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Mainland tourists take picture at the flags at Golden Bauhinia Square in Wan Chai. Photo: Dickson Lee
Opinion
Public Eye
by Michael Chugani
Public Eye
by Michael Chugani

Hongkongers losing patience with relentless flood of mainland visitors

What does it take to make our officials listen? Why do they always behave as if they know better than the people what the people want? Ask any Hongkonger if we already have too many mainland visitors.

What does it take to make our officials listen? Why do they always behave as if they know better than the people what the people want? Ask any Hongkonger if we already have too many mainland visitors. Nine out of 10 will agree without hesitation. Only fat-cat landlords, hotel bosses and high-end store owners who have profited from mainlanders at the expense of Hongkongers will disagree. Yet our policymakers listen only to the fat cats. Visitor arrivals last year rose 12 per cent to 60.8 million. Mainlanders made up 47.2 million of this - an increase of 16 per cent. For a city of seven million, that is a staggering number. Now you know why the MTR, the streets, shopping centres and even ferries to outlying islands are always full, especially during weekends. Forget about a ride on the Peak Tram. The long lines will scare you off for life. Now you know why you hear more Putonghua than Cantonese in popular shopping districts. Tell that to our policymakers and they will recite the mantra that mainland tourism brings prosperity. If that is true, how come Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying used much of last week's policy address to talk about improving people's lives? With mainlanders pumping big bucks into the economy, should we not all be rich? Yet we still have a million people living below the poverty line. And it is like drawing blood from a stone to make bosses agree to raise the minimum wage by a few dollars an hour. The negatives of mainland visitors cancelled out the positives a long time ago. Shenzhen residents making multiple trips across the border account for much of the growth in visitor numbers. These are not tourists. They are grocery shoppers and parallel-goods traders who compete with locals for daily necessities, thereby driving up prices. The sheer numbers coming daily have eroded our quality of life and fuelled animosity. As Public Eye has warned before, it is a powder keg with a lit fuse. Do our officials really want to shut their eyes and ears until it explodes in the way Occupy Central did?

 

Why is patriotism such a dirty word in Hong Kong? Why do Hongkongers, particularly those in the democracy camp, equate it with brainwashing? Sunday's inauguration of the Hong Kong Army Cadets Association - a uniformed group promoting pride in being a Chinese citizen - has drawn fire. Why? What is wrong with educating youngsters about how to be responsible citizens? The Boy Scouts of America, the US Army Cadet Corps and Britain's Boys' Brigade do very similar things. But critics claim the Hong Kong version is brainwashing, instigated by the central government to promote loyalty to the country, as if being patriotic is somehow wrong. Joining the association is voluntary. Even if it is brainwashing, if people choose to be brainwashed, is it not their democratic right? The only idiocy with the inauguration was the barring of the mainstream media. If promoting patriotism is right, do it openly. Why hide it?

 

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