Journey to Hong Kong

There will be a rally tomorrow (Feb 19) organized by more than a dozen associations against the cross border scheme to allow more mainland private cars to drive into HK. The rally will start at 3pm at Sogo department store in Causeway Bay. Protesters will then march to the new government headquarters in Tamar.

If you are in HK on 19 February (Sunday), join me in the rally against the Scheme.

If you can read Chinese, this is my personal statement against the Scheme.

If you cannot, here are the succinct reasons why I am, with so many other Hong Kongers, so much against the scheme:

1. HK is such a small place with congested roads. The scheme will only lead to more pollution and congestion on the road. What is more, the car fuel standards in the mainland are lower than those in HK. More mainland cars on HK’s roads can only worsen the already very poor air quality here, not to mention the congestion on the road.

2. HK does not need more cars. It needs better use of its precious land and build facilities such as cycle paths for citizens here to have a better quality of life. While cities like Amsterdam are striving for providing more and better public transport and cycle paths for its citizens, Hong Kong government is stupid enough to go against the trend by putting more cars on the road, just for the politically correct move of “integrating Hong Kong with mainland”.

3. With the public transport (MTR) so developed and the city small enough, where is the need for the mainlanders to travel by car in the city?

4. The Scheme aims to encourage more mainland tourists to Hong Kong. But evidence has shown that the influx of mainland tourists is doing harm to the city. We do not need more mainland tourists!

5. Mainland drivers’ reckless way of driving and their left-hand driving vehicles compared with Hong Kong’s right-hand driving ones raise concern over road safety. Here’s what a reader wrote to me today on my Chinese blog:

Hi,
I share a piece for you to support your move. This morning (18 Feb 2012) at around 6:21 am. I was driving on the fast lane in Aberdeen Tunnel towards Causeway direction. At the tunnel exit, I saw a BMW X-series private car bearing a China license plate on slow lane was resversing backward. He missed the Causeway exit and was making a ridiculous reversing. This is not uncommon in China. I saw this first time in Hong Kong. Please ask Transport Department to share the CCTV recording to give you this evident to support your protest statement.

At present, there are already 2,000 mainland registered cars on Hong Kong’s roads. The scheme would allow more private cars to travel between Hong Kong and Guangdong Province.

In the first phase of the pilot scheme, Hong Kong drivers can apply for a seven-day permit to drive in Guangdong from March 30 this year. In the second phase, each day up to 50 cars from Guangdong Province can enter Hong Kong. The government maintains that the timetable for the implementation of the second phase is yet to set. But you know, once the first phase is implemented, do you think the second phase will not go ahead?

There is bitter hostility between Hong Kongers and mainlanders these days. For Hong Kong government and its officials, this is like a slap in their face. They have been preaching the integration of Hong Kong and mainland and all the accompanying benefits to Hong Kong. They did not envisage nor could recognize that there are serious issues with “integration”. Expectedly, the government is not saying anything on the conflict between Hong Kongers and mainlanders, not to mention doing anything about it.

I do not want to delve into the reasons, the history and psychology that may lead to the conflict. While I think it is absolutely wrong to disrespect people and label each other as “dog” or “locust”, I am most concerned that Hong Kong is losing its character, press freedom, academic freedom, and all in all its value system.

In other words, I feel that Hong Kong is becoming another Tibet, where the immigration/strong presence of newcomers not only dominates its economy but also change its economic, cultural and social fabrics.

Let me lay bare these facts to you:

- In 2010, 37% of the babies born in Hong Kong are of mainland parents; in 2011 the year of dragon, the first baby born in Hong Kong is of mainland parents.

- In 2011, mainlanders accounted for 28% of the total number of transactions and 37% of the total transaction amounts in the primary property market.

- In 2011, Hong Kong received over 25M mainland tourists, representing over 60% of the total number of tourists of the year.

- In Hong Kong’s universities, mandarin was heard spoken everywhere, with many mainland students either being offered scholarships to study here or whose families are rich enough to afford them studying here. Mainland scholars who have obtained their doctorates overseas also heavily fill the faculty rank in the local higher education sector.

Here’s what I see and hear:

- In Hong Kong’s main shopping areas, there remain only cosmetics shops, jewelers, luxury watch shops, and pharmacies which sell baby formula, all of which cater to the needs and purchasing power of mainland tourists. The smaller / traditional shops are dying due to soaring rents.

- The simplified Chinese is everywhere, even in supermarkets. (To date, I cannot read / refuse reading books in simplified Chinese – they are eye sores, a distorted writing system that is in force in the mainland for political reasons only.)

- Hong Kong’s housing price is among the world’s highest, with cash from mainland buoying the local property market.

- Uncivilized behavior is easily seen. A friend of mine told me she actually saw a mainland parent allow her child to pee in the middle of a shopping mall. As a mother, she also told me she genuinely felt lucky that she became a mother some years ago, not now otherwise she would have to fight with mainland mums for maternity service and school places for her kid.

- A mainland scholar in a Hong Kong University just caught himself in a scandal for publicizing a survey of the Chief Executive hopefuls even before the survey was properly done and was completed. Allegedly he wanted to curry the favor of one of the hopefuls.

- A Hong Kong based Beijing official recently repeatedly lambasted a scholar in The University of Hong Kong for “serving the interests of a specific political group” after this scholar’s public polling recently shows that a low proportion of Hong Kongers identify themselves as Chinese, and this same scholar proposed an online election of the Chief Executive involving all the residents.

- 440 people were arrested by the Hong Kong police for protests and demonstrations in 2011, compared to 57 in the previous year.

- The press has been having a hard time conducting interviews and doing reports in the new government headquarters at Tamar because of strict rules and unfriendly press arrangements and security guards.

Can the Hong Kong government see what is happening to the city? Of course it can. It just refuses to see. An unelected Chief Executive and government, they do not need to listen to the people, anyway. They need only to look up to Beijing. Next month, the government will implement a new policy that would allow mainland drivers from Guangdong Province to drive and travel in Hong Kong. Are they sane? Is Hong Kong not polluted and congested enough? Are there not enough mainland tourists? With Hong Kong reachable by MTR, where is the need to travel in Hong Kong by car?

If you can find some hope for Hong Kong, let me know.