A common journalistic ruse is to quote "sources close to the government" about some controversial matter. This way you get the quote, you get the story and you get it sounding high level without having to name names. For example in today's Standard Carrie Chan parrots such a source on the topic of mainland women giving birth in the Big Lychee:

Taxpayers would have to fork out a hefty HK$5 million for each child born in Hong Kong to mainland women, according to a source close to the government.

The price tag would cover the child's education and medical and social expenses as well as the costs of the parents migrating to the territory.

There's no detailing how this "source" reached the "hefty $5 million" figure, other than the traditional "rabbit out of hat" method. The article goes on to describe how all these mainland women giving birth in Hong Kong pose a danger to the city's way of life, even though senior politicians including The Don see these births as a potential demographic benefit. And of course this "hefty $5 million" is just a measure of costs, without any consideration of benefits such as providing future workers to support the growing legions of aging Hong Kongers.

The government is in quite a muddle about these pregnant mainlanders. Funnily enough, there are a lot of them desperate to give birth here even though they largely can't afford it. There are a couple of reasons why: firstly even if they can't pay the hospital bills they know they'll get high quality medical care, and secondly under Hong Kong's Basic Law, Article 24 says the permanent residents of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall be Chinese citizens born in Hong Kong before or after the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Already there's mutterings of "re-interpretation" of the Basic Law to deal with this issue...although in this case it's so black-and-white that it is hard to see how anyone could squirm out of it. Indeed Article 22 of the Basic Law clearly puts the onus on Beijing to sort out this problem: For entry into the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, people from other parts of China must apply for approval. Among them, the number of persons who enter the Region for the purpose of settlement shall be determined by the competent authorities of the Central People's Government after consulting the government of the Region. However it doesn't seem as if Beijing is too interested.

Instead the latest solution is more pragmatic, if not draconian:

Executive Council member Jasper Tsang Yok-sing proposed Monday that incentives for pregnant mainlanders to deliver babies in Hong Kong should be thwarted by both immigration and administrative measures.

"This is not an incurable epidemic, but it can be curbed by economic and administrative measures," Tsang said.

Denying entry at the border to non-resident pregnant women is a "universal and equal" immigration policy that is applicable to all, he said...Mainland mothers who fail to settle their medical bills after giving birth in local hospitals should also have applications for their children's birth certificates deferred.

Or maybe these government "sources" could be more creative, creating a scheme for pregnant mainland women to come to Hong Kong under some kind of bond scheme which gives them a path to both repaying their hospital bills and remaining in the SAR, with all the benefits that brings to both these women and the SAR. Unfortunately "creative" and "government" are not terms that go together often.

I will be out of blog range for the next few weeks, so hopefully some of my fellow contributors can take up the slack. Hope you have a Merry Christmas and a happy 2007.

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Copyright Simon World