WITH 645 days to go before the colony is handed over to Chinese communist rule, the issue of restoring British citizenship to the 3.5 million Hong Kong British subjects has again hit the headlines. After all, it is the only thing that Britain can unilaterally do for the Hong Kong people without China's approval.
Speaking on the BBC radio programme Any Questions? broadcast from Government House on Friday, Governor Chris Patten reiterated the Hong Kong Government's position of supporting such a move.
Mr Patten's remarks stirred up much excitement both locally and in Britain. They have also raised the expectations of some Hong Kong people who feel they are being abandoned by Britain. As Hong Kong gets closer to the fateful date, more and more people are bound to feel apprehensive and will look to Britain for protection.
Of all the countries in the world, Britain is probably the only one which does not allow the right of entry to its own nationals. There are six forms of British nationality of which only one, British citizenship, allows its holders entry to Britain.
The process of division began 33 years ago in 1962, when the Commonwealth Immigrants Act excluded some British nationals and Commonwealth citizens from free entry to Britain. The Nationality Act of 1981 turned these people into second-class citizens, including the three million Hong Kong British Dependent Territory citizens, the so-called BDTCs.
BDTC status not only offended Hong Kong people's sense of pride and identity, it also signalled an abandonment of British responsibility for its own nationals and a surreptitious detachment from Hong Kong.
