Hong Kong-China border reopening sparks rush for limited quota

Hong Kong’s online registration system for people to reserve a spot to travel to mainland China was overwhelmed by users on its first day of operation, signalling the daily quota of 60,000 people isn’t enough to meet pent-up demand.

About 250,000 people in Hong Kong made bookings via the system in the first five hours after the website began operating Thursday evening (Jan 5), local media outlets including Wen Wei Po and Sing Tao Daily reported. 

As of early Friday morning, most slots for Sunday, the day of the border reopening, were booked out. Another popular date is Jan 21, the day before Chinese New Year, which only had limited availability left.

The reopening of the border, which has effectively been shut since early 2020, is aimed at helping Hong Kong revive the social and business ties with the mainland that are at the core of its economy.

But some restrictions will remain, at least initially. In addition to the quota – which includes a 50,000-person cap on people travelling via land borders – anyone coming into the city from the mainland needs to show a 48-hour negative PCR test result, and some land border checkpoints remain closed. 

That has curtailed optimism about any short-term boost for Hong Kong’s economy, which has been battered by three years of strict Covid curbs. Wealthy mainland Chinese took their business to Singapore, which opened its borders earlier last year, local hotel and catering firms are struggling with a shortage of manpower after employees found work elsewhere, and hundreds of thousands of people left the financial hub.

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While Hong Kong officials said on Thursday they will seek to increase the daily quota, it is unclear how quickly cross-border travel can return to pre-pandemic levels.

In 2019, there was an average of 640,000 trips a day between the city and the mainland via the land border control points. BLOOMBERG