Democracies Must Not Fail Hong Kong Migrants
These communities deliver as many benefits to their host countries as they gain from being there.
By David Fickling (Bloomberg/asia)
May 30, 2020, 12:34 PM GMT+7
Silent protest. Photographer: DALE DE LA REY/AFP
Hong Kong was built upon migration. Its entrepreneurial people may be on the brink of another exodus.
The U.K. shamefully left residents of its former colony in a second-class category of non-citizenship when it handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997. It may finally be about to right some of the wrongs of the past. Holders of British National (Overseas) status — who get U.K.-style passports and some consular help, but have no special rights to live in Britain — may have their visas broadened to give them residency and a path to citizenship, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Thursday.
Such a move would only happen if China follows through on its measures to impose national-security laws on Hong Kong, violating the spirit of the 1984 Joint Declaration that paved the way to the handover. Should the U.K. make good on this offer, though, it would be hugely significant: The 315,000 holders of so-called BN(O) passports number nearly three times the U.K.’s existing 110,000-strong Hong Kong-born population. In total, about 2.9 million Hong Kongers — more than a third of the city — still have BN(O) status and should be able to apply for the passport if the need arose.
Perfidious Albion
Despite its historic links, the U.K. has a relatively small Hong Kong-born population
Even then, it wouldn’t be enough. About 1.4 million Hong Kongers were born since the 1997 handover. The democracy activists most at risk of reprisals in any crackdown are over-represented among that generation, who’d by virtue of their age be ineligible for BN(O) status. That’s where Taiwan, the U.S., Canada and Australia — the other democracies that have spoken up in support of the rights of Hong Kongers this week — need to back up their words with actions.
President Donald Trump was vague on details of action his administration may take over Hong Kong in a speech Friday — but as my colleague Eli Lake has argued, America should open its doors to Hong Kongers as a matter of principle. There’s little to welcome about the Cold War brewing between Washington and Beijing, but one small virtue of the previous conflict with the Soviet Union was the way America welcomed refugees from Communist countries in a way that would be unthinkable in our current nativist moment. Taiwan, which has justified fears of becoming the next target of Beijing’s irredentist nationalism, is in the same geopolitical boat.
Canada and Australia have even more to gain. Each has a proportionately larger Hong Kong diaspora than any other English-speaking country, with about one in every 200 residents born in the city, and larger numbers of second- and third-generation migrants. Canada’s trade minister, Mary Ng, is Hong-Kong born, as is Gladys Liu, who holds one of the most marginal seats on behalf of Australia’s ruling coalition.
One Door Opens
The openness of both countries to inflows of people has served them well. Since 1997 per-capita income in Canada and Australia has grown faster than the average of rich nations, and quicker than the U.K. or U.S. Diaspora communities often have relationships and on-the-ground knowledge in their countries of origin that are invaluable for building up economic ties. A 10% increase in migration increases bilateral trade by 1.5%, an effect that's even stronger with higher-skilled or better-educated newcomers like those from Hong Kong.
Welcoming Hong Kongers who seek the liberties they’re denied in their home city would be the latest step in a long tradition. Chinese migrants from the disintegrating, war-torn Qing empire laid the foundations of diaspora communities in Australia, California and Canada that have endured ever since.
The same factors spread southern Chinese across Southeast Asia, helping to cement trading links from Java to Thailand that persist to this day. Taiwan, whose President Tsai Ing-wen this week promised to introduce laws offering right of abode to Hong Kongers, has likewise gained from successive waves of mainland transplants since the 19th century. Hong Kong itself owes its modern boom to the millions of refugees and migrants who fled the People’s Republic from the late 1940s to the present.
Consider Maree Ma, who came to Australia as a child when her mother was one of tens of thousands of Chinese students offered residency in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre. She’s now general manager of Vision Times Australia, an independent Chinese-language media company. It’s important that the world now hears Chinese voices outside Beijing, she said in a phone interview: “They see the Chinese diaspora as their asset, and they try to speak on behalf of us.”
Strong ethnic-Chinese communities participating in modern democracies help illustrate that there’s an alternative to the nationalist wave currently gripping many rich countries, and a different path for China than the authoritarian one Beijing is set upon. By opening their borders to a new wave of migrants, democracies can show that the world need not continue down its current dark path.