Hong Kong rages at wave of pregnant Chinese Chinese officials are trying to reassure Hong Kong citizens that they will curb the number of pregnant women coming to give birth in the city as anger over non-residents" access to health and education resources stirs up wider anti-mainland feeling. The head of Guangdong province's family planning department told local media this week the government would fine anyone caught giving birth to a second child in Hong Kong as that would be an infringement of mainland China's one-child policy. The people of Hong Kong can rest easy. There are definitely ways to solve this problem," said Zhu Xiaodan, the neighbouring province's new governor, during a visit to Hong Kong over the weekend. The number of babies born in Hong Kong to mainland parents has risen sharply from 709 in 2000 to 33,499 for the first eleven months of 2011, or 38 per cent of total newborns in the city. Rising wealth has enabled more mainland Chinese parents to meet the expenses of travelling and giving birth in Hong Kong - a trip that can cost more than $6,000 for non-residents. Any child born in Hong Kong, regardless of parents" immigration status, automatically receives permanent residency rights and 12 years of free education. The Hong Kong government has come under pressure from its hospitals and citizens to reduce the number of mainlanders" births as residents fret over access to hospital beds and school places. Anger over the issue has risen in recent weeks and some locals are mounting one of the loudest and most visible anti-mainland campaigns seen in the city since its return to Chinese rule nearly 15 years ago. "The tension is partly driven by cultural differences between two societies that are living more closely together, but it's also largely down to government policy, which needs to be addressed urgently," said Lam Wai-man, assistant professor of politics at the University of Hong Kong. This month a Facebook community called "It's time to say no" placed a full-page advertisement in a Hong Kong newspaper urging a ban on the "invasion" by mainland parents. The advert featured the city's skyline dominated by the image of a locust - a derogatory term for mainland China visitors. Last month, thousands of Hong Kong citizens protested outside a Dolce & Gabbana store where security staff were accused of discriminating against locals and giving mainland customers preferential treatment. "This is the result of having 30m mainland visitors coming to a city of 7m each year," said Victor Zheng, an academic who specialises in local politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. It's also difficult for the local population to adjust to the fact that the city has become economically dependent on the mainland - a reversal of fortunes compared to the old days, when the mainland was the poor neighbour. The Hong Kong government has promised to review the need to reduce further the quota allocated to non-local mothers in public hospitals, which has already gone down from 10,000 last year to under 3,500 this year.