What turned into a ruinous royal blunder had something of an innocent beginning at a casual football game on the Mala’e Pangai Si’i, the open waterfront ground beside the Royal Palace in Nuku’alofa. There is not much agreement on the date, this long running scandal is full of incomplete timings and actions. Watching the game in what may have been the late 1970s was Hong Kong businessman George Chen Kai-cheng. He was visiting the kingdom in search of business opportunities. Lobsters interested him.
‘There were only a couple of ethnic Chinese there at that time so I stood out among the crowds,’ Chen said. ‘I was standing outside the royal palace watching a soccer match when they told me the king wanted to talk to me ...I looked over and saw the king sitting nearby under a canopy.’
Tāufa’āhau had not learned any lessons from the Meier blunders. Several conversations followed between the king and Chen. At some point the king asked him for ways in which Tonga could make money. Chen replied simply ‘sell passports’. The motivation was straightforward; the British colony of Hong Kong was due to be handed back to China in 1997. Many Hong Kong and Taiwan people wanted to escape the growing power of Beijing with second ‘passports of convenience’. Tonga could be among the first to cash in on fear.
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