By Hazel Parry Jul 1, 2007, 12:35 GMT
Hong Kong - It is dusk in Hong Kong and as the sun sets on one of the world's most famous skylines a group of protestors set up camp for the night on the waterfront of Victoria Harbour.
Next to them is a line of tents, a table littered with leaflets and petitions and above them a wall covered with handwritten messages and photographs. One of the messages reads simply: 'Don't destroy our Queen's Pier.'
But destroyed it will be. Last month the Hong Kong government gave the go ahead for its destruction as part of huge land reclamation project and in doing so sealed the fate of one of Hong Kong's most symbolic colonial structures.
The pier, named after Queen Victoria, was completed in 1925 to serve as the ceremonial landing place for the British Royal Family and governors of Hong Kong. Queen Elizabeth II landed there in May 1975, as did Prince Charles and his wife Princess Diana in November 1989.
But it is not the first, nor likely to be the last, colonial relic to disappear since Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region of China on July 1, 1997. The Queen's head on stamps has long gone. Prince of Wales Barracks in Wan Chai was renamed Central Barracks in 2001 and the old Royal Mail letter boxes bearing the royal insignia ER are now few and far between.
The British are disappearing too. Recent figures gleaned from the arrivals and departure figures of the Immigration Department show the number of Western expatriates in the city of 6.9 million has dropped from 106,740 in 2001 to 71,150 in 2006. The fall in British expatriates is particularly steep, dropping from 13,490 in 2005 to 11,420 last year.
Guy Day, a Briton who has lived and worked in the recruitment business in Hong Kong since 1996, has witnessed the decline first hand.
'The numbers tend to go through cycles in line with the economic cycles Hong Kong has experienced. But overall if you were to compare the number of expatriates now to pre-handover, it is still significantly lower,' said Day, the Asian managing director for recruitment company Ambition.
Changes in immigration rules which came with the handover are no doubt behind some of that decline. The days of Britons - or the FILTH (failed in London try Hong Kong) as they were termed - turning up visa-free and looking for work are gone. But industry observers say other factors are at play.
One view is that despite everything Hong Kong has to offer in terms of a big city - the nightlife, the diversity of culture, the shopping and lifestyle - it is struggling to compete with rival Singapore which consistently scores higher in surveys on the quality of life it offers expatriates. Pollution too is becoming an important factor.
A survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong late last year claimed that four out of five of 140 business leaders know of professionals who are thinking of leaving or have already left because of the pollution problem. More than half said they know of people turning down jobs here for the same reason.
'I think Hong Kong is beginning to struggle on the quality of life,' says Ambition's Guy Day. 'What we are seeing quite a lot of is people having a greater interest in Singapore and I think the pollution thing is certainly factoring into the equation.
'The diversity that Hong Kong offers foreigners is enormous and if you were single you'll probably choose Hong Kong because there is more going on.
'But an executive with a family is probably going to choose Singapore ahead of Hong Kong. Certainly your money goes further in Singapore in terms of property and it offers a much more outdoor lifestyle.'
There is also the financial consideration, says Day. Hong Kong still boasts a low tax rate at 15 per cent, but the currency is pegged to the struggling US dollar, which means an annual salary of a million dollars Hong Kong has lost some of its lure, being worth almost 50 per cent less than a decade ago.
Yet despite the noticeable decline in expatriates, the number of foreign companies with a presence in Hong Kong remains high, with the British Chamber of Commerce claiming a membership at an all-time high.
This is backed up by an annual survey by the Census and Statistics Department which claims the number of foreign companies with regional offices and headquarters in Hong Kong has increased from 3,237 in 2001 to 3,845 last year. The number of UK companies accounted for 337 of the total last year, compared to 253 in 2001.
According to Christopher Hammerbeck, executive director of the British Chamber of Trade, the real reason behind the fall in numbers of expatriates is not pollution or Hong Kong losing its attractiveness.
'I don't think it's a pull-out. I think we have to recognise that more companies are localising,' said Hammerbeck. 'This reflects a growing maturity in Hong Kong as a business centre in the fact that there are more people around here able and capable of filling senior and middle executive roles,' he says.
'My sense is that more people are staying longer and becoming permanent residents of Hong Kong.'
But that's not the sense of one British expatriate who in preparing to leave Hong Kong after six years, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa: 'I feel we are not quite as welcome here as we used to be.'
It's a sentiment also most probably echoed by the British diplomats who - like the old Queen's Pier is no longer needed in Hong Kong - were told there was no role for them in the upcoming 10th anniversary celebrations of Hong Kong reverting back to China.
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