Wall Street Journal
September 30, 2012
In the 1990s, just before the handover of Hong Kong to China, there was a going-away lunch for the Canadian consul general. When I entered the venue, I thought it must be the wrong place. The hundreds of ethnic Chinese gathered for the lunch in the colony’s largest hotel ballroom didn’t look like “Canadians.” But before I could complete my turn back out the ballroom door, I realized this was indeed a roomful of Canadians.
After Britain agreed to transfer sovereignty—and Hong Kong’s seven million people—to China, many Hong Kong Chinese sought foreign passports, anxious that after the handover in …
