By Li Hongmei

Protests in Hong Kong targeting mainland visitors are opposed by 80 per cent of mainlanders and 60 per cent of Hongkongers, according to a survey by the Beijing-based newspaper Global Times.

An article in the paper also quoted a Hong Kong scholar as saying Hongkongers needed more education in national identity.

Over half of the 1,209 mainlanders surveyed said escalating tension between Hong Kong and the mainland as due to "incitement by radicals and foreign influence" while almost 40 per cent said it was caused by some Hongkongers envying "the faster economic progress on the mainland".

However, the "uncivilized behavior of mainlanders in Hong Kong" and the impact of mainlanders who buy up the city's stocks of infant formula and properties were cited as the top reasons for tension by more than half of respondents from both Hong Kong and the mainland.

The survey, conducted using random sampling between last Friday and yesterday, interviewed people aged 15 and above in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Xi'an, Changsha and Shenyang.

It came almost a week after some local activists staged a protest in Hong Kong's Tsim Sha Tsui on February 16 calling on the mainland shoppers to go home.

More than half of about 1,000 Hong Kong residents surveyed said more communication was necessary to alleviate tension with mainlanders.