A few weeks ago, the native of southern Guangdong province said she was chatting in Mandarin with a friend in West Kowloon when a young man walked past and began shouting obscenities at them and saying they should “go back to mainland China”.“I was so shocked at that moment. I couldn’t understand what prompted the man to do such a thing to us, as we didn’t know each other, and my friend and I were just talking about my newborn baby,” she said.
After almost four months of protests in Hong Kong, which stemmed from a dispute over the now-withdrawn extradition bill, there is a growing sense of fear within certain communities, and not least among those who moved to the city from the Chinese mainland. Although there has long been friction between Hongkongers and “mainlanders” – with the latter being seen by the former as a drain on public resources – most of the city’s native inhabitants can trace their roots back to mainland China.
“I recently found out your restaurant is run by mainlanders, so goodbye~ #Hong Kong, add oil,” the post said. Lau Siu-kai, vice-president of The Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies, a semi-official mainland think tank, said the recent increase in animosity towards people with links to mainland China was a result of the insecurity felt across Hong Kong society.
He Wen, an expert in Hong Kong affairs at the Shanghai Institute for East-Asia Studies, said that the recent spike in nationalist sentiment on the mainland – China celebrated 70 years of Communist rule on Tuesday with a massive military parade – had hardened Hongkongers’ concerns. “Local communities have shown a strong far-right trend these years… which has fuelled the extremist and even anti-humanity actions,” he said.
According to a recent report by mainland newspaper Beijing Daily, a 49-year-old man surnamed Zhou was attacked and badly beaten by anti-government protesters in the Wan Chai area of Hong Kong after complaining about them waving a Japanese flag. A group of masked protesters vandalise Diamond Hill station in the Kowloon district of Hong Kong. - AFP
“But those feelings may also stem from a lack of understanding of and social interaction with mainland China, where their parents and grandparents came from,” he said. Gao Fei, a mother of three boys who moved to Hong Kong from northeast China in 2014, said she had hoped her children would get a better education in the city but recently moved them to a school in the nearby mainland city of Shenzhen over concerns about what she saw as rising xenophobia.
Hong Kong belongs to China. Hong Kong was, is, and will forever be part of China no matter what the mob says. Hongkies are Chinese. Hongkies were, are, and will forever be Chinese no matter how they scream their heads off!
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