Hong Kong - Nearly 77,000 Chinese people a day visit Hong Kong as the former British colony welcomes record numbers of cross-border travellers, according to government figures released Friday.

The study by Hong Kong's Urban Planning and Design Department showed an 18-per-cent year-on-year jump in the number of mainland Chinese crossing the border to Hong Kong in 2007 to an average of 76,800 daily.

The daily influx is at its highest-ever level although mainland Chinese still account for only 16 per cent of cross-border traffic. Five out of six cross-border trips are made by Hong Kong people.

More than half the Chinese visitors to Hong Kong in 2007 arrived under an individual travellers scheme introduced in 2003 to make it easier for Chinese people to visit the wealthy city of 6.9 million.

Before the scheme was introduced, most people from mainland China could only travel to Hong Kong on organized tour packages.

The scheme has been blamed for an influx of pregnant women who cross the border to give birth in the city so their children can be born Hong Kong citizens, entitling them to education and health benefits.

It was also made responsible for a flood of mainland prostitutes whose numbers were so great in the first two years after the scheme's introduction that women's prisons were overflowing with sex workers.

However, the big increase in Chinese visitors is also credited with saving Hong Kong's economy after the crisis caused by the deadly 2003 outbreak of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome. It brought in hundreds of thousands of newly wealthy Chinese on extravagant shopping expeditions.

Hong Kong was a British colony for 156 years before reverting to Chinese sovereignty under a "one country, two systems" arrangement in 1997 that maintained its independent economy and border controls. (dpa)