This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, August 22, 2019.

I'm Caleb Brown.

For citizens of Hong Kong feeling the stresses of pressure from Beijing, one option

offered by a British parliamentarian is this, give

Hong Kongers British citizenship. What are the implications of that plan? Could it actually

lower tensions? Generally, what does pressure from expats do to or for their home

countries?

Cato's Chris Prevel and Alex Narasta comment.

A British parliamentarian, the chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, whose name I will not try to pronounce, but his first name is Tom.

He suggests that as a means of reassurance, and I assume this means to protesters in

Hong Kong, Great Britain should provide citizenship to people in Hong Kong, and others have suggested that frankly this should have

happened 20 years ago when Hong Kong negotiated the transfer of that

hunk of land to China.

So, Chris, you have some thoughts about this idea.

You know, as a foreign policy matter,

that would be both a nice gesture.

But would it be, could it be perceived as threatening in a way?

Well, I don't really think it would be perceived as threatening.

And it's certainly not as threatening as other things that the US government or other governments

might threaten to do against the Chinese government if they were to use force

against protesters in Hong Kong. It just this all started we had a conversation among scholars just an informal lunch discussion.

Just an informal lunch discussion and Ryan Bourne called my attention to this, which I had not seen.

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