Dec 20 2009
Pregnancy tourism
I love it! Women from mainland China flock to Hong Kong to have their babies. Why?
HONG KONG — Roger Huang is a happy, healthy baby boy, born in mid-September. But as far as the Chinese government is concerned, he doesn’t exist — not officially, anyway.
The baby was born in Hong Kong, after his mother, Huang Rui, a 31-year-old Beijing-based freelance journalist, moved here in June to join her husband, who is from Shanghai and works at a bank. The move was strategic; Huang plans to have a second child soon, and under China’s “one child” family planning policy, Roger’s Hong Kong birth doesn’t count. (In recent years, China has softened its stance on the policy, with federal officials now debating even more radical changes.)
“My plan is to have two babies in three years, while I’m still not very old,” Huang said. “Having the baby in Hong Kong is good — we can have another child.”
That loophole in China’s one-child policy is one reason mothers from mainland China have deluged the maternity wards of Hong Kong’s hospitals in recent years. Many women also come here for what they consider better medical facilities, which often have Western-trained doctors and nurses.
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