Agencies are promoting Vocational Training Council (VTC) courses to pregnant women in mainland China, touting packages cheaper than HK$100,000 (US$12,600) including commission as the lowest-cost route for the women to secure Hong Kong passports for their newborns, the South China Morning Post has found.
The path would enable their children to get into top-tier mainland universities more easily and could even secure them a job as a civil servant in the future, the agencies claimed.
But critics questioned whether the practice, despite boosting the number of births in Hong Kong, would truly shore up the youth population, and urged authorities and the VTC, the city’s largest vocational training institution, to safeguard local resources and prioritise nurturing talent.