Widespread protests hit plan to ease road travel between Hong Kong and Guangdong

It's no longer about left-hand driving versus right-hand driving.

An on-the-ground and online campaign is being waged by Hong Kong residents against a plan to ease road travel between Hong Kong and Guangdong.

About 200 of these protestors gathered yesterday outside Victoria Park to nosily urge the government to abandon the plan. On the Internet, 7,000 persons thumbed down the scheme on a special Facebook site created to protest the plan. The Democratic Party has collected 1,400 signatures protesting the scheme.

The speed and extent of the protest over what began as an innocuous plan to ease border restrictions on road travel has surprised many.

It was only in the middle of last week that Hong Kong authorities said that owners of Hong Kong-registered private cars will be allowed to travel to neighboring Guangdong in March in the first phase of a scheme that should eventually pave the way for less complicated road travel.

The first phase will allow 50 Hong Kong-registered vehicles a day to travel in Guangdong for up to seven days. This quota may later be increased to a maximum of 500 cars per day.

Observers suggest that the passionate attack on the plan is the offshoot of bad blood between Hong Kong resident and Mainlanders that has received extensive media attention.

Earlier this month, a number of Hong Kong residents took out a full-page newspaper advertisement calling mainland Chinese visitors "locusts" in response to comments by a Beijing professor who called Hong Kong residents "bastards," "thieves" and "dogs."

Other opponents claim the plan will make the Hong Kong's roads more polluted and less safe as drivers from China will find it difficult to adapt to Hong Kong’s left-hand driving as compared to China’s right-hand driving.