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Updated Monday, February 6, 2012 0:00 am TWN, By Beh Lih Yi, AFP



	This file photo taken on July 19, 2008 shows a Chinese mainland tourist posing for a photo in front of a statue of Hong Kong movie icon Bruce Lee in Hong Kong. A bitter feud between Hong Kongers and mainland Chinese, sparked by the northerners' increasing financial and political clout, has led to an awkward debate about the former British colony's identity. (AFP) Enlarge Photo

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Bitter exchanges highlight Hong Kong-mainland divide

HONG KONG--A bitter family feud between Hong Kongers and their northern neighbors sparked by mainland China's increasing financial and political clout has led to an awkward debate about the former British colony's identity.

The glittering southern financial center has been governed according to the “one country, two systems” formula since its return to Chinese rule in 1997, but recent incidents have made it look more like “one country, two cultures.”

As both sides enter a year of leadership change and economic uncertainty, some are questioning whether the jangling nerves are evidence of a deeper unease among freedom-loving Hong Kongers about their status under Chinese rule.

“This is a period of difficult adjustment and confusion,” said political analyst Joseph Cheng of Hong Kong's City University.

“About 20 or 30 years ago, Hong Kong people tended to look down on their Chinese cousins. Now there's a sense of inferiority due to the economic boom in China.”

It took an incident as apparently small as a mainland girl flouting rules against eating on Hong Kong trains to set off the haters on each side of the Shenzhen River.

A video of Hong Kongers angrily berating the girl went viral online last month, drawing a blistering response from Peking University professor Kong Qingdong.

“What type of people are those who deliberately don't speak Mandarin? Bastards!” the outspoken academic, who says he is a descendent of Confucius, said in interview with a Chinese website.

“As far as I know, many Hong Kong people don't regard themselves as Chinese. Those kinds of people are used to being the dogs of British colonialists — they are dogs, not humans.”

A Hong Kong online forum hit back with insults of their own in the form of a newspaper ad, published last week in the widely read Apple Daily, depicting mainlanders as “locusts” set to devour Hong Kong's resources.

Millions of mainland tourists and investors pour into Hong Kong every year, adding billions of dollars to the local economy.

But they also fuel property prices and take up limited hospital spaces, particularly in maternity wards which struggle to care for tens of thousands of mainland women every year.

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