The tensions between Hong Kong residents and mainland Chinese visitors are bubbling up yet again — with a video showing a confrontation involving a mainland family whose child was videotaped urinating on a busy street.

But this time, the video has stirred a backlash from mainland Chinese angered by the treatment of the well-dressed young couple, raising questions about whether animosity directed at cross-border visitors has gone too far.

In the video, the mother is seen holding her crying child as she and her husband get into a pitched argument with the man who shot it as they seek to retrieve the footage. At one point, the couple struggles with the man over the child’s stroller as a crowd gathers on a Mong Kok street, with the anguished mother shouting in Mandarin, “Don’t you have kids?” at the man, who speaks Cantonese. The parents were subsequently arrested for allegedly taking the man’s cellphone and assaulting him.

The confrontation has drawn intense interest on social media sites in China and harsh criticism of the behavior of the people of Hong Kong, with some touching the third-rail subject of whether Hong Kong residents should show patriotic fealty to Beijing — a sensitive issue in the Chinese territory, which takes pride in its semiautonomous status.

“Hong Kong is China’s territory whether or not you want to be a part of China,” said one comment on Sina Weibo. “Whether or not you like it, we will all go to Hong Kong because this is our territory. If you really don’t like it, then you can get out of China.”

Another commenter took aim at the treatment of the child.

“There is no way I would go up to film a child, especially a little girl, on the street” if she were urinating, “and then smugly criticize the parents,” said another comment on Sina Weibo.

The furor over the video comes as Hong Kong officials are showing some willingness to push back against the negative treatment of mainland Chinese, whose tourism and shopping dollars help fuel the territory’s booming economy. Recently, York Chow Yat-ngok, the chairman of Hong Kong’s Equal Opportunities Commission, suggested that to combat anti-mainland passions, the panel might consider pushing legislation against the use of such words as “locusts,” a derogatory label applied in Hong Kong to the cross-border visitors, who often travel in sizable tour groups that descend on certain tourist spots and stores.

His remarks came after a noisy protest in February in which demonstrators insulted mainlanders by calling them locusts and referring to them as “Shina,” a Japanese term for the Chinese evocative of Japan’s brutal wartime occupation.

Underlying the tensions is the increasing presence of mainland visitors on Hong Kong streets. The number of visits is expected to hit 45 million this year, up 11 percent from the year before. Some Hong Kong residents accuse the mainland Chinese of driving up prices at stores and fueling a superheated housing market. But the bulk of those visits are by day-trippers who typically cross the border for shopping jaunts.

Source: http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com