research-oriented hospital in the Northern Metropolis, next to the campus of the HKUST Medical School, signalling a new direction that combines medical services and research.
With local and Mainland medical services increasingly becoming close substitutes, the actual demand that incoming talents will place on Hong Kong’s healthcare system still requires more detailed study before a more accurate assessment can be made of how hospital beds, manpower establishment, and medical infrastructure will need to be adjusted in the future.
Rethinking Planning and Policy in a New Era of Deep Integration
As Hong Kong and the Mainland become deeply integrated at the economic and daily-life levels, Hong Kong has entered a new era of development. The large and continuing cross-border in- and out-migration is putting the traditional planning model — which relies on assumptions of a stable population — to a severe test: whether in housing, education, healthcare, or broader socio-economic policy, there is far greater uncertainty. These changes cannot be handled by any single bureau alone; they require a high-level policy platform to coordinate, drawing on the expertise and data of government, business and academia, and starting from population composition and cross-border mobility, to review the existing planning framework and policy tools.
Only on the basis of such cross-sector collaboration can Hong Kong, in this new round of regional integration and global competition, both seize opportunities and reduce mismatches and waste — laying down a more resilient and forward-looking blueprint for urban development for the next generation.
(Translation supported by AI)
Related articles:
- Is a 10-Million Greater Bay Area Metropolis Feasible for Hong Kong? by Yun-wing Sung, Alex Ngau
- Hong Kong has absorbed hundreds of thousands of talents — why is the total population shrinking? by Yun-wing Sung
