Public hospitals in Hong Kong may stop admitting mainland mothers seeking to deliver their child in the territory to keep more resources for the use of local women.
Said senior Hospital Authority official Dr Cheung Wai-lun in a radio interview, "We are evaluating next year's quota for non-local pregnant women. There is a chance we might further lower it or we may even stop admitting them."
The Hong Kong government has already drastically reduced the quota of births set for non-local women in public hospitals from 10,000 to 3,400, but further cuts remain possible.
Meanwhile, mainland couples who deliver their second child in Hong Kong will be fined for violating the country's family planning policies, warned Zhang Feng, family planning department director of Guangdong province. And government employees found to breaking the law may even lose their jobs, he added.
"It doesn't matter if they give birth to their second child on the mainland or in other countries and regions, they have violated the country's policies and the province's regulations," said Zhang.
Guangdong couples form a significant proportion of the parents of the 41,000 mainland babies born in Hong Kong in 2010. Mainland babies formed some 47% of the 88,000 babies born in the special administrative region that year.