Then & Now | The dilemma of Hong Kong Chinese with two passports

As any sensible person knows, insurance policies have value only when a) the purchaser has read and followed the small print; and b) the insurer is able to honour a policy sold to some unsuspecting punter long ago. Otherwise, a prolonged series of ultimately fruitless “But I thought I was covered …” arguments are likely to ensue. And so it is proving to be with the Hong Kong Chinese who acquired overseas citizenship – and the consular protection it seemed to confer – but who did not bother to renounce their Chinese nationality.

Singapore’s late prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, never one to mince words – and to the chagrin of his critics, he was usually right – described the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration as simply giving the Hong Kong Chinese “thirteen years notice to leave”. And so it came to pass. In the years that followed, families departed in droves.

Back in the 1980s, Hong Kong Chinese “emigrants” to (mostly) Australia or Canada were spoken of locally – without irony – as having obtained an “insurance policy”. Their objective was to have a back-pocket escape hatch in case Hong Kong went to the dogs after the 1997 handover to China. The telling phrase implied that these people had little intention of participating in the national life of their new country, much less actually living there – or paying any more tax than they legally had to – for any significant length of time. With some exceptions, emigrants would stay just long enough to obtain an alternative residence before coming straight back home.

Various social phenomena – and the terms to describe them – emerged during this period. “Astronauts” were the principal breadwinners who remained in Hong Kong to keep the family business afloat and spent long periods inhabit­ing the flight paths to and from Sydney or Vancouver while their spouses and children sat out their time in “immigration jail” – another telling metaphor – in their intended country of citizenship.