TNAG-1386-FCO40-1834-Future-of-Hong-Kong-nationality-and-citizenship-1985 — Page 36

·

i

many young professionals are halting their careers for five or six years to emigrate, usually to Canada or the United States, establish rights of residence or citizenship and then return to Hong Kong. T.S. Lo, the Executive Councillor who resigned, has set up an agency to help people emigrate, financed with his own money, and claims that six or seven people a day contact him, although he does not publicly advertise. The rich have options for settlement all over the world: while we were in Hong Kong an advertisement in the South China Morning Post offered a book for $HK295 which described 'How to get a second passport without leaving Hong Kong'. Fears exist, unscrupulous people will exploit them, and the poor will be unable to allay them.

But it is Britain, the country which colonised Hong Kong and which has had responsibility for it for over 150 years, which should be taking out insurance for any Hong Kong people who need it. Sir Geoffrey Howe, in his first speech on the Hong Kong Bill, said that Hong Kong's position was difficult because it was 'sui generis'; the preamble to the agreement said that "This is not a choice which Her Majesty's Government have sought to impose on the people of Hong Kong. It is a choice imposed by the facts of Hong Kong's history'. 19 But it was Britain which wrote Hong Kong's history: Hong Kong is what it is today because it has been a part of the British Empire, and not of mainland China, since 1842. To act as though it had created itself, and Britain had accidentally stumbled upon it and were helping it sort out its convoluted and self-made problems, is a breathtaking abdication of responsibility for the future security of British nationals overseas.

*It contrasts vividly with the provisions made for the inhabitants of other British territories whose relationships with a third country mean that they can never achieve independence. Gibraltarians gained the right to register as full British citizens in the 1981 British Nationality Act; Falkland Islanders had their own special Nationality Act passed in early 1983 to make them all, retrospectively, full British citizens. As a result, both groups can have the right of abode in Britain. Kenneth Chong, secretary of the Hong Kong Belongers Association, contrast- ing this with the failure of Hong Kong's representations for special treatment, pointed out that it 'exudes the stink of apartheid'.20

The most immediate comparison for Hong Kong people is, however, much nearer home. Just 40 miles across the South China Sea is the Portuguese colony of Macau which is also negotiating its return to China. But all those born or naturalised in Macau have full Portuguese citizenship, not a second-class status. This not only means

13