HOLDERS of British passports who gained their nationality without staying in Britain will not be able to relinquish their Chinese nationality even if they want to, according to the head of a local pro-China think-tank.
Shiu Sin-por, executive director of the One Country Two Systems Economic Research Institute, said British passport holders under the British nationality scheme would not be able to give up their Chinese nationality because they had not stayed in a foreign country.
Under Chinese law, he said, they were still regarded as Chinese nationals.
Lu Ping, the Director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, said holders of British nationality scheme passports were still considered as Chinese nationals and would have no consular protection after 1997.
Mr Shiu, who is also a Hong Kong affairs adviser, maintained that Britain had no case under international law to offer consular protection to British passport holders if they were in China as well as Hong Kong after 1997.
'You cannot say you are not of Chinese nationality if you have spent your whole life on Chinese soil,' he said.
