My Take | A very Hong Kong tale of emigration and return
- An online viral story about a family of returnees from Britain seems to be an indictment of certain types of snotty, racist and delusional Hongkongers, rather than naive ‘BNOers’
YouTube wastes a lot of my time but it can be educational sometimes. Watching the channels respectively run by “blue” (pro-China) and “yellow” (anti-China) presenters can be quite entertaining, especially when it comes to claims about the state of contemporary Britain. According to one group, it’s a hellhole rapidly descending into third-world status; to the other, paradise on earth. You probably get a much clearer picture, though, from the “UK” section of the BBC news service, which also has a Chinese-language version.
A recent Facebook post by Hong Kong billionaire Jacinto Tong Man-leung about a family of returnees from Britain after a brief stint at emigration has been quoted approvingly by many online blue commentators. However, I am not quite sure the post actually says what it means to say.
The chief executive of property investment firm Gale Well Group, Tong relates a gathering of friends in which one explains why the family has come back to Hong Kong from Britain.
A bit of local context here. There has been an ongoing information war between the blues and the yellows about an exodus of locals and expats from the city following the worst periods of the pandemic and the introduction of the national security law. Many take advantage of the BN(O) passport scheme offered by Boris Johnson’s government to relocate to Britain.
The yellows claim this is the end of Hong Kong and that they want their children to grow up in a free and democratic country. The blues say naive “BNOers” are just relocating to an economically stagnant and racist country to become jobless or underemployed second-class citizens.