Maybe I'm wrong, but Article 5 seems to have laid down two conditions for a person to not be considered Chinese at the time of his birth:
I added the numbers in parentheses just to show my interpretation of the law. Isn't it saying that the person must have both foreign nationality at birth AND parents who were settled abroad? If just having parents who were settled abroad is enough for them to not be Chinese, why add the extra clause about acquisition of foreign nationality?But a person whose parents are both Chinese nationals and have both settled abroad, or one of whose parents is a Chinese national and (1) has settled abroad, AND (2) who has acquired foreign nationality at birth shall not have Chinese nationality.
The recent Court of First Instance case that defined "settled abroad" seems to have failed because the applicant had both acquired Canadian citizenship when he was born AND his parents were already permanent residents of Canada.
But as I said, maybe I'm wrong, so feel free to correct me.
No, I didn't. I'm pretty sure I was Chinese at birth. The situation is this: I was born in Saigon and both my parents were ROC citizens when I was born. I can definitely prove this for at least one of them, most probably my mother, as I recall keeping her citizenship documents. For those who aren't familiar with the incident of forced naturalization, all residents of Chinese descent in Saigon were literally forced to take on Vietnamese citizenship - this is a historical fact, and it happened after 1956. All of my family, relatives and friends had Vietnamese nationality forced on them after this decree. None of us would have wanted it otherwise, so I can't say that my nationality at birth could've been anything else but Chinese. Forced citizenship had yet to take place when I was born. Naturalization as a British citizen happened many years after that, when I came to the UK in the 80s, so yes, I've had my nationality "changed" twice so far. From Chinese to Vietnamese, and eventually from Vietnamese to British. It's pretty disheartening, because none of my family wanted to have Vietnamese nationality in the first place, but that's how it happened - I can only say I was born in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Having said that, we were all ROC citizens (probably?), not PRC. I'm not even sure these nationality laws had been established back then, considering it was only a few years after the founding of the PRC when these events took place, so now, I'm not sure how the present laws might apply to me and my parents retrospectively. In any case, I consider myself Chinese before I was forced to adopt new citizenship.
P.S. My father lived and died in HK. He never set foot on the UK.