Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Kong had increased by 15 percent in 1993: 'mostly they are Canadian'.
Through the 1990s the density of such stories thickened in the Hong Kong
media: 'Emigrants find grass no greener' (Torode 1994); 'Brain gain follows
tremendous brain drain' (Batha 1996); 'Luxury (Vancouver) homes for sale
as migrants return to SAR' (Lyons 1997). Similar accounts, but lamenting
losses rather than celebrating gains, could also be found on the Canadian
West Coast. 'Tycoons go over horizon', announced the
Globe and Mail
as
early as 1993. According to Bob Rennie, Vancouver's most successful condo-
minium sales agent, 'The Hong Kong rich are still buying family homes here.
But they're selling off the other two or three homes or condos they bought for
investments. Then they're going back home to make money' (Cernetig 1993).
A rebound in 1994-96 was followed by a serious outflow of migrants and
capital by 1997: a property report in the
Wall Street Journal
announced that
'For Vancouver the party is over: Hong Kong money is no longer acting as
stimulus' (Carlisle 1997). The fervent denials of the effects of East Asian
investment on the Vancouver housing market circa 1988-90, legitimated by
the Laurier reports, were now long forgotten. 'Hong Kong exodus worries
BC', stated a national affairs journalist for the
Toronto Star
. 'Vancouver real
estate prices drop as immigrants start going home', he was told by the local
real estate industry (Walkom 1997). The overseas asset disclosure legislation
was held by some to be behind the exodus, but so too was growing optimism
for the future of Hong Kong after 1997, until the financial crisis at the end of
that year forced re-patriation of capital and labour across the Pacific. Others
of course had been planning return all along.
Making a number of assumptions,
5
we can develop a rough sense of
departures by comparing actual and predicted Hong Kong and Taiwanese
totals in Canada when immigration flows are added to baseline populations
(Table 8.1). Hong Kong-born immigrants numbered 77,410 in 1986. By
adding 1986-90 immigration landings of 95,350, we would expect a 1991
population of some 173,000, holding other factors constant. The actual
Census enumeration of 152,455 in 1991 indicates a net deficit of over
20,000 or 13 percent of the 1991 total. The 1991-95 computation esti-
mates a deficit of 86,000, 36 percent of the 1996 total population, and the
1996-2000 calculation identifies 72,000 Hong Kongers missing from this
simple accounting system, or 31 percent of the 2001 population. The
Taiwanese trends suggest limited outflow in the late 1980s, but numbers
pick up steadily in the 1990s with the 1996-2000 deficit amounting to
25,000 or 37 percent of the 2001 population. While an admittedly rough
approximation, the figures do give us a sense of the large scale of return
(and onward) migration. In Chapter 4 we detected a substantial cohort of
business immigrants absent from tax filer data; the combination of landing
cards plus census data also reveal significant numbers are missing from
successive enumerations.
