Emigration is therefore a problem and the Hong Kong Government are taking it seriously. It is not, however, a disaster as some press reports have made out. Hong Kong is producing more professional, managerial and skilled people than it is losing through emigration. Ironically one of the main reasons why the present level of emigration is hurting
Hong Kong at all is the very success of the Hong Kong economy, which has produced a labour shortage and an insatiable demand for skilled workers and good managers.
The most pressing problem facing Hong Kong now is nothing to do with 1997 at all: the Vietnamese boat people. Some 140,000 of these people have come to Hong Kong since 1975. Over 100,000 have been resettled abroad, and Hong
Kong itself has settled 14,000 (no mean achievement for a tiny territory which has also had to absorb huge numbers of immigrants from China for years). The number of boat people in Hong Kong diminished to a low of 7,600 in May 1987, but
in the past two years the trend has reversed. Arrivals have
increased, while the rate of resettlement has fallen.
18,000 boat people arrived in Hong Kong in 1988;
resettlement amounted to only 2,700. The great majority of those arriving are not genuine refugees, but economic migrants. As I write this article (in early May) a new surge of arrivals is hitting Hong Kong some 2,000 in the
d
past week. Hong Kong has coped superbly well with this enormous burden, but there is now mounting anxiety in the territory.
Britain is working hard to help Hong Kong with this
appalling problem. The key to it lies in Vietnam. Vietnam
must prevent people leaving the country illegally; and it
must take back those who have left (except the few who are genuine refugees). The British Government have been talking to the Vietnamese for some months on both counts, and some
progress has been made (one small group of volunteers was returned to Vietnam in March under UNHCR supervision) though nothing like enough.
My colleague, Lord Glenarthur,