I’ve seen a couple of estimates of 300,000 Canadians living in Hong Kong going around (see, for example, Joanna Chiu’s reporting in the Star). So I tried to track down the source, and I’m pretty sure this 2010 survey from the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada is it. Having found it, it’s worth noting that the figure of 295,930, regularly rounded up to 300,000 in coverage, was provided as a conservative estimate based on the study. The high estimate (assuming everyone sharing a household with a Canadian was also Canadian) reaches 542,601 Canadian citizens in Hong Kong. I wanted to run a quickie post, drawing out the exceptionally strong transnational (and post-colonial) ties that characterize the Canadian-Hong Kong relationship. For this I’ll stick with the conservative estimate provided.

To provide context, the population of Canada runs at about 37 million compared to Hong Kong at near 7.5 million, so the ties aren’t entirely balanced. But when we look at transnational ties, we’re mostly talking about the metropoles of Hong Kong (7.5 million), Toronto (5.9 million) and Vancouver (2.5 million), which puts relations on more of an even footing. I’ll come back to that shortly!

One of the cool things from the 2010 survey is that it tells us what province Canadian citizens living in Hong Kong last lived in back in Canada (p.  11). We can multiply these figures by our (conservative) estimate of Canadian citizens living in Hong Kong to get an estimate of how many Canadians with ties to particular provinces live in Hong Kong. Let’s compare these figures to the total number of people born in Hong Kong who live in each of these provinces in Canada, as estimated in the 2016 Census (table 98-400-X2016184). Here’s what we get:

Here we can really see both BC and ON account for the vast majority of ties to Hong Kong. Can we zoom in further to the metropolitan level? We can with the census data, though the survey data from Hong Kong is limited to provinces. To solve this problem, here I’ll just adjust the survey data from Hong Kong by a factor reflecting the census distribution (i.e. what proportion of those born in Hong Kong and residing in each province specifically live in the metro area reported? spoiler: the vast majority)

There you have it! The vast majority of transnational connections to Hong Kong appear to be in Vancouver and Toronto. Vancouver’s ties are well-known. But it’s really striking that adding in Toronto, there’s not much left to account for across the rest of Canada. And worth noting that I’m likely understating these ties, both by looking at the conservative estimate of Canadians living in Hong Kong and by only considering those born in Hong Kong currently residing in Canada. Based on survey results, those born in Hong Kong make up the majority (two-thirds) of Canadian citizens residing in Hong Kong. But half of the remainder were born in Canada (see Chart 2). And here in Canada, resident children of Hong Kong immigrants often also retain vibrant ties to Hong Kong. There are lots of other ways to develop Hong Kong ties too. In 1996, for instance, about one in six Canadian immigrants arriving from Hong Kong were born elsewhere.

Regardless of how we measure ties, it’s clear ties to Hong Kong are important in Vancouver and Toronto. These ties could prove even important in the near future, as lots of Canadians reconsider the viability of Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” status. But even before the current unrest, all the way back in 2010, it appears the majority of Canadians in Hong Kong “sometimes” or “all the time” considered returning to Canada to live, according to that Survey of Canadian Citizens in Hong Kong.

Adding a bit of data from 2016 Census table 98-400-X2016202, we can see the date of arrival of current residents of Canada born in Hong Kong (as well as the immigration class of their arrival back to 1980). Most of the immigration to Canada from Hong Kong unfolded in the run-up to the 1997 handover of the metropolis from British control to Chinese control and concern over how “one country, two systems” in China was going to shake out. For those living and working in Hong Kong now, that concern is back.

p.s. – If your name is Jens & you’re trying to teach me R, please assume I did all of this in R. For everyone else, here’s a messy spreadsheet.