Cross-border tensions overshadow yearly national meetings in Beijing

Fresh tensions between Hongkongers and mainlanders are clouding the annual meetings of the national legislature and top advisory body in Beijing that start today.

While Hong Kong's representatives to the meetings intend to seek changes to a multiple-entry arrangement to curb visitor numbers, others worry they will achieve little other than stoking further antagonism among already exasperated mainlanders.

And those ideas - which primarily target parallel-goods traders as opposed to big spenders - were likely to be deemed too little too late for radical locals who had hurled abuse at mainlanders in key New Territories shopping centres in the past weeks.

Still, Priscilla Lau Pui-king, a Hong Kong deputy to the National People's Congress, said she would give it a try.

"A quota should be set on the number of solo travellers, depending on communication between the Hong Kong and relevant mainland authorities and on the capacity of Hong Kong's tourism facilities," she said.

In her proposal to the NPC, Lau would mention how locals were affected by mainland travellers and suggest that mainland authorities register solo travellers after a quota took effect.

She dismissed criticism that the suggestion was technically infeasible. "In an era of big data, that's not difficult."