MCLC: birth rights battle

Tue Feb 14 08:28:34 EST 2012

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: birth rights battle
***********************************************************

Source: MSNBC, Behind the Wall (2/13/12):
http://behindthewall.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/13/10394026-birth-rights-b
attle-china-vs-hong-kong

Birth rights battle: China vs. Hong Kong
Tens of thousands of mainland Chinese women travel every year to Hong Kong
to give birth so their children can enjoy the former British colony's
benefits. NBC's Adrienne Mong reports on the growing tension the trend has
fueled between Hong Kong locals and mainlanders.
By Adrienne Mong

HONG KONG & SHENZHEN, China  Anchor babies. Birth tourism. Cross-border
births.

It¹s a growing global phenomenon driven by Chinese with wherewithal and
wealth.  Chinese from a China that  even as it continues to grow and open
up to the rest of the world  still faces a restrictive enough present and
an uncertain enough future that they choose to give birth outside of China.

Some do it to avoid the one-child policy.  Many do so for the benefits the
child will receive as a citizen of the country into which it¹s born: free
or better education, the freedom to travel, good social services, a safe
haven.

The United States is overwhelmingly the most popular destination for
wealthy Chinese, a phenomenon
<http://rockcenter.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/28/8511587-born-in-the-usa-b
irth-tourists-get-instant-us-citizenship-for-their-newborns> covered by
NBC News 
<http://behindthewall.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/06/16/6872357-the-trials-and
-tribulations-of-chinas-anchor-babies>.

But a close second is Hong Kong, the tiny former British colony of 7
million people.

Since its return to Beijing¹s oversight  in 1997, and as China has made it
easier for its people to travel, tens of thousands of mainlanders
regularly head over the border to book up maternity wards at Hong Kong¹s
good quality and affordable public hospitals.

Of the 88,000 births in Hong Kong in 2010, roughly 45 percent were
delivered by mainland Chinese women, according to Hong Kong's government.

The growing number of cross-border births isn¹t just straining health care
resources and the local population¹s goodwill.  It¹s also helped to
provoke an identity crisis that 15 years after the handover has alienated
local residents from their northern neighbors.
A business catering to pregnant mainlanders

For four years, Gordon Li has been running a business from Shenzhen,
southern China, arranging travel to Hong Kong for pregnant mainland
Chinese women. 

(*Gordon Li is not his real name; he did not want to divulge his identity.
 Just last week 
<http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/SCMP/menuitem.2af62ecb329d3d7733492d9253a0
a0a0/?vgnextoid=e49d097cf3765310VgnVCM100000360a0a0aRCRD&ss=Hong+Kong&s=New
s>, another agent from mainland China pleaded guilty to breaching Hong
Kong immigration laws for helping mainland women give birth in the city.
It was Hong Kong¹s first prosecution of its kind and, given the current
mood, may not be the last.)

³We work like a travel agency [and] the fee depends on the client whether
they want to stay in a luxury hotel or a small hotel, etc.,² said Li, who
charges his clients between a few thousand yuan and 20,000 yuan ($3,200)
to navigate the system.  Most of his customers are from the mainland¹s
wealthiest regions like Guangdong, Zhejiang, Beijing, and Shanghai.

Li estimates that he has helped at least a few hundred mainland women to
have babies in Hong Kong.  ³Last year was the most,² he said.

His early clients were trying to get around the mainland¹s strict
one-child policy, but today most of his new customers travel to Hong Kong
because, Li says, there are ³a lot of conveniences.²

The public health system in freewheeling capitalist Hong Kong is
considered better and safer than it is in its communist neighbor.
Maternal mortality ratiostatistics
<http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/portal/article/viewArticle
/1846> collected by organizations like the World Health Organization
support Hong Kong¹s reputation for good quality health care for mothers
and newborn babies.

Every day, more than 10,000 students who live in mainland China cross the
border to go to school in Hong Kong.

Other benefits for newborns include being automatically eligible for ³the
right of abode² in Hong Kong, which means becoming permanent residents.
Which in turn means unfettered access to free public education considered
superior to that in the mainland; political freedoms; and ease of travel
anywhere in the world.

And they are entitled to all of this without giving up their China
citizenship.

In fact, more than 10,000 mainland Chinese children who were born in Hong
Kong, but live in China, go across the border every day
<http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/hkedition/2011-03/17/content_12183318.htm>
to attend school in the former British colony.

Hong Kong is fed up

Huang Lijuan is a 27-year-old kindergarten teacher from Guangdong
Province.  She and her husband, Tsing Ho Nan, a 32-year-old engineer from
Hong Kong, met in Shenzhen and moved to Hong Kong after getting married.

³I¹m three months pregnant, and the due date is August 5,² Huang told NBC
News one afternoon in a community center in Tsuen Wan, Hong Kong.  ³But I
haven¹t been able to book a hospital bed in a maternity ward.  All of the
public hospitals are fully booked.²

³There are 80 to 100 [mainland women married to Hong Kong men living here]
who are pregnant, but they failed to book any hospitals to deliver their
babies,² said Koon Wing Tsang, an organizer with the Mainland-Hong Kong
Families Rights Association.  Like Huang, they are all casualties of
recent restrictions on non-local women.

Under popular pressure, the Health Authority (HA) in Hong Kong has
instituted quotas 
<http://topics.scmp.com/news/hk-news-watch/article/Hospitals-may-ban-mainla
nd-mothers> for non-local residents.  Currently, only 3,400 births by
non-local women are permitted at public hospitals this year  down from
10,000 in 2011.  Private hospitals are allowed 31,000 births by non-local
women.

³The government and the HA are committed to ensuring that local pregnant
women will be given priority in the use of the services over non-Hong Kong
residents (non-eligible persons, NEPs),² said a Health Authority spokesman
in a written response to NBC News requests for an interview.

But even the new quotas may not be enough.  As Huang found out, all the
maternity wards in Hong Kong¹s public hospitals  and many private clinics
 are fully booked until September.

Moreover, the quotas don¹t prevent mainland women from using the emergency
wards as a last resort.  More than 1,600 such births last year were
delivered in Hong Kong¹s emergency rooms  an unnecessary medical risk
since such wards are not equipped or staffed properly for deliveries.

Some Hong Kong government officials have raised the possibility of an
outright ban on mainland Chinese women giving birth in the city, but
critics have argued enforcement is problematic.

Others have suggested ending the practice of granting automatic permanent
residency status to babies born to non-local parents.  To do so, according
to legal experts as well as Hong Kong¹s Chief Executive Donald Tsang,
would mean having to reinterpret
<http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/SCMP/menuitem.2af62ecb329d3d7733492d9253a0
a0a0/?vgnextoid=084c133243265310VgnVCM100000360a0a0aRCRD&ss=Hong+Kong&s=New
s> the Basic Law  the territory¹s mini-constitution.

Any such action would require consultations with Beijing, which could
prove to be a political minefield for Hong Kong, which prides itself on
its Western-style democratic values.

China to ban names that signal 'orphan' status
<http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/11/10377764-china-to-ban-name
s-that-signal-orphan-status>

'Locusts' & 'running dogs'

Adding fuel to the fire is a recent series of tense confrontations between
local and mainland residents.

Last month, Hong Kong citizens were outraged over a report
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH6Ju00Kdgk> that a Dolce & Gabbana
boutique had banned local shoppers from taking photographs of its shop,
but allowed mainland Chinese tourists and other visitors to snap away.  A
Facebook campaign 
<http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?we_cat=11&art_id=118644&sid=
35006726&con_type=3&d_str=20120109&fc=10> days later galvanized more than
a thousand people to protest outside the shop, forcing it to shut early.

Barely a week later, a heated dispute
<http://shanghaiist.com/2012/01/20/hong-kong-mainland-mtr-bitchfight.php>
broke out on the Hong Kong subway when a mainland Chinese child was asked
to stop eating on the train  a practice banned in the territory.  The
argument between locals and mainlanders was captured by a cell phone
camera, and the video went viral on the Internet.

Tensions were further inflamed by comments from a Peking University
professor, who when shown the video of the subway dispute, called the
territory¹s residents ³running dogs of the British imperialists.²

This month, a group of concerned Hong Kong citizens bought a full-page ad
<https://twitter.com/#%21/george_chen/status/164578481907318784/photo/1>
in a popular mainstream Chinese-language Hong Kong daily newspaper that
called mainland visitors ³locusts.²  The term refers to the large numbers
overrunning the territory to consume all its resources.

A ³locust² song <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueNr7mfFZu8> even made the
rounds on the Internet, with spiteful lyrics poking fun at mainland
Chinese, and inspiring at least one group of young Hong Kong men to roam
around singing the song at visiting mainland Chinese.

An identity crisis

³I think the real reason that Hong Kong people are upset is because they
feel helpless politically,² said Wen Yunchao, a mainland blogger and
activist now living in the territory.  ³The rules they believe in are
being broken by all these mainland visitors, and yet they still have to
rely on China economically.²

Dr. Elaine Chan at the Center of Civil Society and Governance at Hong Kong
University agrees the tension is ³a manifestation of something deeper.²

³Hong Kong people do not have a very positive view of mainlanders,² she
said.  ³Not just because they are buying properties and not just because
they are buying all the luxury goods.  But also because of how they carry
themselves.²

Both Wen and Chan argue there¹s an underlying sensitivity to and awareness
of the fact that Hong Kong is bound up with China culturally,
historically, politically, and economically  and yet there remains a gap
in fundamental values between the two: in terms of the rule of law or
basic civility.  That tension makes some people in the territory
uncomfortable.

For now, Beijing has remained silent at least on the cross-border births
issue, although authorities in neighboringGuangdong
<http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/SCMP/menuitem.2af62ecb329d3d7733492d9253a0
a0a0/?vgnextoid=b3248b0c3a255310VgnVCM100000360a0a0aRCRD&ss=Hong+Kong&s=New
s> province have promised to find a solution.
But another hot-button topic may soon eclipse that of birth tourism.  The
main topic of conversation last week was a government proposal
<http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/SCMP/menuitem.2af62ecb329d3d7733492d9253a0
a0a0/?vgnextoid=9eed750371d65310VgnVCM100000360a0a0aRCRD&ss=Hong+Kong&s=New
s> to open up the border to mainland Chinese drivers and their vehicles.
Concern over road safety issues is so great in Hong Kong that an online
petition 
<http://www.timeslive.co.za/world/2012/02/13/thousands-join-hong-kong-campa
ign-to-keep-out-chinese-motorists> has already gathered 7,000 signatures.

With additional reporting by Bo Gu.