Beijing suspends tour groups to protest-hit Hong Kong
Move comes amid increase in censorship as democracy protests threaten diplomatic fallout; National Day celebrations most muted since takeover
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 02 October, 2014, 3:37am
UPDATED : Thursday, 02 October, 2014, 8:02am
Staff Reporters
Mainland tourists pass an Occupy Central sign in Causeway Bay yesterday. Fewer mainlanders will be visiting the city after package tours were suspended. Photo: May Tse
Mainland authorities have suspended visits by tour groups to Hong Kong as the city's democracy movement threatens to become an international diplomatic issue.
The China National Tourism Administration told operators not to organise tour groups to the city. People who booked before yesterday would not be affected.
"It means that there will be no more mainland tours a week from now," said Hong Kong Travel Industry Council executive director Joseph Tung Yao-chung.
The chairman of the Hong Kong Inbound Tour Operators Association, Ricky Tse Kam-ting, described the move as unprecedented. Individual travellers seem to be not affected.
Mainland tourists account for 75 per cent of total visitors to Hong Kong. But most of them, around 67 per cent, come to the city as individual travellers.
Pro-democracy protests - partly triggered by Beijing's decision to set restrictions on the city's leadership election in 2017 and partly by a heavy-handed police response - have swept Hong Kong. The city had the most muted National Day celebrations yesterday since returning to China 17 years ago.
Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying was jeered at the flag-raising ceremony in Golden Bauhinia Square, Wan Chai. Protesters have demanded that he step down by tonight, with a student group threatening to occupy government buildings if he does not.
Some 800 secondary and university students in Macau gathered yesterday to show solidarity with their Hong Kong peers, listening to lectures on universal suffrage during an almost three-hour action. About 200 Hongkongers also sat in a park in Brisbane, Australia, to show their solidarity.
The Hong Kong protests - dubbed the "Umbrella Movement" - are also threatening to become a diplomatic headache for Beijing.
Washington, London, Tokyo, Germany and the United Nations have all expressed concerns, drawing sharp warnings from Beijing to stay out of its internal affairs.
Hong Kong was to be discussed yesterday at a meeting in Washington between Foreign Minister Wang Yi and US Secretary of State John Kerry.
Shi Yinhong , a mainland foreign relations expert, believed that Washington would ask Beijing not to suppress the protests and to change its decision over Hong Kong's electoral reform.
He said Wang would stand firm and ask foreign nations to stay out of Hong Kong affairs.
"Beijing believes that if it shows any signs of weakening its stance, the US may step up its support of the organisers [of the protests]."
Beijing is also worried the movement could trigger demands for democracy on the mainland. Fu King-wa, an assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong's Journalism and Media Studies Centre who tracks weibo microblogging sites, said the number of posts deleted by mainland censors had hit a record high since Saturday.
Fu, who tracks a daily sample of 50,000 to 60,000 postings, found that 98 posts per 10,000 were blocked on Saturday, 152 on Sunday, and 136 on Monday. It is higher than the June 4 anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
