TNAG-1386-FCO40-1834-Future-of-Hong-Kong-nationality-and-citizenship-1985 — Page 34

active critics of colonialism and who feel prouder of their Chinese identity than of their colonial British one are insulted that Britain should feel the need to lock them in to Hong Kong and deny them any freedom of choice.

The official response to these criticisms is that nothing has changed that Hong Kong people lost the right to live in Britain in 1962, and the changes in 1983 and 1985 were changes in name only. For most people in Hong Kong, right of abode in Britain after 1962 was not an issue: they belonged to Hong Kong. But the second-class status they were given after 1983 not only offended their sense of pride and identity, it also signalled an abandonment of British responsibility for its own nationals, a surreptitious detachment of Hong Kong people from Britain. It is indeed widely believed in Hong Kong that the Nationality Act was passed, and its likely conclusions deliberately kept quiet in Hong Kong, mainly to remove any obstacles to return to China. Hong Kong people did not necessarily want right of abode in Britain: but they did want a meaningful citizenship which identified either their continuing connection with Britain, or their separate identity as Hong Kong British. This would both have increased security in Hong Kong and raised the stakes in the negotiations with China as the South China Morning Post noted, it 'might have left Peking more deeply aware that not all the cards were on its side'. 16

This did not happen and Hong Kong British people will now be left with the meaningless and unclear status of British Nationals (Overseas) (which China regards only as a temporary travel document facility). For some people, this denies their identity and sense of belonging; for many others, it gives no basis on which to argue the autonomy and uniqueness of Hong Kong within China.

Yet it is difficult to see how at this stage it would be possible, even if there were the political will, to grant full British citizenship to all British nationals in Hong Kong without jeopardising the Agreement with China. As far as China was concerned, the Agreement was negotiated on behalf of five and a half million Chinese nationals in Hong Kong, three million of whom were to be allowed to retain a transitional British status. If Britain were now, after the signing of the Agreement, to seek to change the status of its nationals there so that there were three million British citizens in Hong Kong, owing allegiance only to Britain (as China does not allow dual nationality), this would almost certainly be seen as an attempt to retain British sovereignty over the territory, and would mean that even those who would rather be Chinese would automatically lose their Chinese nationality.

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