National security law: Beijing likely to play long game after Canada’s visa offer to Hongkongers, experts say

Move to offer three-year visa to residents may be provocative but Beijing is expected to keep its cool for now, pundits suggest

Dispute cannot be compared to one with Britain, where China feels other side has broken an international agreement

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Observers say China is unlikely to respond to a new Canadian visa scheme for Hongkongers with the same force as it did to one by Britain. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 7:39pm, 6 Feb 2021Updated: 11:48am, 8 Feb 2021

Beijing may take its time to respond, but is unlikely to hit back hard against Canada’s latest move to offer a swathe of Hongkongers work permits, political pundits and international relations experts have suggested.

At issue is whether towards the end of the new three-year visa, Canada would allow holders to turn their temporary status into permanent citizenship, and if so, how – something Ottawa has yet to spell out.

But analysts suggested that even if it did, Beijing was unlikely to react with the same anger that it did when ending its recognition of the British National (Overseas) passport last week.

“There was an agreement that Britain would not turn the travel document into a pathway to citizenship,” said Lau Siu-kai, vice-chairman of Beijing’s semi-official think tank the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies.

Vice-chairman of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies Professor Lau Siu-kai. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

He was referring to a memorandum signed alongside the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984, a document which set out the future of Hong Kong and its return to the mainland.