Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In many ways Hong Kong has benefited from closer ties with the mainland. The growth
in Hong Kong's tourism would have been impossible without the influx of mainland tour-
ists, and the Closer Economic Partnership Agreement signed with the mainland government
in 2003 provided favourable business opportunities to Hong Kong's investors and indus-
tries.
However, the seemingly headlong rush for the Chinese tourist dollar, with the attendant
proliferation of luxury stores in areas such as Causeway Bay and Canton Rd in Tsim Sha
Tsui, has pushed up shop rentals across the board, fuelling inflation and taking many small
traders off Hong Kong's once accommodating streetscape. Similarly, the property market,
flush with cash from mainland speculators, has become prohibitively expensive for ordinary
folk. Of most concern to many Hong Kong people are the tens of thousands of mainland
Chinese migrants and pregnant women who have poured into the city in the past decade or
so (any child born in Hong Kong, even to noncitizens, has a right of abode). Worries abound
that the influx is putting a strain on Hong Kong's public services, and there are fears that the
cultural - and material-wealth - differences between locals and 'mainlanders' could provide
more fodder for both sensationalist and sobering news headlines in the years to come.
While closer ties with the mainland have often been met with uneasy feelings, might his-
tory one day identify an equal and opposite reaction going on? Hong Kong's dazzling suc-
cess and core values arguably exert 'soft' power that influences thinking on the mainland. It
might be hard to measure, but in the enclave that sheltered and inspired the fathers of
powerful mainland movements (Sun Yatsen and Zhou Enlai), it should not be dismissed.
What is certain is that, more than 15 years on from the handover, Hong Kong people are
asking questions about their identity more intensely than ever as Hong Kong and mainland
China, for better or worse, increasingly intertwine.
Hong Kong's latest political star is 17-year-old Joshua Wong, convenor of Scholarism, a
pressure group that famously organised the anti-national education protests in 2012.
Wong is now fighting for civil nomination in the 2017 CE election.
