Jonathan Manthorpe’s Asia- Pacific Report
Growing antipathy reveals divide between territory and mainland China
The Hong Kong government is moving to stop pregnant mainland women flooding the territory’s hospitals to have their babies.
In a partial response to growing antipathy toward overbearing and demanding Chinese visitors, tourists and shoppers, the Hong Kong government is moving to curb the streams of pregnant mainland women flooding the territory’s hospitals to have their babies.
Last year, nearly half the babies born in Hong Kong — 38,043 of 80,131 — were to mainland Chinese mothers aiming to get citizenship and schooling for their offspring in the free and open international city which remains largely self- governing 15 years after Britain returned it to Chinese sovereignty.
The authorities expect even more pressure on the system in coming months as the Year of the Dragon is a favourite year for Chinese families to have babies.
A week ago, about 1,500 Hong Kong mothers and their infants took to the streets in protest at the ever- increasing tide of mainland women, which officials say threatens to overwhelm Hong Kong’s muchadmired hospital system.
This was the latest in a number of recent protests against mainland Chinese visitors and the local businesses that cater to their expensive tastes.
Earlier this month, hundreds of Hong Kongers protested outside a branch of the luxury goods retailer Dolce & Gabbana after allegations the store discriminates against local people while pandering to mainlanders’ tastes.
There has been a stream of complaints in recent months that shopkeepers are aiming more and more at providing luxury goods for the cash- rich mainlanders and ceasing to stock items locals want and can afford.
There are also claims that many businesses catering to the local market are being forced to close as real estate companies push up rents to cash in on the mainland trade.
All this disquiet about what is seen as the rudeness and domineering attitude of the mainland visitors found a focus earlier this month when a professor at the University of Hong Kong, Robert Chung, published the latest in a regular series of surveys on how the territory’s seven million people view their own identity.
Chung has repeated the survey every few months since the end of nearly 150 years of British colonial rule and Hong Kong’s return to China at the end of June 1997.
The latest survey, however, unleashed a torrent of vitriolic comment in the official Chinese media when Chung’s team found in December that 63 per cent of the territory’s people consider themselves Hong Kongers first and only 34 per cent think of themselves as primarily Chinese.
Media controlled by or friendly to Beijing accused Chung of having “evil political aims,” and of being a “slave to black political funding.”
One state- run Chinese newspaper said Chung’s survey was “intent on messing up Hong Kong,” and another said that now Hong Kong is part of China it is “illogical” to ask the territory’s people how they identify themselves.
There is no doubt, however, that Hong Kong people do consider that their city state has a different culture and values from the mainland.
Recognition of those differences was intrinsic to the “one country, two systems” deal under which Britain agreed to hand back the territory to China.
This pact said that Hong Kong would keep its British- style administration and values, such as the rule of law and an independent judiciary for 50 years after the handover.
By and large Beijing has kept to this agreement, though it has stepped in to slow down or stall the rapid progress toward full democracy that was envisaged in the deal.
Direct election of Hong Kong’s governor, known as the chief executive, is now slated for 2017, two decades after the handover.
Even so, Hong Kong citizenship with its access to a free and open society with excellent education and social services is highly attractive to mainlanders. This is why tens of thousands of Chinese women every year try to arrange to have their babies in Hong Kong so that the child acquires the territory’s citizenship.
Some mainland women plan well ahead and rent apartments in Hong Kong in the early stages of pregnancy. But others wait until the last minute and then make a dash across the border to Hong Kong hospital emergency wards.
Last week, Chief Executive Donald Tsang announced a four- point plan to hold back the torrent of mainland women.
The government will consider heavily increasing the charges for non- locals who turn up at accident wards as they are about to give birth.
The Immigration Department will get more resources for border checks. Local authorities will crack down on intermediaries who help mainland women get into Hong Kong. And there will be more raids on unlicensed hotels that put up pregnant mainland women.
Writing in the online magazine Asia Sentinel last week the columnist Alice Poon bemoaned the rudeness of mainland visitors and what she sees as their adverse effects on Hong Kong.
“On a deeper level, the unbridgeable gap seems to be between Hongkongers’ acceptance and most mainlanders’ rejection of or aversion to universal values like the rule of law, democracy, equality and liberty,” she wrote.