Booming baby business brings little joy to Hong Kong

By Hazel Parry Feb 21, 2012, 2:06 GMT

Hong Kong - New mother Mrs Jiang has just made one of the biggest single investments of her life so far.

The 29-year-old from Guizhou in southern China paid more than 70,000 Hong Kong dollars (9,000 US dollars) to give birth to her first baby across the border in a Hong Kong private hospital.

'It is a lot of money, but I hope it will be worth it,' she said, cradling her five-day-old son on the day she left hospital. 'We want the best for him.'

Mrs Jiang, the wife of a businessman, says the fee she paid was far in excess of a year's salary she earned as an administrator prior to giving up work.

But she is confident the investment will bring greater opportunities for her son.

Mrs Jiang, who declined to give her full name, is one of thousands of mainland Chinese women choosing to give birth in Hong Kong. Last year, they accounted for about 45 per cent of the 88,000 births in the city of 7.1 million.

Their numbers have risen steadily since border restrictions were eased in 2003 following the handover of 1997 when Hong Kong reverted to Chinese sovereignty.

For many mothers-to-be, the attraction is the permanent residency given to the babies of Chinese nationals born in Hong Kong: a status which guarantees the offspring free healthcare, education and other benefits in the wealthy city.

For others, it is a way of avoiding fines for second and subsequent children imposed under China's one-child policy, as the extra births are registered in Hong Kong.

But this baby boom has caused problems for Hong Kong's health service, which has found itself struggling to cope with the demand.

Since 2007, the government has introduced several measures aimed at curbing the rise in maternity tourists from China.

These have included imposing fees of 38,000 Hong Kong dollars and a compulsory booking system on non-local pregnant women. It has also introduced a quota system, which this year set the number of beds available for non-local women at 3,400 in public hospitals and 31,000 in private units.

But still they come. Mrs Jiang said she booked her bed though a Hong Kong obstetrician when she was barely a month into her pregnancy, and opted for a caesarian delivery to make things more predictable.

The bill of around 70,000 Hong Kong dollars for a five-night maternity package was considerably less than the 100,000-dollar-invoice she would have faced had she opted for extras such as a fully-private room or delivery on a day considered auspicious in the Chinese calendar.

There is also growing evidence that some women are taking more drastic measures and breaking laws to defy the number restrictions and give birth in Hong Kong.

Figures released by the Hospital Authority suggest some may be hiding pregnancies from immigration officers as they cross the border and then turning up at accident and emergency units already in labour. In the first 11 months of last year, there were 1,453 emergency births, double the number in 2010.

Others are overstaying their visas, with one newspaper report claiming an average of 20 mothers with newborn babies appearing in front of the city's Western Magistrates Court every day for such offences.

One such mother quoted by the Sunday Morning Post said she overstayed for six weeks to give birth to her second child in Hong Kong to avoid fines at home for breaching the one-child policy.

The demand for Hong Kong births has also spurred the rise in 'maternity tourism' agents in China who make a profit out of doing the legwork and booking deliveries for mainland Chinese women.

Earlier this month, one such agent, Xu Li, was jailed for 10 months for making a false representation to immigration officers in helping a heavily pregnant woman cross the border without a hospital booking.

After crossing the border, the woman immediately phoned an ambulance to take her to hospital to give birth, the court heard.

Cases like this and the inconvenience of an over-stretched maternity service for local women have also stirred up bad feelings in Hong Kong towards mainland mothers.

It was one of the factors that recently led a group to launch a Facebook and advertising campaign likening mainland Chinese coming to Hong Kong as locusts.

Mrs Jiang says she feels saddened by the locusts label.

'We are helping the Hong Kong economy. We have paid and are not getting something for nothing,' she said. 'They should be giving us a welcome. We are all Chinese.'

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