Hong Kong's Leader Seeks to Ease Concerns About China HONG KONG - Seeking to address a local backlash against mainland Chinese control, the chief executive of Hong Kong called on Thursday for closer relations with the mainland but also emphasized his willingness to impose limits on mainland visitors and investors. From Internet postings depicting mainlanders as locusts despoiling Hong Kong to the waving of British colonial flags at street demonstrations, resentment of mainland influence swelled this year. It reached a peak in late summer, when tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets repeatedly to protest plans to introduce a patriotic education program extolling the Chinese Communist Party. The hostility of many Hong Kong residents toward Beijing has put the territory's leaders in an awkward position, as they are largely selected by Beijing and coordinate policies closely. Leung Chun-ying, the chief executive since July 1, has been the subject of particular skepticism from many residents because he has a long history of close association with mainland officials. He pursued a highly successful and lucrative career as a real estate surveyor before entering politics. But Mr. Leung has also taken a series of measures in recent months to limit the mainland presence in Hong Kong. He withdrew the patriotic education plan. He has used baggage restrictions on municipal trains to discourage mainland traders from emptying shelves in low-tax Hong Kong and carting the goods back across the border to the mainland. Mr. Leung has imposed a ban on mainland mothers from scheduling births at Hong Kong hospitals starting on Jan. 1. And his administration has just imposed taxes of up to 20 percent on purchases of homes in Hong Kong by anyone who is not a permanent resident, an attempt to address worries about housing affordability. Mainland investors had been accounting for at least a fifth of the city's overall real estate transactions and a much higher proportion of high-end purchases. Michael DeGolyer, a political analyst at Hong Kong Baptist University, said that these measures were starting to allay local worries about mainland domination. "It has lessened in terms of the concern of its just overwhelming Hong Kong," he said. In a rare speech specifically addressing relations with Beijing, Mr. Leung said on Thursday that he hoped to improve relations by emphasizing better communications between Hong Kong and the mainland. "It is without doubt our most important bilateral relationship, and one we must treat with the utmost respect," Mr. Leung said. Mr. Leung sought to assuage concerns that close contact with the mainland would hurt the territory's ability to maintain the separate economic and judicial system that it preserved after Britain returned it to Chinese rule in 1997. "This does not mean surrendering our autonomy, it means making the most of our high degree of autonomy defined in the Basic Law," the territory's mini-constitution, he said in a speech at the Foreign Correspondents" Club. Hong Kong has no sales tax and virtually no import duties, while China has duties of 20 percent or more on many imports plus a value-added tax of 17 percent. The combined tax rate of about 40 percent - China even collects taxes on taxes - has prompted large numbers of mainland visitors to go on shopping trips to Hong Kong. Many Hong Kong residents complain that they receive poor service in stores if they speak their own dialect instead of the Mandarin Chinese widely spoken on the mainland. Another concern has been a surge of mainland women who come to Hong Kong to give birth, so as to avoid China's "one child" policy and also obtain free education, nearly free medical care and Hong Kong passports for their offspring. Nearly 150 countries and territories offer visa-free or visa-on-arrival entry to Hong Kong passport holders, while mainland China makes it difficult to obtain a passport and many countries require visas for mainland Chinese citizens, fearing that large-scale immigration would otherwise ensue. Mainland mothers accounted for 46 percent of the births in Hong Kong last year. Mr. Leung's ban on the scheduling of deliveries by mainland mothers at Hong Kong hospitals as of January has raised fears that mainland mothers may show up anyway just as they are starting to give birth, when they cannot be safely turned away. Referring to the adjacent mainland Chinese city of Shenzhen, and drawing an unusual comparison to gun control, Mr. Leung sought to allay these fears by saying, that "If we could and we did effectively stop, for example, guns from coming over the border from Shenzhen, we could stop pregnant ladies."