How Hong Kong can accommodate growing number of mainland visitors
Cheah Cheng Hye says it's possible for Hong Kong to successfully accommodate the growing number of mainland visitors, with some imaginative thinking and a return of its 'can-do' spirit
The Hong Kong economy relies heavily on spending by visitors from the Chinese mainland - yet a growing minority of Hong Kong residents don't want them around, at least not in such large numbers.
We need to find a way out of this, for not only is there a lot of money at stake but an even larger issue of whether Hong Kong can survive the transition from British colony to being part of the People's Republic.
At first, it is tempting to ignore those in Hong Kong protesting against the visitor invasion. After all, what is Hong Kong's role if not to feed China's craving for all sorts of goods and services of foreign origin? We didn't get rich by accident. Hong Kong, which has long nurtured a "can do" spirit, should simply keep smiling and let them come, according to what used to be a clear majority view in Hong Kong.
The trouble is that we now have a new type of Hong Kong, a mature and divided society with an evolving culture of blaming everyone for everything and a growing portion of the population demoralised by rising costs for housing and almost everything else.
"Can do" is becoming "No can do", and it is going to get worse unless we make fundamental social and political changes, a subject beyond the scope of this column. The fact is, a clear consensus no longer exists to support such a large visitor invasion. Here, we are talking about really big numbers: during the first two months of this year alone, Hong Kong (population: 7.2 million) received 7.8 million visitors from the mainland, 17 per cent higher than in the same period last year. For all of last year, we received 41 million mainland visitors, 17 per cent higher than the previous year, according to official Hong Kong figures.
Politics aside, the place is physically too small for this many people. Local residents are upset by falling service standards while everyone is crowding each other out on streets and subways and in shops and restaurants, resulting in frustration all round, not least among the visitors themselves. More and more, there are people who don't, or think they don't, benefit from the invasion.
The extremist fringe of Hong Kong politics has resorted to applying the term "locusts" to placards hoisted against mainland tourists in a 21st century version of Hong Kong racism.
