Hong Kong’s deal with Disney is more than a bet on the popularity of Mickey Mouse. It’s a bet on China. After a year of tense negotiations, Hong Kong agreed to contribute $3.8 billion of the $4 billion price for the park’s infrastructure and land. That was good news for Disney, which announced last week that its two-year slump continued with a dismal last quarter. And if critics in Hong Kong wondered how the government of Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa got stuck with the bill, the calculation was simple. Hong Kong has been attracting fewer and fewer tourists since the Asian financial crisis struck in 1997, but the number of visitors from the mainland is rising. Disney could turn that stream into a flood.
That, anyway, is the plan. To make sure it works, Hong Kong will offer special Disney privileges to fellow Chinese. The Tung Chee-hwa government is reportedly considering a waiver on the visa requirements for Chinese tourists visiting for less than a week. Smaller, affordable hotels aimed at Chinese travelers will fill up an area almost as large as the park. And to lure tourists from the Disney island into the center of the city, Hong Kong is planning an array of new attractions, including a fisherman’s wharf. “We will do whatever we can to facilitate an increase in the number of mainland visitors,” says Acting Financial Secretary Raphael Hui.
The catch: Hong Kong people may be less welcoming. Many view mainlanders as uncultured, and top hotels have traditionally frowned on mainland guests. At the Panda Exhibit in Ocean Park, a popular amusement park, a guide holding a sign demanding quiet says it’s mostly mainlanders who break the rule. “They don’t give a damn” about the pandas, he says. And most locals supported the government efforts to halt the immigration of more than 1 million mainland children of Hong Kong parents. “People want their money,” says a Disney official, off the record. “They just don’t want them to live here.”
They can’t have it both ways. By 2015 Hong Kong expects its Disneyland to attract up to 5 million mainland tourists, a number only slightly smaller than the local population of 6.7 million. People in Hong Kong will have to ask themselves, “Can I live with this, can I take the same bus with them, can I go to the same restaurant with them?” says Michael Hui, a Chinese University business professor. “Having Disneyland in Hong Kong will be a good incentive for people here to face the reality that they are part of China.” It’s hello Mickey, hello China.
