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Parallel-traders who snap up items such as baby formula and diapers wait in line to carry their goods across the border at Sheung Shui railway station. Photo: Felix Wong

Protests against parallel-traders put pressure on HK government to curb mainland visitors

With more angry protests likely against traders who swamp the northern New Territories, the pressure is mounting to curb mainland visitors

Amy Nip

Three rounds of scuffles between police, protesters against cross-border trading and border residents since last month have put fresh pressure on the government to review the policy of allowing individual visits from the mainland.

Locals in Tuen Mun, Sha Tin and Yuen Long are angry at traders who profit at their expense by visiting frequently on multi-entry permits to buy up baby formula and diapers - and other mainlanders who similarly make a beeline for the much sought-after items.

The trading activities and large numbers of mainland shoppers jack up prices, drain retail supplies and jam walkways and public transport, according to residents. Yet another protest, in Tsuen Wan or Sheung Shui, is brewing this Sunday.

"We want to highlight the problems related to mainland travellers. Parallel-goods trading is only one of the problems," said Ray Wong Toi-yeung of Hong Kong Indigenous, which helped organise the first of the protests, in Tuen Mun on February 8.

Wong said their concerns went beyond the traders, who cart products across the border without paying import taxes.

Clashes during Sunday's Yuen Long protest. Photo: Felix Wong
The city received 60.8 million visitors last year, 47.2 million from the mainland. In comparison, Taiwan welcomed only 9.91 million arrivals. "Hong Kong is so small. Our capacity is already overwhelmed," Wong said.

Two out of three survey respondents want to see the number of mainland travellers restricted, regardless of any negative impact on the city's economy, Chinese University said in findings released on Wednesday.

The grievances are common across the northern New Territories. Cross-border shoppers, including traders, fill the streets and often run their trolleys over people's feet. Rents are shooting through the roof, squeezing small family shops out of business in favour of retail chains.

Residents first gathered to protest in 2012, in Sheung Shui, but little had changed since then, Ronald Leung Kam-shing, of the North District Parallel Imports Concern Group, lamented.

"The only difference is parallel-goods traders are now ruder and bolder," he said. "They would rebuke [protesters] and insist what they are doing is legal."

Weary of the day-to-day disruption, many residents had stopped differentiating between traders and bona fide tourists, Leung conceded, since both types of visitors packed MTR facilities with suitcases.

Tourism-sector lawmaker Yiu Si-wing said that curbing entry from Shenzhen could ease the crowds in Sheung Shui and Yuen Long. But it would not eradicate parallel-goods trading as more than half of the traders were from Hong Kong.

Travel Industry Council chairman Michael Wu Siu-ieng said it would be a "more rational" approach to look into the individual visit scheme and multiple-entry permits separately. The scheme allows people from 49 mainland cities one or two trips to Hong Kong within a specific time frame without having to join tour groups, whereas the permits are exclusive to the 1.8 million permanent Shenzhen residents - granting unlimited trips to the city.

Of that number, sources indicate about 10,000 travel to Hong Kong more than 100 times a year and are likely to be traders. The rest make only a few trips.

If the Immigration Department analysed the entry records, Wu said, it could help the government come up with suggestions on how to keep traders at bay.

In 2012, incoming Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying persuaded mainland authorities to stop permits going to non-permanent residents of Shenzhen.

Leung also ordered a look into the city's tourism capacity, and the Commerce and Economic Development Bureau reported in 2013 that hotels and tourist attractions were ready to welcome more visitors, but that the MTR system would be strained.

The bureau suggested the private sector consider building a border shopping centre.

Professor Lui Tai-lok, who chairs the SynergyNet think tank, says the government must address the issue regardless of opposition from the retail industry.

Some businesses had profited greatly over the last decade, he said. The number of cosmetics and personal-care shops shot up from 90 in 2004 to 1,440 in 2013.

And people who crossed the border individually more than doubled from about 10 million in 2009 to 23 million in 2012.

"The term 'locust' latched on [among Hongkongers] in 2011," Lui noted, using a negative phrase that referred to mainlanders. "At that time, visitors started using public transport a lot."

At the root of the problem is Guangdong's huge population and demand for resources, he said. The provincial authorities should request policies from the central government to satisfy their people's needs instead of looking to Hong Kong, he said: "It is stupid to build a shopping centre at the Hong Kong border. Why not build one in Shenzhen?"

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: IN NEED OF A TRADE-OFF AMID WORSENING BORDER TENSIONS
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