Hong Kong | Gov’t said to seek limit to visits from Shenzhen residents

A local villager, center, gestures at protesters demonstrating against mainland Chinese shoppers at a suburban district of Yuen Long in Hong Kong

Hong Kong proposed to China that visits from Shenzhen residents be cut to once a week as an increase in day-trippers and traders buying goods in the city led to protests, a government official said.
The change in policy, which currently allows Shenzhen visitors to travel across the border freely with a permit, would reduce the number of such arrivals by 30 percent, or 4.6 million visits, according to the Hong Kong official, who asked not to be identified as the Chinese government hasn’t made an announcement.
The impact on tourism in the city would be limited since more than 90 percent of multiple-entry permit holders are day-trippers, the official said.
A surge in parallel traders who buy daily necessities in Hong Kong to resell in the mainland spurred weeks of street protests this year as they drive up prices and hoard goods. Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying has to balance the public discontent with concerns that a drop in visitors will further depress retail sales and hurt the economy.
The proposal takes into account the city’s “receiving capacity of mainland visitors,” the government said in a statement on Saturday, which didn’t specify what the measures are. The government’s media department referred to the statement when asked for confirmation of the details.
The South China Morning Post reported specifics of the plan yesterday, citing unidentified people from the government and Shenzhen police.
Scuffles have broken out between protesters and the traders at neighborhoods near the border, spurring arrests and demands from lawmakers to curb visitors. The incidents further stoke tension with China, months after Hong Kong students led unprecedented street protests demanding more autonomy in elections.
Protests against parallel trading have hurt the city’s image as a tourist destination, according to Hong Kong Financial Secretary John Tsang. The drop in visitor arrivals over the three-day Qingming Festival holiday earlier this month is of “concern,” he said in a post on his government blog yesterday.
Tourists from mainland China jumped 16 percent to 47 million in 2014 from a year earlier, according to the Hong Kong Tourism Board. Day trips accounted for a record 60 percent of these, compared with 38 percent in 2006.
Instead of rich Chinese flying in to purchase luxury items, Hong Kong is seeing an increasing number of visitors buy up shampoos, milk powder and other necessities. Concerns in China about the safety of local products have led to demand for those sold in the city.
While expenditure on luxury items plunged 14 percent last year, the sales of medicine, cosmetics and at supermarkets saw as much as a 9.3 percent gain, government data shows.
Two-thirds of the 743 people surveyed in February by the Chinese University of Hong Kong wanted the government to reduce the number of individual Chinese visitors. More than three-fifths of those polled said the tourists have brought inconvenience to their lives, the university said.
With Chinese tourists making up 78 percent of Hong Kong’s visitors last year, their changing composition ripples through the economy and drags down the sales of luxury good companies including Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group Ltd. and Prada. Michelle Yun, Bloomberg