Guest Post — Minyao Wang: Britain Is Finally Living Up To Its Moral Responsibility to Hong Kong
Britain Is Finally Living Up To Its Moral Responsibility To Hong Kong by Minyao Wang
Across the pond in the United Kingdom there is a momentous development which has the potential to unleash one of the biggest migration waves in modern times, comparable to the recent arrival of Middle Eastern refugees in Germany or the exodus of refugees from Southeast Asia after the end of the war in Vietnam. Effective January 31, up to 5.7 million people in Hong Kong (out of a population of 7.5 million) can apply for a new visa which will allow them live and work in the U.K. and eventually become British citizens. Even if only a fraction of the eligible Hong Kong residents accepts the offer (the British Government is formally projecting that only 300,000 will make the move), the upcoming exodus will have profound societal impacts in both the U.K. and Hong Kong. It is worth pausing for a moment to sketch out why, 180 years to the date of the initial British arrival in Hong Kong and almost 25 years after the British relinquished control of the territory to China, a government elected to implement Brexit concluded that it has a moral obligation to open the country’s doors to the Hong Kong people.
Reflecting the country’s imperial history, British nationality law is both complicated and convoluted. To my knowledge, it is the only democracy that has tiers of citizenship. There are currently six different types of British nationality, only one of which—straightforward British citizenship—allows its holders to live without restriction in the U.K. In the final years of colonial rule in Hong Kong, the majority of its residents were considered “British Overseas Citizens” who did not have the right to live in the U.K. That status was terminated on July 1, 1997, when Hong Kong’s sovereignty was restored to China and Hong Kong residents became Chinese citizens. In recognition of its historical association with Hong Kong, Britain enacted a unique and largely symbolic tier of nationality called “British National (Overseas).” British Overseas Citizens from Hong Kong qualified for this new status by undergoing a voluntary registration process before the 1997 handover. Over three million people in Hong Kong registered, eager to retain a linkage to (and a possible insurance policy with) their soon to be former colonial ruler. Holders of BN(O) nationality may travel internationally using a special British passport and in the unlikely event that they are in distress, call on a British consulate for assistance, but they cannot work or live in the U.K. And critically, BN(O) nationality cannot be transferred by descent. There is no way for a child of a BN(O) holder born after 1997 to acquire that status (in fact, there is no way to obtain that status after 1997 at all). As a result, with the passage of time, BN(O) will become a relic.
In a treaty signed with Britain and registered at the United Nations regarding the future of Hong Kong, the Communist government of China agreed that for 50 years after the handover “the current social and economic systems in Hong Kong will remain unchanged.” The Chinese further promised the people of Hong Kong that they could after 1997 democratically elect their leaders who would govern Hong Kong free from interference by Beijing. The understanding was after 50 years (by 2047) China would have evolved into a democracy with a standard of living close to that of Hong Kong so that the two places would converge politically and economically.
Whitehall bureaucrats might have believed the lofty Chinese promises, but the people in Hong Kong knew better. They found it impossible to entrust their future to a brutal dictatorship that unleashed disaster after disaster on the Chinese people and massacred thousands of unarmed young civilians in Tiananmen. Surveys from the time indicated that at least half the city would immediately leave if given the chance. People preferred taking the risk of starting anew in a foreign land to accepting their fate under communism. In their heart of hearts, the people of Hong Kong knew that the involuntary marriage of their prosperous, modern and cosmopolitan enclave to a repressive and impoverished communist behemoth was bound to be disastrous.
The Hong Kong people furiously lobbied for the right to move to the U.K. Their emotional plea was that a renowned anti-communist like Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher should not turn over six million souls to totalitarian communism without giving them an option B. This did not work. The best London would do (and it did it very reluctantly and only after the bloodshed in Tiananmen forced its hands) was to, using a point system, give 50,000 high-achieving Hong Kong families the opportunity to move to the U.K. One prominent political leader in London noted that prospective Hong Kong emigrants would be “a destabilizing factor in society” because they did not “share our culture, our language, [and] our ways of social conduct.” According to him, the British people did not want to be “swamped by people of different culture, history and religion. … The fact is that most people in Britain did not want to live in a multicultural, multiracial society.” The people of Hong Kong saw the British indifference to their plight as thinly disguised racism. One common sign in Hong Kong was: “The issue is right or wrong, not white or Wong.”
Rebuffed by London, the people of Hong Kong looked elsewhere for safety. Exploring and executing a plan to emigrate became a daily obsession for the Hong Kong middle class. One Hong Kong person pensively told the British Parliament that “I sometimes wonder what the British people feel when they read about Hong Kong British subjects scurrying around the world to find somewhere else to take them in.” In the decade leading up to 1997, about 60,000 people left each year. Those departures are the most scathing rebuke imaginable of China and its failed government. People who could find a way out all voted with their feet. Canada was the preferred destination of the Hong Kong diaspora. They have remade large portions of metro Vancouver and Toronto into thriving Little Hong Kongs. Arguably the best Hong Kong cuisine and pastries in the world are now found in those two Canadian cities. Nearly 600,000 people in Canada speak Cantonese as their first language (while only 100,000 in Britain do).
The post-handover developments in Hong Kong have decisively vindicated the worst pessimism of its people. We are now at the mid-point of the 50 year period. The hoped-for convergence is not happening as China doubles down on its severe political repression at home. It has imprisoned millions of Uyghur people in concentration camps, which both the Trump and Biden administrations have correctly called an act of genocide. The Communist regime has made it clear that it has no intention of honoring its legally binding promise to allow democratic elections in Hong Kong. Instead, it enables its hand-picked cronies to rule Hong Kong, whose incompetence has led to a sharp deterioration in living standard for ordinary people. Meanwhile by virtue of language, culture and family connections, the people of Hong Kong have a unique window onto mainland China itself. They see that beyond the gleaming skyscrapers, high speed trains and other “Potemkin village” projects, there is no substance. They see that China’s present would unfortunately be Hong Kong’s future, not the other way around. They do not want their children to be a part of that very bleak future.
When the Hong Kong Government in the spring of 2019 attempted to introduce a new law that would facilitate extradition with the mainland, the Hong Kong streets exploded with rage. Millions of ordinary people marched in almost daily protests demanding that China honor its treaty obligations, confronting Hong Kong police officers who resorted to thuggish mainland police tactics to shut down peaceful assemblies. It was inevitable that it would come to a head like this. Even if the extradition bill was never introduced, something else would have certainly ignited the accumulated anger and frustrations of the Hong Kong people. And it was also inevitable that the Communists regime would respond to the historic uprising with an iron fist. While the rest of the world is distracted with COVID 19, the Chinese government is busy eliminating the last vestiges of freedom in Hong Kong. There is no question that Hong Kong is becoming another dour mainland Chinese city devoid of human hope.
Faced at last with the irrefutable proof that its treaty with China is a worthless scrap of paper, the British Government decided to go beyond verbal condemnation. To his everlasting credit, Prime Minister Boris Johnson decided that all BN(O) registrants, as well as their family members (including in some circumstances adult children) who are not themselves BN(O) passport holders, are eligible to move to the U.K to start a new life. To quote Mr. Johnson, “[t]his would amount to one of the biggest changes in our visa system in British history” but Britain must “uphold our profound ties of history and friendship with the people of Hong Kong.”
In other words, the people of Hong Kong are finally getting what they asked for unsuccessfully 30 long years ago. It is a remarkably magnanimous gesture by a government that campaigned on restricting immigration. Even more remarkably, the country’s most ring-wing political figures and newspapers are either silent or outright supportive. Even though immigration is such a controversial topic in the U.K. (as it is here in the U.S.), there is unanimous recognition across the political spectrum that China’s breach of its obligations to Hong Kong is beyond the pale and it is time for Britain to correct a serious historical wrong.
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Minyao Wang, an attorney, has previously posted for the ImmigrationProf blog.
KJ