MCLC: HK seeks to ease concerns about mainland

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: HK seeks to ease concerns about mainland
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Source: NYT 
(12/6/12):http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/07/world/asia/hong-kongs-leader-se
eks-to-ease-concerns-about-china.html

Hong Kong’s Leader Seeks to Ease Concerns About Mainland China’s Influence
By KEITH BRADSHER

HONG KONG — Seeking to address a local backlash against mainland Chinese
control, the chief executive of Hong Kong called on Thursday for closer
relations with the mainland but also emphasized his willingness to impose
limits on mainland visitors and investors.

From Internet postings depicting mainlanders as locusts despoiling Hong
Kong to the waving of British colonial flags at street demonstrations,
resentment of mainland influence swelled this year. It reached a peak in
late summer, when tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets
repeatedly to protest plans to introduce a patriotic education program
extolling the Chinese Communist Party.

The hostility of many Hong Kong residents toward Beijing has put the
territory’s leaders in an awkward position, as they are largely selected
by Beijing and coordinate policies closely.

Leung Chun-ying, the chief executive since July 1, has been the subject of
particular skepticism from many residents because he has a long history of
close association with mainland officials. He pursued a highly successful
and lucrative career as a real estate surveyor before entering politics.

But Mr. Leung has also taken a series of measures in recent months to
limit the mainland presence in Hong Kong. He withdrew the patriotic
education plan. He has used baggage restrictions on municipal trains to
discourage mainland traders from emptying shelves in low-tax Hong Kong and
carting the goods back across the border to the mainland.

Mr. Leung has imposed a ban on mainland mothers from scheduling births at
Hong Kong hospitals starting on Jan. 1. And his administration has just
imposed taxes of up to 20 percent on purchases of homes in Hong Kong by
anyone who is not a permanent resident, an effort to address worries about
housing affordability. Mainland investors had been accounting for at least
a fifth of the city’s overall real estate transactions and a much higher
proportion of high-end purchases.

Michael DeGolyer, a political analyst at Hong Kong Baptist University,
said that these measures were starting to allay local worries about
mainland domination. “It has lessened in terms of the concern of its just
overwhelming Hong Kong,” he said.

In a rare speech specifically addressing relations with Beijing, Mr. Leung
said on Thursday that he hoped to improve relations by emphasizing better
communications between Hong Kong and the mainland. “It is without doubt
our most important bilateral relationship, and one we must treat with the
utmost respect,” Mr. Leung said.

Mr. Leung sought to assuage concerns that close contact with the mainland
would hurt the territory’s ability to maintain the separate economic and
judicial system that it preserved after Britain returned it to Chinese
rule in 1997. “This does not mean surrendering our autonomy, it means
making the most of our high degree of autonomy defined in the Basic Law,”
the territory’s mini-constitution, he said in a speech at the Foreign
Correspondents’ Club.

Hong Kong has no sales tax and virtually no import duties, while China has
duties of 20 percent or more on many imports plus a value-added tax of 17
percent. The combined tax rate of about 40 percent — China even collects
taxes on taxes — has prompted large numbers of mainland visitors to go on
shopping trips to Hong Kong. Many Hong Kong residents complain that they
receive poor service in stores if they speak their own dialect instead of
the Mandarin Chinese widely spoken on the mainland.

Another concern has been a surge of mainland women who come to Hong Kong
to give birth, to avoid China’s one-child policy and also obtain free
education, nearly free medical care and Hong Kong passports for their
offspring. Nearly 150 countries and territories offer visa-free or
visa-on-arrival entry to Hong Kong passport holders, while mainland China
makes it difficult to obtain a passport and many countries require visas
for mainland Chinese citizens, fearing that large-scale immigration would
otherwise ensue.

Mainland mothers accounted for 46 percent of the births in Hong Kong last
year.

Mr. Leung’s ban on the scheduling of deliveries by mainland mothers at
Hong Kong hospitals as of January has raised fears that mainland mothers
may show up anyway just as they are starting to give birth, when they
cannot be safely turned away. Referring to the adjacent mainland Chinese
city of Shenzhen, and drawing an unusual comparison to gun control, Mr.
Leung sought to allay these fears by saying, that “If we could and we did
effectively stop, for example, guns from coming over the border from
Shenzhen, we could stop pregnant ladies.”