Hong Kong - Mainland War of Words

Recently (some) Hongkongers have complained that (some) Mainlanders behave poorly in public transport, occupy hospital facilities and other valuable resources unfairly, drive up housing prices, etc.  (Some) Mainlanders, on the other hand, complained that (some) Hongkongers cannot speak Putonghua properly, are unfriendly to Mainlanders, require tough laws to keep them in line, do not appreciate the business that Mainlanders bring to Hong Kong, etc.

Indeed, Hong Kong has developed a culture quite distinct from those of the Mainland, Taiwan or other Chinese communities.  And it is often a source of mis-understanding or even conflict.  However, the protagonists in this cases are largely “barking up the wrong trees”. (Just a convenient idiom - no offense intended.)

Hongkongers and Mainlanders are really not that much different in nature.  Put into the others’ shoes, they would probably behave in exactly the same manner.  It is the political systems and the corresponding governments that are responsible for the source of much of the conflict.

It is the Hong Kong government that have failed to curtail unlawful behaviour of greedy and arrogant businesses such as D&G.  It is the Hong Kong government that failed to sort out who should be able to benefit from the public services, such as hospital beds, financed by Hong Kong tax payers.  It is the Hong Kong government that use fear-mongering to prevent a rational discussion of a sensible immigration policy.  It is the Hong Kong government who allow the big real estate developers to manipulate the market, restrict the supply, and to sell flats using misleading information, driving up prices.

On the other hand, it is the Mainland’s political system that allows people like 孔慶東 to prosper from spewing hatred and extremist views.  It is the Mainland’s economic system that allows low-quality, fakes and poisonous products to flood the market - which drive the buyers to seek safer, high quality products in Hong Kong.  It is also the Mainland political system that allows officials to amass fortunes through corruption - which drove them to launder the ill-gotten wealth in the casinos in Macau, and the real estate markets in Hong Kong.  It is also the Mainland government that bastardize the Chinese script into unrecognizable simplified characters - ostensibly for the sake of raising the level of literacy.  Now, both Hong Kong and Taiwan, which keep using the traditional characters, have much higher literacy rates than in the Mainland - it turned out that the traditional characters is not really the obstacle.  The cost of that policy, however, is that generations of Mainlanders cannot read the original scripts in the enormous treasure of Chinese culture. 

So, to whom should our mutual complaints be directed?