Up to a million people fleeing Hong Kong could adapt to China

Albert Ho mixes the dining room of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong with a suit jacket and a black handkerchief and falls into his seat. The 69-year-old lawyer, democracy advocate and opposition politician has just visited two friends in prison.

One of them is Jimmy Lai, a media mogul and pro-democracy activist Apple Daily the newspaper applauded the city’s protest movement before Beijing quelled the riots with a draconian national security law it exercised to accuse it of “foreign collusion”. Lai has been he denied bail while awaiting trial. Another was politician Wu Chi-wai, the former leader of the city’s main opposition party, the Democratic Party, and one of 55 activists and former lawmakers arrested in early January. John Clancey, an American lawyer for Ho’s firm, was too arrested that day, the first foreigner caught by the new and exhaustive security law, which among the vaguely defined crimes includes subversion and secession. “I have so many friends who are in jail now,” Ho says during lunch. “I’ll probably be next.” He might be right: He was once chaired by the Democratic Party and his law firm has defended hundreds of protesters. Chinese state media have dubbed him a member of one new “Colla dels Quatre” responsible for the city’s unrest.

China’s relentless repression may have managed to crush Hong Kong protests and neutralize political opposition. But he is also doing something else: inciting many here to consider fleeing abroad. Recently released data from Taiwan’s National Immigration Agency shows that more than 10,800 Hong Kongs received residence permits in 2020, nearly double the total for the previous year. Since the security law came into force, several nations – including Australia and Canada – have opened new immigration routes for Hong Kong residents. And in the U.S., Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Feb. 1 that the country should offer a refuge in Hong Kong “victims of repression by Chinese authorities.”

The United Kingdom, the former colonial lord of the territory, yes gave a broader welcome, inviting holders of British national (overseas) (BN (O)) passports to apply for a new type of visa that establishes a path to citizenship. About 5.2 million Hong Kong residents, or two-thirds of the 7.5 million population, are eligible to host the UK in their offer. According to a British government forecast, up to a million will be released in the next five years.

Over time, the exodus could reshape Hong Kong’s political and financial landscape, with the prospect of a study This year alone capital outflows of $ 36 billion. The flight will only accelerate the integration of the territory with mainland China, which has shown its willingness to pump people and money across the border, even encouraging more Chinese companies to trade in Hong Kong.

Of course, Hong Kong’s history has been shaped by migrations (inbound and outbound) that have often been caused by political turmoil. The mainlanders fled here after Mao Zedong’s communists conquered China in 1949 and in the decades following the young “freedom swimmers” faced the sea to escape the Cultural Revolution.

The rich have left the city in times of uncertainty, even after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and before the surrender in 1997, when the United Kingdom transferred sovereignty to China. They marched to London, Singapore, Sydney, Toronto and other cosmopolitan places. Many returned once they realized that the People’s Liberation Army tanks were not going to roll down Queen’s Road Central, which is why present-day Hong Kong is home to more than 300,000 dual Canadian citizens.

The best escape route these days leads to the UK After China enacted the security law without local debate on June 30, the Boris Johnson government called the measure a “clear and serious” violation of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, in which China pledged not to alter Hong Kong’s way of life for the 50 years following the handover. London retaliated with the new visa for BN (O) passport holders, created before the city’s return to the Chinese government in 1997, which would allow them to remain in the UK and gain citizenship if they stayed at least 180 days each year. for five years. years.

At least 7,000 Hong Kong residents had already arrived in the UK before the visa application window opened on 31 January. The only probable reason that has not been followed is the atrocious treatment of Covid-19 in the UK, with a daily number of cases of around 20,000. (Hong Kong’s total throughout the pandemic is less than 11,000 infected.) With the UK advancing rapidly in vaccinations, the number of arrivals is likely to increase: an impact assessment by the British government suggests from an average point of 320,000 to more than one million Hong Kongers will accept their offer for five years.

For Tak, a recent arrival in London who asked for his full name to be withheld out of concern for his family, there is now no going back. Born and educated in Hong Kong, he worked at one of the city’s world banks and, during protests, spent lunch breaks and weekends attending rallies and marches. He says previous emigrants returned home after surrender, when the city was prospering and China was not threatened.

It’s different now, he says. The harsh way in which the Chinese leadership has dealt with the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong shows that it does not mind endangering the city’s status as one of the world’s financial centers. Concerned about the worsening political climate, his family set up offshore accounts and changed their money. He hopes his parents will end up accompanying him to the UK

For Tak, the national security law was the “turning point.” His nightmare is that Beijing will one day subdue the Hong Kongers as it has done Uyghurs, members of an ethnic minority in western China who have been forced into detention camps. “Once Hong Kong loses its importance as a financial center, the people of Hong Kong will have the same luck,” he says.