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Opinion | Maybe Britain or the US will come to Hong Kong’s rescue. And pigs might fly

  • Britain will not reverse policy and start recognising Hong Kong BN(O) passport holders as citizens. The US will not throw open its doors to Hongkongers.
  • No one is coming to our rescue. The only capital city worth visiting in a pickle is Beijing

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For the second time in a fortnight, holders of British National (Overseas) Passports rally outside the British consulate in Hong Kong, on September 15, to demand the same rights as British passport holders. Photo: K. Y. Cheng

A common expression to emphasise unlikelihood is that “pigs might fly”. It might seem a little old-fashioned, but a wave of porcine cynicism washed over me recently at the sight of a crowd outside the British consulate in Hong Kong.

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They were calling for holders of British National (Overseas) Passports to be treated the same as the holders of British passports. In effect, they wanted full British citizenship, including right of abode in the United Kingdom. They even sang God Save the Queen to demonstrate their loyalty.
The unrest in Hong Kong has thrown up many strange sights – a former chief secretary urging sanctions against Hong Kong, otherwise intelligent people pretending the city could one day be independent, supposed triad gangsters beating ordinary citizens in full public view while armed police were nowhere in sight, but the consulate march gets a special prize for absurdity. For it ignores something that happened within living memory precisely to address the current situation.
In 1979, then-leader Murray MacLehose became the first British-appointed governor to visit the mainland since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. He met China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping. Precisely what was said remains murky, except on one point: Hong Kong people should put their hearts at ease because the future would be fine. This message was duly passed on to the good citizens of Hong Kong.
Following the visit, the British government began to consider the possibility that there might be no role for the country to play in Hong Kong after 1997. It also foresaw a danger that post 1997, something might happen to cause Hongkongers to lose confidence in the territory and consider emigration.
Whitehall prepared for this contingency by introducing the British Nationality Act of 1981, which provided inter alia that with effect from January 1, 1983, residents of the various British Territories would have different residency rights. Their passports (British Dependent Territory Citizen ones for those not from the UK) would give right of abode only in the British territory from which they came. The Hong Kong-only BDTC passports were later superseded by BN(O) ones.
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