How many Americans live in mainland China and in Hong Kong?

July 16, 2020 6:49 AM

I find wildly varying estimates online regarding how many American citizens live in both mainland China and in Hong Kong. And I don't see a breakdown of the numbers I find between American citizens born in America and those who became citizens (i.e., Chinese who immigrated to US, became citizens, then returned to live in China / HK). I'd also like to see the reverse statistics - i.e., the number of Chinese citizens who live in the US. Is there an authoritative resource for this information?
posted by Jackson to Society & Culture (2 answers total)

Hi, I'm an American in Hong Kong. I'll try to answer the Hong Kong part of your question, but first, some reasons why it's hard to know the real answer.

The problem you are experiencing is related to, I think, Hong Kong resident status not being the same as citizenship. I'm a permanent Hong Kong resident but not a citizen of Hong Kong; indeed, no citizenship of Hong Kong exists. You can live here as a permanent resident and have:

- a British National Overseas passport if you were born here before 1997
- a Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China passport if you were of Chinese heritage and were born here after 1997
- both of these documents
- one or both of these documents in addition to a foreign passport
- neither of these documents, instead having one or more other passports (this is me)
- indeed no passport, just a travel document if you can't get anything else

It's complicated. But what's worth considering is that someone can be an blue-passported American citizen here by virtue of being born to American citizens somewhere - here or the US - and then move here and if they and their parents are ethnically Chinese, the Census and Statistics Department will count them as Chinese, not American, in terms of ethnicity, while possibly counting them as American nationals or whatever they identify as their nationality on the form. Which brings us to the second problem, which is how the Census and Statistics Department here collects data on who lives here.

The 2011 Census and 2016 Bycensus collected information on Hong Kong residents' nationality, race and ethnicity but not on their preferred passport-carrying nationality, because as we have seen you can have no, one or more than one nationalities and live here. The most recent bycensus' demographic data, from 2016, states that there were, out of a total population of 7,336,585, 14,749 Americans here at that time.

But is this the total number of people who the US would identify as American citizens, or who are eligible for American citizenship by virtue of being born to US citizens while resident here? Or just the number of non-Chinese US citizens here? I think the true number of people with a US passport or eligibility for one is much higher that 14,749.

By doing a little math and just thinking about the majority population here, Chinese people: The number of Chinese ethnicity folks here in 2016 was 6,752,202. But the number of Chinese nationality people here was quite a bit lower - 6,646,415. That's a difference of 105,787. I'm guessing that it's among these folks that you'll find Chinese-ethnic US passport holders, among many other Chinese-diaspora descendants who live here.

So an absolute upper bound of your answer is going to have to be 120,000 - we know, for example, that not every one of those 105,787 people with Chinese ethnicity but not nationality is American: there will be many Canadian, British, Australian and New Zealand passport holders in that number, for sure, in addition to Chinese diaspora-descended people from around the world, places like Singapore, for example.

And the State Department believes there are "around 85,000 American residents in Hong Kong" - but do they live here full-time? That's what's unclear to me. Hong Kong resident status - the impermanent kind dependent on a visa - still entitles you to nearly every privilege of life here but voting. I have no Chinese heritage and was a non-permanent resident for seven years before I became a permanent resident late last year; the State Department's number would include both me and someone here on a six-month contract with non-permanent resident status in that number.

One more statistic: the number of Americans resident in Hong Kong by duration of residence. Check table A122 on this page. Out of that 14,749:

Less than 1 year: 1815
1-3 years: 2648
4-6 years: 1962
7-9 years: 1772
10 years or more: 6552

The huge increase in that last number makes me think that it's this number that represents at least some of the folks you mention in your question, folks comfortably living here, not on short-term contracts but as long-term residents with local partners, or indeed local themselves.

Fascinating question.
posted by mdonley at 8:17 AM on July 16, 2020 [9 favorites]

Response by poster: mdonley, thanks for this information. Not as definitive as I'd hoped, but a lot of variables as you said. I've been wondering if everything turns for the worst in HK and leaving HK seems necessary, will all those holding American passports be treated the same by the Chinese government?
posted by Jackson at 6:12 AM on July 17, 2020