Letters | Passports and the idea of belonging in Hong Kong
Readers discuss the BN(O) passport, lai see as social contract, and the Hong Kong spirit
Before 1997, when many families made contingency plans for Canada or Australia, the suffix in BN(O) carried a quiet finality. It acknowledged a connection to Britain while setting a boundary. It did not confer the right of abode; it offered recognition at a distance. Around that time my father told me: “You’re not stateless. You’re from Hong Kong.”
Today the BN(O) has no practical function in Hong Kong. It is not recognised for entry. Daily life is organised instead around the permanent identity card and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region passport. What has changed is not the existence of Hong Kong identity but the structure within which it sits. Over three decades, that civic belonging has been nested within Chinese sovereignty. The promise of “unchanged for 50 years” was never permanence; it was a timetable.
Seen in this light, moving to Britain looks less like a sudden rupture than a decision about where to live within a transition that has always pointed towards 2047.