Adhering to the need to "put Hong Kong people first" in formulating policies （2014/12/05)

President, Hong Kong and the Mainland are mutually dependent. Following the reform and opening up of China since the 1970s, Hong Kong has backed up on a mutually beneficial basis the remarkable development of the Mainland in various areas with our competitive edge in the supply of funding and talents, the exchange of information and a sound legal system. However, more than 30 years have elapsed and the situation now has already reversed. With the emergence of China as the second largest economy in the world, it is now the turn of Hong Kong to attract foreign investment with the aid of the resources and advantages offered by the Mainland in order to maintain our economic growth and prosperity. World attention has now been focused on the huge market of China and everyone is following the world trend and trying in every way to get a share of the market. However, unfortunately, some people including Mr Gary FAN and Ms Claudia MO have chosen to do the very opposite. They have been advocating localism and de-sinolization, targeting their attacks repeatedly at visitors and new arrivals from the Mainland, stirring up China-Hong Kong conflicts and bringing endless troubles with an aim to drag Hong Kong onto a path of no return, of self-seclusion.

This is not the first time that Mr FAN move a motion on "putting Hong Kong people first" and the many fallacies in the reasons given for moving the motion have only aroused our suspicion of his motive for doing so.

First of all, with regard to the proposals put forward in the motion to protect the official status of Cantonese, I think the real purpose behind is to promote localism. Through the campaign to protect the official status of Cantonese, the proposers aim to reject Putonghua and other international languages and label the learning of Putonghua as Mainlandization. As we all know, the language policy of "biliteracy and trilingualism" has been adopted in Hong Kong after the reunification, not only to cater for the need of maintaining close contact with the Mainland, but more importantly, to keep pace with the economic success of China in recent years. The emergence of China has made it necessary for many foreigners to get acquainted with Chinese and many people are rushing to learn Putonghua. As a matter of fact, Putonghua has become an important tool for communication as English, while learning Chinese and speaking Putonghua is a world trend. Hong Kong people enjoy a definite advantage in learning Putonghua and it is not a bad thing for students to master Putonghua as a second language during their young age. This will definitely be conducive to enhancing the competitiveness of our next generation and should have no conflict with the protection of indigenous languages.

Mr FAN has also suggested in the motion "to reduce the existing admission rate of over 80% for Mainland students to funded tertiary programmes, and to give priority to local students in allocation and use of local education resources". The statement is obviously misleading and has deviated from the actual facts, and the sole purpose is to arouse the discontent of local students against Mainland students. Under the existing policy of the University Grants Committee (UGC), UGC-funded institutions may admit non-local students to their degree, sub-degree and postgraduate programmes up to a level not exceeding 20% of the approved UGC-funded places of these programmes. According to the data maintained by the UGC, the number of non-local students in 2013-2014 only constituted 15% of the UGC-funded places in tertiary institutions. The wordings used by Mr Gary FAN in his motion would mislead the public into thinking that the majority of UGC-funded places in local universities have been allocated to Mainland students. It is a known fact that tertiary institutions all over the world would make their best endeavour to attract overseas students to enrol in the programmes they offer and strengthen their academic standing with the normal practice of providing financial assistance to students with outstanding academic achievements. The provision of an increased number of self-financing programmes in local universities is actually the major reason for the marked increase in the number of Mainland students in the past decade and students enrolled in these programmes are required to pay the regular programme fee, with Government subvention granted only to some students with outstanding academic performance. It would be a very irresponsible generalization of the actual admission rate for Mainland students to funded tertiary programmes if illustration is only made on the examples of individual faculties or postgraduate programmes. With his repeated attempts to mislead the public by stating that the existing admission rate for Mainland students to funded tertiary programmes is 80% and claiming that local education resources have been seized by Mainland students, the intention of Mr FAN is indeed very obvious.

As for economic development, Mr FAN seeks to cap the number of visitors under the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS) and abolish the measure of "multiple-entry endorsements", to which I have to express my objection. We have to bear in mind that since the implementation of the IVS in 2003, a significant growth has been maintained in the overall tourists' spending in various tourism-related industries of Hong Kong such as retail, catering, transportation, hotel, and so on. This is conducive to both the economic development and the creation of a large number of job opportunities in Hong Kong and any suggestion to cap the number of Mainland visitors would be taken as a gesture to show our dislike and rejection for visitors. The influx of Mainland visitors does affect the daily life of residents in some districts but the problem stems from the inadequacy of the Government in exploring measures to enhance our capacity for receiving tourists, to divert visitor flow and to tackle the impact of parallel trading activities. In my opinion, it is not feasible to abolish the measure of "multiple-entry endorsements" or even introduce a land departure tax which, as mentioned by Mr SIN Chung-kai just now, is similar to the levying of arrival tax in overseas places because these may result in congestion in custom counters and boundary control points. Thus, the series of measures proposed to mitigate the nuisance caused by visitors in some districts will only be in vain. They will only turn out to be detrimental to the tourism-related industries as well as the economic development of Hong Kong.

President, for the future of Hong Kong, I hope that the extremists among Members of the opposition camp will show mercy and stop defaming Mainland visitors and flaring up China-Hong Kong conflicts. Instead, a solution to the problem should be given in an objective and positive manner. Any message conveying the idea of localism and promoting a seclusion and closed-door policy will in no way bring protection to our next generation but will render young people narrow-minded progressively and restrict their future development in the isolated island of Hong Kong.

With these remarks, President, I object to the original motion.