Fact check: Yonden Lhatoo's warning to HKers about the UK

Hi there, I am usually quite a big fan of the South China Morning Post's (SCMP) Youtube channel as they do give us quite a balanced view of affairs from Hong Kong and most notably, their rather anti-Beijing, pro-democracy stance. But I was rather taken aback by a recent post by Yoden Lhatoo about emigrating to the UK which contained a lot of misleading half-truths, so in today's post, I am simply going to fact check some of the claims that he has made in this video because it is ultimately an opinion piece, rather than a news report. So to begin, here's the Youtube video below for you to watch. 

Claim 1: "The streets of London were in fact not paved with gold". 

Fact check: You're mixing truth and lies about what people believe. 

No shit Sherlock, really? I have lived in London for 23 years and I don't think anyone has come to this city with such expectations. The population of London is 9 million and like any other big city in the world, London has a lot of opportunities to offer in various industries from finance to tourism to fashion to showbiz to just about any sector you can think of but nobody is going to hand you a wad of cash just for showing up! You're expected to earn your keep, prove yourself and those of us who do flock to the city with big dreams are only hoping to be given the chance to prove ourselves, that's all. Now I need to point out that many who do come to London are from smaller towns and rural areas because such opportunities aren't available where they came from but Hong Kong is a big city as well with 7.5 million people. So by all means, there is no lack of opportunities in a city like Hong Kong, but just like London, the streets of Hong Kong are not paved with gold either - in fact, there isn't a single city in the world where the streets are in fact paved with gold. Oh please. Get real. I think Lhatoo is somewhat unfair to the Hong Kongers who are seriously considering this prospect of moving to the UK - they're not naive enough to believe that the streets of London are indeed paved with gold, that life would somehow be super easy here in the UK. They just want to leave Hong Kong because of the current political situation and they realize that it is virtually impossible to win this battle against the Beijing government in the long run - that's why they want to leave. It has nothing to do with having unrealistic expectations about how easy it would be to earn money in the UK. So whilst his claim of the streets of London not being paved with gold is correct, he is implying that those who are thinking of taking this offer to move to the UK actually believe that to be the case and that's not true. So, that's when he craftily mixes truth and lies to make it harder for you to figure out whether or not what he said is true. 

Claim 2: Unemployment in Britain has been at its highest in more than three years, rising to 10%.

Fact check: True but this is actually a massive red herring.

Yes whilst the unemployment rate in the UK has always been higher than that in Hong Kong, we're not proud of that but that's mostly because of the welfare state which makes it easier for people to become unemployed - despite having been a British colony for so long, Hong Kong has a very different system so the unemployed can get a bit of help from the government but it is not generous at all. But if Lhatoo's point is that migrants from Hong Kong won't be able find jobs because of the high unemployment rate - I have to challenge that. A lot of whether or not you can find a job or not depends on your personal circumstances: are you highly educated or are you a high school drop out? Are you a highly skilled professional or have you been only doing unskilled, low-paid jobs? Do you speak many languages or are you hopelessly monolingual? Do you have exceptionally good social skills or do you totally suck at job interviews? Do you have many years of valuable work experience?  There are so many factors that determine how employable you are - therefore just pointing to the unemployment rate is a complete red herring. I compare this to the situation in Singapore: there is hardly any unemployment in Singapore for a simple reason - neither the government nor the citizens of Singapore believe in a welfare state. If you're unemployed, you're forced to either take low-paid work or starve (or depend on your family to support you). This is why we have the elderly in Singapore still working low-paid jobs such as clearing dishes at food courts because they cannot afford to retire - thus the low rate of unemployment isn't so much a sign that Singapore's economy is doing super well. If you moved to Singapore tomorrow, there's absolutely no guarantee that you would find a good job if you just don't have the right skills. In any case, we're in the middle of a Covid-19 induced recession - all economies around the world (including Hong Kong's) have taken a sharp hit as a result, so the UK is not different by that token. Thus any talk of the UK's high unemployment rate is really quite misleading: a red herring indeed. 

Claim 3: The new migrants from HK will not be able to claim benefits and have to support themselves.

Fact check: I don't think they want to come to the UK to live on benefits!

Lhatoo points out that the new migrants from Hong Kong will not qualify for any kind of benefits and must support themselves financially for at least six months - they then have to be self-sufficient for up to seven years before they can become British citizens. Whilst all this is true, I think it is once again a red herring. Lhatoo pretty much described the path that other migrants like myself had to take before I could naturalize as a British citizen - however, even after I did become a British citizen, I never did take a single penny in any kind of welfare payments. No - that's reserved for poor people who desperately need help and let's just say I am relatively rich. On top of that, I am well educated, ambitious and I have dreams - I didn't come to London to simply exist on the periphery of society, barely getting by on welfare benefits which by the way, are not generous at all. I'm sure you've all read about how the government is refusing to provide free school meals to the children of the poorest of the poorest in the UK. It is a fucking miserable existence to be so destitute to have to beg the government for free food for your starving children. Yes there are a lot of poor people in the UK but I don't think the Hong Kongers who do choose to move to the UK have any intention of living like that - heck, being Chinese (ethnic stereotype I know), they want to earn money, become successful and show the folks back home that they have made it in the UK. There's a great saying in Chinese: 好馬不吃回頭草 - in this context, it means that those who have chosen this path will not return to where they have come from, instead they will do whatever it takes to prove to everyone that they have made the right choice. Thus it is no surprise that amongst all the ethnic groups in the UK, the Chinese are the richest - hence we are so much richer than the white people here, mostly because of the "好馬不吃回頭草" mindset! 

There is already a sizable Chinese diaspora in the UK anyway given the links between Hong Kong and Britain, with 1997 giving many the push they needed to make the difficult decision to move to the UK. Currently there are already 111,733 people in the UK who are born in Hong Kong according to the 2011 census, however that doesn't include people like my friend Jack who was born in England but both his parents are from Hong Kong and he still closely identifies with Hong Kong despite being born here. Overall, the British Chinese community number 433,150 according to the 2011 census and thus that number will include people like me who were born in Singapore as well as my friend Jack who was born here. So the migrants from Hong Kong easily account for more than a quarter of the Chinese community here in the UK and we're doing pretty darn well as an ethnic group, thank you very much. Lhatoo hasn't realized that this is mostly because those who do move to the UK are usually highly educated graduates and professionals who are not your average Hong Konger, this is because we need to meet pretty strict criteria before we even get the work permit to work in the UK. So this filter creates the illusion that we are the model minority who work so hard and earn so much more than white people when really, the local white English are not banished from England if they become unemployed. People who are interested in moving to the UK will do their research before making that big decision whether to actually move or not and most will only decide to move if they know that they will be better off in the UK. I trust these migrants from Hong Kong to do their homework and arrive at a sensible decision because moving to another country is not an easy decision. 

Claim 4: Immigration consultants expect mostly unskilled youngsters and those trying to escape prosecution for protest related crimes to take up the citizenship offer. Not the usually sought after professionals.

Fact check: Holy crap, where do I even begin? He is wrong on so many levels. 

Lhatoo is probably assuming that the people who were on the streets protesting didn't have to be in the office because they were unemployed or had such terrible, shitty jobs that they would rather protest in the streets than go to work. There is however, a happy medium to be struck in this case however - I hate to use anecdotal evidence but allow me to use myself as an example. I left Singapore because I had become very disillusioned with both the Singaporean government and Singaporean society (the two go hand in hand, the PAP wouldn't be in power without the support of the people) - however, I never once protested against the government, never even got a parking ticket or arrested for something minor like jaywalking. In fact, I wasn't just a law-abiding citizen, I was a triple scholar and former national champion gymnast. I was nothing like the kind of 'unskilled youngster' or criminal trying to escape prosecution when I decided to leave Singapore and move to the UK - instead, I was apolitical and saw that as a private matter, a decision I had to make for myself. my happiness and my future and I didn't have to justify it to anyone but myself. I had no intention of challenging the authority of the Singaporean government or changing the minds of my fellow Singaporeans, instead I simply wanted to leave quietly and peacefully to start a new life in London. Lhatoo assumes that the professionals who are gainfully employed in Hong Kong would not want to leave because they have good jobs there and thus have little to complain about - but many of those who do take up on this offer to move to the UK would be highly skilled, highly educated professionals like myself who will simply arrange the paperwork quietly and then get on that plane to London without making any fuss. What makes Lhatoo think that well educated, highly skilled professionals in Hong Kong are completely happy with the current status quo under Carrie Lam? Even if they aren't in the streets protesting, it doesn't mean that they are completely happy with the situation - quite a number would just leave quietly once the opportunity is presented. 

Claim 5: Lhatoo talks about other countries with better prospects and quality of life than Britain. 

Fact check: Totally misleading. 

The most popular destinations for migrants from Hong Kong include Canada, New Zealand and Australia - then there are other countries as well like America, Singapore and of course, the UK. Do these countries offer better prospects and quality of life than Britain? That's the wrong answer to ask! If you're on your way to London with an extremely lucrative job offer from an investment bank, then the money you earn enable you to live an incredibly good life. But if you're poor, then it really doesn't matter whether you're in Hong Kong, Canada, New Zealand or New Zealand, life is going to really suck for you because you are working really long hours just to make ends meet. How good your prospects are depend entirely on the quality of your CV and the quality of your life depends on how rich you are - these are factors that vary person to person, rather than country to country. So for Lhatoo to talk about the UK as if it is such a terrible place compared to other countries, well that's totally misrepresenting the situation here. If we were to take GDP per capita as the measure of "prospects" and "quality of life" in a country, then according to both the IMF and the World Bank, Singapore is actually the second richest country in the world but do all residents in Singapore have equally good prospects and quality of life? Hell no, there is a huge disparity between the rich and the poor - not all Singaporeans are crazy rich Asians just because it is the richest country in Asia and the second richest country in the world. The wealth is not equally shared amongst all citizens and the Singaporean government isn't really that interested in redistributing the wealth from the rich to the poor and indeed, there are some very poor Singaporeans leading absolutely wretched, miserable lives in one of the world's richest countries. Hence any talk about prospects or quality of life without even mentioning one's individual circumstances is totally misleading. So the quality of your life ultimately depends a lot more on your personal wealth rather than other factors like a country's GDP per capita or the kind of government of a country.

Claim 6: The Covid-19 situation is so much worse in the UK than in Hong Kong. 

Fact check: True but what are the practical implications of this? 

No one is denying the fact that Hong Kong has handled the Covid-19 situation extremely well - there have only been 5,309 cases so far in Hong Kong, just 105 deaths (at the time I am writing this) and usually less than ten new cases a day. This is in sharp contrast to the situation in most European countries right now which are experiencing a massive second wave of infections and deaths. As for the statistics in the UK right now, the case numbers are meaningless as testing is still woefully inadequate and whilst we have officially 917,575 cases, the actual number is many times more than that given that people are only asked to get a test when they show symptoms, this misses out of the large number of asymptomatic cases. Even our death toll of 45,365 (at the time I am writing this) is a massive under reporting and the real number (when you look at excess deaths) would be around 65,000 instead. So whilst it is absolutely true that the British government has been totally fucking incompetent when it came to Covid-19, the other side of the coin is that it is still mostly the elderly and the vulnerable who fell very ill and died. At 44 years old, I'm not exactly one of these young men who feels invincible, but otherwise life still goes on pretty much as normal for me. I'm still working hard, I'm going to the gym, I'm seeing my friends, I even went on traveling to five countries this summer. Lhatoo is giving the impression that if you move to the UK, you're going to die of Covid - that's not really true, you'll probably die if you're over 80, obese and have a pre-existing medical condition that makes you more susceptible but for ordinary folks like me, I'm not really that worried or concerned about the situation. It is more an inconvenience that I have to put up with, like having to wear masks all the time now and not being able to do all those things I love like going to the theater. So please, let's put things in perspective: of course I'm quite annoyed because I have been inconvenienced but I'm certainly not dying of Covid-19. 

Claim 7: Lhatoo talks about the racist attacks against Chinese looking Asians in the UK. 

Fact check: This is totally blown out of proportion, very exaggerated. 

I'm not denying that in the early days of the pandemic, there was some anti-Chinese racism because the virus did originate from Wuhan, China. There was also that attack that took place in central London when Singaporean student Jonathan Mok was brutally beaten up by four white youths after being insulted about the virus - that was not the only incident and they made the headlines. However, Lhatoo makes it sound as if Chinese people are constantly being attacked everyday in the UK, that we're afraid to even leave our houses because of the threat of such racist attacks - again, that's completely untrue. After work today, I took the train to the gym, I met my friends (a mix of Italian, Polish, Spanish, Indian and British friends) there and then I went to the supermarket on my way home. The journey itself was uneventful and boring, apart from the fact that my Overground train was delayed by about ten minutes - that was the only part of the journey that irked me. At no time did I ever feel unsafe or that anyone was going to attack me because I am Chinese-looking and East Asian origin (technically speaking, I'm mixed Eurasian but that's another story for another day). Sure I get upset when I read about incidents of racism in the news, but I've yet to personally experience any Covid-related racism personally in London. The fact is London is a very cosmopolitan city with people from all over the world living here - only 62% of London is white and even if you do meet a white person, s/he could be an immigrant from somewhere like Poland, Estonia or Hungary. There are areas in London like Brent, Hounslow and Tower Hamlets where white people are in the minority - there are parts of England which are a lot more white, with far fewer ethnic minorities but if these migrants from Hong Kong are really that worried about racism, then they can always choose to live in a big city like London, where the many ethnic minorities here have always been a part of the multi-cultural identity of the city. 

Furthermore, Lhatoo neglects the fact that racism doesn't affect all Chinese people equally - one's personal wealth and job plays a huge role in whether or not you will be encounter racism. If you worked in a low-end customer service job like in McDonald's, your chances of encountering abusive behaviour is a lot highter. My friend Brenda had worked in McDonald's as a part time job when she was a student and she explained to me what she encountered there, "people think they can speak to you like you're nothing, for the slightest thing - like if you made them wait a few minutes for their food, because they ordered a special burger and it is being prepared for them, but they expect to see it within like 30 seconds, they'll yell at me as if it was my fault. It's like we don't deserve any respect or dignity just because we take a job like that, they think you're the scum of the earth, the lowest of the low. Even though I'm black, I don't think I ever got any kind of racist abuse but that doesn't mean I didn't get abuse - what I'm saying is that my white colleagues got just as much abuse and they weren't spared that abuse because they had fair skin and blonde hair. In hindsight, I should have never worked there but I was so young and naive back then." In sharp contrast, I have mostly been working from home during the pandemic and since I work in banking providing a B2B service within financial services, I would never ever come across a random member of public the way Brenda had to at McDonald's. So a Chinese immigrant to the UK is far more likely to encounter racist abuse (or just abuse regularly, as Brenda points out - abuse is abuse, whether racism is involved or not) if s/he is working in a low-end customer service role as opposed to a well-paid professional job. Mind you, the exact same principle applies in Hong Kong (and any other big city in the world) as well - very poor people with crap jobs will suffer a lot more abuse. So may I state the obvious: it really sucks to be poor anywhere - even Hong Kong!

Claim 8: Anti-immigration is real - that's what Brexit is all about, remember. 

Fact check: Again, very misleading - the devil is in the detail. 

I feel that we need to look at the details of this statement to understand the situation better - the Brexit vote was a hugely divisive issue and in the end, it passed by a tiny margin of 51.9% to leave vs 48.1% to remain. The nature of democracy means that we have a winner takes all situation whereby the majority wins, no matter how slim the victory may have been and in this case, 51.9% is barely scraping through. Many parts of the UK such as London, Scotland and other big cities like Birmingham and Manchester actually voted overwhelmingly to stay in the EU. Lhatoo is implying that 100% of the voters in Britain voted for Brexit and that 100% of British people are anti-immigrant - that's not true of course and if he is using the Brexit referendum result to justify this claim, then that is so misleading  given how close the results were and how huge the regional variations were. Looking at the results in more details, you will see that some areas like the richer cosmopolitan cities being very pro-EU and some poorer rural areas being very pro-Brexit - the devil is in the details. This is because these poor rural areas are already struggling and they are afraid of all these Eastern European migrants coming over to the UK, competing for the few half-decent jobs they have locally. Whereas in a place like London, well we're not fussed about migrants coming over from Eastern Europe to 'take our jobs' - when my company closed down our London back office and relocated all those jobs to Tallinn, my former colleagues merely spent their redundancy payments on lavish extended holidays, before finding equally well-paid jobs in London - there was no panic whatsoever when they had to undertake that transition. So for Lhatoo to imply that the entire country is pro-Brexit and anti-immigrant as a reason to dissuade Hong Kongers from moving to the UK is quite misleading because he has selectively picked information to make Britain look racist and ignored anything to the contrary - he did not present a reasonable argument. 

Claim 9: There's a whole new world of pain coming to Britain given the way they are mucking up Brexit.

Fact check: True but again, different people are going to be affected differently. 

Oh I don't doubt that Boris Johnson is a fucking moron who is fucking up Brexit badly, yeah I can't tell you just how much I hate Boris Johnson. The people who had put their faith in him and his bunch of lies deserve exactly what they are getting when this whole new world of pain comes. However! The devil is once again in the detail: those who will be hit hardest are the poor, not the rich. Our currency the pound sterling has already lost 20% after the Brexit vote and it may lose even more value due to a chaotic Brexit. We import a lot of food in the UK so food prices will go up - we don't grow coffee in the UK (too cold) and so if I walk into the supermarket and see that the price of the usual coffee I buy has gone up by 20%, I might grumble about having to pay more but I'll buy it anyway because I need my caffeine hit in the morning and I'm rich - I can still afford it. But if poor people are faced with the fact that food prices have gone up by 20%, then they have no spare cash to spend to cover that increase in prices: they would either have to make cuts elsewhere (spending less on clothing, entertainment, transport, education etc) in order to buy the same food they used to consume or they would have to make cuts within their supermarket shopping, buying either less food or lower quality, cheaper alternatives. There will be shocks to the economy and businesses will suffer - so if you're running a local restaurant, when there is a whole new world of pain, people will not spend as much money, they will eat out less and they would choose cheaper alternatives like buying food from the supermarket instead, so the restaurant will have less business and they may have to lay off some of their staff if they cannot make as much money due to poor business, this is a vicious cycle. So it is true that some people are indeed going to suffer of course as this Brexit shit show continues, but some will suffer a lot more than others. So the poorest in our society are going to be suffering the most, whilst the rich will be fine.

How does this affect would-be migrants from Hong Kong then? Well, time for a dose of common sense: hypothetically speaking, if a lowly-educated, unskilled manual labourer from Hong Kong somehow gets his hands on one of these BNO passports and is thus eligible to move to the UK, then undoubtedly he is going to have a totally miserable life in the UK working in a very lowly paid job! But if you are a  banker moving to the UK on a very lucrative contract from a top investment bank, then you will still have a pretty good life in the UK because you have the means to buy everything you need to have a very high standard of living. Furthermore, for someone like myself who works in an international business, I have clients everywhere from Chile to China - quite unlike the local restaurant who is dependent on the local community supporting it to make money, I'm able to do business with people from halfway around the world. This is why I am not going to suffer like the guys working at local restaurant during a recession because I'm able to say, "okay so Covid-19 is hitting South America really hard, but things are a lot better in Hong Kong, China and Taiwan." So I can simply change my marketing strategy, shelf my Latin American business plans and just focus on the Chinese markets instead - all from the comfort of my living room since I've mostly been working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic. This reminds me of the time when I told my parents that my old friend Sue, a former classmate from Singapore is moving to Manila - now my parents think of the Philippines as this very poor country, where most people are desperate to leave and work abroad in search for better paid jobs. So they were confused as to why my friend Sue would want to move to Manila, like isn't she going to see a big drop in her living standards there? Oh man, I just rolled my eyes and said, "do you have any idea how much money that company is going to pay Sue? You seriously have no idea how rich Sue is and how much she earns?" The Filipino economy may be a hot mess but nonetheless Sue is one of those crazy rich Asians. 

Claim 10: HK has lower crime rates, low taxes, high quality and efficiency of services, good public transport, good public health care - you can kiss all that goodbye if you move to the UK. 

Fact check: A lot of half truths mixed in there with lies in a deliberate attempt to mislead. 

Don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of Hong Kong but Lhatoo makes the UK sound more like Nigeria or Tanzania and even in such places, life isn't that horrific either. Let's deal with each of the items he mentioned: it's not like the UK has such high crime rates that we're afraid to leave our houses - yes there is more crime than in Hong Kong but there are huge disparities in terms of crime rates depending on where you live. Poor people cannot afford to live in nice neighbourhoods, so they are forced to settle for cheaper housing in areas with higher crime rates, where there is gang violence and drug dealers on your doorstep. Yes the situation is pretty grim for poor people but for richer folks, they are spared such issues: I have a good friend who lives in an expensive condominium complex in London - there is only one entrance where you need to get past security and without an electronic key fob to get through the secondary gate, you can't enter the compound unless the security guard (who is there 24-7) lets you in. During the lock down, I cycled a lot because it was a form of exercise that allowed me to get out of the house - I explored the local neighbourhood of Primrose Hill on my bike rides which is one of the most exclusive areas in London and most of the streets in Primrose Hill have private security. The fact is if you have money, you will gladly spend some of that money to make yourself feel safer where you live and that's money well spent - only the poor who don't have any money are at the mercy of the dangerous criminals that lurk around in dark corners within the communities where they live. So when it comes to crime rates, the fact is if you're poor, you're fucked. But if you're rich, you're going to be just fine! So if you're a rich person from Hong Kong looking to move to the UK, you have nothing to worry about. But if you're poor, then you're better off choosing a society that offers you the best chances at social mobility to escape your poverty, rather than looking at the other issues. 

As for low taxes, well have you seen how the poorest in Hong Kong live in cage homes? Have you seen the number of homeless people in Hong Kong? Part of the reason why taxes are so low in Hong Kong is because of the government refusing to spend more money taking care of the very poorest in society there. The poor are blamed for their predicament, so instead of offering help all they get is shame from society, they are labeled as lazy or stupid and if they are homeless, then that's their fault for not having worked harder to earn more money. Yes we pay higher taxes in the UK and that is a bid to redistribute the wealth from the rich to the poor - is that such a bad thing? We have a progressive tax system, that means those like me who earn a lot of money pay more in taxes, whilst the poor who earn very little hardly pay any taxes but are net beneficiaries in the system - meaning that they receive more in benefits than actually they pay in taxes. Is this system perfect? No it isn't, but at least there is some attempt to help the poor in the UK. There is a very high price to be paid for low taxes in Hong Kong and it is the poorest in Hong Kong society who can least afford it who are ultimately paying that price - is that something to be proud of? I don't think so! Moving onto our public transport system, it may not be the best in the world and it may not be as cheap as in Hong Kong, but most big cities in the UK have a pretty decent public transport system. It isn't perfect but it is not as if it is unsafe or falling apart. The only places I have been disappointed with public transport are Argentina and Georgia - both of these countries are very sparsely populated, so there just isn't enough demand from the locals there to justify investment in a decent public transport system hence it is extremely limited in some areas. I'll complain about the public transport in Argentina but not in the UK. 

On the topic of quality public health care, Lhatoo isn't fair to the UK's NHS. Many would point to our poor handling of the Covid-19 pandemic as evidence that the NHS doesn't work but there are other European countries like Belgium, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, France and even Switzerland who have been hit very hard as well by Covid-19 despite having very good health systems. Allow me to use the example of the micro-nation of San Marino which I actually visited back in September for a short holiday - the Covid-19 death toll there is just 42 and you might think, that's a low number, even lower than Hong Kong's so they must be doing well, right? But when you take into account San Marino's tiny population and calculate the deaths per population, that adjusted figure shoots San Marino to number in terms of the Covid-19 deaths per population (in second place is Peru, followed by Belgium). It's not that San Marino doesn't have a public health care system - it is a small and rich country with a well funded public healthcare system but the key reason why Europe is hit so hard by Covid-19 is because countries like Italy, France, the UK, Spain and San Marino have much older populations due to our shockingly low birth-rates. So there are far more old people around in these countries who are vulnerable to Covid-19, compared to places like Africa or India, where the population is a lot younger as the birth-rate is a lot higher and mind you, they have much worse public healthcare systems. So whilst I want to acknowledge how great Hong Kong's public healthcare system is, it is unfair to dismiss the UK's healthcare system the way Lhatoo did - honestly, things are really not that bad here in the UK. We got hit harder by Covid-19 because of our ageing population. 

Claim 11: Those who end up leaving are going to be deeply disappointed and desperate to return home to HK.

Fact check: Again, completely misleading and he made too many assumptions. 

Once again, Lhatoo has based this assumption on the condition of the UK economy and the current mess we're in right now rather than making each individual immigrant take responsibility for their personal decisions. Will migrants from Hong Kong end up deeply disappointed in the UK? That will depend on so many factors like whether or not they can find a well paid job in the UK - that in turn will depend on whether or not they are highly educated, highly skilled and are thus very attractive to employers. At that level, then conditions will vary from individual to individual - if you do have the skills to get a good job in Hong Kong, then you're probably going to be fine in the UK. If you are uneducated, unskilled and doing a terrible, lowly paid job in Hong Kong, then your fortunes are not going to change just because you move to the UK. Thus how well these migrants ultimately fare in the UK depends entirely on themselves, rather than all of these other factors that Lhatoo has talked about in this piece. Lhatoo makes the mistake of lumping all of the migrants from Hong Kong bound for the UK into a monolithic entity when really, they needed to be treated as individuals and you cannot make any kind of assumptions about them as a group per se. Moving to another country is a big undertaking and it is up to the individual to make it work - let's compare it to going to university: are you going to graduate with brilliant results or are you going to do so badly and end up deeply disappointed, unable to graduate? A lot depends on the individual and how hard s/he works towards that degree - the university cannot promise or guarantee anything, the individual student needs to take personal responsibility to ensure that s/he gets the grades s/he needs to graduate. Lhatoo didn't once touch upon the concept of personality responsibility, which really weakens his entire argument against moving to the UK. 

Claim 12: "Let's hope Beijing is benevolent enough to let them back in without retaliation."

Fact check: That's highly unlikely, as long as you remain apolitical. 

First of all, it is completely legal for Hong Kongers to have more than one passport, dual nationality or citizenship isn't forbidden by Hong Kong's laws - which is the whole reason why so many Hong Kongers have this BNO passport in the first place. So a migrant from Hong Kong could go work in the UK for a few years, whilst taking advantage of his/her BNO passport to bypass the more stringent requirements associated with getting a work permit in the UK. Is this enough to incur the wrath of the Beijing government, by simply exploiting a loop hole to gain employment in the UK? That's unlikely, given the number of Hong Kongers who do work abroad - even within China, there are loads of Chinese nationals who do go work abroad; seeking employment outside 'the motherland' isn't seen as such a massive betrayal. There's no sense of "oh how dare you go work in London instead of contributing to your motherland, the country of your birth!" In fact, this freedom of movement is something that is a fundamental right both in Hong Kong and in China - so if you have the ability to find yourself a well paid job abroad, then the Beijing government really doesn't care where you go or what you do, as long as you do not act against the interest of the Beijing government. Indeed, they have bigger fish to fry: namely those who are politically active and the Chinese Communist Party can be ruthless in dealing with anyone seen as an enemy - but by definition, that means people who are directly trying to hurt the interests of the Chinese government, such as by exposing the atrocious human rights abuses going on in Xinjiang against the Uighur people or the rampant corruption within the Chinese Communist Party. Simply using this loophole to work in Britain is definitely not enough to put you on the radar of the Beijing government, as long as you remain apolitical then really, the Beijing government doesn't care what job(s) you do, where you go or what country you settle in, so Lhatoo's warning is really just a big fat lie.

Conclusion: what is the point of Lhatoo's piece then? What is he trying to achieve? 

SCMP are fiercely proud of their Hong Konger identity, this is evident from a lot of the cultural pieces presented by Luisa Tam about the Cantonese language and other aspects of life in Hong Kong. Hong Kong has long had a difficult relationship with both London and Beijing - after all, they had gone from being a British colony to a state that's effectively controlled by Beijing, whilst they're probably wishing that they could achieve full independence like Singapore but that was never going to happen given how the Chinese governments is so keen to flex their muscles over Hong Kong. So they had gone from being London's mistress to Beijing's bitch, whilst really disliking both. The best explanation perhaps is that they are merely trying to appear patriotic by discouraging Hong Kongers from leaving their country and seek green pastures in the UK - the message is, "don't go, please stay in Hong Kong and help us fight for a better future for Hong Kong." If that was the intended message, then they had certainly misfired with this video because that was not the message I got - instead, it was just Lhatoo telling us what a horrible nasty country Britain was and not to move there because things are just shitty here. It was so one-sided that it even came across as somewhat racist or at least woefully ignorant, written by someone who doesn't have a good understanding of the situation here in the UK. Journalists can misfire and in this case, Lhatoo's badly written script was a muddled mess of miscommunication. If he was trying to inspire a pro-Hong Kong feeling of patriotism, then he should have talked about Hong Kong's unique cultural identity rather than simply insult Britain - let me address the elephant in the room: Lhatoo is not Chinese, he is in fact Indian. He speaks Hindi, not Cantonese. He may have been a long-term resident of Hong Kong but he was born in India. He wouldn't have been the right person on the SCMP team to deliver the message about Hong Kong's cultural identity - thus it would have made more sense for someone else on the SCMP to do this piece, but Lhatoo was not the man for the job. 

So there you go, that's it from me on this issue - what do you think? Are you a fan of SCMP? Why is Lhatoo refusing to even touch upon the issue of personal responsibility when it comes to one's quality of life? Why does Lhatoo seem to hate Britain so much - is it simply racism or is the relationship between Hong Kong and Britain too complex to simply dismiss as one tainted with racism? If you live in Hong Kong, are you tempted by this offer to move to the UK and what are your concerns about starting a new life in the UK? Why do you think the Chinese minority in the UK are the model minority who earn so much more than every other ethnic group? Or do you think Lhatoo has a valid point, have I been too harsh on him? Would you want to move to the UK in 2021? So do leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.