Inter-Asia Cultural Studies

ISSN: 1464-9373 (Print) 1469-8447 (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/riac20

Imagining accidental fetal citizens: pregnant

Mainland women and the cultural politics of
birthright citizenship

Tsung-yi Michelle Huang, Chun-kai Woo & Yen-fu Lai

To cite this article: Tsung-yi Michelle Huang, Chun-kai Woo & Yen-fu Lai (2019) Imagining
accidental fetal citizens: pregnant Mainland women and the cultural politics of birthright
citizenship, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 20:1, 73-90, DOI: 10.1080/14649373.2019.1576398

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14649373.2019.1576398

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INTER-ASIA CULTURAL STUDIES
2019, VOL. 20, NO. 1, 73–90
https://doi.org/10.1080/14649373.2019.1576398

Imagining accidental fetal citizens: pregnant Mainland women and

the cultural politics of birthright citizenship
Tsung-yi Michelle HUANG, Chun-kai WOO and Yen-fu LAI
Department of Geography, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This essay looks at the mobility of pregnant Mainland women in Hong Kong to Pregnant Mainland woman;
expose the reverberations of the SAR government’s immigration policies birthright citizenship; fetal
relating to cross-border birth tourism. Pregnant Mainland women and their citizen; reproductive
futurism; birth tourism;
children (fetuses), as emergent social subjects, embody conflict and the
localism; Sino-Hong Kong
negotiation between population governance and economic benefits. The relationship
government denies pregnant Mainland women the right to give birth in
Hong Kong based on their non-eligible status while admitting their children
to be born in Hong Kong on the grounds that their children meet Hong
Kong’s future demand for population renewal, in this way boosting the
development of childbirth tourism. However, the localism, which has had an
extensive influence on Hong Kong local society in recent years, has rejected
the SAR government’s “population renewal” imaginary by suggesting its own
“locust imaginary.” The government’s acceptance and the local’s exclusion of
the population flow between China and Hong Kong imply distinct cross-
border subject imaginations. Only by contextualizing and critically analyzing
the various othering identities such as the non-eligible or locusts can we
better understand the cultural politics of Hong Kong birthright citizenship
over recent years.

Galvanized by the launch of CEPA (Closer Economic Partnership Agreement) in 2003, recent years
have witnessed an ever more intense relationship between Hong Kong and China, bringing about
new economic links, social organizations and population mobility. While the links in this new era
suggest a prosperous and stable economic future, they have concomitantly produced increasing
anxiety in Hong Kong, with the perception that the Sino-Hong Kong border has given way to a
new relation that lies beyond the reach of the SAR (Special Administrative Region) government
and compromises the interests of the local populace. One prime example that showcases the com-
plicated cross-border politics and the challenge of governance confronting Hong Kong is the con-
troversy centering on the right of abode in 1999 and the policy relating to pregnant Mainland
women based on the case of Chong Fung Yuen in 2001, which continued in force up to 2012,
when the “zero delivery quota” policy for expectant Mainland mothers whose husbands were not
Hong Kong residents was strictly enforced. To explain the implications of Hong Kong’s population
policy over the last two decades and the ways discourses of citizenship contribute to understanding
the conflicts between the logic of capital and that of governance during Hong Kong’s integration into
China, this essay attempts to focus on debates surrounding representations of expectant Mainland

CONTACT Chun-kai WOO [email protected]

© 2019 Tsung-yi Michelle Huang, Chun-kai Woo and Yen-fu Lai. All rights reserved.
74 T.-Y. HUANG ET AL.

mothers and their Hong Kong-born infants, prompted by an upsurge of Mainland women giving
birth across the border. We will look at the cultural construction of birthright citizenship, so as to
critically analyze how the SAR government, birth tourism industry, media and discourses of localism
seek to articulate birthright citizenship by creating an image and a certain imagination of pregnant
Mainland women and their children. On one hand, pregnant Mainland women generate tremendous
profit for private hospitals and birth-related businesses in Hong Kong; their Hong Kong-born chil-
dren are lauded as a solution to Hong Kong’s aging society; on the other hand, the practice of cross-
border births causes enormous tension, as it prioritizes economic benefits at the price of local
resources, including medical services and educational opportunities, among others.

Contextualizing birthright citizenship in Hong Kong: how pregnant Mainland

women became non-eligible and consumers of birth tourism
1999 and 2001 saw two major governance challenges for the Hong Kong SAR. The fundamental con-
cern of the 1999 controversy lay in whether children born in the Mainland to Hong Kong parents
should still have permanent resident status. At the time of decision, the Hong Kong Court of Final
Appeal and the Hong Kong SAR government held different views pertaining to the right of abode.
The court eventually ruled that persons born in the Mainland to parents with Hong Kong citizenship
had the right to Hong Kong residency without the approval of Mainland authorities, a decision
which destabilized the SAR government’s dominance over discourse on the right of abode as well
as the supervisory authority of the Mainland government (Tung 1999). To respond to an expected
influx of children born in the Mainland to Hong Kong, the SAR government sought an interpret-
ation from the committee of the National People’s Congress in regard to the right of abode in the
Basic Law to unmake the citizenship of Mainland-born children and ensure that their right to resi-
dency could only be obtained by obtaining an entry permit.
Two years later, in Chong Fung Yuen’s case, the Court of Final Appeal ruled that Mainland
children born in Hong Kong to non-local parents had the right to acquire permanent status,
which accordingly boosted the number of cross-border births and those dubbed with the deroga-
tory moniker of “double-not children” (shuangfei) born to Mainland parents who were non-per-
manent residents in Hong Kong. This time the SAR government justified and rationalized the
accidental citizenship of Mainland children born in Hong Kong with population policies. Since
the judgment was handed down in Chong Fung Yuen’s case in 2001, the number of cross-border
births has risen significantly. To control the influx, the Hong Kong government first categorized
local pregnant women as “eligible” and pregnant Mainland women as “non-eligible,” on the basis
of which the government then raised obstetric charges and re-allocated the distribution of medical
resources, ensuring that Hong Kong mothers would have priority in obstetric services in public
hospitals while Mainland mothers were required to pay out large sums in obstetric expenses
for medical services in private hospitals. “Non-eligible” originally referred to those pregnant Main-
land women who married to non-residents. However, in 2003, the “Report of the Task Force on
Population Policy” revised the categories applicable to “non-eligibles,” a revision which defined the
Mainland spouses of Hong Kong residents who travel with a two-way exit permit and who have
lived in Hong Kong for less than seven years as “non-eligible” and modified their daily hospital-
ization fee of 68 HKD (the same charge as local residents or “eligibles”) to a revised rate of 3,300
HKD (Government of HKSAR 2003, 65). Based on this revision, the Mainland spouses of Hong
Kong residents became “single-not mothers” (danfei), whose entitlement to medical benefits was
accordingly rescinded by the government.
 INTER-ASIA CULTURAL STUDIES 75

Over the decade of controversy, it is important to note that pregnant Mainland women, as emer-
gent social subjects, embody conflict and negotiation of population governance and economic
benefits. Such an analysis of the cultural politics of birthright citizenship is informed by Ayelet Sha-
char’s (2009) reformulation of political membership, Peter Nyers’s (2006) observations of accidental
citizenship and Sean Wang’s (2017) discussion of fetal citizenship. Shachar (2009, 7) argues that both
principles of conferring citizenship, jus soli (law of the soil) and jus sanguinis (law of blood), rely on
“birthright transfer of entitlement” to define political membership and distribution of resources. Put
another way, membership boundaries are not only “sustained for symbolic identity and belonging
purposes,” they also serve as “crucial role in preserving restricted access to the community’s accu-
mulated wealth and power” (Shachar 2009, 10). While Shachar urges us to look beyond identity
and belonging and focus on the “transfer mechanism” of birthright citizenship, Nyers (2006, 23–
24), in examining the political subjects of birthright citizenship, brings our attention to the discursive
technologies of what he calls the “accidental citizens.” He observes that the strong emphasis on tigh-
tening immigration policy and strengthening border enforcement during the post-911 years brings
about a tendency of demeaning the immigrants who gain their citizenship via the jus soli principle by
describing them as “accidental,” such as “citizenship tourists,” “instant citizens” and “anchor babies,”
just to name a few (Nyers 2006, 24). Borrowing the idea of “accident” from Paul Virilio, Nyers main-
tains that the construction and revocation (the making and unmaking) of citizenship involves dis-
cursive strategies of “accidental citizenship.” The “accident” comes from an exceptional occurrence
that departs from the norm, and it connotes certain uncertainties produced by risk and danger as
well as certain strategies of avoiding: “As a way of (not) being political, the ‘accidental citizen’ is simi-
larly considered to be incidental, non-essential, and a potentially catastrophic exception to the norm.
Accidental citizenship is nominal (not necessary), ephemeral (not essential), and dangerous (not
desirable)” (Nyers 2006, 24). In sum, the term “accidental citizenship” suggests the pejorative dis-
course surrounding birthright citizenship, as it categorizes individuals born to “non-local” parents
as “accidental” political subjects that are indeterminate and incidental, so as to manifest the essential
risk of citizenship and accordingly to justify the “unmaking” of citizenship if necessary (Nyers 2006,
23–24).When those who acquire birthright citizenship are defined negatively as uncertain, accidental
political actors, the affinity between individuals and their birthplaces can be easily severed, rendering
birthright entitlement to citizenship no longer ascriptive and natural.
If Nyers’s “accidental citizenship” highlights the discursive technologies to unmake the citizenship
of non-locals, Wang’s (2017, 264–274) textual analysis of media reports of birth tourism emphasizes
the importance of birthright citizenship in producing and securing the fantasy of a national future by
exploring how the principle of jus soli and the figure of the fetal citizen become the site for struggle
over the shaping of temporalities of the national future in the USA. He argues that reproductive
futurism “invokes the imaginary child for whom the society must demand a better future” and
such a disciplinary image puts a spotlight on the figure of the fetal citizen in debates over the politics
of immigration (Wang 2017, 264–270). Analyzing the ideologies of reproductive futurism in the
media representation of Chinese birth tourism in southern California, Wang points out that the dis-
courses of “worthy immigrant” and “anchor babies” that surround the idea of the fetal citizen are
expressions of anxiety over what an ideal national body should be like and who may give birth to
citizens in the U.S. Furthermore, both pro- and anti-birth tourism rhetoric envision the figure of
the fetal citizen as part of the national future but deny the pregnant woman as a full citizen in
her own right. Those who are pro-jus soli argue that maternity care is provided for the unborn
child only because the unborn child, not the pregnant woman, “will be classified as [a] U.S. citizen.”
The opponents, as Wang observes, often accuse pregnant Chinese women of “stealing,” or
76 T.-Y. HUANG ET AL.

“cheating,” which can be seen as a conceptual slippage – “these women are stealing a national future
that never belonged to them.” To be specific, “Jus soli might still leave their fetuses a claim on that
national future, but it is not for these women; after all, they are seen as merely ‘containers of citi-
zens.’” In sum, the overdetermined national future, as “a temporal mode of discipline in the present”
in both accounts “accords the fetus its own citizenship at the expense of recognizing the pregnant
woman’s own” (Wang 2017, 272–273).
This essay intends to present Hong Kong’s story of pregnant Mainland women to add to the
above findings on birthright citizenship. We will identify the controversy over birthright citizenship
in Hong Kong as a complex case study in which the aforementioned concept and operation of birth-
right citizenship can be understood. As a special administrative region of China, Hong Kong has
“returned” (huigui) to China, retaining a separate border and jurisdiction. The central-local relation-
ship featuring “one nation yet two administrative areas” is mirrored in the official definition of the
“right of abode in Hong Kong,” which emphasizes the possession of Chinese citizenship with “born-
in-Hong-Kong” as an additional condition. Said differently, although maintaining a separate border
with its own customs system under the “One Country, Two Systems” principle, the Hong Kong SAR,
distinct from nations which can confer sovereign citizenship, is under the jurisdiction of the PRC.
The citizen subject defined under the Basic Law of Hong Kong is “PRC citizens” – who are entitled
to the right of abode in Hong Kong, as long as they were born prior to the establishment of the SAR
government. In other words, jus soli determines right of abode for PRC citizens in Hong Kong, the
acquisition of which, in turn, forms the identity credential upon which the allocation of other
resources is justified. Against this context the case of pregnant Mainland women in Hong Kong
will be explored to show how the concept of birthright citizenship is defined through national com-
munity and territory. There will be an attempt to clarify the complex relationship between birthright
citizenship and the utilization of public resources, tackling the intersecting links between identity, a
sense of belonging, and the “transfer mechanism” of citizenship, in Shachar’s (2009, 7) words, to
consider how “accidental citizenship” and “reproductive futurism” became the key concepts under-
lying government policy, news, and the conflicting discourses of local people surrounding pregnant
Mainland women and the children they bring into the world.
Now we are ready to return to the situation in Hong Kong. In 1999 Tung Chee Hwa’s remarks
addressing the right of abode controversy demonstrate how the rhetoric of “the accidental” is mobi-
lized to rationalize the SAR government’s population policy:
[T]he admission of these additional people would put enormous pressure on Hong Kong […]. This
would trigger social problems and have consequences which would lead to serious and adverse effects
on the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong, the strain of which we would be unable to bear. (Tung
1999)

It is worth noting that Tung’s description of being “compelled” marks the pejorative discourse that
centers around the accidental consequences caused by children born in the Mainland to Hong Kong
citizens and its subsequent detrimental impact on Hong Kong society. In the name of protecting the
best interests of local people, the accidental citizens are stigmatized as a liability to the society. By
legalizing exceptional administrative strategy in seeking help from the Central Government to rein-
terpret the Basic Law with this accident rhetoric, the SAR government ultimately overruled the Court
of Final Appeal, assuming the right to approve citizenship and denying Mainland children the right
of abode on the pretext that they are an unexpected and unbearable burden upon Hong Kong society.
In his 2011 Policy Address, Donald Tsang, the chief executive of Hong Kong offered a new under-
standing of “accidental citizens”:
 INTER-ASIA CULTURAL STUDIES 77

I must stress that the government does not encourage Mainland women to give birth in Hong Kong. But
as long as their children are Hong Kong permanent residents, we must consider these children as a valu-
able human resource for Hong Kong. (Tsang 2011)

Unlike Tung’s dystopic portrayal two years previously, Tsang invites Hong Kong people to see preg-
nant Mainland women and their babies in a different light, envisioning the potential benefits of
cross-border births. While pregnant Mainland women are not welcome, as far as cross-border obste-
tric practices are concerned, their Hong Kong babies do not have to be undesirable accidents; but
rather, they can be celebrated as “potential new blood” for Hong Kong’s aging population. One can-
not overlook that the gesture of welcoming accidental citizens is premised on a patriarchal logic not
so different from the practice of “keeping the child but not his mother” (jiu zai ng jiu naa).1 What
deserves nuanced interpretation in this quote is the underlying logic of the rhetoric employed. Here,
the official population policy of Hong Kong justifies Hong Kong-born babies’ right of abode by creat-
ing them as an antidote for the aging society of Hong Kong. As such, Hong Kong is able to justify the
allocation of more social resources to human resource cultivation, to turn accidental citizens into
assets to the society rather than a liability. Tsang’s talk suggests that as the definition of right of
abode in Hong Kong is undermined by cross-border childbirth, the SAR government, in turn,
deploys the discourse of population policy to distinguish between Mainland mothers and their
Hong Kong-born children by way of their different birthplaces. The SAR government rejects preg-
nant Mainland women but embraces their offspring as a human resource for Hong Kong, and in so
doing reifies the divide between them in terms of whether they are Hong Kong-born or not. At the
same time, such a policy that stipulates Hong Kong-born residents receive priority for healthcare
services could also deny access to social resources to pregnant Mainland women who were not
born in Hong Kong.
The logic of “keeping the child but not his mother,” which ties the Hong Kong-born babies to the
needs of Hong Kong’s future, allows the government to defend the jus soli policy. The ideology of
reproductive futurism defines the fetal citizen as “potential new blood for Hong Kong’s aging popu-
lation,” while expectant Mainland women, as “container[s] of citizens,” should return to the Main-
land after giving birth to the “new blood,” rather than share Hong Kong’s future with their children.
As Wang (2017, 274) describes, the child/fetus “is now a figure through which women as (future)
mothers are interpellated and disciplined.” This kind of government rhetoric which separates
Hong Kong infants from their Mainland mothers was also meant to ease the discontent of the people
of Hong Kong towards cross-border births by keeping pregnant Mainland women at bay, while
labeling the accidental citizens as beneficial to the overall prosperity of Hong Kong. Importantly,
here “beneficial” connotes not only the provision of human resources for the local as Tsang refer-
ences in his speech, but the unstated economic advantages brought about by cross-border birth
tourism.

“User pays”: marketization of Hong Kong’s medical resources and development of

birth tourism
The official governing policy of pregnant Mainland women since 2001 has defined them as “non-eli-
gible persons,” which leads a considerable amount of them to become consumers of the obstetrics
and gynecology services in private hospitals. Clarifying the production context and representation
of non-eligible persons and consumer identity helps to grasp the significance of the benefit principle,
consumerism, and the politics of exclusion underlying Hong Kong’s governance logic of pregnant
78 T.-Y. HUANG ET AL.

Mainland women and the way medical services are both welfare benefits for citizens and potential
lucrative birth tourism market.
Before looking into the formation of the cross-border birth tourism market in Hong Kong, we
first need to account for how Hong Kong’s local medical resources mesh with a profit-based tourist
market, allowing non-eligible persons to utilize these medical resources as consumers. In fact, mar-
ket logic has always influenced medical resource distribution within Hong Kong’s healthcare sys-
tem. Chau and Yu (2003, 199–200) point out that the Hong Kong government, following its
laissez-faire policy, has tackled medical services based on residualism and market principles. His-
torically, the British Hong Kong government started out with no intention of providing public wel-
fare for Hong Kong society following the Second World War. It was not until after the 1967 leftist
riots that the British Hong Kong government started implementing welfare policies such as social
assistance and public housing in the 1970s and augmented public medical services in 1974 to quell
the social discontent against the colonial government at the time (Chau and Yu 2003, 202). The
current Hong Kong healthcare system is primarily founded on the so-called “dual medical econ-
omy,” with government-subsidized non-profit organizations as well as government-managed hos-
pitals providing over 92% of clinical medical services and private clinics providing 76% of non-
clinical services (Chan 2011, 18–19). While the British Hong Kong government had previously
provided most clinical medical services, it continued to emphasize the residual aspect of the pol-
icies that could satisfy people’s medical needs; when faced with rising public medical expenditure,
it also continued to employ “user pays” rhetoric to persuade the public into accepting increases in
medical charges (Chau and Yu 2003, 202–203). After the establishment of the Hong Kong SAR
government, economic recessions, such as the Asian financial crisis, led to a fiscal deficit and
prompted the government to propose healthcare reform, to cut back on medical expenses. Health-
care reform was concerned with strengthening the residual welfare model, “founded on the belief
that the private market and the family are superior to the government as service providers, and that
the government should focus on helping those who are unable to have their needs met in these two
sectors.”
Accordingly, the government proposed increasing individual medical charges in 2002 and also
indicated that users in need would have to pay higher medical costs in the future. However, attempts
at reform also aimed to reinforce the importance of market logic in medical resource distribution,
such as replacing the principle of universality with the principle of economic efficiency’s emphasis
on supply and demand, or establishing a quasi-market in medical services (Chau and Yu 2003,
203–206). Through the operation of residualism and market principles, the Hong Kong government
recognized itself as the defender of the capital market, playing a crucial part in the development of
medical services.
The discursive framework in which the Hong Kong government employs the “user pays” rheto-
ric to emphasize the importance of applying residualism and market principles to medical charges
points to the fact that the politics of medical welfare lie in the long-term struggle over the principle
by which medical resources are distributed. Chan’s (2011, 23) research identifies the crux of the
problem: the ultimate determinants of Hong Kong’s healthcare system are societal values. In
other words, “in Hong Kong, concerns about equity, in terms of service consumption (i.e. equal
access to all) and service financing, have played an important role in health care decisions.” Yet
“the current system separates the users from the payers” – the payers sustaining the public health-
care system are primarily the upper-middle class who frequent private hospitals, whereas those
enjoying public medical resources are the lower-middle class who pay less taxes. This ultimately
led to antagonism between the payers and the users. Especially after the financial crisis, the middle
 INTER-ASIA CULTURAL STUDIES 79

class started to show their discontent at sustaining medical subsidies or medical insurance through
higher tax payments. The less cohesion in society and the more citizens question the fairness of
state governance, the more intense the social value conflict caused by the medical welfare policy
becomes.
Analyzing the politics of medical resource distribution through the lens of medical financial
reform, Chan (2011) points out that medical resource distribution and policy are closely related
to the social hierarchy of and value distribution between “tax payers” and “users.” Donald Tsang set-
ting in motion the six industries of Hong Kong, medical services included, based on the rationale that
Hong Kong should “seize the opportunities of Hong Kong/Guangdong cooperation” can serve
further discussion with regards to the social relation between the above-mentioned “tax payers”
and “users.” In this case, when the users of medical services are not local citizens but, rather, con-
sumers coming across the border, is the “user pays” rhetoric still sufficient to convince the public
to accept market logic as the distribution principle for public/private medical resources? What social
value conflicts could this possibly lead to? In Tsang’s 2009 Policy Address, he made the following
statement on the development of the medical industry,
Hong Kong is capable of attracting residents living in peripheral areas to come and use local medical
services. It has become increasingly convenient for Mainland residents to come to Hong Kong, forming
the customer base for Hong Kong’s medical services. The government will continue to provide land to
promote the development of private hospitals and to encourage cooperation between public and private
medical institutions. (Tsang 2009)

Here, he sees medical services as an industry, indicating that the customer base of medical services
has already extended to the “peripheral areas” outside of the parameter of local citizens. The “Main-
land visitors” as a “customer base” are given special emphasis, so as to allow Mainland residents to
make use of local medical resources as “customers.” In other words, the opening-up of cross-border
mobility brings forth the geo-accessibility between Hong Kong and Mainland China, making Main-
land visitors the prime customer base for medical market expansion. In light of this, the SAR gov-
ernment decided to promote the development of private hospitals and sanctioned four tracts of land
for the construction of private hospitals at the end of the same year, as well as considering the con-
version of other private land for medical purposes.2 During Tsang’s two terms as Chief Executive, the
number of private hospital beds rose from 3,122 in 2006 to 4,000 in 2012. As a result of his approval
of the expansion or reconstruction of three extant private hospitals, the number of private hospital
beds has increased again from the original 4,000 to 4,910 since the completion of construction – 25%
growth.3
Undoubtedly, pregnant Mainland women who cross the border to give birth in Hong Kong are
one of the most hotly debated cases when it comes to the marketization of local medical resources.
In contrast to the essential citizens, that is, Hong Kong residents, pregnant Mainland women are
represented as outsiders and are denied political membership of Hong Kong as well as access to
its public resources. The idea of certain people being labeled as “non-eligible” rationalizes policies
concerning the distribution of medical services, including flexible markup pricing practices and a
quota scheme for public hospitals, which are followed by the commercialization of medical services,
turning pregnant Mainland women into birth tourism “consumers.” For example, in 2005 the gov-
ernment increased obstetric charges under the pretext of “ensuring that local pregnant women would
have the priority in being provided with proper obstetric services” (Health, Welfare and Food Bureau
2005). Public hospitals in Hong Kong raised the charge to 20,000 HKD for non-eligible pregnant
women and accordingly demonstrated a standard of pricing that adhered to the so-called “cost
80 T.-Y. HUANG ET AL.

recovery” principle (Health, Welfare and Food Bureau 2005). In 2007 the price bump on obstetric
services for Mainlanders was premised upon “reducing the incentives for non-eligible pregnant
women to avoid antenatal examinations” (Food and Health Bureau 2012). The medical charge for
cross-border childbirth was determined by whether or not they made an appointment with the hos-
pital before giving birth there – 39,000 HKD for those who made an appointment and 48,000 HKD
for those who did not.
The case of pregnant Mainland women crossing the border to pay for Hong Kong’s obstetric ser-
vices complicates the aforementioned “user pays” principle and the implied tension between taxpayers
and users, both of which originally referred to local Hong Kong residents, albeit with class differences
between them. When Hong Kong’s medical services are offered for purchase to Mainlanders, the “user
pays” logic still applies but here the “user” has transformed from local low-income residents in its orig-
inal context to the target affluent consumers of the healthcare market from outside of Hong Kong. To
legitimize Mainlanders’ access to local resources, the government draws on the pricing standards of
private hospitals for these non-eligible users to qualify them as eligible consumers.
The government specified that the pricing policy was formulated “quoting the pricing standards
of private hospitals, including those of private practitioners, so as to discourage non-eligible citizens
from choosing public medical services for their lower price” (Legislative Council Secretariat 2012a).
The numbers of pregnant Mainland women admitted to private hospitals surged due to the quota
imposed on the number of pregnant Mainland women allowed to be cared for as well as the price
bump on obstetric services in public hospitals (Table 1). The Hospital Authority subsequently
announced in August 2008, September 2009 and April 2011 that it would stop accepting bookings
for obstetric services from pregnant Mainland women. In 2012, the government only allowed a lim-
ited number, 3,400, of Mainland mothers into public hospitals (Food and Health Bureau 2012).
Statistics show that this governing policy successfully channeled pregnant Mainland women into
private hospitals, yet in terms of the total number of cross-border births, during the past decade the
SAR government has not effectively prevented shuangfei mothers-to-be from giving birth in Hong
Kong, but rather they have induced a boom in birth tourism (Chan 2011). Implied in the policy
of governing “the non-eligible” is the market logic which allows that pregnant Mainland women

Table 1. Pregnant Mainland women giving birth in Hong Kong (Legislative Council Secretariat 2012b).
 INTER-ASIA CULTURAL STUDIES 81

can access birthright privileges in Hong Kong, as long as they can afford the high price of obstetric
services. The growing number of Mainland mothers, as well as the increased obstetric charge, not
only transformed the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department from its gradual decline due to the
decrease in the local birth rate into a tourism market with massive potential but also forged new
links with childbirth agencies, cord blood banking and other obstetrics-related industries. There
are various “one-stop-shop” (yitiaolong fuwu) obstetrics service rates (medical, residential, delivery
and other service fees) to assist pregnant Mainland women in giving birth in Hong Kong, including
agencies arranging cross-border delivery for pregnant women and the “obstetrics package” provided
by Hong Kong hospitals.
“One-stop-shop” and “obstetric packages” are both terms for tourism advertisements, referring to
the concrete mechanisms and institutions of cross-border birth tourism. In making arrangements for
pregnant women to give birth in Hong Kong, agencies in China all emphasize that they offer “one-
stop-shop” for pregnant women. This so-called “one-stop-shop” means the agencies in charge of
completing all the necessary procedures required for Mainland mothers to deliver babies in Hong
Kong, services which include making appointments for prenatal obstetric examinations with doctors
in Hong Kong, processing confirmation of delivery booking, arranging cross-border transportation,
stays in hotels in Shenzhen or Hong Kong before delivery, check in with hospitals for delivery, apply-
ing for birth certificates, Hong Kong Re-entry Permit and Home Return Permit as well as sending
documents back to pregnant Mainland women after delivery if they are unable to extend their visa
and stay in Hong Kong.4
In different terms, while the “user pays” logic rationalizes pregnant Mainland women’s access to
Hong Kong’s obstetric services and brings in lucrative profits for the private medical market, this
kind of cross-border marketization of medical resources renders the distribution of medical benefits
more complex politically. Pregnant Mainland women’s double identity points to this very conflict –
they are defined by the Hong Kong government as non-eligible persons in terms of citizenship and at
the same time they are seen as eligible cross-border consumers when it comes to purchasing obstetric
services, as long as they can afford the high price. The double identity thus makes these women’s
“societal value” and their contributions to Hong Kong society ambiguous if not dubious.
The purported benefits of welcoming accidental citizens could, in actual fact, be a misfortune in
disguise: as the obstetric medical services sector becomes the paradoxical site of both allocating pub-
lic resources and the source of business profit, it seems inevitable that there will be compromise with
regard to local people’s access to public resources in the pursuit of capital. In what follows we will
analyze the reproductive future imagined in the representations of pregnant Mainland women in
media coverage and nativist discourse in an attempt to grasp how the fetal citizen, when coded as
a locust or a locust egg, becomes not only the most convenient vehicle for the local to articulate
cross-border birth, its impact on Hong Kong’s population structure and its future, but also the
site of struggle over Sino-Hong Kong economic relations between the government and society.5
Specifically, this locust discourse will be examined in the context of the emergence of Hong Kong
localism in recent years, which defines the Sino-Hong Kong relationship in terms of cross-border
interactions.

Othering accidental fetal citizens: locusts, localism, and reproductive futurism

In response to the influx of pregnant Mainland women, the SAR government legitimizes their right
to deliver babies in Hong Kong by defining them as “non-eligible persons” and, in so doing, opens a
door for these women to the birth tourism market. The government regulations outlined above
82 T.-Y. HUANG ET AL.

reveal how an economic discourse was deployed to naturalize accidental citizenship as a state con-
trolled commodity. The burgeoning birth tourism industry soon opened up a new demographic
challenge, which witnessed the extension of the Right of Abode to include not just Mainland children
born to Hong Kong parents but Hong Kong-born children to parents from the Mainland. As more
and more pregnant Mainland women crossed the border to purchase obstetric services, the tensions
entailed by commodifying accidental citizens emerged. Concomitant with rising localism in Hong
Kong, the general public are inclined to refute the government’s rhetoric implying this is a source
of “new blood” for the population. Instead of the purported benefits brought about by the incoming
birth tourists, they emphasize the problems such accidental fetal citizens may cause to Hong Kong’s
demographic structure and question if they deserve to be Hong Kong citizens.
Opponents from local society continuously condemn such commodification of birthrights first by
resorting to negative images of pregnant Mainland women as problematic mothers. They are often
considered either too reckless or too ignorant to pay for prenatal care to ensure a safe pregnancy and
a healthy baby. Another common story centers around birth defects. Sensational headlines abound –
“their [Mainland mothers avoiding prenatal checkups] children will be more vulnerable to heredi-
tary diseases” (“Side Effects” 2012), “we don’t know if they carry AIDS [sic]” (“Mainland Pregnant
Women” 2012), or “20 percent of pregnant Mainland women risk giving birth to freak babies as a
result of not getting vaccines for measles” (Yu 2010). By describing the Mainland mothers’ neglect of
their babies’ health, these reports mostly call people’s attention to the burden they create on Hong
Kong’s healthcare system and on its social service. Here the images of problematic mothers and their
babies speak to the anxiety over the “new blood” for the population – if Mainland mothers are such a
dangerous, uncontrollable other, they are not even qualified as “containers of citizens,” and accord-
ingly their children can hardly be ideal fetal citizens of Hong Kong. Drawing on the ideology of
reproductive futurism, these reports suggest it is unwise to waste medical and social resources on
these cross-border births.
The unqualified mothers are further dehumanized in newsprint discourse through radical
oppositional discourses, denigrating them as “locusts” that deprive Hong Kong locals of access
to public resources. The image of locusts, originally referring to Mainland tourists in Hong
Kong, is transformed into a disciplinary image in the localist discourse that labels Mainlanders
in Hong Kong as “predators of resources” (Lam Fai Fred’s blog 2011). One salient example
can be found in a Facebook community page named “Anti-Mainland Pregnant Women:
100,000 People Show the Government Why.”6 Established in 2011, this community page shows
how Sino-Hong Kong tensions over the years have been embodied by pregnant women from
the Mainland, and the problems that have been associated with them, such as crossing the border
to give birth, buying up milk powder and selling smuggled goods, to name but a few. All of these
sources of tension can be framed within the derogatory rhetorical discourse that depicts Mainlan-
ders as locusts. Other than the online campaign, this group also initiated a protest against preg-
nant Mainland women, making a plea to the SAR government to stop the “locusts” from using
local medical resources.7
The metaphor of locust concretizes the problem of allocation of Hong Kong’s resources during an
incident in which Golden Forum members collectively published posts that stigmatized shuangfei
pregnant women. On the 1 January 2012, Golden Forum members published defamatory posters
concerning shuangfei pregnant women in the Apple Daily and Sharp Daily (Figure 1), demonstrating
that Hong Kong society had already had enough of Mainlanders coming over the border to plunder
resources, and they called on the government of the Hong Kong SAR to change the law in order to
prevent shuangfei pregnant women from coming to Hong Kong to give birth. The main image on the
 INTER-ASIA CULTURAL STUDIES 83

Figure 1. “Are You Okay with Hong Kong Paying 1 million HKD to Raise Shuangfei Children Every 18 Minutes?”
(“Anti-locust” 2012).

poster is a massive locust perched on top of a mountain, looking towards Hong Kong’s Victoria Har-
bor, preparing to fly towards what symbolizes Hong Kong’s “Lion Rock” to plunder resources. The
imagery on the poster warns that the locust is already on the threshold of Hong Kong and could
invade Hong Kong society at any minute, highlighting the massive pressure on Hong Kong society
caused by the public resources legally allocated to the accidental citizens of these “locusts.” On the
whole, the image of locust posits pregnant Mainland women as predators devouring Hong Kong’s
resources, spawning a brood of pernicious pests.
The most startling slogan on the poster appears in the form of a rhetorical question: “Are you
happy for Hong Kong to spend 1 million HKD every 18 min on the children of shuangfei?” Here
the facts and statistics (1 million every 18 min) are a shock tactic aimed at getting the viewer to
grasp not only the immediate financial burden Hong Kong must shoulder but also the future cost
the society has to pay if the “locusts” cannot be stopped. In a sense, the plea exemplifies how the
future serves as “a temporal mode of discipline in the present” (Wang 2017, 272). To rationalize
such a mode of discipline, the political discourse of the poster employs the rhetoric of charity:
We know that you suffer from poisoned milk powder, so we tolerate your raid upon;

We know that you have no freedom, so we bestow “free pass” on you;

We know that your education is backward, so we share our educational resources with you; we know that
you don’t read traditional Chinese, so we use “crippled” Chinese character in the following for you:
“Please do respect HK local cultures. Without HK, you are all doomed!”

Strongly demand the Central Government amend Basic Law Article 24! Stop shuangfei pregnant Main-
land women from fleeing en masse to Hong Kong! (“Anti-locust” 2012)
84 T.-Y. HUANG ET AL.

The poster lists several facts about the rights Mainlanders have when entering Hong Kong, but it
interprets these rights as Hong Kong society giving charity to Mainland China. The cause and
effect relation in this patronizing charity discourse embodies the entrenched differences between
Hong Kong and Mainland China in terms of their respective levels of civilization: the former as
higher, the latter as lower. The civilized Hong Kong was superior to the uncivilized Mainland: the
Mainland is backwards in terms of education, food security and lack of democracy; therefore it
needs charity from Hong Kong, superior as it is in terms of education, politics as well as its living
environment. The charitable rhetoric in the poster implies that Hong Kong has no obligations to
raise fetal citizens born to Mainland parents since these shuangfei mothers are “invaders” who
“go too far” and “know nothing about local cultures.” In this light, cross-border births are unbearable
and unnecessary burdens weighing on Hong Kong’s future – the Hong Kong government has to pay
one million HKD per person to support these fetal citizens from kindergarten through to college.
Summarized in the form of an outcry, “We, the people of Hong Kong, have had enough!” in
large letters, the poster puts the task of stopping pregnant women from coming to Hong Kong at
the forefront. Along with the powerful visual representation of the locust as a disciplinary image,
the charitable discourse calls pregnant Mainland women locusts and refers to birth tourism as
“invading Hong Kong” so as to justify the plea to the government to revise Article 24 of the Basic
Law and protect Hong Kong’s resources from being exploited by Mainlanders.
The effectiveness of the locust as a rhetorical device, related to the fertility of pregnant bodies, was
also used against the fetal citizens of pregnant Mainland women, who were referred to as “locust
eggs” that will cause a “warping” of the values of Hong Kong society “in no time.” The lyrics of
the song “Locust World,” adapted from a popular song by a member of the HK Golden music
forum, is a pertinent example illustrating the ways Mainlanders are compared to locusts in that
they are seen to be exhausting Hong Kong’s resources (ChinglishVlogs 2011). As soon as it was
released, this song became popular with Hong Kong citizens. In the lyrics the “plague of locusts”
is associated with the negative characteristics and imaginaries of other pests to portray expectant
Mainland women as an unrelenting tide of pregnant alien monsters. The metaphor of the locust
eggs disassociates the fetus in the pregnant Mainland woman’s womb, which will have the right
to reside in Hong Kong, from its place of birth, seeing it instead as an extension of its mother’s
body: mother and child are seen as inextricably linked, the child of a locust can be nothing but a
locust. The song compares the fetal citizens as locust eggs, parasite feeding off of the pregnant
woman’s body, waiting to be born as a citizen:
Invading across the Hong Kong border and taking over our land – that’s your specialty. Parasitic until
your citizenship is recognized. Big-belly locusts are like aliens; pregnant and not stopped by immigra-
tion. No one can stop them from scamming HKIDs. Locust eggs hatch in hospitals – taking over
beds and not paying bills. Do you feel the anger within the sadness? What is really invaded is the future
of the next two generations. (ChinglishVlogs 2011)

The suggestion of the “parasitic eggs” paints a grim picture of Hong Kong’s future. These locusts,
which spawn a second generation in Hong Kong, appropriate resources, and their Chinese way of
thinking is also capable of brain-washing Hong Kong citizens, thus posing a risk to the next gener-
ation. The locust as a rhetorical device, along with negative media coverage, successfully posits preg-
nant Mainland women and their children as nothing but shameless invaders and as embodiments of
misfortune. Such an attempt to other them suggests Hong Kong society’s anxiety and angst toward
cross-border births, which to some extent has become the collective sentiment that drives Hong
Kong society to discipline or exclude the fetal citizens born to Mainland mothers.
 INTER-ASIA CULTURAL STUDIES 85

To fully comprehend the emergence of the locust discourse and its imagination of fetal citizen-
ship in Hong Kong, it is necessary to trace the development of local consciousness since the
handover. After the 1997 transfer of Hong Kong sovereignty to China, activism advocating the
preservation of the local gradually arose in Hong Kong society, with voices criticizing develop-
mentalism by evoking folk memory, which had been the focus of the first-wave of “local con-
sciousness” since “the Handover” (Law 2015, 137). As Sino-Hong Kong economic and trade
relations grew closer, doubts as to whether this form of integration could really benefit the devel-
opment of Hong Kong began to surface. For example, the 2010 Anti-Hong Kong Express Rail
Link movement protested the rapid integration of China and Hong Kong while opposing devel-
opmentalism (Law 2015, 137). Thereafter, a series of protests relating to Mainland tourists
sparked one after another, including a controversy over a boutique store photo ban at Tsim
Sha Tsui’s Canton Road, parades against pregnant Mainland women giving birth in Hong
Kong, and the anti-parallel trading demonstrations, which escalated into social conflict, all of
which served to reinforce the bond between localism/local consciousness and the “oppose [the]
Mainland, resist China” mindset (Law 2015, 138–139). Such localism underlines the fact that
one of the focal points of Sino-Hong Kong economic and trade integration lies in demarcating
Hong Kong from China by maintaining border control and, in this way, constructing the imagin-
ation of a “community.” The treatise Hong Kong Nationalism, published by The Hong Kong Uni-
versity Students’ Union (HKUSU), purports that “[t]o demarcate Hong Kong from China, time is
of the essence,” urging that Hong Kong must “reclaim the right of approval towards Mainland
arrivals” so as to “maintain autonomy in defense of extant core value and to prevent bad
money from driving out good” (Undergrad HKUSU 2014, 45). Kwong and Ho (2017, 44) stress
that “border control is the foundation to the effective operation of a self-governing community,”
drawing on “multiple-entry endorsement” as the instance to show how failure to control people
flow might impact the streets of Hong Kong. Hung (2014, 35) also deems the right to approve
immigrants and tourists as an important stipulation to ensure locals’ right to public housing and
medical services. Through the demarcation of border, the local discourses emphasize taking the
initiative to reject any elements that could “disturb or disrupt” the system and values of Hong
Kong. Through the elimination of such elements, the mentality of “Hong Kong People Take Pri-
ority” can thus be rationalized. Basing itself on the demarcation and exclusivity of the border,
promoters of the local consciousness attempt to establish a set of demographic structural con-
cepts against the threat of China. Among them, “population displacement” invariably becomes
the highlight of such discourses. For example, HKUSU believes that China is undertaking “colo-
nial displacement” in Hong Kong: “the identity of ‘Hong Kong people’ will soon become history”
(Undergrad HKUSU 2014, 45–46). Hung brings the argument further, pointing out that the
Hong Kong SAR government is operating “population displacement […] replacing local Hong
Kong people with Mainland immigrants” (Undergrad HKUSU 2014, 48). The contrast between
the SAR government’s emphasis on “population renewal” and the local discourses’ suspicion
of “population displacement” shows that local discourses consider border mobility to be highly
relevant to the development of the demographic structure. The purity of the demographic struc-
ture thereby becomes the key to safeguarding Hong Kong’s “core value” while the shifts in the
demographic structure are identified as a crisis for the Hong Kong community, hence reinforcing
the necessity of demarcating Hong Kong from China.
Among the local discourses, Chin Wan’s best-selling books, Hong Kong as a City–State (Chin
2011) and Hong Kong as Adherents of a Pre-communist China (Chin 2012), exemplify the way
the discourse of pregnant Mainland women crossing borders to give birth consolidates the
86 T.-Y. HUANG ET AL.

“ethnic” borders between Hong Kong and Mainland China. Throughout his books, to form the
basis for the theory of Hong Kong as a city–state, Chin cites many examples involving pregnant
Mainland women, making statements as to what the Hong Kong SAR government “should” do in
terms of governance when it comes to pregnant Mainland women. Chin (2011, 151) advocates
imposing limits on pregnant Mainland women (especially shuangfei) coming to Hong Kong to
give birth, assuming that this future population from beyond the border would be a burden
on Hong Kong society. The metaphor of locust appears repeatedly throughout Chin’s discourse;
at times the term serves as a synonym for pregnant Mainland women: “without the locusts com-
ing to Hong Kong to occupy hospital beds and take advantage of the welfare system … ” (Chin
2012, 165). He calls on the Hong Kong SAR government to take back the right to approve or
deny immigration status, the autonomy to permit or deny entry to danfei/shuangfei planning
to give birth in Hong Kong, and even the power to grant or refuse Hong Kong residency. At
the same time, Hong Kong as a City–State points out that Hong Kong needs to approach Main-
land immigrants with a mind to “justice” (yi) as opposed to “economic advantage” (li), and what
he means by “justice” are the principles of “ethno-cultural consciousness” (Chin 2011, 152).
Whether or not new immigrants would identify with Hong Kong and whether they would be
advantageous to Hong Kong society’s cultural consciousness became the main basis for them
to be integrated into Hong Kong’s ethnic identity.
The opposition between justice and economic advantage also enables Chin’s nativist discourse to
appropriate reproductive futurism in order to prescribe criteria for an ideal Hong Kong citizen as
well as to exclude pregnant Mainland women and their children. He puts forth the “principles of
citizenship” as the basic premise for access to public services, and “citizens” must be in possession
of certain moral standards. Hong Kong’s public services should not be open to everyone, they should
be allocated on the basis of these “principles of citizenship” as criteria: holding respect for common
courtesy, having a certain level of moral cultivation and being willing to take the responsibilities and
duties that come with citizenship. These behavioral criteria must be, on the whole, similar to that of
Hong Kong people in order to become a “citizen” with access to Hong Kong’s public services and
social welfare (Chin 2012, 153). When principles of citizenship serve as the premise for access to
public resources, pregnant Mainland women lack the level of moral cultivation which would qualify
them as citizens and therefore should not be granted access to Hong Kong’s public resources. Fol-
lowing this logic, Chin (2012, 154) argues that what they have been doing in Hong Kong poses a
threat to the public services sector:
Public hospitals have clearly stopped taking appointments from Mainland women, but how then do
Mainland women still get beds in public hospitals? They get them using bullying techniques, like rushing
into the emergency room on the onset of labor, convulsing and screaming in pain, as well as threatening
to sue.

In Chin’s nativist discourse, moral discourse essentializes the ethnic differences between Hong Kong
and Mainlanders to provide Hong Kong residents with a rationale for refusing pregnant Mainland
women Hong Kong’s public resources. In other words, the “principle of citizenship,” to borrow Robert
Sack’s (1986, 20) words, employs territoriality as “a strategy to establish different degrees of access to
people, things, and relationships.” Defining civilization and morality as the essential qualities of good
citizens in Hong Kong, Chin territorializes Hong Kong as a city–state, the future of which cannot be
shared by cross-border birth tourists and their children. Notably, such a spatial strategy is also temporal
– the imagination of a future without Mainlanders is a discipline of the present which naturalizes the
distribution of local resources and the control of Sino-Hong Kong borders.
 INTER-ASIA CULTURAL STUDIES 87

To be more specific, as Eithne Luibhéid (2013, 173) observes in her discussion of the politics of
birth in Ireland: “immigration controls entail not just spatial dimensions (‘protecting the borders’)
but also temporal dimensions (‘protecting the future’).” She argues that the official narrative often
pits a national future against the future of the migrant women and their children. In other words,
the governance of the border is “articulated through the state’s mobilization of heteronormative
logics: in this case, a model of competing reproductive futurism.” In Hong Kong, one also witnesses
a competing reproductive futurism invoked to justify the tightening of border controls not just in the
popular locust discourse but in the official narrative. More than a decade after the watershed case of
Chong Fung Yuen, in 2012, the newly elected Chief Executive, Leung Chun Ying announced that the
quota for shuangfei pregnant Mainland women giving birth in Hong Kong would be lowered to zero.
Leung (2013) asserted the importance of local interests, arguing that cross-border birth takes a heavy
toll on Hong Kong society: “That area of business is gone for good […]. The bottom line is this: Will
it benefit Hong Kong?” When the state changes the rules to redefine cross-border birth as illegal,
pregnant Mainland women no longer assume the flexible roles of non-eligible person for obstetric
services and birth tourist and the controversy about new blood for the population and population
displacement is abated despite problems associated with their reproductive futurism that continue
to haunt Hong Kong society.8

Conclusion
On the basis of Article 24 of The Basic Law under the current administration, Hong Kong society, to
its dismay, is faced with the daunting reality of pregnant Mainland women coming to Hong Kong to
give birth. This essay looks at the mobility of pregnant Mainland women to expose the reverberations
of the SAR government’s immigration policies relating to cross-border birth tourism, examining the
logic used in practice and the official discourse that relies on the trope of “the accidental” and the
ideologies of reproductive futurism to frame issues of citizenship. In the official discourses that either
endeavor to rationalize or revoke birthright citizenship, identities of pregnant Mainland women pro-
liferate and contradictory images abound: non-eligible users of local services versus premium guests
with deep pockets, a possible solution to Hong Kong’s population crisis versus unethical predators
on local resources. Together these representations suggest how pregnant Mainland women and their
children (fetuses), as emergent social subjects, embody conflict and the negotiation between popu-
lation governance and economic benefits.
The government denies pregnant Mainland women the right to give birth in Hong Kong based
on their non-eligible status while admitting their children to be born in Hong Kong on the
grounds that their children meet Hong Kong’s future demand for population renewal, in this
way boosting the development of childbirth tourism. However, the localism, which has had an
extensive influence on Hong Kong local society in recent years, has rejected the SAR govern-
ment’s “population renewal” imaginary by suggesting its own “locust imaginary.” At the heart
of Hong Kong’s popular discourse of pregnant Mainland women as locusts is the logic of repro-
ductive futurism – the principle of jus soli invokes the imaginary of the fetal citizen in relation to
“population displacement” that foretells a dystopian future for the community. The locust as a
rhetorical device and negative media coverage represented pregnant Mainland women and
their children as cross-border social subjects detrimental both in terms of Hong Kong’s resources
and its social values. Although the “locust imaginary” is merely one of Hong Kong local society’s
many discourses centering on Sino-Hong Kong relations, and its inherent hate speech has not
won the recognition of all scholars who stress the prioritization of local interests, what the “locust
88 T.-Y. HUANG ET AL.

imaginary” represents – including the threat of China’s power invasion, the awareness of border
defense as well as the distributive justice of civil rights – are all issues which are of prevalent
concern in Hong Kong society at the moment.
In sum, in recent years there appear to be two drastically different interpretations, by the Hong
Kong SAR government and the local Hong Kong people, respectively, of the meaning of population
integration brought about by Sino-Hong Kong cross-border mobility to the future development of
Hong Kong: “population renewal” and “population displacement.” Such a glaring disparity shows
that the close economic and trade relationship between Hong Kong and China has impacted the
civil rights distribution within Hong Kong’s borders and the related local identity imagination.
Even if the SAR government allows the children of pregnant Mainland women right of abode in
Hong Kong on the basis of economic development, local society will continue to use derogatory
terms such as “locusts” or “displacement” to reject these accidental citizens from their community,
and, by doing so, deny the legitimacy of the SAR government’s cross-border policies. The govern-
ment’s acceptance and the local’s exclusion of the population flow between China and Hong
Kong imply distinct cross-border subject imaginations. Only by contextualizing and critically ana-
lyzing the various othering identities such as the non-eligible or locusts can we better understand
the cultural politics of Hong Kong birthright citizenship over recent years.

Notes
1. “Keep the child but not his mother” is Cantonese slang, mainly referring to situations in which a patri-
archal family drives the mother away and keeps the children born to her with a mind to ensure the family
line.
2. For more details, see http://archive.news.gov.hk/isd/ebulletin/tc/category/healthandcommunity/091014/
html/091014tc05005.htm.
3. For the details about the development of the private hospitals in Hong Kong, see https://www.legco.gov.
hk/yr11-12/chinese/sec/library/1112in24-c.pdf; https://www.legco.gov.hk/yr12-13/chinese/panels/hs/hs
_hps/papers/hs_hps0114cb2-448-2-c.pdf.
4. See Apex International Group (2012); Hong Kong Renan Baby Consultant Company (2012).
5. While there has been other “non-eligibles,” that is, residents from other nationalities, who are obliged to
pay more to give birth in Hong Kong, Mainlanders seem to be the only object of resentment, the
“locusts” plundering Hong Kong’s medical resources. One reason behind this seemingly unreasonable
phenomenon is the large number of Mainland women compared with expectant mothers from other
nationalities. On top of this, the complaints of pregnant Mainland women have much to do with the
rising conflict between Hong Kong society and the Beijing government in recent years, which also wit-
nessed the loss of confidence and trust in the SAR government’s population policy and its governance of
cross-border activities between Hong Kong and China, among them, the right to utilize local resources,
including medical services.
6. See http://www.facebook.com/itstimetosayno.
7. For details of the demonstration, see http://orientaldaily.on.cc/cnt/news/20110828/00176_021.html.
8. For example, Leung points out that more than 200,000 shuangfei babies have been born in Hong Kong
since the end of 2012. They are permanent residents and have access to health and education services.

Special terms
Shuangfei 雙非 Yitiaolong fuwu 一條龍服務
Danfei 單非 Yi 義
Huigui 回歸 Li 利
Jiu zai ng jiu naa 要仔唔要乸
 INTER-ASIA CULTURAL STUDIES 89

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.

Funding
This work was supported by the Chinese University of Hong Kong [direct grant 4051051] and Ministry of
Science and Technology, Taiwan [101-2410-H-002-190].

Notes on contributors
Tsung-yi Michelle Huang is a Professor of Geography at National Taiwan University, who specializes in East
Asian urban cultures. She is the author of Walking Between Slums and Skyscrapers: Illusions of Open Space in
Hong Kong, Tokyo and Shanghai (2004) and Articulating New Cultural Identities: Self-Writing of East Asian
Global City-Regions (Chinese) (2008). She is currently preparing her new book, Facing the Rise of China: Geo-
politics of Emotion and Narratives of Development.
Chun-kai Woo is a Ph.D. candidate of Department of Geography, National Taiwan University.
Yen-fu Lai received his master from Department of Geography, National Taiwan University.

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