Hong Kong: China threatens to stop recognizing UK-issued passports


  • China threatens to no longer recognize British passports held by many Hong Kong citizens, a relic of their British colony status until 1997.
  • The Boris Johnson government has offered all Hong Kong citizens the opportunity to live and work in the UK, after Beijing imposed a new draconian security law in the region.
  • China’s ambassador to the United Kingdom warned on Thursday that Beijing would take steps to invalidate British national passports (abroad), potentially trapping up to three million people in Hong Kong.
  • Liu Xiaoming said, “If you don’t want to be a partner and our friend, and you want to treat China as a hostile power, you will pay the price.”
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China threatens to stop recognizing British passports held by millions of Hong Kong people, creating the possibility that up to three million people are prohibited from leaving the region.

Liu Xiaoming, China’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, issued the threat on Thursday in the latest escalation of a dispute between London and Beijing that started when China imposed a draconian security law on Hong Kong, a former British colony.

The new law, which has seen hundreds of pro-democracy protesters arrested in Hong Kong, led the British government of Boris Johnson to offer all Hong Kong citizens, some three million people, the opportunity to live and work in Britain through five years of limited license, which could lead to full British citizenship.

Xiaoming yesterday warned the United Kingdom that China would take steps to stop recognizing British national (foreign) passports as valid travel documents, effectively prohibiting Hong Kong citizens from leaving and moving to the United Kingdom.

“Since the UK violated the promise and commitment to BNO, we have to take other steps not to recognize BNO as a valid travel document,” he said at a press conference on Thursday.

He insisted that “China does not threaten anyone” but “we simply let him know the consequences.”

Xiaoming said: “China wants to be a friend of the United Kingdom and a partner of the United Kingdom, but if it does not want to be a partner and our friend, and it wants to treat China as a hostile power, it will pay the price.”

“We have a thousand reasons to make this relationship successful and none to make it fail.”

The new law imposed on Hong Kong by the Chinese Communist Party, which is also opposed by the European Union and the United States, is designed to reduce anti-government protests there.

Prime Minister Johnson said he violated the Sino-British Joint Declaration that the United Kingdom and China signed in 1984 by effectively ending the “one country, two systems” agreement under which China promised to grant Hong Kong more freedoms than China continental for 50 years. years since her return to Chinese control in 1997.

The UK government has estimated that as of February there were around 350,000 British (foreign) national passport holders in Hong Kong, and 2.9 million people who could claim one.

Boris Johnson China


REUTERS / Toby Melville


The Hong Kong dispute is just one of several sources of tension between the British Johnson government and China.

Beijing reacted angrily to the UK’s decision to remove Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei from its 5G networks by 2027, and the Chinese Foreign Ministry accused Britain of being “the deception of the United States.”

London is also putting increasing pressure on China for its Uighur human rights abuses in Xinjiang province.

Ambassador Xiaoming was dealt with on live television last week with leaked drone images that appear to show Uighur Muslims shaved heads and bound blindfolded before being driven to trains.

Xiaoming did not deny the veracity of the images, which first emerged last year, to the BBC’s Andrew Marr, but insisted that it could simply show a normal “prisoner transfer” in the country.

At his press conference on Thursday, the Chinese ambassador to the United Kingdom tried to discredit claims that Beijing was cracking down on the Uighurs, claiming that those sent to re-education camps were being de-radicalized.