China delivers baby boom to expectant Hong Kong
By Tan Ee Lyn
HONG KONG (Reuters) - China is delivering a baby boom to Hong Kong as wealthy mainland women flock to the city, seeking better hospitals and brighter futures for their unborn children.
"I want my child to be educated here, I want him to be seen as just a normal Hong Kong boy," said May Lee, 27, an accountant from southern Fujian province whose baby is due in April.
China's decision last year to relax restrictions on citizens travelling to Hong Kong has not only led to steady increases in burglaries and begging, but lots more babies as well.
A growing number of well-to-do Chinese women like Lee are choosing to give birth in Hong Kong, which entitles the child to residency rights in the former British colony.
For the mainland Chinese, Hong Kong offers tantalising riches and hospitals and schools reputed to have far higher standards than those at home. The free-wheeling capitalist city on mainland China's doorstep is also one of the most prosperous in the world.
The many mainland women in Hong Kong maternity wards have also given a much-needed shot in the arm to hospitals that had worried for years about falling revenues as local birth rates declined.
"Between a quarter and a third of beds in maternity wards in some public and private hospitals are taken up by mothers from the mainland," said Henry Yeung of the Hong Kong Doctors Union.
A growing number of mainlanders are also having regular health assessments and surgery done in the territory.
"Mainlanders are just more confident about health services here," Yeung added.
NEW POLICY BORN
Just a few years ago, authorities would turn away pregnant visitors from the mainland, fearing the city would be swamped with uneducated migrants. Those who managed to sneak in were swiftly expelled with their babies soon after delivery.
The government was so afraid of becoming a welfare state that mainland Chinese with relatives in Hong Kong were denied the right to stay. To draw attention to the plight of those separated from their families, some mainland Chinese even set themselves on fire in August 2000 at Hong Kong's immigration building after losing an appeal to stay.
The tide turned in 2001, when Hong Kong's top court gave residency rights to a child born here to a mainland couple.
The floodgates opened a bit wider last July, when Beijing lifted travel restrictions to Hong Kong to help boost the territory's sputtering economy and relieve pressure on its unpopular China-backed leaders, who have told residents to expect more favours from the central government.
Easier cross-border travel, however, is not without problems.
The city has nabbed a small but growing number of mainland visitors for robbery and prostitution. Newspapers report that crime syndicates in parts of China round up crippled beggars, ship them to Hong Kong and then skim much of the takings.
But most visitors from the north are law-abiding, and are even winning over the city's shopkeepers with their purchasing power. Mainlanders flood local shops looking for gold jewellery, which is much cheaper than at home, and some reportedly lay down hard cash to buy luxury homes.
Under China's new travel rules, mainlanders can now visit Hong Kong on their own instead of having to sign up with package tours. They can choose when to visit, how long to stay and all they need is the money to obtain residency for their newborn.
"Lifting of travel restrictions made it possible for people who were not able to do it in the past," said Lynne Fung, communications general manager at Matilda International Hospital, one of Hong Kong's costliest healthcare facilities.
Since the court judgement in July 2001, some 4,000 children of mainland parents have been delivered in Hong Kong.
"For a certain type of client, money is not an issue," Fung said, showing off a private room which looked more like a five-star hotel suite, overlooking the South China Sea.
Private hospitals in Hong Kong charge anywhere between HK$30,000 and HK$40,000 (US$3,850-5,130) for delivering a baby, or up to eight times more than it would cost on the mainland.
But for mothers like Lee, money is not the main concern.
"I like the education system here," she said. "To be born and bred here is better."
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