tim's experiment

Concern about the number of mainland ladies coming to Hong Kong to have their babies has mysteriously transformed itself into a preoccupation with the fact that the resulting kids have an automatic right to live in Hong Kong. Hence the solution to the problem now being touted on all sides is to come up with some legal way of removing the automatic residency from the off-spring. This seems to me to be rather unrealistic. It is not based on any careful research among mainland mothers-to-be and depends on a rather poor stab at their likely motivations.

No doubt if you are a pregnant mainlander the prospect of your kid having the right to live in Hong Kong is not unwelcome. But it hardly seems a strong enough attraction to offset the considerable cost, inconvenience and even danger involved in having your baby in Hong Kong. After all his or her right to live in Hong Kong is going to be a rather fragile asset. The kid is going to stay with you on the mainland, in the majority of cases, until he or she is old enough to leave home for work or university – say 18 years. In that time a lot of things could happen. The Hong Kong government may change the law so that your kid is no longer a resident. Or the need for permission may disappear: in most places citizens are allowed to travel freely within their own countries. This arrangement has not yet reached China but things are getting looser. Another possibility is that after 18 years no sane mainlander wishes to move to Hong Kong anyway, there being no attractive difference any more. If something really dire happens in China, Hong Kong can no longer expect to be left out. So giving birth in Hong Kong, as a long-term investment in the future of your sprog, doesn’t have a great deal going for it.

Meanwhile there are other more cogent reasons which have nothing to do with the Basic Law of the Hong Kong SAR and relate to parts of China’s current arrangements which local left-wingers would perhaps rather not draw to our attention. The One-child policy, to begin with, is still policy. Mothers embarking on a second pregnancy are still subject to a good deal of discouragement and some post-natal persecution. No doubt having it in Hong Kong is not a complete solution to this problem, but it helps.

There is also the matter of mainland medical services. We are occcasionally assured that some hospitals in China are as good as any hospitals anywhere, but the average standard is quite low, and corruption is a problem. There is also the matter of unscrupulous suppliers of necessities like baby milk. In a country where people are prepared to poison babies to make a fast buck, mothers-to-be may feel that the hazards of having their babies on the threshold of a Tuen Mun casualty department are worth risking, and indeed smaller than the dangers of a conventional delivery nearer home.

Given these attractions you have to wonder whether mainland mothers would be significantly deterred by an announcement that their off-spring would no longer be instant Hong Kongers. Actually if people really believe this is the main consideration the problem could be solved very easily by announcing that all babies born anywhere in China would have the automatic right to live in Hong Kong. This would entirely remove the incentive to give birth in Hong Kong and the babies, when grown, would still have to solve the sort of problems which face would-be migrants anywhere: jobs, housing, culture shock …. And of course if the present arrangements are still in force they will need exit permits from the Chinese authorities.

But this will of course not happen. There is no room in our inn. Perhaps we should offer a stable.