Lin Min

    REGIONAL bias is nothing new in China. The Chaozhou-Shantou area in eastern Guangdong has been stereotyped as the capital of fake products. In 2005, a police station in Shenzhen publicly displayed a banner saying “Crack down on extortion gangs from Henan,” triggering a lawsuit that ended with an apology from the police.

    A decade ago mainlanders were seen as country bumpkins by many in Hong Kong, but now big-spending mainland visitors sweeping up luxury goods in the territory are loathed as economic overlords. On the other side of the border, Hong Kong men have been blamed for keeping a large number of mistresses in Shenzhen, pushing up rent in areas close to the border checkpoints and giving rise to a number of notorious “villages of concubines.”

    The saddening war of words between some groups of people in Hong Kong and on the mainland in the past two months, however, has generated much greater attention.

    In January, a video of a Hong Kong man yelling at a mainland woman whose daughter was eating dried noodles on the subway, where drinking and eating are prohibited, was widely circulated and caused a stir on the mainland. Tension rose when Beijing University professor Kong Qingdong called Hong Kongers “running dogs of the British colonialists” in an Internet talk show in response to the subway dispute.

    Many have argued that the tension was a result of vast cultural differences. However, these have existed for a long time and don’t seem to pose a serious hindrance to Hong Kong-mainland relations. Hong Kong has been an open society for more than a century. Mainlanders are no less open-minded after three decades of reform and opening up.

    It was the fears that the interests of the Hong Kong people are being threatened that have led to extreme remarks such as labeling mainlanders as “locusts.”

    Mainland shoppers depleting milk formula stocks in the special administrative region (SAR) have caused inconvenience to local shoppers and in some cases, disputes and brawls. Even worse, a growing army of pregnant women from the north swarm Hong Kong’s maternity wards, seeking access to benefits like world-class education and health care for their children.

    The influx of would-be mainland mothers poses a real threat to Hong Kong-mainland relations and needs to be tackled by urgent policy changes. An ad in the Apple Daily last week denouncing mainland visitors as “locusts” had a line saying “Are you willing for Hong Kong to spend HK$1 million (US$128,900) every 18 minutes to raise the children born to mainland parents?”

    Such concerns warrant attention from policymakers. Last year, 40,000 pregnant women from the mainland gave birth to babies in the city, straining hospital service. The SAR government said it would cap the number of nonresidents giving birth at 34,000 this year. However, this limit is unlikely to dampen the enthusiasm of mainland women seeking Hong Kong citizenship for their children. Hong Kong needs a change in law that confers no citizenship on children born in the city to nonresident mothers. If left unresolved, this issue is likely to cause further tension.     

    Yet, spats and unfriendly remarks over cultural differences would not hold up the increasing exchange of people across the border. The growing presence of mainland visitors in Hong Kong, after all, serves as a boost to the city’s economy. Calls for the SAR government to reconsider the policy of allowing individual mainland tourists to visit Hong Kong do not represent the will of the Hong Kong people.

    Following the 2003 SARS epidemic, the Central Government rescued Hong Kong’s battered economy by opening the floodgate to mainland visitors. For quite some time, mainland tourists were regarded as saviors of Hong Kong’s retail and tourism industries. Even today, spending by mainlanders helps the SAR shore up an economy hit by the euro crisis.

    The offensive slurs such as “dogs” and “locusts” serve no good but harm the feelings of the people on both sides of the border. Those who resorted to insult need to look at the bigger picture and understand that the two-way flow of people and exchange of culture creates a win-win situation.

    (The author is editor of the Shenzhen Daily News Desk.)