In contemporary society, the Hakka people in Hong Kong have been identified primarily through their concentration and population in the villages and small towns in the New Territories. During the Qing Dynasty, the Hakka people were displaced and persecuted due to marked cultural differences from classical and modern Han Chinese customs. Refusing to practice the binding of feet, the Hakka people were marked out as 'Hak' or 'guest' people in Hong Kong [Cantonese dialect transliteration]. Strikingly, the linguistic properties of the Hakka language indicate a language structure which antidates the evolution of the Cantonese and Mandarin dialects: from a linguistic perspective, it remains implausible to suggest that the Hakka language originated from the Northern provinces. [1]]. The last great migration of the Hakka people towards Hong Kong took place at the time of the 'Tai Ping' revolution (1850-1864). Hakka dissenters featured in the anti-government rebellion and subsequently were persecuted following the failure of the Tai Ping revolution. One notable feature of the Hakka culture was their marked embrace of the Christian faith which at the time of anti-Western sentiment in the Qing dynasty added more cultural impetus for their persecution.

Traditional Hakka religious affiliation requires further exploration, however there is no evidence to suggest that the Hakka people deviated from mainstream Confucian practices with a hierarchised dependence on authority given through the family head. Christianised by protestant missionaries in the mid-19th century who offered nutrition and basic needs for the Hakka people, the Hakka were often mistakenly categorised with the cult practices of Hong Xiuquan's Taiping Tianguo movement. Hakkas are considered in mainstream Chinese society as a taboo caste or "the Jews of China" due to their forced migratory patterns and systematic victimization by other Chinese ethnic groups ^{[citation needed]}. The interclan wars contributed to the extensive decline of the Hakka population, not only in the southern Chinese provinces, but also in Hong Kong. Thus the new settlers who were forced to concentrate on the northern New Territories of Hong Kong and marginalised. The Punti, having occupied land of more strategic and economic importance, experienced an identity crisis with the influx of the new immigrants whose economic ascent, threatened their own. Punti violence and contributed much to the persecution of the Hakka people in Hong Kong although some sources [citation needed] suggest that the Hakka people were able to defend their own, the general consensus remains that the Hakka people endured adverse hardship from immigration into the Punti territory. Responding through Confucian defences, the Hakka people placed a greater reliance on the internal strengths of their own customs and cultural identity. This model of community survival, dependent on the integrity of the nuclear clan unit in the face of adversity has contributed to the 20th century outcome of preserving the cultural identity of the Hakka people.