Of the recent debates in the Legislative Council, perhaps none was more timely or touched on more fundamental issues affecting the long-term well-being of Hong Kong than the one on population policy moved by the Liberal Party's Kenneth Fang Kang last Wednesday.
The debate followed hot on the heels of daily reports of maternity wards and homes bursting at the seams with pregnant mainlanders, and intensive care units more than 100 per cent full with babies born to mainland women.
Despite the government's attempts to discourage such births by raising medical fees at public hospitals and imposing a quota system on mainland wives, the number of babies born to mainland women in Hong Kong has continued to soar.
Worse still, to circumvent the Hospital Authority's controls, the number of mainland mothers gate-crashing the emergency units of public hospitals last year doubled to 1,656. Rumours are rife that many circumvent controls by sneaking in early, and staying in local apartments illegally converted into guesthouses for pregnant mainlanders.
What was a trickle prior to the landmark Chong Fung Yuen judgment by the Court of Final Appeal in July 2001 - no more than 1,991 such births in the first 43 months after reunification - has swollen to a deluge, bringing the numbers to more than 35,000 last year.
The mainland baby boom threatens not only to overwhelm Hong Kong's medical and health care services, and in due course, schooling and housing supply, but also to alter fundamentally the city's demographics in the long term.
From 2005 onwards, the single-digit growth in the number of mainland births in Hong Kong jumped exponentially, as news of the benefits of birth in Hong Kong, including the right to a Hong Kong Special Administrative Region passport with extensive international access, spread like wildfire among the rising ranks of the nouveau riche on the mainland.
