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THE MINORITIES
"We want a home, we had a home, will we have a home now?”
an Indian businessman, whose family
has been in Hong Kong for four generations
There are about 10,000 British Dependent Territories citizens in Hong Kong who are not ethnically Chinese and who are therefore, unlike the vast majority of BDTCs in Hong Kong, not entitled to Chinese nationality in addition to their proposed British National (Overseas) status China's memorandum on nationality gives Chinese nationality only to 'Hong Kong Chinese compatriots'25. Nor will their children born in Hong Kong after 1997 be able to acquire Chinese nationality at birth, as the nationality law of China provides that only those born to a Chinese national parent automatically become Chinese26
is
Non-Chinese British nationals in Hong Kong and their children will therefore rely only on their British nationality. But that nationality not an effective citizenship, as it carries with it no right of abode in the country which has granted it. They will be dependent for a place to live on China, a country of which they are not nationals and which has no ultimate responsibility for them.
The non-Chinese minority includes many different groups. About 6,000 of them are of Indian origin. Some, mainly Dawoodi Bohra Muslims, settled in Hong Kong in the mid-nineteenth century as merchants and traders (one family arrived with the British in 1842 and set up the first ferry service from Hong Kong island to the mainland). Others are Parsees, whose families have distinguished records of public service and municipal generosity. Others are Sindhis, Hindus who fled from Pakistan at Partition with little more than they stood up in. By no means all the Indian community are rich businessmen: there are Sikhs who are policemen, nightwatchmen and soldiers and who work in factories or on boats, and there are clerks and junior civil servants.
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