The Revd Dave Ho Young wasn’t interested in being Chinese when he was growing up. After his parents’ divorce, he was brought up by his British mother in Shropshire, while his Cantonese father moved back to Hong Kong. These days, the Revd’s Chinese heritage plays a bigger part in his life: his evangelical C of E church, St Barnabas in Leeds, has become a gathering place for the city’s newly arrived Hong Kong émigrés.
Two years ago, Britain opened the route to residency for Hong Kong Chinese who hold British National (Overseas) passports, after the National Security Law imposed by the Chinese Communist party ended the city’s ‘one country, two systems’ arrangement with the mainland. Since then, 125,000 Hong Kongers have entered the UK, which makes this one of the largest migrant waves modern Britain has ever seen. Yet their arrival has been met with very little trouble or backlash.
This is perhaps the most highly educated group of immigrants ever to arrive in the country
In some parts of the country, local communities are changing.
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