Hong Kong Says Ruling Could Increase Populace by 20%

A senior official told legislators here that Hong Kong’s population--already among the densest in the world--could swell by more than 20% because of a controversial court decision earlier this year.

In the first official government estimate of the effects of the “right of abode” ruling by Hong Kong’s highest court, Hong Kong Secretary for Security Regina Ip said a government survey shows that more than 1.6 million people living on the Chinese mainland are eligible for Hong Kong residency.

Hong Kong has a population of 6.6 million people.

In one of its first constitutional cases since it was created at the end of British rule, the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeals ruled Jan. 29 that the territory’s Basic Law--negotiated between Chinese and outgoing British officials before China resumed control of the territory in 1997--grants the right of residency to all mainland-born offspring of Hong Kong residents, including children born out of wedlock.

According to Ip, the ruling grants eligibility to 692,000 first-generation offspring and to an additional 983,000 people who are children of the first group. Included in the numbers, Ip said, are at least 520,000 children born out of wedlock, most sired by Hong Kong men who have second or third families on the mainland.

Presenting a nightmare scenario, Ip said such a sudden influx of population would test the ability of Hong Kong--which since 1997 has functioned as a Special Administrative Region of China--to house, educate and provide employment for its people.

“Tens of thousands of mainland residents settling in Hong Kong,” Ip said before the Legislative Council here, “will cause a rapid increase in our population and unemployment rate, a more crowded living environment. Hillside squatters may reappear. Education and medical facilities may not be able to meet the demand.”

In making its presentation, the government was clearly attempting to push the Hong Kong legislators to find some way to block implementation of the court ruling. The national government is also bitterly opposed to the ruling. One possibility, in fact, is that the Legislative Council will ask the National People’s Congress in Beijing to amend the Basic Law to exclude most of the mainland-born children.

The controversy surrounding the court case has been accompanied by a wave of anti-immigrant sentiments here. Hong Kong television stations Wednesday night supplemented their stories on the Ip appearance before legislators with reports detailing overcrowding in schools attended by mainland immigrants and rising crime in the immigrant population.

But Stephen Lam, chief government spokesman, said the purpose of the stark government projections “was not to scare anybody but to lay out fully the implications of the court decision.”

The government said its estimates for the number of people affected by the ruling were based on surveys of 10,000 Hong Kong households. To avoid embarrassment to men interviewed in front of their wives, the government surveyors devised a means for the men to acknowledge the existence of other wives and children without informing the Hong Kong families.

Similar surveys are currently being conducted in nearby Guangdong province.