11 Mar The Pearl Report: International School

tingtingting

Securing a place at UWCSEA at the moment is not that hard. Two of my colleagues (Canadian and South African) left HK for SG last year. Both of them had no difficulty in getting their kids in.  (By the way, neither of them have any connection with the school.  No big donation, etc.)

minirat

caa 發表於 13-3-13 23:49
回復 Shrimpiggy 的帖子

I meant it. What do u mean by "less competitive expats deemed to come"? Do u ...

I completely understand where Shrimpiggy is coming from.  The expats I know love HK more than Singapore.  So I guess it's very much up to individuals.  The international schools in Singapore are equally expensive than those in HK.

minirat

shadeslayer 發表於 13-3-14 08:40
However, Singaporeans are not allowed to go to an IS. HK people should considered yourselves lucky.



...

Being a Singaporean myself, I don't know any friends who have ever thought of sending their kids to IS in Singapore.  Maybe there are Singaporeans who have thought of thate, but I am sure they are the minority.  We are confident of our own local education system in general.

shadeslayer

We are going off track here but I will just say it is not about how good the education system is, it is about having the choice.  It is like saying our Chief Executive is doing great and we don't need democracy.

21Ckid

回復 FattyDaddy 的帖子

Are you familiar with the expat community, or you just reading the barking by people like Amcham chairman and those relocation consultants, who are really only bargaining.

Very few expats like Singapore, and no offence, many singaporeans like to live here. And if you ever think it is difficult for them to find IS in HK, look into Beijing and Shanghai, BIS (Beijing International School) is the HK equivalent of HKIS, and is extremely hard to get in, the parents almost need to be in the list of who's who, so to speak, and far more expensive.

Honestly, Hk has been very generous to expats, positive discrimination, if i may add.

Shrimpiggy

I love the term positive discrimination.

FattyDaddy

21Ckid 發表於 13-3-14 10:34
回復 FattyDaddy 的帖子

Are you familiar with the expat community ...

If you based your impression on the ex-pats you personally know in Hongkong, then of course it is likely that most of them would tell you they prefer Hongkong to other places, after all, they wouldn't be here or would be gone already if they don't.

I have worked in quite a few multi-national organizations in Hongkong, and I have noticed the number of ex-pats employees had been steadily decreasing since the 90's, no I don't personally know each one of these people, I just know there are less of them now. How do I know that? I see less foreign faces in my work, I see less foreign names in the company phone book.

If you talk about positive discrimination, then you would absolutely LOVE to be a white male in ShangHai.

21Ckid

回復 FattyDaddy 的帖子

I had lived a number of years abroad, i do know a bit more than you assume.

The down days for expats are the 90's. Many are coming back in the last few years, you are seeing more of them, in particular in finance. I have no idea which companies you work for.

White males love all cities outside the caucasian world. Name any cities they are privileged.

FattyDaddy

21Ckid 發表於 13-3-14 12:55
回復 FattyDaddy 的帖子

The down days for expats are the 90's. Many are coming back in the last few years.

Haha, simple demographics speak louder than anecdotal impressions, following are the proportion of whites as a percentage of the total population in Hongkong:-

Census 2001 - 0.7%
Census 2006 - 0.5%
Census 2011 - 0.2%
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Hong_Kong

The earliest figure was 2001, so it was not distorted by the exodus of British civil servants and armed forces in the run up to 1997. Granted, Wiki is not an authoritative source, you could do me a favour and find the actual figures published by the HK government.

"Outside the caucasian world" is not a monolithic slab, in Hongkong (and Singapore), white males have to make an effort, albeit not a very strenuous one, in China, they don't even have to try

Shrimpiggy

原帖由 FattyDaddy 於 13-03-14 發表
本帖最後由 FattyDaddy 於 13-3-14 13:50 編輯

Both statements of lesser expats in hk and white males love to work in HK have no conflicts.
More and more locals taking the middle and top management roles in HK. You can see HSBC, Standard chartered, MTR, CLP, etc that locals are the majority in managing these financial, utility companies. Only top management and subject matter experts might have expats in HK.
Thus expats still love to work in HK for top management roles while the middle level management opportunity for them are shrinking.....

shadeslayer

原帖由 Shrimpiggy 於 13-03-14 發表
Both statements of lesser expats in hk and white males love to work in HK have no conflicts.
More an ...

Big corporations like to outsource non core functions. The outsourced team typically comprise middle to lower management or manual labour, etc.  For one of the company you mentioned here, I know for a fact that a non-core function that is completely outsourced have a number of Caucasian in the team.  Another company I know is in similar situation, even the top 2 level of the outsourced team are foreigners. Leaving the junior management and manual labour to the locals.  I didn't notice that many foreigners in outsourced teams in the past.

So yes, there are still a lot of foreigners working in HK.

shadeslayer

原帖由 FattyDaddy 於 13-03-14 發表
本帖最後由 FattyDaddy 於 13-3-14 13:50 編輯

FattyDaddy,

Are expats on work visa counted towards the wiki demographic data?

FattyDaddy

shadeslayer 發表於 13-3-14 14:24
FattyDaddy,

Are expats on work visa counted towards the wiki demographic data?

The same set of figures show an increase in the number of Indonesians, 0.8% (2001), 1.3% (2006), 1.9% (2011), most of these would be domestic helpers on work visa.

For an accurate assessment of population structure, it is vital to account for everyone in the territory, including transient people like tourists, and yes, less white tourists are coming to HK, that is also a common consensus.

21Ckid

FattyDaddy 發表於 13-3-14 13:47
Haha, simple demographics speak louder than anecdotal impressions, following are the proportion of  ...

For christ sake, you have been wasting your time doing this.... searching the web i guess with words like "demographic" etc and was so jubilant that after much efforts, you bumped into a certain web site with numbers you dreamed of..... Did it ever come to you that the numbers didn't make sense, that it was totally against our common sense that we are seeing more and more gweis nowadays? Can wiki not make any mistakes???

I did this: at the bottom of your quoted web site (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Hong_Kong), there was a list of reference, the first one is the official census report with a link (http://www.census2011.gov.hk/pdf/summary-results.pdf), here in table 6 were shown the real numbers of "whites" in Hong Kong:

2001: 0.7%
2006: 0.5%
2011: 0.8%

Yes, the correct % of whites for 2011 was 0.8%, not 0.2%. Wiki made a mistake, why can't it? The above did spend me a few minutes, I hope the time wasn't wasted if you do learn, and trust your own eyes.

It seems you are only familiar with one city, shanghai, in china, and in all around asia i suppose. If you believe that, it is up to you.

FattyDaddy

21Ckid 發表於 13-3-14 22:53
Yes, the correct % of whites for 2011 was 0.8%, not 0.2%. Wiki made a mistake, why can't it? ...

Sure it can, that was why I asked you to do me a favour and check it, which you did, and both I and Wiki stand corrected. Actually I did not verify your findings by scanning through the 154 page document, I took your word in good faith.

So what does that tell us? 0.7% in 2001, 0.5% in 2006, and 0.8% in 2011, it would appear there is no real trend and we're back to square one, it neither confirmed "HK has more and more gweilo" nor "HK has less and less gweilo".

My choice of ShangHai for China is obvious, if we are going to compare Hongkong to China with regard to the willingness of ex-pats to reside, it is only fair to pick the most internationalized city in China, what would be the point in comparing Hongkong to somewhere like Hohhot?

Shrimpiggy

I am so selffish that I would like to spend time to help ourselves to make a better decision rather than getting myself involved in disputes not benefit our kids.

21Ckid

FattyDaddy 發表於 13-3-15 00:26
Sure it can, that was why I asked you to do me a favour and check it, which you did, and both I and ...

Nobody needs to scan through 154 pages (or even 1000 pages) to get a piece of information, except perhaps you, because there is something called an index. It takes you less than 1 minute to get to that information. You know what index is all about?

I don't know what your "square one" is, but i suppose you means 0.2% and 0.8% are quite the same, but then i couldn't disagree, as we could as well just round it down, and there will be no whites in HK, perhaps never ever.

FattyDaddy

21Ckid 發表於 13-3-15 01:50
Nobody needs to scan through 154 pages (or even 1000 pages) to get a piece of information ...

I don't know what you're bickering on about, I did not scan the document because I took your word for it, in good faith, you're unhappy about that?

Square one means the difference between 0.7% in 2001 and 0.8% in 2011 is immaterial, it neither proved me right nor proved you wrong, and lets leave it at that.

hkparent

21Ckid, I think you are getting quite personal in picking what FattyDaddy has said. I don't know any of you but I hope participants in this kind of forum show true respect to one another.

21Ckid

回復 FattyDaddy 的帖子

Of course I can leave you there, to save you from further embarrassment.