Hong Kong people Oxford English Dictionary in March 2014. Hong Kong people do not comprise one particular ethnicity, and people that live in Hong Kong are independent of Chinese citizenship and residency status. The majority of Hong Kongers are of Chinese descent and are ethnic Chinese (with most having ancestral roots in the province of Guangdong); however there are also Hongkongers of, for example, Indian, Filipino, Nepalese, Indonesian, Pakistani, Vietnamese, and British descent. Expatriates from many other countries live and work in the city. During the years leading up to the 1997 handover of sovereignty from Britain to China, many residents left Hong
British nationality law and Hong Kong on or after 1983 to a parent settled in Hong Kong are BDTCs. The law also stated that British Citizens or BDTCs by descent could not automatically pass on British nationality to a child born outside the United Kingdom or the dependent territories concerned unless a parent acquired citizenship otherwise than by descent. Negotiation concerning the future of Hong Kong started in the late 1970s between Britain and China. With the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration on 19 December 1984, the future of Hong Kong was set, with China to assume sovereignty of the entire territory of Hong Kong