"In his 2007 Review of Citizenship, Lord Goldsmith recognised that to give BN(O)s full British citizenship automatically would be a breach of the commitments made between China and the UK in the 1984 Joint Declaration on the future of Hong Kong, and that to secure Chinese agreement to vary the terms of that treaty would not be possible."
Feel free to post a legal opinion that said the opposite.
If you believed for a second that British would grant British citizenship to 5 millions people, then I've got a bridge to sell you.
I'm not sure what you mean. HK residents have been able to travel to the UK without a visa whether or not they had a BNO passport. If you're talking about the right to come and live in the UK without restriction, only EEA citizens had that right. If the UK had offered a similar scheme to HK residents without the same being offered to British citizens who wanted to live and work in Hong Kong (same applies in reverse, British citizens can travel to HK for 6 months but need a visa to stay longer, study or work), the government would probably have been challenged in court by other nationalities who said that the policy was racial discrimination.
It means that British could have granted citizenship to much more than just 50,000 HK people. Just check the wiki link below if British wanted, then citizenship could be granted for much more than 50,000 HK people which is a joke. Don't try to hide behind dual-citizenship nonsense every HKers know they got abandoned by the British.
I don't see why. Up until now there was hope that Hong Kong would do fine under Chinese rule and that 1C2S might even be extended (Deng said as much). Therefore normal HKers had every reason to stay. Now the situation is quite different because it's clear that the CCP wants to run Hong Kong like any other Chinese city.
Because you are not a HKer that is why you don't see why. There were already a million of HKers that have foreign passports. These are the people who were forced to return to HK because they were not doing well in the West.
For over one century, no elections and not even any representatives at the high ranking HK officials. British ruled with iron fist and no complain whatsoever.It's something I mentioned previously. The only way to change policy in Hong Kong is to change the government. Beijing blocked direct elections for the Chief Executive unless it could hand-pick the candidates via its proxies in the Functional Constituencies. That means there can't be change, because all Chief Executives would endlessly be pushing the status-quo because status-quo = stability = CCP happy. There's been over 20 years of pro-Beijing Chief Executives selected by Beijing loyalists, and there's still no credible plan for dealing with housing in the city.
Did British get blamed for what happens in HK? Rarely and no one dare to do so. The ones who dare to speak up ended up either in jail or put on a boat to ship back to China.Would direct elections make everything better? Maybe not. But if Beijing wants to retain final control over Hong Kong politics it can't complain when it gets blamed for what happens in the city.
If CCP cracked down on 2003, then Hong Kong would be a much better place than now. It is sad that Xi were not in power in 2003.Don't get me wrong. I don't think China managed things badly in the first couple of years. The CCP was content to wait on the national security legislation after the 2003 protests. It also moved quickly to get rid of Henry Tang when it turned out he was probably corrupt and deeply unpopular.
However, everything started going downhill afterwards, probably because Xi took over and introduced a national policy of "control, control, control". There was no chance he was going to allow real democracy in Hong Kong.
Up until 2010, most HK people I met (and these were people under 40) said they were Chinese and being a HKer was part of that. There was maybe suspicion over the repeated statements from the CCP that it was "too early" to talk about electoral reform. But there wasn't fear or loathing of China/Chinese people. They saw themselves as being Chinese.
I'm not sure that playing the game of "who called who mean names first" really achieves much. Before 2014 I can recall plenty of Chinese people saying HKers were spoilt brats who complained too much. Also, the term "locusts" frequently referred to people who worked in the grey market reselling things like baby milk. Some of those were HKers as well, not just mainland Chinese. It's a term that's also used outside of HK to refer to the grey market reselling to China.
What a joke, I am a HKer. Many of my friends in HK or in the US never want to mention they are Chinese. A few times when I said that I am a Chinese and they would correct me by saying you are a HKer. Fear and loathing of China and Chinese were widespread. People who can't speak fluent Cantonese were ostracized and looked down to in 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s.
It is funny you don't even understand the meaning of the word locusts. The locusts are for new immigrants who use welfare system and have too many children. But it ends up to be a label for all mainlanders. Many Hong Kong people believe that these people come to HK just for the welfare and contribute little to the society. The truth is much more complicated. And many of these so called locusts are elder HK males who can't find a wife in HK and married someone in mainland and have children.
It would be rather strange for someone to be attacked in mainland China for speaking Cantonese given that there are tens of millions of people in China that speak it, and most of them are in mainland China. On the other hand, if you started making your political views clear such as by publicly talking about autonomy for Hong Kong (or Taiwanese independence) there'd be a significant chance of being attacked.
As for Mandarin in HK, no one should be attacked for speaking their native language. But it's hardly surprising that some thugs would do that especially given the current tensions - they're a good excuse to commit violence. There's also been longer-term irritation about Mandarin in HK due to perceived attempts at forcing it on the city. Even a few years ago Lam had to publicly deny that there were plans to start teaching primarily in Mandarin in schools.
Are you kidding? Even you speak perfect Cantonese, you could still be discriminated in HK. A few years ago, my sister was discriminated because they thought she is some kind of wealthy mainlander then they became super nice when they found out she is a HK returnee that coming back from the US. This pure discrimination and prejudice have left a bad taste for my family.
As for speaking Mandarin, it has been a taboo before the handover when the British official making Cantonese as one of the official language in HK. It is not a recent phenomenon. Don't try to twist facts and claim moral high ground and blame the HK government for the outright prejudice and superiority complex of many HK people.
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