The Hong Kong handover resulted in yet another nationality: British National (Overseas) or BN(O). There were some 3.5 million residents of Hong Kong who held British Dependent Territories citizen (BDTC) status by virtue of their connection with Hong Kong. Another 2 million other Hong Kong residents are believed to have been eligible to apply to become BDTCs. Upon handover, they would lose this status and became solely PRC citizens. Uncertainty about the future of Hong Kong under PRC rule led to the United Kingdom creating a new category of nationality for which Hong Kong BDTCs could apply. Any Hong Kong BDTC who wished to do so was able to acquire the (non-transmissible) status of British National (Overseas).
Read more about this topic: History Of British Nationality Law
Famous quotes containing the words british and/or national:
“We may be scum, but at least we’re la crème de la scum.”
—Report on the British royal family. quoted in Sunday Times (London, Nov. 13, 1988)
“All men are lonely. But sometimes it seems to me that we Americans are the loneliest of all. Our hunger for foreign places and new ways has been with us almost like a national disease. Our literature is stamped with a quality of longing and unrest, and our writers have been great wanderers.”
—Carson McCullers (1917–1967)