2015-09-04 HKT 17:23
A professor at the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Bob McKercher, has rejected Chief Executive CY Leung’s suggestion that fewer mainlanders were visiting the territory because of high profile protests against them.
On Thursday, Leung said a dwindling number of visitors will take a toll on low-income workers in the city. He quoted the director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, Wang Guangya, as saying that protests against parallel-goods traders had damaged the relationship between mainlanders and the people of Hong Kong, and that a lot needed to done to rectify this.
Leung made the remarks as the Nikkei Purchasing Managers' Index, which gauges the activities of private companies in Hong Kong, dropped to its lowest level in six years. The figure dropped to 44.4 in August from July’s 48.2. A reading below 50 indicates contraction.
But McKercher said there were many other reasons for the fall in the number of mainland visitors. For example, he said, the slowdown in the mainland's economy has discouraged some people from second and third tier cities from visiting Hong Kong.
He said the decline in mainland visitors had therefore more to do with the mainland's economy rather than politics in Hong Kong or its people’s relationship with mainlanders.
http://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1209489-20150904.htm
