Rhoticity in Hong Kong English: A Philippine influence?

I've wanted to write about this for a long time, but never found the time to do so.

I found this study about rhoticity in Singapore English (http://www.icphs2011.hk/resources/OnlineProceedings/RegularSession/Tan/Tan.pdf). In a nutshell, it found that many people in Singapore consider rhoticity (pronouncing the /r/ in words like "car" and "cart") to be a sign of good education and higher social status.

I was wondering about this for a long time. When I was living surrounded by Singaporeans about 20 years ago, none of them had a rhotic accent. Then I came across some very fashionable Malaysian students who tried to sound rhotic, seemingly in an attempt to appear "Americanized" and "cool". And recently, I started listening to Singaporean talk shows on internet radio, and noticed that more and more seemingly "upwardly mobile" people, especially female, are starting to "roll the r".

This is interesting because, from what I know, in southern England, having a rhotic accent is considered a sign of being a country bumpkin rather than hip and cool. (You sound like you are from Ireland or West Country or somewhere like that if you pronounce the "r". Even people in Lancashire don't do that anymore, you know!) So this is another sign of increasing dominance of American English even in traditionally British-oriented outer-circle Asia (minus the Philippines, of course).

Now, when I attended the IAWE conference in Hong Kong last year, there was a linguist from Hong Kong saying that some younger Hong Kong speakers are going rhotic due to the influence of the American media inputs. This is hardly surprising because many of the DJs and personalities on English channels of RTHK have north American accents. And if I'm not mistaken, among the expat communities in Hong Kong today, there are more Americans and Canadians than Brits.

I asked him if this could also be because many Hong Kong families hire Filipino helpers to take care of their children. In fact, quite often, those helpers are the only people with whom many Hong Kong children converse in English, so it would not be a surprise if Hong Kong youngsters picked up the Philippine rhotic /r/ from them, even if they are still taught the non-rhotic RP at school. But the linguist in question categorically denied this possibility. I was not quite convinced. Maybe some research is needed.