GLOBAL BUSINESS SAVVY: EXPLORING HONG KONG'S DEMOGRAPHY
I plan to apply to study abroad this winter in Dubai and Hong Kong. To better prepare for this trip and to build my global intellectual capital, business savvy by "learning the relevant demographic data in countries of interest", I decided to conduct some research on Hong Kong. To contextualize the findings, I compared the data to that of mainland China. The following findings are from CIA World Factbook.
In 1997, Hong Kong became the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. As an autonomous territory, Hong Kong operates on the "one country, two systems" model with its own independent economic system.
Hong Kong's population of 7,141,106 is quite ethnically homogenous: 93.1% of the population is ethnically Chinese, 1.9% is Indonesian, 1.9% is Filipino, and the remaining 3% belong to other ethnic groups. 90% of the population practices an "ecletic mixture of local religions", while 10% are Christians. Cantonese is the official language, spoken by 89.5% of the population. The population pyramid is very typical, with nearly half of the population falling between the ages of 25-54 years and the rest being spread fairly evenly across the other age brackets.
Hong Kong's population growth rate is .38%, not too far from mainland China's .45%. However, Hong Kong has a positive net migration rate (1.68 migrants/1,000 compared to mainland China's -.44 migrants/1,000). Further, I found interesting the differences in the population sex ratio. Hong Kong's total population has .87 males/female, whereas China's population has 1.06 males/female.
The Takeaways:
Conducting this research educated me on the demographics of Hong Kong, a city state I will soon visit. Further, this experience highlighted some of the key differences between China and Hong Kong. Having become curious about the sources of these differences, I look forward to further learning about their underlying causes during my visit in January.
Furthermore, completing this exercise helped me to contextualize Hong Kong amongst the world's other states. The World Factbook ranks the nation in question on each statistic. For example, Hong Kong's net migration rate of 1.68 migrants/1,000 is the 55th highest amongst the world's 190+ states. Not only does this allow me to understand that Hong Kong is near the upper quartile in terms of migration, but it also gives some frame of reference for what migration rates are like around the world.
Finally, this experience solidified how to read demographic trend data. Analyzing the CIA World Factbook data required me to refresh myself on how population related statistics like dependency ratios, birth rates, and unemployment rates are calculated. This is a key skill for reporting data and identifying the trends like those in the McKinsey Global Forces Report. For example, the report attributes the in part to increased labor force and declining dependency ratio. In order to observe this trend, one must know how to calculate and interpret these population statistics. This exercise has reinforced that skill for me.
