New City in Ireland for HK Emigrants

Hong Kong residents fleeing their home amid China's crackdown might soon have a new place to settle in the Irish countryside. Ivan Ko, the founder of charter city investment company Victoria Harbour Group, formulated a plan to build a new city modelled after Hong Kong to house emigrants near Dublin's airport. Ko's new city, would be called Nextpolis, and would house 50,000 former Hong Kong residents in a 50 square kilometer (31.07 square miles) site located between Dublin and Belfast, complete with Cantonese-speaking schools. "We like Ireland," Ko said. "Corporate taxes are very low. You have very strong manufacturing and biomedical companies. Major tech giants have European headquarters there. Overall we think Ireland is very good." In addition, Nextpolis' proposed location would allow immigrants to live in Belfast and take advantage of the UK's path to citizenship for select Hong Kongers. Hong Kong has been gripped by unrest since mass protests broke out over an extradition bill in March 2019, and later morphed to oppose new national security laws that criminalize dissent. City residents are expected to emigrate in large numbers as China continues to tighten its grip on the one-time British colony with little regard for condemnations from the west.