Then-British Colony: Li Ka-Shing and Hong Kong

then-british colony: I can still remember how amazed I was when the first tower started to go up, and the lineups were around the block, Yuen recalled in an interview with the Georgia Straight, according to Georgia Asian. There were a lot of Chinese immigrants, Hong Kong immigrants mainly, because of Li Ka-shing and his name. Yuen was part of a team hired by Concord Pacific to create a new neighbourhood of high-rise residential towers after Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing's purchase of the former Expo site. Tens of thousands of people moved from Hong Kong to Vancouver in the late 1980s and early '90s, concerned about the future of the then-British colony, which was going to be returned to China on July 1, 1997. Yuen explained that the exodus from Hong Kong has had a big impact on the Vancouver real-estate industry, noting that prior to Expo 86 there were never lineups to buy property. In the late '80s, there was also an investment boom from Hong Kong, triggered by concerns about what would become of the colony's capitalist business culture after it reverted to China. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.