Don’t know if this is the case of not, but I can tell you a few years ago, there was a wave of people from Hong Kong moving up here (mainland) and studying Chinese. Suppose this could be interpreted as a "sign of times. With that said, those guys have a long way to go in terms of understanding the mainland compared to those who simply set up base here right from the start. Of course, for a civiized environment, I don’t see the mainland beating out Hong Kong until very, very, very far into the future (maybe never).