The UK is granting the most special travel documents to Hong Kong residents since the 1997 handover, bolstering predictions of a mass exodus as China tightens its grip over the former British colony.
British National (Overseas) passports have been granted to 216,398 Hong Kong residents in the first 10 months of this year, higher than any annual figure stretching back to 1997, according to data provided by the UK’s Passport Office.
In October alone, the office issued 59,798 Hong Kongers with the document, 52 percent higher than the same period last year and the highest monthly figure since the British Passport Office began readily compiling them in 2015.
That translates to more than five every minute, based on an average eight-hour working day.
The numbers, which also include renewals, provide the latest glimpse of the departures Hong Kong faces as this year’s sudden enactment of a new National Security Law — in response to anti-Beijing protests last year — raised concerns about dwindling freedoms in the territory.
The monthly numbers began spiking in July, when the UK upgraded the status of British National (Overseas) passport holders. They can now stay in Britain for five years and have an easier path toward UK citizenship.
China has criticized the UK’s move to invite more Hong Kong residents as an inappropriate interference in the country’s domestic affairs.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in July said that the country might not recognize the passports as valid travel documents, although that would likely have little practical significance for Hong Kong residents, who usually enter and exit the territory using their local identity cards.
Meanwhile, real-estate agents in London have been seeing a surge in interest from Hong Kong, with inquiries up almost 80 percent this year for some agencies.
There are an estimated 2.9 million Hong Kongers eligible for the passports and as many as 2.3 million of their dependents, according to a UK government study.
Of those eligible, the UK estimates that as many as 322,000 would move to the kingdom through 2025.
The identity document is a product of the British colonial era that ended in 1997. It was made to recognize Hong Kong residents of the time as overseas British nationals, but only gave holders the right to visit the UK for six months.
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
DEFENSE: The US would assist Taiwan in developing a new command and control system, and it would be based on the US-made Link-22, a senior official said The Ministry of National Defense is to propose a special budget to replace the military’s currently fielded command and control system, bolster defensive resilience and acquire more attack drones, a senior defense official said yesterday. The budget would be presented to the legislature in August, the source said on condition of anonymity. Taiwan’s decade-old Syun An (迅安, “Swift Security”) command and control system is a derivative of Lockheed Martin’s Link-16 developed under Washington’s auspices, they said. The Syun An system is difficult to operate, increasingly obsolete and has unresolved problems related to integrating disparate tactical data across the three branches of the military,
RSS