In the past 12 months, many incidents involving mainlanders have been given wide publicity in Hong Kong.
This has created a negative view of mainlanders who are unjustly criticised by locals.What has caused people to think this way?
The MTR incident, which was uploaded to YouTube, received wide media coverage here. The locals were angry when a mainland child eating noodles made a mess on the floor of the carriage. But some Hongkongers eat on the trains, too. This shows that many locals look down on mainlanders.
To make matters worse, they were portrayed as 'locusts' in an advertisement in the widely-read Apple Daily. This is very discriminatory and bad for Hong Kong's international image.
Hongkongers are also angry about pregnant mainland women coming to Hong Kong to give birth so their children can become local residents. They say the influx is putting a huge burden on the city's resources and preventing local mothers from gaining access to quality maternity services.
I don't think this attitude is fair, especially as some mainland mothers have nowhere else to go, with China's one-child policy still in place.
