Accurate results will be hard to obtain: some Hong Kong men will no doubt be reluctant to own up to the children they have had by mistresses in China, while several of those "second wives" have already said they would not send their kids across the border unless they could accompany them. Officials have not even decided how to regulate the pace of immigration (at the moment, only 150 entrants a day are allowed), and have refused to let those visiting Hong Kong stay past the expiration of their visas. "This is inhuman," says 50-year-old Kwok Ching-peng, whose daughter now faces arrest for having overstayed her visa. "The government promises us one thing, and then they do another. Where is justice?"
What worries many experts is that the chaos is likely to worsen after all of those eligible have crossed the border. According to Peter Hills, director of the Centre of Urban Planning and Environmental Management at the University of Hong Kong, the city's population should grow naturally to more than 7.5 million by the year 2011; if 500,000 more immigrants are allowed in, Hong Kong would reach that density eight years ahead of schedule. The territory already bears the scars of its industrious millions--smog, dank streets and a harbor filled with waste. "Hong Kong is very delicately balanced at the moment," warns Hills. "It's pushing the limits of environmental sustainability." The additional influx could raise pollution to intolerable levels, while municipal workers would be hard pressed to clean up after such a teeming population.
Nor have authorities shown that they can house so many newcomers. By law, immigrants and their families must cool their heels for seven years before even qualifying for public housing. After that, the average wait for a public apartment is another seven years, trapping many families in squalid, often decrepit buildings. Before the court's ruling, Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa had pledged to reduce the latter delay to three years. But his administration has yet to reach its target of building 50,000 new units a year and, says housing activist Virginia Ip, will need to construct at least twice that number just to satisfy current demand. The dearth of realistic ideas for relieving the crunch does not bode well: Lee Wing-tat, the Democratic Party's housing specialist, can only suggest that already-breadbox-sized apartments be built smaller so that more of them can be squeezed onto the available land.
The critical issue, however, may not be space but time. Locating land and then designing and building the infrastructure for additional housing, schools and hospitals takes from three to five years, so the impact of new immigrants will vary greatly depending upon the pace of the influx. The local school system, though already crowded, should be able to cope at first. Officials claim they have room in the coming year for an additional 25,000 primary and secondary students. Already, some 50 organizations support the Education Department with language and assimilation programs for mainlanders. Most activists believe the newcomers can succeed--often discrimination actually drives them to excel at their studies--but only if their numbers are matched by additional teachers and classrooms. "The ultimate solution is to build more schools, but schools can't be built in one day," says Li Che-Cheung, a senior education officer.
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February 22, 1999
Test Case:
Beijing grumbles about the territory's courts
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