Hong Kong: What's Changed, What Hasn't

British Council
STEPHEN SHAVER / AFP

What's Changed

Emigration

Jittery about political crackdowns and economic slowdown, thousands of Hong Kong residents left town in the years before the handover. According to one estimate, one-twelfth of the population —540,000 people — took flight between 1984 and 1997. That river is showing signs of reversing course: according to one Canadian newspaper, by 2005 a third of the 200,000 people who left Hong Kong for Canada before 1997 had been lured back by the booming economy.

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