Hong Kong became a ghost town during the Easter holiday as residents made a record number of trips out of town — particularly to mainland China — leaving bar strips and shopping hotspots empty.
A total of 9.3 million departures from the territory of 7.3 million people occurred last month. It was the single-highest monthly number since at least 1997, government data showed.
The exodus continued through the four-day Easter holiday that ended on Monday, when total Hong Kong resident departures for Macau and mainland China was 10 percent higher than in 2019, the data showed.
Photo: Bloomberg
This year’s Easter tourist arrivals in Hong Kong from mainland China and Macau plunged 46 percent from the 2019 period.
The great departure underscores the challenges facing the once vibrant financial center that has seen a large swath of its professional workers relocate to other countries, a diminished entertainment sector and soaring prices.
The record outflow was largely the result of people heading across the border to the mainland and Macau, where they can enjoy cheaper and a larger variety of entertainment, food and shopping.
Hong Kong residents last month made 8.3 million departures via border checkpoints — another record since at least 1997 — typically used to travel to the rest of China.
Hong Kong is increasingly losing out to nearby Chinese cities including tech hub Shenzhen and casino town Macau as a high-speed rail and a mega cross-sea bridge make cross-border travel faster and easier than ever before.
The financial center is struggling to maintain its appeal in the face of an economic slowdown and weaker yuan.
High Hong Kong rents and limited entertainment offerings — from restaurants to shopping — have pushed up prices and reduced residents’ choices.
Local bars and restaurants are struggling to stay afloat. Dining-in business over the Easter holiday was estimated to have fallen by as much as 40 percent from a year earlier, Hong Kong Federation of Restaurants and Related Trades president Simon Wong (黃家和) said on a local radio program on Monday.
A Facebook group about Hong Kong stores shutting down has attracted 186,000 members, with users posting photographs of shuttered outlets, empty shops and going-out-of business announcements.
Even Hong Kong’s tycoon-owned supermarket chains, such as CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd’s (長江和記實業) ParknShop and Jardine Matheson Holdings Ltd’s (怡和控股) Wellcome, are facing increasing pressure as they rework strategies to provide people with more choices.
State-owned conglomerates China Resources Holdings Co (華潤集團) and Dah Chong Hong Holdings Ltd (大昌行集團) — the territory’s biggest food and fast-moving consumer goods distributors — have closed dozens of grocery stores in the past few months.
Travel agencies operating tours to the mainland, on the other hand, are experiencing booming business. Over the Easter holiday, the number of Hong Kong residents signing up for tour groups to other Chinese cities rose three-fold from a year earlier, EGL Tours Co (東瀛遊旅行社) executive director Steve Huen (禤國全) said.
RUN IT BACK: A succesful first project working with hyperscalers to design chips encouraged MediaTek to start a second project, aiming to hit stride in 2028 MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it is engaging a second hyperscaler to help design artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators used in data centers following a similar project expected to generate revenue streams soon. The first AI accelerator project is to bring in US$1 billion revenue next year and several billion US dollars more in 2027, MediaTek chief executive officer Rick Tsai (蔡力行) told a virtual investor conference yesterday. The second AI accelerator project is expected to contribute to revenue beginning in 2028, Tsai said. MediaTek yesterday raised its revenue forecast for the global AI accelerator used
TEMPORARY TRUCE: China has made concessions to ease rare earth trade controls, among others, while Washington holds fire on a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods China is effectively suspending implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminating investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced. The White House on Saturday issued a fact sheet outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier in the week by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Under the deal, China is to issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of US end users and their suppliers
Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV’s China unit yesterday said that it had established sufficient inventories of finished goods and works-in-progress, and that its supply chain remained secure and stable after its parent halted wafer supplies. The Dutch company suspended supplies of wafers to its Chinese assembly plant a week ago, calling it “a direct consequence of the local management’s recent failure to comply with the agreed contractual payment terms,” Reuters reported on Friday last week. Its China unit called Nexperia’s suspension “unilateral” and “extremely irresponsible,” adding that the Dutch parent’s claim about contractual payment was “misleading and highly deceptive,” according to a statement
Artificial intelligence (AI) giant Nvidia Corp’s most advanced chips would be reserved for US companies and kept out of China and other countries, US President Donald Trump said. During an interview that aired on Sunday on CBS’ 60 Minutes program and in comments to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said only US customers should have access to the top-end Blackwell chips offered by Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization. “The most advanced, we will not let anybody have them other than the United States,” he told CBS, echoing remarks made earlier to reporters as he returned to Washington
RSS