An irate Chinese Wall Street Journal editor who was crossing the Hong Kong border when immigration department officials took her into a room and asked if she was pregnant called the encounter discriminatory in a microblog post, which instantly went viral at the weekend.
“Although I understand that the staff was only carrying out their duties, I was still very furious,” wrote Yuan Li, editor of WSJ/Dow Jones’ Chinese service who also oversees the Chinese-language website of WSJ. “I felt I was discriminated against for having a PRC passport.”
The Hong Kong Immigration Department on Tuesday told the South China Morning Post that such measures are in line with government policy and by no means a discrimination. The authority said it had refused 2,773 pregnant mainland women who did not meet the conditions to enter Hong Kong this year, as of July.
The Hong Kong government has been facing pressure from locals to tighten checks on expectant mainland mothers who try to enter Hong Kong to give birth so their children will gain right of abode.
Yuan’s blog post had more than 16,000 comments as of Tuesday, many of them suggesting that mainland residents ask themselves why cross-border tensions have increased.