How ethnically diverse can a “Chinese City” be? The case of Hong Kong

Abstract

Racial-ethnic segregation in Chinese cities is not a commonly investigated topic, as race and ethnicity are usually not a significant issue in the relatively homogeneous city population. The situation in Hong Kong, as a Special Administrative Region under China, is somewhat unique, given its British colonial history, a political and economic system different from the rest of the country, and as a major international financial center. The city’s changing racial-ethnic mix has not been studied recently from a geographical perspective. Of particular interest is whether the sizes and distributions of foreign populations have changed since its return to China. Ethnic Chinese account for over 90 percent of Hong Kong’s population, but the Chinese population is not necessarily homogeneous, as the number of new Mainland immigrants has reached a significant proportion. Using census data in 2001 and 2011, this article provides an assessment of the changing distributions of and spatial relationships among major population groups, foreign (British, Filipinos, and Indonesians) and domestic, over the 10-year period after it was reverted back to China. Based on citizenship, the British continued their moderately segregated patterns, and many Filipinos seemed to follow the British closely. Indonesians were widely scattered as they were hired mostly by Chinese households. New Mainland immigrants tended to concentrate in selected districts that have been popular immigrant districts for several decades. Although the British and new Mainland immigrants have become more integrated with Hong Kong residents, we conclude that the assimilation patterns in Hong Kong deviate from the typical models of residential assimilation developed for North American cities.