Education is the fastest growing industry in Hong Kong

Hong Kong is on course to be the scholastic hub of Asia as the government rolls out new incentives to lure talent to the city on the wave of academic excellence. Yes, education has become the fastest growing industry in Hong Kong.

Last year Chief Executive John Lee announced in his annual policy address the setting up of a committee on Education, Technology and Talent to promote Hong Kong as an international hub for high calibre talent. And he is expected to elaborate on this in his annual address in September. Hong Kong, he said can expect a shortage of about 180,000 workers over the next five years and to develop a quality talent pool, we will implement reforms to different aspects of the talent admission regime.

Hong Kong boasts 54 international schools, providing different non-local curricula, including those of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as the International Baccalaureate program.

Also, world-class institutes such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology, University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, the Asia Society, and HKU-Pasteur Research Pole (France) have established their bases in Hong Kong.

As Hong Kong is an international city, besides preparing local students for the future, it also offers golden opportunities for international students, especially those pursuing a high-tech career with international AI institutions in neighbouring Shenzhen.

Last year, about 73,700 non-local student from more than 100 countries/regions came to study post-secondary programmes in Hong Kong and another 5,100 students entered Hong Kong on exchange programs.

And US President Donald Trump’s savage crackdown on Harvard and other universities is being viewed as an opportunity to lure top students and research talent to the city. Early results are promising. Hong Kong's eight publicly funded universities have received 850 transfer inquiries from students affected by the new US policies and have extended at least 36 formal offers in the past couple of months.

Already Hong Kong is on the road to achieving its goal of being a world tertiary centre as it is the only city with five universities in the world's top 100 ranking and is fourth globally for education competitiveness.

The government is attaching so much importance to the future of Hong Kong this year that it is allocating some 17.5 per cent of its budget, or HK$102.86 billion to education.

To fully leverage the distinctive advantages of the post-secondary education sector in Hong Kong, and to press ahead with the development of Hong Kong as an international education hub, the Government is taking forward a series of measures to attract more outstanding talents to study and conduct research in Hong Kong. These include raising the enrolment ceiling of non-local students for publicly funded post-secondary institutions, increasing the quotas of the Belt and Road Scholarship and the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme, launching the Research Matching Grant Scheme to encourage more organizations to fund institutional research activities, increasing much needed hostel places, temporarily exempting non local postgraduate students and full-time non-local graduate students from restrictions on taking up part-time jobs, allowing non-local students to stay in Hong Kong without conditions for 24 months after graduation, and developing the Northern Metropolis University Town.

These efforts aim to promote the "Study in Hong Kong" brand, enhancing Hong Kong's competitiveness and contributing to national strategies focused on talent cultivation and innovation.

The plan includes the development of post-secondary education in the Northern Metropolis (a large swath of land straddling the boundary between Hong Kong and Shenzhen) and striving to develop the Northern Metropolis University Town where local post-secondary institutions are encouraged to introduce more branded programs, research collaboration and exchange projects with renowned mainland and overseas institutions.

To kickstart the project, the government has already designated about five hectares of land for a self-financing institution to construct its new campus in Hung Shui Kiu, neighbouring Yuen Long. Site formation works are expected to be completed by next year, following which eligible institutions will be invited to submit proposals for development.

Those studying in Hong Kong will gain access to tech hubs, manufacturing bases, and the vast talent networks in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area that will provide graduates with superior career opportunities while accelerating research commercialization.
Associate vice president of Lingnan University and a Hong Kong legislator, Prof. Lau Chi- pang, summed it up nicely: "Once universities produce unicorn startups, their competitiveness will go beyond rankings and solidify their role as true innovation engines."

Mark Pinkstone

** The blog article is the sole responsibility of the author and does not represent the position of our company. **

Hong Kong is facing a dilemma as more locals are spending their dollars outside of the city than what the visitors are bringing in.

Relaxed visa/permit restrictions for locals and foreign residents alike is making it easier for travel to the mainland while inbound traffic crossing the boundary is low budget and spending less on accommodation and food.

Tourism is an important pillar for Hong Kong’s economy. In pre-COVID times, tourism accounted for about four per cent of the territory’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and provided for about six per cent of total employment.

In Hong Kong’s heydays, the city saw about 65 million tourists in 2018, of which 51 million came from the mainland. It was boom time for retailers and restaurants. Long queues of mainland shoppers would line the streets along Canton Road and elsewhere waiting to buy luxury items from Gucci, Prada, Tiffany’s and other high-end stores which set up shop in Hong Kong to tap this lucrative market.

Today many restaurants and retail outlets are closing down, especially in the boundary towns of Sheung Shui and Yuen Long. The market is no longer there, and high rental costs make it almost impossible to survive.

During the 2025/2026 festive season, Hong Kong saw a 25.6 per cent rise in inbound trips on New Year’s Day 2026 (664,338 trips), but this was still countered by a massive 515,954 outbound exits on the same day.

Winston Yeung, chair of the Hong Kong Federation of Restaurants & Related Trades, told local media that business was sluggish during the Christmas holiday, with some restaurant owners calling it “the slowest business at Christmas over the past 10 years.”

Unfortunately, the local market is not propping up the tourism outlets. Instead, the locals are traveling in large numbers to Shenzhen and Macau and other parts of China for day trips or extended holidays, thereby providing a leakage in the local economy.

While Hong Kong received more than an estimated 45 million visitors last year, more than about 100 million departures were recorded by the Immigration Department of locals leaving Hong Kong by plane, train or bus mainly to the mainland (75 per cent), and to other major Asian destinations.

Hong Kong has 320 hotels offering 92,907 rooms, according to the Hong Kong Tourism Board. Despite mainlanders’ choice of more budget accommodation, occupancy rates for the hotel industry remained high at 88 per cent last year. The major hotels are not affected by the change in mainlanders’ preferences as they rely more on the affluent international tourist, visiting Hong Kong for business, conventions or holidays.

Property developer, Caldwell Banker Richard Ellis (CBRE) says Hong Kong’s hospitality market currently presents various investment-ready assets including rare investment opportunities for upper upscale and luxury hotels. These high-end properties are particularly attractive due to their resilience, as they are less reliant on Chinese group travelers and enjoy sustained spending power among affluent individual travelers and international visitors. This makes them attractive for investors seeking stable returns in a dynamic market.

To encourage locals to spend more at home and at the same time provide a bonus for tourists, Hong Kong has organised a series of mega events, many held in the new sports stadium on the site of the old Kai Tak airport in Kowloon. Traditional events in 2026 will include the French May Arts festival in March, Hong Kong Book Fair in July, Hong Kong performing Arts Expo in October, the World Snooker Grand Prix in February, and, of course, the international dragon boat races in June.

Blockbusters will include BlackPink World tour in January, the Hong Kong marathon, which draws in runners and their supports from around the world, and the Hong Kong Tennis Open also in January.

That is good for the inbound and outbound tourists alike. But more needs to be done to tip the tourism scales to a surplus for Hong Kong’s economy to grow at a faster pace. As the saying goes charity starts at home, so it is up to us as local residents who have reaped the benefits of the city to spend more in local restaurants and retail outlets than spend it elsewhere. Support local enterprises. After all, the restaurants in Hong Kong are ranked among the best in the world and are tax free as against a value-added tax applied to restaurants and shops in the mainland.