Why British passports would not have solved Hong Kong’s identity crisis
In fact, Macau people like me view the Portuguese passport as just a travel document, providing us with privileged entry to most countries without applying for a visa. Of course, we also feel proud of – and honoured by – the written constitution of Portugal which treats all holders of Portuguese nationality as equal.
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It is understandable that a person’s sense of dignity and privilege is somehow related to his nationality. Once, while going through Hong Kong customs with my Macau SAR passport, I was detained by an official who then led me to a small room for interrogation. I had never had quite such an unhappy experience with my Portuguese passport before then.
The episode is regrettable, but it is a mirror of something to do with the significance of nationality. A British English teacher of mine in the early 1980s told me how fortunate I was that I had a full Portuguese passport, as merely a small number of Chinese people were privileged to hold it. The grounds for the British government not granting Hong Kong people the right of abode in Britain derived from the population in Hong Kong accounting for one-tenth of that in his country, he added.